as in our fellow-man?"

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of our
Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts
forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tarnish
of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we
seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love;--though, alas, the
grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view.

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and indeed,
to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he
sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in
the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as in the
poorest Ox-goad and Gypsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility;
there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were
it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit: were it
never so honorable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing
Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a
Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, "unimaginable
formless, dark with excess of bright"? Under which point of view the
following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems
characteristic enough:--

"The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even with
armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. 'The Philosopher,' says
the wisest of this age, 'must station himself in the middle:' how true!
The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest has
mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.

"Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in Arkwright