re, were
suggested by beholding the winter sunset lines of the sky through the
bare gothic-window tracery of a leafless forest. Recent research finds
the stained window in the antique burning East, where no studies were
made by frost or forest light--nay, the leaves carved by
tradition-loving Gothic Free Masons in churches often keep a peculiar
Eastern form.

I am not, however, lecturing of Lost Arts in the strain which sings
'there is nothing new under the sun,' and which in a chilling manner
benumbs the faith in progress by shaking with a grin before the wearied
inventor some skeleton puppet of buried ages, which resembles his great
thought as a hut resembles a palace. On the contrary, I find in this
strange frequency of anticipation among Indo-Germanic races, and in its
premature failures, a vast proof of inventive vitality and of promise of
great rising truths into all future ages. 'Steam power is nothing new,'
say the advocates of the genius of the past. Hero of Alexandria invented
a steam toy--as he who can read his _Spiritalia_ published by the
Jesuits in 1693 may learn for himself. But the power now roaring and
whizzing all over the world, and which would build every pyramid and
every monument of Egypt now extant in twenty-four hours, is no toy. When
I think of this, there is no ingenious trifle for amusement which does
not inspire a droll awe. Possibly those walking dolls now performing
their weary pilgrimages on level glass-pane floors in Broadway
windows--gravely lifting those enormous gilded boots, which remind me of
Miss Kilmansegg and Queen Berta _a grands pies_, in one--have a good
reason for their dignity of gait. For may they not be golden-footed and
solemn, like her who rose from the waves of old to prophesy to her
son?--and if she was _silver_-footed, it makes no difference, for so are
some of the _autoperiper_--nay, _that_ word finishes me, and I go no
further. Such a block of Greek would bring even a German sentence down
with a crash to a verbless conclusion. What I would have said was, that
it may be that these dolls are heralds of greater dolls yet to come,
which shall be wound up to fetch and carry, to sew on buttons--nay, it
is even possible (in the wildest of dreams) that they may be made to
boil potatoes properly. And I have been told that a recent improvement
in boys' rocking horses, by means of which a trotting motion is given to
the legs of those docile animals, has suggested to a mechanic