an ancient faith, and wandered into a cloud-region, where everything
was misty and deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of
reality, but still dissolving when he flung himself upon it for
support and rest. His instinct and early training demanded
something steadfast; but, looking forward, he beheld vapors piled on
vapors, and behind him an impassable gulf between the man of
yesterday and to-day, on the borders of which he paced to and fro,
sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often making his own woe
a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a miserable man.
Next, there was a theorist,--one of a numerous tribe, although he
deemed himself unique since the creation,--a theorist, who had
conceived a plan by which all the wretchedness of earth, moral and
physical, might be done away, and the bliss of the millennium at
once accomplished. But, the incredulity of mankind debarring him
from action, he was smitten with as much grief as if the whole mass
of woe which he was denied the opportunity to remedy were crowded
into his own bosom. A plain old man in black attracted much of the
company's notice, on the supposition that he was no other than
Father Miller, who, it seemed, had given himself up to despair at
the tedious delay of the final conflagration. Then there was a man
distinguished for native pride and obstinacy, who, a little while
before, had possessed immense wealth, and held the control of a vast
moneyed interest which he had wielded in the same spirit as a
despotic monarch would wield the power of his empire, carrying on a
tremendous moral warfare, the roar and tremor of which was felt at
every fireside in the land. At length came a crushing ruin,--a
total overthrow of fortune, power, and character,--the effect of
which on his imperious and, in many respects, noble and lofty nature
might have entitled him to a place, not merely at our festival, but
among the peers of Pandemonium.