, so beautifully,--so
unguidably! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which
shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same manner; and
hover,--tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not, Pilatre-like,
explode; and demount all the more tragically!--So, riding on windbags,
will men scale the Empyrean.

Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls.
Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt commerce;
an Antique Egyptian Hierophant in this new age. Soft music flits;
breaking fitfully the sacred stillness. Round their Magnetic Mystery,
which to the eye is mere tubs with water,--sit breathless, rod in
hand, the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each circle a living circular
Passion-Flower: expecting the magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured
Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men, great is your infidel-faith! A
Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse, D'Espremenil we notice there; Chemist
Berthollet too,--on the part of Monseigneur de Chartres.

Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins,
Lavoisiers, interfered! But it did interfere. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle,
iii.258.) Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and withdraw. Let him walk
silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by the ancient town of Constance;
meditating on much. For so, under the strangest new vesture, the old
great truth (since no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed:
That man is what we call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power
over men; and, on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a
World round him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies,
Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely name, to
say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages,
come in for his share. (August, 1784.)

Chapter 1.2.VII.

Contrat Social.

In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush
suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment.
Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere
universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of its deformity;
and, in the long run, on Twenty-five dark savage Millions, looking
up, in hunger and weariness, to that Ecce-signum of theirs 'forty feet
high,'--how could it but be questionable?

Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent
of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses
and cathedrals; but its High-