memory of a Creed) in them; Palaces, and a State and Law. Thou seest
the Smoke-vapour; unextinguished Breath as of a thing living. Labour's
thousand hammers ring on her anvils: also a more miraculous Labour works
noiselessly, not with the Hand but with the Thought. How have cunning
workmen in all crafts, with their cunning head and right-hand, tamed
the Four Elements to be their ministers; yoking the winds to their
Sea-chariot, making the very Stars their Nautical Timepiece;--and
written and collected a Bibliotheque du Roi; among whose Books is the
Hebrew Book! A wondrous race of creatures: these have been realised, and
what of Skill is in these: call not the Past Time, with all its confused
wretchednesses, a lost one.

Observe, however, that of man's whole terrestrial possessions and
attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or
divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with victorious
assurance, in this life-battle: what we can call his Realised Ideals. Of
which realised ideals, omitting the rest, consider only these two:
his Church, or spiritual Guidance; his Kingship, or temporal one. The
Church: what a word was there; richer than Golconda and the treasures of
the world! In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk;
the Dead all slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, 'in
hope of a happy resurrection:'--dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in
any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in
the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness) it spoke to
thee--things unspeakable, that went into thy soul's soul. Strong was he
that had a Church, what we can call a Church: he stood thereby, though
'in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities,' yet
manlike towards God and man; the vague shoreless Universe had become for
him a firm city, and dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief;
in these words, well spoken: I believe. Well might men prize their