l men had believed in it, as in a Heaven's Glad-tidings men should;
and with overflowing heart and uplifted voice clave to it, and stood
fronting Time and Eternity on it. Nay smile not; or only with a smile
sadder than tears! This too was a better faith than the one it had
replaced: than faith merely in the Everlasting Nothing and man's
Digestive Power; lower than which no faith can go.

Not that such universally prevalent, universally jurant, feeling of
Hope, could be a unanimous one. Far from that! The time was ominous:
social dissolution near and certain; social renovation still a problem,
difficult and distant even though sure. But if ominous to some clearest
onlooker, whose faith stood not with one side or with the other, nor
in the ever-vexed jarring of Greek with Greek at all,--how unspeakably
ominous to dim Royalist participators; for whom Royalism was Mankind's
palladium; for whom, with the abolition of Most-Christian Kingship and
Most-Talleyrand Bishopship, all loyal obedience, all religious faith
was to expire, and final Night envelope the Destinies of Man! On serious
hearts, of that persuasion, the matter sinks down deep; prompting, as
we have seen, to backstairs Plots, to Emigration with pledge of war, to
Monarchic Clubs; nay to still madder things.

The Spirit of Prophecy, for instance, had been considered extinct for
some centuries: nevertheless these last-times, as indeed is the tendency
of last-times, do revive it; that so, of French mad things, we might
have sample also of the maddest. In remote rural districts, whither
Philosophism has not yet radiated, where a heterodox Constitution of
the Clergy is bringing strife round the altar itself, and the very
Church-bells are getting melted into small money-coin, it appears
probable that the End of the World cannot be far off. Deep-musing
atrabiliar old men, especially old women, hint in an obscure way that
they know what they know. The Holy Virgin, silent so long, has not gone
dumb;--and truly now, if ever more in this world, were the time for her
to speak. One Prophetess, though careless Historians have omitted her
name, condition, and whereabout, becomes audible to the general ear;
credible to not a few: credible to Friar Gerle, poor Patriot Chartreux,
in the National Assembly itself! She, in Pythoness' recitative, with
wildstaring eye, sings that there shall be a Sign; that the heavenly Sun
himself will hang out a Sign, or Mock-Sun,--which, many say, sha