born
again, continually, like the sons of men; stone Mountains that die daily
with every rain-shower, yet are not dead and levelled for ages of
ages, nor born again (it seems) but with new world-explosions, and such
tumultuous seething and tumbling, steam half way to the Moon; O thou
unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwellingplace of the UNNAMED; O
spirit, lastly, of Man, who mouldest and modellest that Unfathomable
Unnameable even as we see,--is not there a miracle: That some French
mortal should, we say not have believed, but pretended to imagine that
he believed that Talleyrand and Two Hundred pieces of white Calico could
do it!

Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing Historians of that
day, that suddenly, while Episcopus Talleyrand, long-stoled, with mitre
and tricolor belt, was yet but hitching up the Altar-steps, to do his
miracle, the material Heaven grew black; a north-wind, moaning cold
moisture, began to sing; and there descended a very deluge of rain.
Sad to see! The thirty-staired Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get
instantaneously slated with mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick
set: our antique Cassolettes become Water-pots; their incense-smoke gone
hissing, in a whiff of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vivats, there is
nothing now but the furious peppering and rattling. From three to four
hundred thousand human individuals feel that they have a skin; happily
impervious. The General's sash runs water: how all military banners
droop; and will not wave, but lazily flap, as if metamorphosed into
painted tin-banners! Worse, far worse, these hundred thousand, such is
the Historian's testimony, of the fairest of France! Their snowy muslins
all splashed and draggled; the ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the
backbone of a feather: all caps are ruined; innermost pasteboard
molten into its original pap: Beauty no longer swims decorated in her
garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian clouds,
but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for 'the shape was
noticeable;' and now only sympathetic interjections, titterings,
teeheeings, and resolute good-humour will avail. A deluge; an incessant
sheet or fluid-column of rain;--such that our Overseer's very mitre
must be filled; not a mitre, but a filled and leaky fire-bucket on his
reverend head!--Regardless of which, Overseer Talleyrand performs his
miracle: the Blessing of Talleyrand, another than that of Jacob, is on
all th