THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs* Jefferson P. Chandler
 
 CARLYLE'S CHOICE WORKS 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 PY 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 NKW YORK 
 HURST AND COMPANY 
 
 12; NASSAU STREET.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PR 
 
 ft) 
 
 12^ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 13ook I. 
 
 PROEM. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. MIDAS 3 
 
 II. THE SPHINX 8 
 
 III. MANCHESTER INSURRECTION 16 
 
 FV. MORRISON'S PILL 24 
 
 V. ARISTOCRACY or TALENT 28 
 
 VI. HERO-WORSHIP . , . . 34 
 
 ttoofc II. 
 
 THE ANCIENT MONK. 
 
 I. JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND 40 
 
 II. ST. EDMUNDSRURY 47 
 
 III. LANDLORD EDMUND 51 
 
 IV. ABBOT HUGO 57 
 
 V. TWELFTH CENTURY 62 
 
 VI. MOMV SAMSOX .,., , , , . . 00
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VII. THE CANVASSING 73 
 
 VIII. THE ELECTION 76 
 
 IX. ABBOT SAMSON 83 
 
 X. GOVERNMENT 89 
 
 XI. TUB ABBOT'S WAYS 92 
 
 XII. THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES 98 
 
 XIII. IN PARLIAMENT . . 103 
 
 XIV. HENRY or ESSEX 105 
 
 XV. PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL 109 
 
 XVI. ST. EDMUND 116 
 
 XVII. THE BEGINNINGS 123 
 
 33oofc III. 
 
 THE MODERN WORKER. 
 
 I. PHENOMENA 133 
 
 II. GOSPEL OF MAMMOXISM . . , 141 
 
 III. GOSPEL OF DILETTANTISM 146 
 
 IV. HAPPY 149 
 
 V. THE ENGLISH 153 
 
 VI. Two CENTURIES 161 
 
 VII. OVER-PRODUCTION ,...,. ....... 165 
 
 VIII. UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY 169 
 
 IX. WORKING ARISTOCRACY 177 
 
 X. PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT 182 
 
 XI. LABOR 190 
 
 XII. REWARD 194 
 
 XIII. DEMOCRACY 202 
 
 XIV. SIR JABESH WINDBAG 214 
 
 XV. MORRISON AGAIN 213
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Boofe IV. 
 
 HOKOSCOPE. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 1. ARISTOCRACIES 230 
 
 11. BRIBERY COMMITTEE 242 
 
 III. THE ONE INSTITUTION 24? 
 
 IV. CAPTAINS OP INDUSTRY 259 
 
 V. PERMANENCE 265 
 
 VI. THE LANDED 271 
 
 VII. THE GIFTED 276 
 
 VIII. TIIE DIDACTIC 281
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 PROEM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MIDA3. 
 
 THE condition of England, on which many pamphlets are 
 now in the course of publication, and many thoughts unpub- 
 lished are going on in every reflective head, is justly regarded 
 as one of the most ominous, and withal one of the strangest, 
 ever seen in this world. England is full of wealth, of multi- 
 farious produce,. supply for ; Jiumau want in every kind; yet 
 England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the 
 land of England blooms and grows ; waving with yellow har- 
 vests ; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, 
 with fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strong- 
 est, the cunningest and the willingest our Earth ever had ; 
 these men are here ; the work they have done, the fruit they 
 have realized is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of 
 us : and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone 
 forth, saying, " Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, 
 ye master-idlers ; none of you can touch it, no man of yon 
 shall be the better for it ; this is enchanted fruit ! " On th i 
 poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest shape ; but 
 on the rich master-workers too it falls ; neither can the rich
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 master-idlers, nor any richest or highest man escape, but all 
 are like to be brought low with it, and made " poor " enough, 
 in the money sense or a far fataler one. 
 
