Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic and
thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a
Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted
to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly
pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a
Conqueror and Victor: but of the true sort, namely over the Devil:
thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a
wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic
Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.--Fool! why
journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on
the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand
there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert,
foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand years: but canst thou
not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?'

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on
some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so
that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of
date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows:

'Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters,
cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers
still remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps: ay,
there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has
been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of
sight, like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau
bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian
Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest
level,--intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon
her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the
more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad
Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for
Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many
ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with
artillery, and with artillery be battered? Koenig Ottokar, amid yonder
hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls
a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the
others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled! The
greensward is torn-up and trampled-down; man's fo