state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our
compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of
"Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" and how "Man thereby, though
based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend
down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible,
indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth." Let us, omitting these
high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from
the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and
practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as
it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious
remarks:--

"The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our Professor, "who
shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised
to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves
together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into
the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William
the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most
undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they
were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do
thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much
clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those
mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut
out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of
concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought,
so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the
greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern,
Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I
might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

"Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in
Silence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to
thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame (_Schaam_)
the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other
plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the
eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily
thyself, the root withers, and no f