stures into
the street!--

Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful? There is a joy in it, to the
wise man too; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it were sadder than
any sorrow,--like the vision of immortality, unattainable except through
death and the grave! And yet who would not, in his heart of hearts, feel
piously thankful that Imposture has fallen bankrupt? By all means let it
fall bankrupt; in the name of God let it do so, with whatever misery to
itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then,--known it must
and shall be,--is hateful, unendurable to God and man. Let it understand
this everywhere; and swiftly make ready for departure, wherever it yet
lingers; and let it learn never to return, if possible! The eternal
voices, very audibly again, are speaking to proclaim this message,
from side to side of the world. Not a very cheering message, but a very
indispensable one.

Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here; that we are not permitted
to regret its being here,--for who that had, for this divine Universe,
an eye which was human at all, could wish that Shams of any kind,
especially that Sham-Kings should continue? No: at all costs, it is
to be prayed by all men that Shams may _cease_. Good Heavens, to what
depths have we got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strange
to many a man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely
digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it
seems strange exceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and
big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since
fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown
ceremonial,--what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all his life
long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any
getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and
groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite
comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they were pleased
to call reigning; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honorable
members perorated; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real and
no sham there, did not scrip continue salable, and the banker pay in
bullion, or paper with a metallic basis? "The greatest sham, I have
always thought, is he that would destroy shams."

Even so. To such depth have _I_, the poor knowing person of this epoch,
got;--almost below the level of lowest humanity, and down tow