long after this loathsome convulsion! While tears lie and
cheat by aping heavenly feelings, laughter is awkwardly trying to
let the craziness of evil demons skulk behind it, hides itself
from vulgarity for the sake of being seen, feigns terrour when our
unsubdued struggling feelings are detected, and saunters about in
the midst of whatever is disgusting and impure, perpetually
clapperclawing with some outcast among the rabble or other: one
moment our intelligent, and higher faculties, as they call them,
get the upper hand; the next they are beaten down and trod upon by
something base and profligate: and thus veering to and fro, now
toying now scolding, laughter clatters down the steps of idiocy,
which crumble with the decay of our bodily strength ... and man
grins, and is happy.

Blessed time, when there was a real existence, a life in life!
when the vast whole of eternity, being sufficient to itself, had
not splintered itself out into time! when the spirit did not need
a succession, measured out by the atoms of time and space, to
become conscious of its power and of its being! What a portentous
event was it, when eternity and life parted fellowship!--when the
band by which spirits were bound in one, burst, and that strange
creature, Death, rusht in through the chasm to domineer over all.
Now that which is firm, stedfast, enduring, has concentrated
itself in the depths of its own being, and has put on the
unvarying aspect of solid meditation. Stones, rocks, metals, bid
defiance to decay with their cold looks, and would make believe
that they know not of change. Drops of water dancing like tiny
elves along them, the sightless legions of the air, wherever they
spread, are eating into the limbs of the rigid haughty giant; the
dwarf, man, digs into his bones, and, if his strength were equal
to his fury, would reduce him to fleeting sand. May it not
peradventure be the same with the eternal stars? A little acid,
and the monster sneezes sillily, and roars, and yawns, and for the
moment remembers its spiritual nature.

And thou with thy butterfly wings in thy light summer garment,
thou that hoverest aloft, and flittest over the mountains, and
sweepest along the earth! from the airy changeling of the
caterpillar, up or down to the lion and to man, ye all of you,
fostering a brief