w:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly
Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow.
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's
Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in
long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus,
like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the
Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again
into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled
up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision,
resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest
adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in; the last Rear of the host
will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?--O Heaven, whither?
Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to
Mystery, from God and to God.

"We _are such stuff_
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep!"'

CHAPTER IX

CIRCUMSPECTIVE

Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have many British
Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the
Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and
adventurous has the journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable
Woollen-Hulls of Man; through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his
wondrous Social Garnitures; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's
Soul, to Time and Space themselves! And now does the Spiritual,
eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin
in any measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, as through
a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of
Man's Being, what is changeable divided from what is unchangeable?
Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in _Faust_,--

''Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by';

or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician,
Shakspeare,--

'And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces,
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself,
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind';

begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand
safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that
Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society