contempt, all manner of Buddists, Bonzes, Talapoins and suchlike, to
build brick Temples, on the voluntary principle; to worship with what
of chantings, paper-lanterns and tumultuous brayings, pleases them;
and make night hideous, since they find some comfort in so doing.
Cheerfully, though with contempt. He is a wiser Pontiff than many
persons think! He is as yet the one Chief Potentate or Priest in this
Earth who has made a distinct systematic attempt at what we call the
ultimate result of all religion, '_Practical_ Hero-worship:' he does
incessantly, with true anxiety, in such way as he can, search and sift
(it would appear) his whole enormous population for the Wisest born
among them; by which Wisest, as by born Kings, these three hundred
million men are governed. The Heavens, to a certain extent, do appear
to countenance him. These three hundred millions actually make
porcelain, souchong tea, with innumerable other things; and fight,
under Heaven's flag, against Necessity;--and have fewer Seven-Years
Wars, Thirty-Years Wars, French-Revolution Wars, and infernal
fightings with each other, than certain millions elsewhere have!

* * * * *

Nay in our poor distracted Europe itself, in these newest times, have
there not religious voices risen,--with a religion new and yet the
oldest; entirely indisputable to all hearts of men? Some I do know,
who did not call or think themselves 'Prophets,' far enough from that;
but who were, in very truth, melodious Voices from the eternal Heart
of Nature once again; souls forever venerable to all that have a soul.
A French Revolution is one phenomenon; as complement and spiritual
exponent thereof, a Poet Goethe and German Literature is to me
another. The old Secular or Practical World, so to speak, having gone
up in fire, is not here the prophecy and dawn of a new Spiritual
World, parent of far nobler, wider, new Practical Worlds? A Life of
Antique devoutness, Antique veracity and heroism, has again become
possible, is again _seen_ actual there, for the most modern man. A
phenomenon, as quiet as it is, comparable for greatness to no other!
'The great event for the world is, now as always, the arrival
in it of a new Wise Man.' Touches there are, be the Heavens ever
thanked, of new Sphere-melody; audible once more, in the infinite
jargoning discords and poor scrannel-pipings of the thing called
Literature;--priceless there, as the voice of new Heavenly