Thought he, it's a wicked world in all
meridians; I'll die a pagan.
In good time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the
meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
"Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in the town of
Meridian. The relative at whose house I had intended to stay was ill, so I sought other quarters.
At this moment the sun passed the
meridian. Barbicane, after a few moments, rapidly wrote down the result of his observations, and said:
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and
Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in Heaven -- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the
meridian glare of day I see them still -- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!
Natures that have much heat, and great and violent desires and perturbations, are not ripe for action, till they have passed the
meridian of their years; as it was with Julius Caesar and Septimius Severus.
"Yes," he continued, with a contemptuous smile, "the blowing up of the first
meridian is bound to raise a howl of execration."
This famous timepiece, always regulated on the Greenwich
meridian, which was now some seventy-seven degrees westward, was at least four hours slow.
And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single
meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my soul.
I cannot help promising myself, from such a dawn, that the
meridian of this youth will be equal to that of either the elder or the younger Brutus."
Far to the south the sun climbed steadily to
meridian, but between it and the frozen Yukon intervened the bulge of the earth.
