ilian Vespers, Thirty-Years Wars: mere sin and misery; not
work, but hindrance of work! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly
green and yellow with her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the
mind of the thinker rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all,
we have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which,
poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She knows so
little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have
rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish
choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox, 'Happy the
people whose annals are vacant,' is not without its true side.

And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a stillness,
not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness, and symptom of
imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing
forces the weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on,
noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be
noiseless. How all grows, and has its period, even as the herbs of the
fields, be it annual, centennial, millennial! All grows and dies, each
by its own wondrous laws, in wondrous fashion of its own; spiritual
things most wondrously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these
latter; not to be prophesied of, or understood. If when the oak stands
proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart is sound, it
is not so with the man; how much less with the Society, with the Nation
of men! Of such it may be affirmed even that the superficial aspect,
that the inward feeling of full health, is generally ominous. For indeed
it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that
Churches, Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such
Institution plethorically says to itself, Take thy ease, thou hast goods
laid up;--like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was answered, Fool,
this night thy life shall be required of thee!

Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France,
for these next Ten Years? Over which the Historian can pass lightly,
without call to linger: for as yet events are not, much less
performances. Time of sunniest stillness;--shall we call it, what all
men thought it, the new Age of God? Call it at least, of Paper; which
in many ways is the succedaneum of Gold. Bank-paper, wherewith you
can still buy when there is no gold left; Book-paper,