nder-lip and lazy eyes, with our ponderous
Austrian depth of Habituality and indolence of Intellect, we prefer
steady Darkness to uncertain new Light!"--and all men may see where
Austria now is. Spain still more; poor Spain, going about, at this time,
making its "PRONUNCIAMIENTOS;" all the factious attorneys in its
little towns assembling to PRONOUNCE virtually this, "The Old IS a
lie, then;--good Heavens, after we so long tried hard, harder than
any nation, to think it a truth!--and if it be not Rights of Man, Red
Republic and Progress of the Species, we know not what now to believe or
to do; and are as a people stumbling on steep places, in the darkness
of midnight!"--They refused Truth when she came; and now Truth knows
nothing of them. All stars, and heavenly lights, have become veiled to
such men; they must now follow terrestrial IGNES FATUI, and think them
stars. That is the doom passed upon them.

Italy too had its Protestants; but Italy killed them; managed to
extinguish Protestantism. Italy put up silently with Practical Lies
of all kinds; and, shrugging its shoulders, preferred going into
Dilettantism and the Fine Arts. The Italians, instead of the sacred
service of Fact and Performance, did Music, Painting, and the
like:--till even that has become impossible for them; and no noble
Nation, sunk from virtue to VIRTU, ever offered such a spectacle before.
He that will prefer Dilettantism in this world for his outfit, shall
have it; but all the gods will depart from him; and manful veracity,
earnestness of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. He
can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for hire;--and probably
that is the real goal for him.

But the sharpest-cut example is France; to which we constantly return
for illustration. France, with its keen intellect, saw the truth and saw
the falsity, in those Protestant times; and, with its ardor of generous
impulse, was prone enough to adopt the former. France was within a
hair's-breadth of becoming actually Protestant. But France saw good
to massacre Protestantism, and end it in the night of St. Bartholomew,
1572. The celestial Apparitor of Heaven's Chancery, so we may speak,
the Genius of Fact and Veracity, had left his Writ of Summons; Writ was
read;--and replied to in this manner. The Genius of Fact and Veracity
accordingly withdrew;--was staved off, got kept away, for two hundred
years. But the writ of Summons had been served; Heaven's Mess