'sure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not.

That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for 'all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition and de'termine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imag'ings or imaginings,-seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure 'spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere ly'ing close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to 'their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay, even, if thou wilt, to 'their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then, with 'thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God'effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch 'forth my hand, and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily 'stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch many a thing, and 'swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, 'to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds 'avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the true inexplicable 'God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my 'hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith? 'Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder' hiding stupefactions, which Space practices on us.

'Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-ma'gician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. 'Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, 6 we should see ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all 'fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were out'done. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man, poor 'fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without

6

one.

Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Am'phion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? 'Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-man'tled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, C squared ashlar houses, and noble streets? Was it not the still 'higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the

'divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilising man?

Our

highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: 'his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the 'ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still 'flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold Accompani'ments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which hap'pens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happen'ing in two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of 'an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus " was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.

Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, 'from the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke 'that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, 'was it it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, ' and sent flying? Oh, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) 'transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how 'were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the ( Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed 'the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through 'every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the 'glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the 'Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him 'from the foolish.

'Again, could any thing be more miraculous than an actual 'authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and 'thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doc'tor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, 'look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; 'did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well 'nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. 'Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress 'the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what ' else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, 'into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air, and In

6

'visibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; 'round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to 'Eternity minutes are as years and æons. Come there not tones 'of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song ' of beatified Souls? And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); 'and glide bodeful and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), ' and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,-till the scent of the 'morning-air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night 'becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Mace'don does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts, at 'Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanish'ed utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, 'and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it 'all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its 'howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?— 'Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth ' openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, 'some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.

'O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we 'not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very

• deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy

• Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are 'dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME; 'wherein through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is 'to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war'horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and 'heart but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, 'nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a 'firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; it cracks in 'twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sound'ing. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A 'little while ago they were not; a little while and they are not, 'their very ashes are not.

'So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. 'Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission

APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the 'giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces 'on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow :-and then the 'Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and 6 soon even to Sense becomes a Vanished Shadow. Thus, like 'some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, 'does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long'drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge 'from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; 'then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are lev'elled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, 'which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality 'and are alive? On the hardest adamant some foot-print of us the last Rear of the host will read traces of the But whence?-O Heaven, whither? Sense 'knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery 'to Mystery, from God and to God.

'is stamped in; 'earliest Van.

"We are such stuff

'As Dreams are made of, and our little Life

'Is rounded with a sleep!"'

CHAPTER IX.

CIRCUMSPECTIVE.

HERE then arises the so momentous question: Have many British Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has the journey been from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man; through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space themselves! And now does the Spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in Faust:

''Tis thus at the roaring Loom.of Time I ply,

'And weave for God the Garment thou see'st him by ;'

or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, Shakspeare:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 'The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 'And all which it inherit shall dissolve;

And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 'Leave not a wrack behind;'

begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen to be inevitable ?