Once risen into this divine white-heat of temper, were it only for a season and not again, the Nation is thenceforth considerable through all its remaining history. What immensities of DROSS and crypto-poisonous matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his Puritans,--making England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages, by being thrown once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no Nation that has not had such divine paroxysms at any time is apt to come to much. That was now, in this epoch, the English of "adopting Protestantism;" and we need not wonder at the results which it has had, and which the want of it has had. For the want of it is literally the want of loyalty to the Maker of this Universe. He who wants that, what else has he, or can he have? If you do not, you Man or you Nation, love the Truth enough, but try to make a Chapman-bargain with Truth, instead of giving yourself wholly soul and body and life to her, Truth will not live with you, Truth will depart from you; and only Logic, "Wit" (for example, "London Wit"), Sophistry, Virtu, the AEsthetic Arts, and perhaps (for a short while) Bookkeeping by Double Entry, will abide with you. You will follow falsity, and think it truth, you unfortunate man or nation. You will right surely, you for one, stumble to the Devil; and are every day and hour, little as you imagine it, making progress thither. Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Poland,--the offer of the Reformation was made everywhere; and it is curious to see what has become of the nations that would not hear it. In all countries were some that accepted; but in many there were not enough, and the rest, slowly or swiftly, with fatal difficult industry, contrived to burn them out. Austria was once full of Protestants; but the hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; we, with our dull obstinate Cimburgis under-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.