defaces or even desecrates them;
and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has
not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer _our_ Epos, but shines in
the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller,
like a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be
reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much
as know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic
Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African
Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things,
even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their
rise, their culmination, their decline.'

'Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but a
piece of gilt-wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and
truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, "of little price." A right Conjuror
might I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools
the divine virtue they once held.'

'Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity,
then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and
Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his
shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical
Understanding, what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and
Pontiff of the World will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker;
who, Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from
Heaven to fix it there. Such too will not always be wanting; neither
perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account
him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Symbol has
grown old, and gently remove it.

'When, as the last English Coronation[3] was preparing,' concludes
this wonderful Professor, 'I read in their Newspapers that the
"Champion of England," he who has to offer battle to the Universe for
his new King, had brought it so far that he could now "mount his horse
with little assistance," I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol
well-nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the
tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out symbols (in this Ragfair of
a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether
you; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and
perhaps produce suffocation?'

[3] That of George IV.--ED.

CHAPTER IV

HELOTAGE

At this point we determ