four swift
horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, on
timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a
thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with Food,
with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and
go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood,
pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou
whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der
Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are
Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in
Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their
solid Pavement is a picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of
Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou,
the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and
feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a
Tomorrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa
overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that
Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be
past thee, and seen no more."

"_Ach, mein Lieber!_" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned
from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity
to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke
and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of
Night, what thinks Booetes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over
the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of
Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels
of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are
bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her;
and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are
abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick
Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous covelet of vapours,
and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies
simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are
dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side
of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the
vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into
truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stric