. 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 Psalms! Literature, like the old Prayer-
Collections of the first centuries, were it 'well selected from
and burnt,' contains precious things. For Literature, with all
its printing-presses, puffing-engines and shoreless deafening
triviality, is yet 'the Thought of Thinking Souls.' A sacred
'religion,' if you like the name, does live in the heart of that
strange froth-ocean, not wholly froth, which we call Literature;
and will more and more disclose itself therefrom;--not now as
scorching Fire: the red smoky scorching Fire has purified itself
into white sunny Light. Is not Light grander than Fire? It is
the same element in a state of purity.

My ingenuous readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a
rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps
has already su