or the jibes (brocards) of those Parisians, who
stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and 'give vent to
their pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation,' do not tempt one
to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults of St. Denis receive their
own; unwept by any eye of all these; if not by poor Loque his neglected
Daughter's, whose Nunnery is hard by.

Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this impatient way; him
and his era of sin and tyranny and shame; for behold a New Era is come;
the future all the brighter that the past was base.

BOOK 1.II.

THE PAPER AGE

Chapter 1.2.I.

Astraea Redux.

A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that
aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,'
has said, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying,
mad as it looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason? For
truly, as it has been written, 'Silence is divine,' and of Heaven; so
in all earthly things too there is a silence which is better than any
speech. Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of
and recorded, is it not, in all cases, some disruption, some solution of
continuity? Were it even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss
(of active Force); and so far, either in the past or in the present, is
an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our blessedness;
not dislocation and alteration,--could they be avoided.

The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in the
thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard
an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak announces itself when,
with a far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of
the acorn; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when
our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of
proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of
recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an
hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This
hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.

It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done,
but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, more or
less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little
that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions, Walter-the-Penniless
Crusades, Sic