146 THOREAU. 



were held for every hitherto inconceivable purpose. The belated 

 gift of tongues, as among the Fifth Monarchy men, spread like 

 a contagion, rendering its victims incomprehensible to all 

 Christian men; whether equally so to the most distant possible 

 heathen or not was unexperimented, though many would have 

 subscribed liberally that a fair trial might be made. It was 

 the pentecost of Shinar. The day of utterances reproduced 

 the day of rebuses and anagrams, and there was nothing so 

 simple that uncial letters and the style of Diphilus the Laby 

 rinth could not turn into a riddle. Many foreign revolutionists 

 out of work added to the general misunderstanding their contri 

 bution of broken English in every most ingenious form of fracture. 

 All stood ready at a moment s notice to reform everything but 

 themselves. The general motto was : 



And we ll talk with them, too, 

 And take upon s the mystery of things 

 As if we were God s spies. 



Nature is always kind enough to give even her clouds a 

 humorous lining. We have barely hinted at the comic side of 

 the affair, for the material was endless. This was the whistle 

 and trailing fuse of the shell, but there was a very solid and 

 serious kernel, full of the most deadly explosiveness. Thought 

 ful men divined it, but the generality suspected nothing. The 

 word transcendental then was the maid-of-all-work for those 

 who could not think, as Pre-Raphaelite has been more re 

 cently for people of the same limited housekeeping. The truth 

 is, that there was a much nearer metaphysical relation and a 

 much more distant aesthetic and literary relation between 

 Carlyle and the Apostles of the Newness, as they were called in 

 New England, than has commonly been supposed. Both 

 represented the reaction and revolt against Philisterei, a re 

 newal of the old battle begun in modern times by Erasmus and 

 Reuchlin, and continued by Lessing, Goethe, and, in a far 

 narrower sense, by Heine in Germany, and of which Fielding, 

 Sterne, and Wordsworth in different ways have been the leaders 

 in England. It was simply a struggle for fresh .air, in which, if 

 the windows could not be opened, there was danger that panes 

 would be broken, though painted with images of saints and 

 martyrs. Light coloured by these reverend effigies was none 

 the more respirable for being picturesque. There is only one 

 thing better than traditipn, and that is the original and eternal 

 life out of which all tradition takes its rise. It was this life 

 which the reformers demanded, with more or less clearness of 



