lights obliterated, and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled
aloft into the Empyrean; black whirlwind, which made even apes
serious, and drove most of them mad,--there was, to men, a voice
audible; voice from the heart of things once more, as if to say:
"Lying is not permitted in this Universe. The wages of lying,
you behold, are death. Lying means damnation in this Universe;
and Beelzebub, never so elaborately decked in crowns and mitres,
is NOT God!" This was a revelation truly to be named of the
Eternal, in our poor Eighteenth Century; and has greatly altered
the complexion of said Century to the Historian ever since.

Whereby, in short, that Century is quite confiscate, fallen
bankrupt, given up to the auctioneers;--Jew-brokers sorting out of
it at this moment, in a confused distressing manner, what is still
valuable or salable. And, in fact, it lies massed up in our minds
as a disastrous wrecked inanity, not useful to dwell upon; a kind
of dusky chaotic background, on which the figures that had some
veracity in them--a small company, and ever growing smaller as
our demands rise in strictness--are delineated for us.--"And yet
it is the Century of our own Grandfathers?" cries the reader.
Yes, reader! truly. It is the ground out of which we ourselves
have sprung; whereon now we have our immediate footing, and first
of all strike down our roots for nourishment;--and, alas, in large
sections of the practical world, it (what we specially mean by IT)
still continues flourishing all round us! To forget it quite is
not yet possible, nor would be profitable. What to do with it,
and its forgotten fooleries and "Histories," worthy only of
forgetting?--Well; so much of it as by nature ADHERES; what of
it cannot be disengaged from our Hero and his operations:
approximately so much, and no more! Let that be our bargain in