lower will glad thee. O my Friends,
when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example,
the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues
of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them
up by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us
the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing Press with
its Newspapers: _du Himmel_! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's
Goose?

"Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connected
with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. In
a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, by
Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. And
if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how
expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple
Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite
new emphasis.

"For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the
small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In the
Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less
distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite;
the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible,
and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided
and commanded, made happy, made wretched: He everywhere finds himself
encompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the
Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what
is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical;
a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a
'Gospel of Freedom,' which he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he
can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment
of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in
the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real."

"Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with
these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the
verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too,
of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we
consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights.
Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself
to be most