NIL ADMIRARI.

THE man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mécanique Céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. -S. R. I. 10.

IT is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. -P. & P. II. 3.

HERO-WORSHIP.

HERO-WORSHIP still continues; it is the only creed which never and nowhere grows or can grow obsolete. For always and everywhere this remains a true saying: Il y a dans le cœur humain une fibre religieuse. Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.

Remark, however, as illustrative of several things, that man does in strict speech always remain the clearest symbol of the Divinity to man. Friend Novalis, the devoutest heart I know, and of purest depth, has not scrupled to call man, what the Divine Man is called in Scripture, a "Revelation in the Flesh." "There is but one temple in the world," says he, "and that is the body. of man. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body." In which notable words, a reader that meditates them may find such meaning and scientific accuracy as will surprise him.

-M. Goethe's Works.

* This passage pretends to be a quotation from Teufelsdröckh.

WORSHIP of a hero is transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Religions I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions,—all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of Man, is not that the germ of Christianity itself?

greatest of all Heroes is One-whom we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on Earth.

-H. I. Odin.

THE AGE OF ROMANCE.

DEPEND upon it, for one thing, good Reader, no age ever seemed the Age of Romance to itself. Charlemagne, let the Poets talk as they will, had his own provocations in the world: what with selling of his poultry and pot-herbs, what with wanton daughters carrying secretaries through the snow; and, for instance, that hanging of the Saxons over the Weserbridge (four thousand of them they say, at one bout), it seems to me that the Great Charles had his temper ruffled at times. Roland of Roncesvalles too, we see well in thinking of it, found rainy weather as well as sunny; knew what it was to have hose need darning; got tough beef to chew, or even went dinnerless; was saddle-sick, calumniated, constipated (as his madness too clearly indicates); and oftenest felt, I doubt not, that this was a very Devil's world, and he, Roland himself, one of the sorriest caitiffs there. Only in long subsequent days, when the tough beef, the constipation and calumny had clean vanished, did it all begin to seem Romantic, and your Turpins and Ariostos found

music in it. So I say is it ever! And the more, as your true hero, your true Roland, is ever unconscious that he is a hero: this is a condition of all greatness. -M. Diamond Necklace, I.

ROMANCE IN REALITY.

IN our own poor Nineteenth Century, the Writer of these lines has been fortunate enough to see not a few glimpses of Romance; he imagines the Nineteenth is hardly a whit less romantic than that Ninth, or any other, since centuries began. Apart from Napoleon, and the Dantons, and Mirabeaus, whose fire-words of public speaking, and fire-whirlwinds of cannon and musketry, which for a season darkened the air, are perhaps at bottom but superficial phenomena, he has witnessed, in remotest places, much that could be called romantic, even miraculous. He has witnessed overhead the infinite Deep, with greater and lesser lights, brightrolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the Hand of God: around him and under his feet, the wonderfullest Earth, with her winter snow-storms and her summer spice-airs; and unaccountablest of all, himself standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time; he saw Eternity behind him, and before him. The all-encircling mysterious tide of FORCE, thousandfold (for from force of Thought to force of Gravitation what an interval!) billowed shoreless on; bore him too along with it,—he too was part of it. From its bosom rose and vanished, in perpetual change, the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory, which men name Being; and ever anew rose and vanished; and ever that lordliest many-coloured scene was full, another yet the same. Oak-trees fell, young acorns sprang: Men too, new-sent from the Unknown, he met, of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, into strength of sinew, passionate fire and light; in other men the light was growing dim, the sinews all feeble; then sank, motionless, into ashes, into invisibility; returned back to the Unknown, beckoning him their mute farewell. He

wanders still by the parting-spot; cannot hear them; they are far, how far!-It was a sight for angels and archangels; for, indeed, God himself had made it. wholly. One many-glancing asbestos-thread in the Web of Universal-History, spirit-woven, it rustled there, as with the howl of mighty winds, through that 'wildroaring Loom of Time.' Generation after generation, hundreds of them or thousands of them, from the unknown Beginning, so loud, so stormful-busy, rushed torrent-wise thundering down, down; and fell all silent, -nothing but some feeble re-echo, which grew ever feebler, struggling up; and Oblivion swallowed them all. Thousands more, to the unknown Ending, will follow and thou here, of this present one, hangest as a drop, still sungilt, on the giddy edge; one moment, while the Darkness has not yet engulfed thee. Ο Brother! is that what thou callest prosaic; of small interest? Of small interest and for thee? -M. Diamond Necklace, I.

NOTHING INSIGNIFICANT.

DETACHED, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself. -S. R. I. 11.

CUSTOM.

INNUMERABLE are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of Custom but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is

her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realised.

-S. R. III. 8.

THE RESULTS OF MAN'S ACTIVITY AND ATTAINMENT.

OF Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-Habits and of Soul-Habits; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock-and-key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards; but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. -S. R. II. 8.