agabonds to be sent
wandering again over space--for a time. 'During one such periodical
clearance,' says Lacretelle, 'in May, 1750, the Police had presumed
withal to carry off some reputable people's children, in the hope of
extorting ransoms for them. The mothers fill the public places
with cries of despair; crowds gather, get excited: so many women in
destraction run about exaggerating the alarm: an absurd and horrid fable
arises among the people; it is said that the doctors have ordered a
Great Person to take baths of young human blood for the restoration
of his own, all spoiled by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,' adds
Lacretelle, quite coolly, 'were hanged on the following days:' the
Police went on. (Lacretelle, iii. 175.) O ye poor naked wretches! and
this, then, is your inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured
animal, crying from uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do these
azure skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo of
it on you? Respond to it only by 'hanging on the following days?'--Not
so: not forever! Ye are heard in Heaven. And the answer too will
come,--in a horror of great darkness, and shakings of the world, and a
cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink.

Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this universal
Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to the new time and
its destinies. Besides the old Noblesse, originally of Fighters, there
is a new recognised Noblesse of Lawyers; whose gala-day and proud
battle-day even now is. An unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce; powerful
enough, with money in its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least
recognised of all, a Noblesse of Literature; without steel on their
thigh, without gold in their purse, but with the 'grand thaumaturgic
faculty of Thought' in their head. French Philosophism has arisen; in
which little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly
the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is gone out;
Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates: no man has Faith to
withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending himself; it must even
go on accumulating. While hollow langour and vacuity is the lot of the
Upper, and want and stagnation of the Lower, and universal misery
is very certain, what other thing is certain? That a Lie cannot be
believed! Philosophism knows only this: her other belief is mainly that,
in spiritual supersensual matte