serves the Professor, 'not our Logical,
Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might
say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; our Magician and Wizard
to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is
Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever
in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of
Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that
gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours with its own
hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window,
too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its
colour-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known
five-hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of
glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at
any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not
the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred
Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an Implement,
as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little
differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man,
consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those
ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise
symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever,
to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the
Godlike?

'Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an
extrinsic and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for
instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with
them as ensign in their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the
Wallet-and-staff round which the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that
nickname of Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against
King Philip himself? Intrinsic significance these had none: only
extrinsic; as the accidental Standards of multitudes more or less
sacredly uniting together; in which union itself, as above noted,
there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a
like category, too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic
Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and generally all national
or other Sectarian Costumes and Customs: they have no intrinsic,
necessary divineness, or even worth; but have acquired an extrinsic
one. Nevertheless through