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 accompaniments, and rich
symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads
them. Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease
to be wonderful if happening 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 hast 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 less a
stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? O,
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 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 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 Invisibility? This
is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific _