CHAPTER VIII.

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE.

THOUGH, after this Baphometic Fire-baptism' of his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed Indignation and Defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the Rue Saint Thomas de l'Enfer, the old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit ;-whereby, for the rest, its howlchantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret.

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does

Teufelsdröckh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay that will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many 'Saints' Wells, and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to eat his own heart;' and clutches round him outwardly, on the NOT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state ?

Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I 'failed not to look upon with interest. How beautiful ' to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote 'Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost 'the earliest Past: brought safe into the Present, and set 'before your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live'ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two 'thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it

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has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down there ; 'and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls "and Churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out 6. from every kind countenance, and every hateful one,. still warms thee or scorches thee.

"Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results "are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority "they rest on his Customs,, or Fashions both of Cloth

habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective ⚫ stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has required of manipulating Nature: all these things, as indis'pensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, * on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you de"mand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and ' other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It "transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision; it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask me not,. Where are the Laws; where is the * GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou go to Schönbrunn, "to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon: thou findest ' nothing there, but brick or stone houses, and some ❝ bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where then is that same cunningly-devised almighty GOVERNMENT of "theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So spiritual (geistig) is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; only * like a little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body itself forth from the great mystic "Deep.

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Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon up to the extent of three: Cities, with their "Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled Fields, to either or "to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges

may belong; and thirdly Books. In which third 'truly, the last-invented, lies a worth far surpassing 'that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue ' of a true Book. Not like a dead City of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled 'Field, but then a spiritual Field: like a spiritual Tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that already number some 'hundred-and-fifty human ages); and yearly comes its 'new produce of Leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, 'Philosophical, Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one of 'which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can per'suade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, 'which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a 'man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City'builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name 'Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror ' and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: 'thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and 'metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.-Fool! why 'journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone Pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ' ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell 'thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three thousand years: but canst • thou not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even 'Luther's Version thereof?'

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No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some Battle-field; which, we soon gather,

must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows:

'Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with 'shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead 'men and horses; stragglers still remaining not so much ་ as buried. And those red mould heaps: aye, there lie 'the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue 'has been blown; and now are they swept together, and 'crammed down out of sight, like blown Egg-shells!'Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his 'mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian "Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, 'richest level, intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn'bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy 'three broad Highways, meeting here from the ends of 'Europe, made for Ammunition-waggons, then? Were 'thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built 'Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might 'batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered? 'König Ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon ' under Napoleon's within which five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced ' and defiled! The greensward is torn up and trampled 'down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedgerows, and pleasant-dwellings, blown away with gun'powder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous: 'Place of Sculls.-Nevertheless, Nature is at work; 'neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost