h, only opened my eyes to
shut them again for ever, and saw that I had been in vain endeavoring to
support a ruin, to take refuge in a vault of which the foundations were
worn away."....

The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the
rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay
of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is
incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL MESSIAHS, when we wish
to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
suffer for it!"

And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and
it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in
the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for
the future. After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? "Man is
between an angel and a beast: I don't know how long it is since he was a
brute--I can't say how long it will be before he is an angel." Think of
people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think
of the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed
through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!

When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, French air, he
is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and
a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice a year, and then only at a
distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I
wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten
thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of
French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk,
the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one
absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary
quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious
manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect for the
human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more
liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as
that easy prospec