“When the age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now old; and Man’s Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of time; and it seemed as if no Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms of realities, and God’s Universe were the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there,–on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises sansculottism, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks: What think ye of me?”

-Thomas Carlyle