time and human destiny, it strikes him down with the icy fury of a
fiend. Poetry, passion, humanity, are shivered at the touch. The
glorious creature who, an instant before, quivered with life and love
and energy, lies a shapeless mass, disgusting to the sight, loathsome to
the touch, revolting to every instinct of our nature. So, in its
ceaseless routine, forever and forever, wheels on the world. The
play-ground bully, the swindler of the corn exchange, who is the more
virtuous? dolls with life, babies with genius, which the more sensible?
Even baby has its "pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake," and is lulled to sleep with
visions of a coach and six little ponies. Dreams, dreams of self, that
man wraps himself in like the swathing of a mummy. Who ever saw a cake
marked with "T," who ever a "Valley of Tranquil Delight"?

The sun rises and sets on the weary diamond-digger of the South, the
crazed perfume-hunter in the East, the stifled hemp-curer in the fetid
swamps of Russia, the shriveled iron-worker in the scorching furnaces of
England. Here, in Paris, amid that motley herd who feed on virtue, the
moon shines down calmly on purblind embroiderers and peerless beauties,
on worn-out _roués_ and squalid beggars. The breeze that wafts to heaven
the pure prayer of the maiden witnesses the fierce ribaldry of the
courtesan; it flutters the curls of a sleeping infant, and bears on its
wings the whispered exchange of _chastity for bread_. And man goes on,
devouring his three poor meals a day, and babbling the meaningless
nothings he has learned by rote. Oh, land of enlightenment! Oh, age of
Christianity! Oh, zenith of civilization!

The smoke-wreaths curl into thicker clouds. I have painted bright
pictures, and they have faded. I have cherished fond dreams, and they
are vanished. "It is not good for man to live alone;" and I am most
solitary. I can make another picture,--without the roses; but it will be