did; many thanks to it, in the circumstances.

For there was need once more of a Divine Revelation to the torpid
frivolous children of men, if they were not to sink altogether into
the ape condition. And in that whirlwind of the Universe,--lights
obliterated, and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the
Empyrean; black whirlwind, which made even apes serious, and drove most
of them mad,--there was, to men, a voice audible; voice from the heart
of things once more, as if to say: "Lying is not permitted in this
Universe. The wages of lying, you behold, are death. Lying means
damnation in this Universe; and Beelzebub, never so elaborately decked
in crowns and mitres, is NOT God!" This was a revelation truly to be
named of the Eternal, in our poor Eighteenth Century; and has greatly
altered the complexion of said Century to the Historian ever since.

Whereby, in short, that Century is quite confiscate, fallen bankrupt,
given up to the auctioneers;--Jew-brokers sorting out of it at this
moment, in a confused distressing manner, what is still valuable or
salable. And, in fact, it lies massed up in our minds as a disastrous
wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon; a kind of dusky chaotic
background, on which the figures that had some veracity in them--a small
company, and ever growing smaller as our demands rise in strictness--are
delineated for us.--"And yet it is the Century of our own Grandfathers?"
cries the reader. Yes, reader! truly. It is the ground out of which we
ourselves have sprung; whereon now we have our immediate footing, and
first of all strike down our roots for nourishment;--and, alas, in large
sections of the practical world, it (what we specially mean by IT)
still continues flourishing all round us! To forget it quite is not yet
possible, nor would be profitable. What to do with it, and its forgotten
fooleries and "Histories," worthy only of forgetting?--Well; so much of
it as by nature ADHERES; what of it cannot be disengaged from our Hero
and his operations: approximately so much, and no more! Let that be our
bargain in regard to it.

3. ENGLISH PREPOSSESSIONS.

With such wagon-loads of Books and Printed Records as exist on the
subject of Friedrich, it has always seemed possible, even for
a stranger, to acquire some real understanding of him;--though
practically, here and now, I have to own, it proves difficult beyond
conception. Alas, the Books are not cosmic, they are chaotic;