the Constable and Hangman, /ought/ decidedly to be kept up. But
such toleration is the fruit only of later days. In those times, there
was no question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner
the better. A gleam of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely
alloyed, a glow of real enthusiasm and love of truth, may have animated
the minds of these men, as they looked abroad on the pestilent jungle of
Superstition, and hoped to clear the earth of it forever. This little
glow, so alloyed, so contaminated with pride and other poor or bad
admixtures, was the last which thinking men were to experience in Europe
for a time. So it is always in regard to Religious Belief, how degraded
and defaced soever: the delight of the Destroyer and Denier is no pure
delight, and must soon pass away. With bold, with skilful hand, Voltaire
set his torch to the jungle: it blazed aloft to heaven; and the flame
exhilarated and comforted the incendiaries; but, unhappily, such comfort
could not continue. Ere long this flame, with its cheerful light and
heat, was gone: the jungle, it is true, had been consumed; but, with its
entanglements, its shelter and its spots of verdure also; and the black,
chill, ashy swamp, left in its stead, seemed for a time a greater evil
than the other.

In such a state of painful obstruction, extending itself everywhere over
Europe, and already master of Germany, lay the general mind, when Goethe
first appeared in Literature. Whatever belonged to the finer nature of
man had withered under the Harmattan breath of Doubt, or passed away in
the conflagration of open Infidelity; and now, where the Tree of Life
once bloomed and brought fruit of goodliest savour there was only
barrenness and desolation. To such as could find sufficient interest in
the day-labour and day-wages of earthly existence; in the resources of
the five bodily Senses, and of Vanity, the only mental sense which yet
flourished, which flourished indeed with gigantic vigour, matters were