emblematically of much, end with an "_Aber--_," with a "But--!" This
was the last word that came from the Pen of Friedrich Schlegel: about
eleven at night he wrote it down, and there paused sick; at one in the
morning, Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he was, as we
say, no more.

Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. Hope's new Book of
Genesis. Indeed, under any circumstances, criticism of it were now
impossible. Such an utterance could only be responded to in peals of
laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and hideous through the vaults of
the dead. Of this monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped and
huddled together, and the principles of all are, with a childlike
innocence, plied hither and thither, or wholly abolished in case of
need; where the First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing
to do but radiate "gravitation" towards its centre; and so construct a
Universe, wherein all, from the lowest cucumber with its coolness, up
to the highest seraph with his love, were but "gravitation," direct or
reflex, "in more or less central globes,"--what can we say, except,
with sorrow and shame, that it could have originated nowhere save in
England? It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions, whims and
observations, as they lie in the brain of an English gentleman; as an
English gentleman, of unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them,
in his schools and in his world: all these thrown into the crucible,
and if not fused, yet soldered or conglutinated with boundless
patience; and now tumbled out here, heterogeneous, amorphous,
unspeakable, a world's wonder. Most melancholy must we name the whole
business; full of long-continued thought, earnestness, loftiness of
mind; not without glances into the Deepest, a constant fearless
endeavour after truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but the
perhaps absurdest Book written in our century by a thinking man. A
shameful Abortion; which, however, need not now be smothered or
mangled, for it is already dead; only, in our love and sorrowing
reverence for the writer of _Anastasius_, and the heroic seeker of
Light, though not bringer thereof, let it be buried and forgotten.

* * * * *

For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in these two Works, in
innumerable works of the like import, and generally in all the Thought
and Action of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse us.
Unhappy who, in such a t