 Of these successful skilful workers some two millions, it is 
 now counted, sit in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons ; or have 
 " out-door relief " flung over the wall to them, the work- 
 house Bastille being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law 
 broken asunder by a stronger. 1 They sit there, these many 
 months now ; their hope of deliverance as yet small. In work- 
 houses, pleasantly so named, because work cannot be done in 
 them. Twelve hundred thousand workers in England alone ; 
 their cunning right-hand lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful 
 bosom ; their hopes, outlooks, share of this fair world, shut 
 in by narrow walls. They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of 
 horrid enchantment; glad to be imprisoned and enchanted, 
 that they may not perish starved. The picturesque Tourist, 
 in a sunny autumn day, through this bounteous realm of Eng- 
 land, describes the Union Workhouse on his path. " Passing 
 by the Workhouse of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, on a bright 
 day last autumn," says the picturesque Tourist, " I saw sitting 
 on wooden benches, in front of their Bastille and within their 
 ring-wall and its railings, some half-hundred or more of these 
 men. Tall robust figures, young mostly or of middle age ; of 
 honest countenance, many of them thoughtful and even intel- 
 ligent-looking men. They sat there, near by one another ; but 
 in a kind of torpor, especially in a silence, which was very 
 striking. In silence : for, alas, what word was to be said ? , 
 An Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till me, come and 
 reap me ; yet we here sit enchanted ! In the eyes and brows 
 of these men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger, but 
 of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate distress and 
 weariness ; they returned my glance with a glance that seemed 
 to say, ' Do not look at us. We sit enchanted here, we know 
 not why. The Sun shines and the Earth calls ; and, by the 
 governing Powers and Impotences of this England, we are 
 forbidden to obey. It is impossible, they tell us ! ' There was 
 
 1 The Return of Paupers for England and Wales, at Ladyday, 1842, is, 
 " Indoor 221,687, Outdoor 1,207,402, Total 1,429,089." Official Report,
 
 CHAP. I. MIDAS. 5 
 
 something that reminded me of Dante's Hell in the look of all 
 Miis ; and I rode swiftly away." 
 
 So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses : and other 
 "hundred thousands have not yet got even workhouses ; and in 
 thrifty Scotland itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in their 
 dark lanes, hidden from all but the eye of God, and of rare 
 Benevolence the minister of God, there are scenes of woe and 
 destitution and desolation, such as, one may hope, the Sun 
 oever saw before in the most barbarous regions where men 
 dwelt. Competent witnesses, the brave and humane Dr^Alison, 
 who speaks what he knows, whose noble Healing Art in his 
 charitable hands becomes once more a truly sacred one, report 
 these things for us : these things are not of this year, or of 
 last year, have no reference to our present state of commercial 
 stagnation, but only to the common state. Not in sharp fever- 
 fits, but in chronic gangrene of this kind is Scotland suffering. 
 A Poor-law, any and every Poor-law, it may be observed, is 
 but a temporary measure ; an anodyne, not a remedy : Rich 
 ind Poor, when once the naked facts of their condition have 
 tome into collision, cannot long subsist together on a mere 
 Poor-law. True enough : and yet, human beings cannot be 
 left to die ! Scotland too, till something better come, must 
 have a Poor-law, if Scotland is not to be a by-word among the 
 nations. Oh, what a waste is there ; of noble and thrice-noble 
 national virtues ; peasant Stoicisms, Heroisms ; valiant man- 
 ful habits, soul of a Nation's worth, which all the metal of 
 Potosi cannot purchase back ; to which the metal of Potosi, 
 and all you can buy with it, is dross and dust ! 
 
 Why dwell on this aspect of the matter ? It is too indis- 
 putable, not doubtful now to any one. Descend where you 
 will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue 
 you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by 
 Revenue Returns, by Mining-Laborer Committees, by opening 
 your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses 
 itself : you have to admit that the working body of this ricli 
 English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to 
 which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any 
 parallel. At Stockport Assizes, and this too has no reference
 
