arry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with
its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered
round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence
is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse,
fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but
warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more.
Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the
Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink
beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow
them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are
not, their very ashes are not.

"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation
after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing
from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and
Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one
hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly
dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--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 t