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et 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 philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphics, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line."

ON CUSTOM.

"Custom doth make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers, and weaves airy raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, for ever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned.

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of Custom: but of all these perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means that we live; for man must work as well wonder; and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to bis true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or ra

ther we are fond foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference because I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-machine, for whom the divine gift of thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realized."

ON NAMES.

"Notable enough too wilt thou find the potency of Names; which, indeed, are but one kind of such Custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have named Madness and Diseases of the Nerves: seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: 'What is Madness; what are Nerves?'-Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye or without it? In every the wisest soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-empire, out of which, indeed, this world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earthrind."

The speculations of the supposititious Professor of Hodge-Podge Philosophy rise sometimes to even loftier heights of transcendentalism, as in this:

ON SPACE AND TIME.

"Deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. These-as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it―lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, on this Phantom existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can at best but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

"Fortunatus had a Wishing-Hat, which when he put on and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was there. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a hatter to establish himself in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another hatter establish himself, and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of the latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next to clap on your other felt, and simply by wishing that you were Anywhen, straightway to be Then! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of

that late Time!

unimaginable?"

Thinkest thou that it were impossible,

Or in a yet still loftier strain :

ON THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.

"Is the Past annihilated then, or only past? Is the Future non-extant, or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer. Already through these mystic avenues, thou, the Earth-blinded, summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both

are.

Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: That Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal Here, so is it an everlasting Now.”

And, still following up the same lofty strain of speculation, this :

ON IMMORTALITY.

"And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immortality? O Heaven! Is the white tomb of the Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind as these, which rises in the distance, like a pale receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone-but a pale spectral Illusion? Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with God?-Know of a truth, that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable;

that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be,-is even now and for ever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries. Believe it thou must, understand it thou canst not.'

Or again, this:

ON GHOSTS.

"Could anything 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 Doctor! Did he never, with his mind's eye as well as 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; wellnigh a million of Ghosts were traveling 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 Invisibility?—This is no Metaphor, it is a simple scientific Fact. We start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions. Round us, as around the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as Years and Eons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harpstrings, like the song of beatified souls? And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screechowlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful

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