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-baptized 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 inexpungable; 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 St. 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 howl-chauntings, Ernulphuscursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might in the meanwhile, become only the most tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret.

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these pilgrims well, there is perhaps discernable 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 be done by a spectre queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many "Saints' Wells," and ever with

out 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 Nor-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 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 church-yards), and its bellows-engines (in these churches), thou still seest; and its flame, looking out 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 clothhabits and of soul-habits; much more his collective stock of handicrafts, the whole faculty he has required of manipulating nature; all these things as indispensable 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 demand 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, airbuilt, does the Actual body itself forth from the great mystic deep.

Visible and tangible products of the past, again, I reckon up to the extent of three: Cities, with their cabinets and arsenals; their 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 persuade 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 wonderbringing 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?"

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 eggshells!-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 cock-pit, wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for ammunitionwagons, 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 gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies as a desolate, hideous Place-of-Sculls.- Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these powder-devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her; but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure; and next year the Marchfeld will be green, nay, greener. Thrifty, unwearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little