oak and its fortunes.  Solemn enough, did we think of it,—­which unhappily and also happily we do not very much!  Thou there canst begin; the Beginning is for thee, and there:  but where, and of what sort, and for whom will the End be?  All grows, and seeks and endures its destinies:  consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether we think of it or not.  So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a changed world.  In that seven-years’ sleep of his, so much has changed!  All that is without us will change while we think not of it; much even that is within us.  The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day grown a Belief burning to be uttered:  on the morrow, contradiction has exasperated it into mad Fanaticism; obstruction has dulled it into sick Inertness; it is sinking towards silence, of satisfaction or of resignation.  To-day is not Yesterday, for man or for thing.  Yesterday there was the oath of Love; today has come the curse of Hate.  Not willingly:  ah, no; but it could not help coming.  The golden radiance of youth, would it willingly have tarnished itself into the dimness of old age?—­Fearful:  how we stand enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of time; and are Sons of Time; fashioned and woven out of Time; and on us, and on all that we have, or see, or do, is written:  Rest not, Continue not, Forward to thy doom!

But in seasons of Revolution, which indeed distinguish themselves from common seasons by their velocity mainly, your miraculous Seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough, wake sooner:  not by the century, or seven years, need he sleep; often not by the seven months.  Fancy, for example, some new Peter Klaus, sated with the jubilee of that Federation day, had lain down, say directly after the Blessing of Talleyrand; and, reckoning it all safe now, had fallen composedly asleep under the timber-work of the Fatherland’s Altar; to sleep there, not twenty-one years, but as it were year and day.  The cannonading of Nanci, so far off, does not disturb him; nor does the black mortcloth, close at hand, nor the requiems chanted, and minute guns, incense-pans and concourse right over his head:  none of these; but Peter sleeps through them all.  Through one circling year, as we say; from July 14th of 1790, till July the 17th of 1791:  but on that latter day, no Klaus, nor most leaden Epimenides, only the Dead could continue sleeping; and so our miraculous Peter Klaus awakens.  With what eyes, O Peter!  Earth and sky have still their joyous July look, and the Champ-de-Mars is multitudinous with men:  but the jubilee-huzzahing has become Bedlam-shrieking, of terror and revenge; not blessing of Talleyrand, or any blessing, but cursing, imprecation and shrill wail; our cannon-salvoes are turned to sharp shot; for swinging of incense-pans and Eighty-three Departmental Banners, we have waving of the one sanguinous Drapeau-Rouge.—­Thou foolish Klaus!  The one lay in the other, the one was the other minus Time; even as Hannibal’s rock-rending vinegar lay in the sweet new wine.  That sweet Federation was of last year; this sour Divulsion is the self-same substance, only older by the appointed days.