up from the Past Time, and name it History, and
Philosophy of History; till, as we say, the human soul sinks
wearied and bewildered; till the Past Time seems all one
infinite incredible grey void, without sun, stars, hearth-fires,
or candle-light; dim offensive dust-whirlwinds filling universal
Nature; and over your Historical Library, it is as if all the
Titans had written for themselves: DRY RUBBISH SHOT HERE!

And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety;
they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose
they were built for! Yes, another world it was, when these black
ruins, white in their new mortar and fresh chiseling, first saw
the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge not, with thy dilettante
compasses, with that placid dilettante simper, the Heaven's-
Watchtower of our Fathers, the fallen God's-Houses, the Golgotha
of true Souls departed!

Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates? Yes,--and that is
but a small item of the matter. Does it never give thee pause,
this other strange item of it, that men then had a _soul,_--not
by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech; but as a truth that
they knew, and practically went upon! Verily it was another
world then. Their Missals have become incredible, a sheer
platitude, sayest thou? Yes, a most poor platitude; and even,
if thou wilt, an idolatry and blasphemy, should any one persuade
_thee_ to believe them, to pretend praying by them. But yet it
is pity we had lost tidings of our souls:--actually we shall
have to go in quest of them again, or worse in all ways will
befall! A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jonson reminds us, is
indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of the
frightfullest sort; to 'save us,' says he, 'the expense of
_salt.'_ Ben has known men who had soul enough to keep their
body and five senses from becoming carrion, and save salt:--men,
and also Nations. You may look in Manchester Hunger-mobs and
Corn-law Commons Houses, and various other quarters, and
say whether either soul or else salt is not somewhat wanted
at present!--

Another world, truly: and this present poor distressed world
might get some profit by looking wisely into it, instead of
foolishly. But at lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know
always that it was a world, and not a void infinite of grey haze
with fantasms swimming in it. These old St. Edmundsbury walls, I
say, were not peopled with fantasms; but with m