2. From these chemically analytic conceptions of a Paradise in catacombs, undisturbed in its alkaline or acid virtues by the dread of Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far the modern reader may willingly withdraw himself for a little time, to hear of men who, in their darkest and most foolish day, sought by their labour to make the desert as the garden of the Lord, and by their love to become worthy of permission to live with Him for ever. It has nevertheless been only by such toil, and in such hope, that, hitherto, the happiness, skill, or virtue of man have been possible: and even on the verge of the new dispensation, and promised Canaan, rich in beatitudes of iron, steam, and fire, there are some of us, here and there, who may pause in filial piety to look back towards that wilderness of Sinai in which their fathers worshipped and died.
3. Admitting then, for the moment, that the main streets of Manchester, the district immediately surrounding the Bank in London, and the Bourse and Boulevards of Paris, are already part of the future kingdom of Heaven, when Earth shall be all Bourse and Boulevard,—the world of which our fathers tell us was divided to them, as you already know, partly by climates, partly by races, partly by times; and the 'circumstances' under which
