For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures.  A world not fixable; not fathomable!  An unfathomable Somewhat, which is Not we; which we can work with, and live amidst,—­and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being, and name World.—­But if the very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic teaches) are, in strict language, made by those outward Senses of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phenomena of the spiritual kind:  Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!  Which inward sense, moreover is not permanent like the outward ones, but forever growing and changing.  Does not the Black African take of Sticks and Old Clothes (say, exported Monmouth-Street cast-clothes) what will suffice, and of these, cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an Eidolon (Idol, or Thing Seen), and name it Mumbo-Jumbo; which he can thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without hope?  The white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more wisely.

So it was, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years ago:  but so it no longer is.  Alas, much more lies sick than poor Louis:  not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down.  The world is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—­Borne over the Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God, what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries?  Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea:  behold a Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelope the whole world!

Sovereigns die and Sovereignties:  how all dies, and is for a Time only; is a ‘Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!’ The Merovingian Kings, slowly wending on their bullock-carts through the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all wended slowly on,—­into Eternity.  Charlemagne sleeps at Salzburg, with truncheon grounded; only Fable expecting that he will awaken.  Charles the Hammer, Pepin Bow-legged, where now is their eye of menace, their voice of command?  Rollo and his shaggy Northmen cover not the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a longer voyage.  The hair of Towhead (Tete d’etoupes) now needs no combing; Iron-cutter (Taillefer) cannot cut a cobweb; shrill Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their hot life-scold, and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled.  Neither from that black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant, in his sack, to the Seine waters; plunging into Night:  for Dame de Nesle how cares not for this world’s gallantry, heeds not this world’s scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into Night.  They are all gone; sunk,—­down, down, with the tumult they made; and the rolling and the trampling of ever new generations passes over them, and they hear it not any more forever.