'Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed to pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage; can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 'We _are such stuff_ As Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep?' A fervid perception of the evanescence and sorrows of life is the root of Carlyle's pathos, which is unsurpassed in literature. It leads him to some beautiful contrasts between childhood and manhood, positively idyllic in their charm.