of Man's History, in the most parched spot of Europe, when 'Parisian life was at best but a scientific Hortus Siccus, bedizened 'with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; 'what is to be looked for when Life again waves leafy and 'bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing apelike, but 'be wholly human? Know that there is in man a quite inde'structible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even 'plausibly counterfeits such holding. Shew the dullest clodpole 'shew the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul Higher than him'self is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he 'must down and worship.'

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:

เ There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Prophecy 'has gone dumb? This is even what I dispute: but, in any case, 'has thou not still Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar 'settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he 'calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most momen'tous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost not thou 'listen, and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost 'bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, 'zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These 'break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too 'often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the 'sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are to 'follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before the 'old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?' Perhaps, also, in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve:

Fool!

'But there is no Religion?' reiterates the Professor. I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in 'this immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Frag'ments of a genuine Church-Homiletic lie scattered there, which 'Time will assort: nay fractions even of a Liturgy could I point 'out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, en'vironment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the Godlike

'had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the 'Common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in 'whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag 'burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to b 'divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and name 'him-Goethe.

'But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm 'worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest 'the people perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if tho have Faith. Spake we not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, 'yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as & 'sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless, ever'lasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no 'Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the 'Godlike; is not Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History 'and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars 'sing together.'

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.

Ir is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; 'Cloth-webs and Cob-webs,' of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asnnder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed.

Here therefore properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. Courage, then!' may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful medi tation, have found not to be unintelligible; but on the contrary to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours:

'Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus quietly begins the Professor; 'far deeper perhaps than we ima'gine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What spe

'cially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had 'been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and 'phial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my 'horse again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I 'work a miracle, and magical "Open sesame!" every time I please 'to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, or 'shut Turnpike?

"But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of 'Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: 'What are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising of 'one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a con'firmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, 'and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought 'to bear on us with its Material Force.

'Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On 'what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and de'clare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the 'Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept enough; which 'nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of ' meaning.

"But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be con'stant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not the Machine of the 'Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules ?" Probable enough, 'good friends: nay, I too must believe that the God, whom 'ancient inspired men assert to be "without variableness or 'shadow of turning," does indeed never change; that Nature, that 'the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented 'from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable 'rules. And now of you too I make the old inquiry: What those 'same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of 'Nature, may possibly be?

6

They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the 'accumulated records of man's Experience ?-Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to 'the foundations of the Universe, and gauged every thing there? 'Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His 'ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This

'stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas! not in 'anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but 'where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than 'we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without ' shore.

'Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain 'Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a 'rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and 'the like of him have succeeded in detecting, is to me as pre'cious as to another. But is this what thou namest "Mechanism 'of the Heavens," and "System of the World;" this, wherein 'Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen thousand 'Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, ' and inert Balls, had been-looked at, nicknamed, and marked in 'the Zodiacal Waybill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their What, being hid from us as in the signless Inane?

'System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, 'Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expan'sion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few com'puted centuries, and measured square miles. The course of 'Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these 'depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little 'Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and peb'ble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have 'become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean 'Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, 'and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little 'Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously 'enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is man; 'his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; 'his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of 'Providence through Eons of Æons.

'We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it 'is, whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, 'does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? With 'its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and