'sent God, and worship the same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious Symbols, what we * call Religions; as men stood in this stage of culture or the ' other, and could worse or better body-forth the Godlike: some 'Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only ' an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried it ' in this manner, look on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what followed ⚫ therefrom. Higher has the human Thought not yet reached : 'this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quite per'ennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand 'to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest.

But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness ' of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, ' or even desecrates them; and Symbols, like all terrestrial 'Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be 'true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the distance, ' if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes ' when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dim" ness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw 'be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Lumina'ries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their ' culmination, their decline.'

Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre 'is but a piece of gilt-wood; that the Pyx has become a most 'foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, "of little price." A right Conjuror might I name thee, couldst thou ' conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held.'

'Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, 'his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, 'then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love ' and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, 'the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there.

'

'Such too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now " are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Sym'bol has grown old, and gently remove it.

When, as the last English Coronation' was preparing,' concludes this wonderful Professor, I read in their Newspapers ' that the “Champion of England," he who has to offer battle ' to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far that he could now "mount his horse with little assistance," I said 'to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh superannu'ated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters ' and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, 'to tether you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening ' to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation ?'

CHAPTER IV.

HELOTAGE.

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled Institute for the Repression of Population; which lies, dishonourably enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdröckh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place here.

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; something like a fixedidea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light;

1 That of George IV.-ED.

nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this Institute of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves.

First, then, remark that Teufelsdröckh, as a speculative Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zähdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed:

'Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn 'Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather' tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face ' of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy ' rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! 'Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles 'wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but 'it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the 'thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, ' like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on : 'thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for 'the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.

'A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who ' is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, 'but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or 'low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endea< vour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly ' Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made ' Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble

'toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil 'for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?—These two, in all their degrees, I honour : 'all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it ' listeth.

'Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dig'nities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest ' of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, 'could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of 'Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.'

And again: It is not because of his toils that I lament for 'the poor we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task 'a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for him also 'there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden and weary; but for ' him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him, and 'fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him; 'but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of 'God; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded! -That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity 'for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more 'than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it 'does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why ' is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?'

Quite in an opposite strain is the following: 'The old Spar'tans had a wiser method; and went out and hunted-down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too ( numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hof'rath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing-armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most

thickly-peopled country, some three days annually might suf'fice to shoot all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated ⚫ within the year. Let Governments think of this. The expense were trifling nay the very carcasses would pay it. Have them 'salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not 'Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in work'houses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil ⚫ of them, might see good to keep alive?'

Never

'And yet,' writes he farther on, 'there must be something wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his ⚫ worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. 'theless, which of the two was the more cunningly - devised 'article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered • Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!' 'True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor elsewhere: 'too crowded indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this incon'siderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, I till it will grow no more? How thick stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the • Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in ⚫ one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him Earth, will 'feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, 'when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indo'mitable living Valour; equipped, not now with the battle-axe ' and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare? 'Where are they?-Preserving their Game!'