4. Another, Isaiah, seems, above humanity, as a roaring of continual thunder. He is the great censure. His style, a kind of nocturnal cloud, lightens up unceasingly with images which suddenly empurple all the depths of this dark mind, and makes us exclaim, "He gives light!" Isaiah takes hand-to-hand the evil which, in civilization, makes its appearance before the good. He cries "Silence!" at the noise of chariots, of _fêtes_, of triumphs. The foam of his prophecy surges even on Nature. He denounces Babylon to the moles and bats, promises Nineveh briers, Tyre ashes, Jerusalem night, fixes a date for the wrong-doers, warns the powers of their approaching end, assigns a day against idols, high citadels, the fleets of Tarsus, the cedars of Lebanon, the oaks of Basan. He is standing on the threshold of civilization, and he refuses to enter. He is a kind of mouthpiece of the desert speaking to multitudes, and claiming for quicksands, briers, and breezes the place where towns are, because it is just; because the tyrant and the slave--that is to say, pride and shame--exist wherever there are walled enclosures; because evil is there incarnate in man; because in solitude there is but the beast, while in the city there is the monster. That which Isaiah made a reproach of in his day--idolatry, pride, war, prostitution, ignorance--still exists. Isaiah is the eternal contemporary of vices which turn valets, and crimes which exalt themselves into kings. 5. Another, Ezekiel, is the wild soothsayer,--the genius of the cavern; thought which the roar suits. But listen. This savage makes a prophecy to the world,--Progress. Nothing more astonishing. Ah, Isaiah overthrows? Very well! Ezekiel will reconstruct. Isaiah refuses civilization. Ezekiel accepts, but transforms it. Nature and humanity blend together in that softened howl which Ezekiel throws forth. The idea of duty is in Job; of right, in Æschylus. Ezekiel brings before us the resulting third idea,--the human race ameliorated, posterity more and more free. That posterity may be a rising instead of a setting star is man's consolation. Time present works for time to come. Work, then, and hope. Such is Ezekiel's cry. Ezekiel is in Chaldæa; and from Chaldæa he sees distinctly Judæa, as from oppression you may see liberty. He declares peace as others declare war. He prophesies harmony, goodness, sweetness, union, the blending of races, love. Notwithstanding, he is terrible. He is the austere benefactor. He is the universal kind-hearted grumbler at the human race. He scolds, he almost gnashes his teeth; and people fear and hate him. The men about are thorns to him. "I live among the briers," he says. He condemns himself to be a symbol, and makes in his person, become hideous, a sign of human misery and popular degradation. He is a kind of voluntary Job. In his town, in his house, he causes himself to be bound with cords, and rests mute: behold the slave. In the public place he eats dung: behold the courtier.