along, prosecuting his conquests in Flanders; wonderful to behold. So
nevertheless it was and had been: to some solitary thinker it might seem
strange; but even to him inevitable, not unnatural.

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