'damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cot'tages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with her chil'dren round her :—all hidden and protectingly folded up in the 'valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. 'Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that 'lay round my mountain-seat, which in still weather, were wont 'to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, 'in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated 'Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read 'the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind 'housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their hus'bands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, succes'sively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plain'ly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready 'here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, 'with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and 'contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your 'hat.—If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the 'business of the World in its details, here perhaps was the place 'for combining it into general propositions, and deducing in'ferences therefrom.

'Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger 'through the Distance: around some Schreckhorn, as yet grim'blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously 'eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, 'it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood 'smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. How thou 'fermentest and elaboratest in thy great fermenting-vat and la'boratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!-Or what 'is nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art thou not 'the "Living Garment of God?" O Heavens, is it, in very 'deed, HE then that ever speaks through thee; that lives and 'loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?

'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth,f 'and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. 'Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; 'ah! like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewil'dered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of

*

celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres but godlike, and my Father's!

'With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow man; 'with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, way'ward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even 'as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or the 'beggar's gabardinè, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and 'thy Bed of Rest is but a grave. O my Brother, my Brother, 'why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears 'from thy eyes!-Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which in 'this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one like inarticulate cries, ' and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven 6 are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my 'needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that "Sanctuary of Sorrow" by strange, steep ways, had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the "Divine Depth of Sorrow" lie disclosed to me.'

[free.

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. A vain interminable controversy,' writes he, touching 'what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, 'arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in 'every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, 'have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression ' of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is indispensa'ble. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different 'terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to 'change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic Church-Catechism of our 'present century has not yet fallen into my hands meanwhile, my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so.

'for

'Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is 'because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning 'he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance 'Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe 'undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for 'the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach: ' and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfac'tion and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's infinite Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infi'nitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hoch'heimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus speak not of them; to 'the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your 'ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better 'vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, 'he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and 'declares himself the most maltreated of men.-Always there is 'a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

6

But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By 'certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come 'upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs 'to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple pay'ment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint: only such overplus as there may be do we account 'Happiness; any deficit again is Misery. Now consider that we 'have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund 'of Self-conceit there is in each of us,-do you wonder that the 'balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Block'head cry: See there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used !—I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vani'ty; of what thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. 'Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), 'thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou 'deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to 'die in hemp.

เ

'So true it is, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can be 'increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by

lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write: "It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to 'begin.22

6

I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, 'thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tor'menting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is 'not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there 'that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no 'right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined 'not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other 'than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking ' after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion ' enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy_Goethe.' 'Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere: 'there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do 'without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was 'it not to preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, 'the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; 'bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the God'like that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou 'also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with 'manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, ' and learn it! O thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear 'what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee 'needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulphed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.'

6

6

And again: Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth

' with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: 'thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because 'it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and 'he too was sent. Knowest thou that "Worship of Sorrow?" 'The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries ago, now 'lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful 'creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched 'out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.'

Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 'perennial continuance of Inspiration ;' on Prophecy; that there are 'true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day' with more of the like sort. We select some fractions by way of finish to this farrago.

Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus apostrophises the Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; for the task appoint'ed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated 'this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus ' of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as 'it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and 'the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying 'sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, 'all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt 'thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a เ new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, other'wise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty ' in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for build'ing? Take our thanks, then, and thyself away.

Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the 'God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr yon Vol'taire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me?// To the "Worship of Sorrow" ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleas-7 est, has not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it "not here? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of