You will remember that one or two of the
      wise among our forefathers—wise in fact, although not in the
      world’s esteem—had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term
      “improvement,” as applied to the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the five or six centuries
      immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose some vigorous
      intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose truth
      appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly
      obvious—principles which should have taught our race to submit to
      the guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their
      control. At long intervals some masterminds appeared, looking
      upon each advance in practical science as a retro-gradation in
      the true utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that
      intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of
      all—since those truths which to us were of the most enduring
      importance could only be reached by that analogy which speaks in
      proof tones to the imagination alone and to the unaided reason
      bears no weight—occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a
      step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the
      philosophic, and find in the mystic parable that tells of the
      tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a
      distinct intimation that knowledge was not meet for man in the
      infant condition of his soul. And these men—the poets—living and
      perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”—of rough pedants,
      who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been
      properly applied only to the scorned—these men, the poets,
      pondered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when
      our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were keen—days
      when mirth was a word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was
      happiness—holy, august and blissful days, when blue rivers ran
      undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest solitudes,
      primæval, odorous, and unexplored. Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to
      strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most
      evil of all our evil days. The great “movement”—that was the cant
      term—went on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art—the
      Arts—arose supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the
      intellect which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could
      not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish
      exultation at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her
      elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an
      infantine imbecility came over him. As might be supposed from the
      origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with
      abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other
      odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the
      face of analogy and of God—in despite of the loud warning voice
      of the laws of _gradation_ so visibly pervading all things in
      Earth and Heaven—wild attempts at an omni-prevalent Democracy
      were made. Yet this evil sprang necessarily from the leading
      evil—Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb. Meantime
      huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank
      before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was
      deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And
      methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and
      of the far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it
      appears that we had worked out our own destruction in the
      perversion of our taste, or rather in the blind neglect of its
      culture in the schools. For, in truth, it was at this crisis that
      taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle position between
      the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have
      been disregarded—it was now that taste alone could have led us
      gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the
      pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas
      for the μουσικη which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient
      education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since both were
      most desperately needed when both were most entirely forgotten or
      despised. {*1}

      Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how
      truly!—“que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au
      sentiment;” and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the
      natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old
      ascendancy over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools. But
      this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced by intemperance of
      knowledge the old age of the world drew on. This the mass of
      mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected
      not to see. But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to
      look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had
      imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the
      simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the
      astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the turbulent
      mother of all Arts. In history {*2} of these regions I met with a
      ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the three
      latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their individual
      overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the
      infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save
      in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw
      that he must be “born again.”

      And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits,
      daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of
      the days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth,
      having undergone that purification {*3} which alone could efface
      its rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the
      verdure and the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of
      Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for
      man:—for man the Death purged—for man to whose now exalted
      intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more—for the
      redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for
      the material, man. _Una._ Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but
      the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
      believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant
      us in believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself
      sickened, and passed into the grave; and thither your constant
      Una speedily followed you.