th HIS Paladins round him; how glorious, how salutary in the
dim generations now going!--These too were hopes which proved signally
futile. Rigorous Time could not grant these at all;--granted, in his own
hard way, other things instead. But, all along, the Life-element,
the Epoch, though Friedrich took it kindly and never complained, was
ungenial to such a man.

"Somewhat of a rotten Epoch, this into which Friedrich has been born, to
shape himself and his activities royal and other!"--exclaims Smelfungus
once: "In an older earnest Time, when the eternally awful meanings of
this Universe had not yet sunk into dubieties to any one, much less
into levities or into mendacities, into huge hypocrisies carefully
regulated,--so luminous, vivid and ingenuous a young creature had not
wanted divine manna in his Pilgrimage through Life. Nor, in that case,
had he come out of it in so lean a condition. But the highest man of us
is born brother to his Contemporaries; struggle as he may, there is no
escaping the family likeness. By spasmodic indignant contradiction of
them, by stupid compliance with them,--you will inversely resemble, if
you do not directly; like the starling, you can't get out!--Most surely,
if there do fall manna from Heaven, in the given Generation, and nourish
in us reverence and genial nobleness day by day, it is blessed and well.
Failing that, in regard to our poor spiritual interests, there is sure
to be one of two results: mockery, contempt, disbelief, what we may call
SHORT-DIET to the length of very famine (which was Friedrich's case);
or else slow-poison, carefully elaborated and provided by way of daily
nourishment.

"Unhappy souls, these same! The slow-poison has gone deep into them.
Instead of manna, this long while back, they have been living on mouldy
corrupt meats sweetened by sugar-of-lead; or perhaps, like Voltaire,
a few individuals prefer hunger, as the cleaner alternative; and in
contemptuous, barren, mocking humor, not yet got the length of geniality
or indignation, snuff the east-wind by way of spiritual diet. Pilgriming
along on such nourishment, the best human soul fails to become very
ruddy!--Tidings about Heaven are fallen so uncertain, but the Earth and
her joys are still Interesting: 'Take to the Earth and her joys;--let
your soul go out, since it must; let your five senses and their
appetites be well alive.' That is a dreadful 'Sham-Christian
Dispensation' to be born under! You wonder at