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'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 ape'like, but be wholly human? Know that there is in man 'a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. Shew the dullest clodpole, shew the haughtiest feather'head, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and 10 worship.'

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

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There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of 15 Prophecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dispute: but, in any case, hast 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 momentous doctrine 20 '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 25 '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, 30

'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:

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'But there is no Religion?' reiterates the Professor. Fool! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered 'all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name 'LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine Church-Homi5letic 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, environ'ment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the God'like had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest 10 forms of the Common; and by him been again pro'phetically 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 be divine? Know'est thou none such? I know him, and name him 15 'Goethe.

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'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 thou have Faith. Spake we not 20 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 a sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions also, as a 25 'boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say 'that thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not

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God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not Im'mensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ30 music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars 'sing together.'

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.

It 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 5 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 10 him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. 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 15 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 20 beginning. Courage, then!' may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to be clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, 25 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 30

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'than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had car'ried with him an air-pump and vial of vitriolic ether, 5 '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?

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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 viola'tion of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far 15 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.

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

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But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be 25 'constant?" 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 turn30 'ing," 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?

'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, 5 'to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific 'individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the 'Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker 'take them into His counsel; that they read His ground'plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This 10 '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 hand'breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infi'nite, without bottom as without shore. 15

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'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 precious as to another. But is 20 '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 25 'marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill; 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 30 'infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits 'itself to some few computed centuries, and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this * our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: