sion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells
not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the
carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its
Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified
Apparition, visiting our low Earth.

"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilized
Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny,
under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan
broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have I
turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart
I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a
Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their
silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions,
Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the
Prison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom
Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded
Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom,
summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has
three Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of
wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as
he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as
if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come to
Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his
Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall
reappear. Oh, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go
out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and
repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say
whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with
its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear,
where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty
and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast
out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then is
Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole
Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and
jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes,
farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!"

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