[Year 4
comes Strength; out of the Unwise there comes not Wisdom! —Shams are burnt up; nay, what as yet is the peculiarity of France, the very Cant of them is burnt up. The new Realities are not yet come: ah no, only Phantasms, Paper models, tentative Prefigurements of such! In France there are now Four Million Landed Properties; that black portent of an Agrarian Law is, as it were, realised. What is still stranger, we understand all Frenchmen have 'the right of duel'; the Hackney-coachman with the Peer, if insult be given: such is the law of Public Opinion. Equality at least in death! The Form of Government is by Citizen King, frequently shot at, not yet shot.
On the whole, therefore, has it not been fulfilled what was
prophesied, ex postfacto indeed, by the Arch-quack Cagliostro,
or another? He, as he looked in rapt vision and amazement
into these things, thus spake:[1] 'Ha! What is this? Angels,
Uriel, Anachiel, and ye other Five; Pentagon of Rejuvenescence;
Power that destroyedst Original Sin; Earth, Heaven,
and thou Outer Limbo, which men name Hell! Does the
Empire of Imposture waver? Burst there, in starry sheen,
updarting. Light-rays from out of its dark foundations; as it
rocks and heaves, not in travail-throes but in death-throes?
Yea, Light-rays, piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,—lo,
they kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as red Hellfire!
'Imposture is in flames. Imposture is burnt up: one red sea of Fire, wild-billowing, enwraps the World; with its fire-tongue licks at the very Stars. Thrones are hurled into it, and Dubois Mitres, and Prebendal Stalls that drop fatness, and—ha! what see I?—all the Gigs of Creation: all, all! Wo is me! Never since Pharaoh's Chariots, in the Red Sea of water, was there wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they wander in the wind.
'Higher, higher yet flames the Fire-Sea; crackling with
- ↑ Diamond Necklace (Carlyle's Miscellanies).
