retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his physical movement with the grand curves and planetary returns of his thought, through cycles of majestic periods.  Having it in his mind to compose the world’s history, methinks he could have asked no better retirement than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the seductions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive measurement and verification of historic records, seeing into the secrets of human nature,—­secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal,—­but detecting their whole scope and purport with the infallible eyes of unbroken solitude and night.  And then the shades of the old mighty men might have risen from their still profounder abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, treading beside him with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him in melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of the greater ideas and purposes that were so poorly embodied in their most renowned performances.  As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained to him the peculiarities of construction that made the ark so seaworthy; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with him the principles of laws and government; as Raleigh was a soldier, Caesar and Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with this martial student for their umpire; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched his harp, and made manifest all the true significance of the past by means of song and the subtile intelligences of music.

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh’s century knew nothing of gas-light, and that it would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of tallow-candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently to discern even a ghost.  On this account, however, it would be all the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysician, to keep him from bewildering mankind with his shadowy speculations; and, being shut off from external converse, the dark corridor would help him to make rich discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accustomed himself to explore.  But how would every successive age rejoice in so secure a habitation for its reformers, and especially for each best and wisest man that happened to be then alive!  He seeks to burn up our whole system of society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses!  Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by setting the Thames on fire, if he is able!