 6 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 to the present state of trade, being of date prior to that, a 
 Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty of poison- 
 ing three of their children, to defraud a " burial-society " of 
 some 3 8s. due on the death of each child : they are arraigned, 
 found guilty ; and the official authorities, it is whispered, hint 
 that perhaps the case is not solitary, that perhaps you had 
 better not probe farther into that department of things. This 
 is in the autumn of 1841 ; the crime itself is of the previous 
 year or season. "Brutal savages, degraded Irish," mutters 
 the idle reader of Newspapers ; hardly lingering on this in- 
 cident. Yet it is an incident worth lingering on ; the de- 
 pravity, savagery and degraded Irishism being never so well 
 admitted. In the British land, a human Mother and Father, 
 of white skin and professing the Christian religion, had done 
 this thing ; they, with their Irishism and necessity and sav- 
 agery had been driven to do it. Such instances are like the 
 highest mountain apex emerged into view ; under which lies a 
 whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A human 
 Mother and Father had said to themselves, What shall we do 
 to escape starvation ? We are deep sunk here, in our dark 
 cellar ; and help is far. Yes, in the Ugolino Hunger-tower 
 stern things happen ; best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on 
 his Father's knees ! The Stockport Mother and Father think 
 and hint : Our poor little starveling Tom, who cries all day for 
 victuals, who will see only evil and not good in this world : ir 
 he were out of misery at once ; he well dead, and the rest of us 
 perhaps kept alive ? It is thought, and hinted ; at last it is; 
 done. And now Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten, Is 
 it poor little starveling Jack that must go, or poor little starve- 
 ling Will ? What a committee of ways and means ! 
 
 In starved sieged cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of 
 old Jerusalem fallen under the wrath of God, it was prophe- 
 sied and said, " The hands of the pitiful women have sodden 
 their own children." The stern Hebrew imagination could 
 conceive no blacker gulf of wretchedness ; that was the ultima- 
 tum of degraded god-punished man. And we here, in modern 
 England, exuberant with supply of all kinds, besieged by noth- 
 ing if it be not by invisible Enchantments, are we reaching
 
 CHAP. I. MIDAS. 7 
 
 that ? How come these things ? Wherefore are they, where- 
 fore should they be ? 
 
 Nor are they of the St. Ives workhouses, of the Glasgow 
 lanes, and Stockport cellars, the only unblessed among us. 
 This successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth, 
 has as yet made nobody rich ; it is an enchanted wealth, and 
 belongs yet to nobody. We might ask, Which of us has it 
 enriched ? We can spend thousands where we once spent 
 hundreds ; but can purchase nothing good with them. In Poor 
 and Rich, instead of noble thrift and plenty, there is idle 
 luxury alternating with mean scarcity and inability. We have 
 sumptuous garnjtures for our Life, but have forgotten to live 
 in the middle of them. It is an enchanted wealth; no man of 
 us can yet touch it. The class of men who feel that they are 
 truly better off by means of it, let them give us their name ! 
 
 Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, with 
 what advantage they can report, and their Doctors can : but 
 in the heart of them, if we go out of the dyspeptic stomach, 
 what increase of blessedness is there ? Are they better, beauti- 
 f uler, stronger, braver ? Are they even what they call " hap- 
 pier " ? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and 
 human faces in this God's-Earth ; do more things and human 
 faces look with satisfaction on them ? Not so. Human faces 
 gloom discordantly, disloyally on one another. Things, if it 
 be not mere cotton and iron things, are growing disobedient 
 to man. The Master Worker is enchanted, for the present, 
 like his Workhouse Workman ; clamors, in vain hitherto, for 
 a very simple sort of " Liberty : " the liberty " to buy where 
 he finds it cheapest, to sell where he finds it dearest." With 
 guineas jingling in every pocket, he was no whit richer; but 
 now, the very guineas threatening to vanish, he feels that he 
 is poor indeed. Poor Master Worker ! And the Master Un- 
 workcr, is not IK- in a still fataler situation ? Pausing amid 
 his game-preserves, with awful eye, as he well may ! Co- 
 ercing fifty-pound tenants ; coercing, bribing, cajoling; ''doing 
 what he likes with his own." His mouth full of loud futilities, 
 and arguments to prove the excellence of his Corn-law ; and in
 
 8 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK t 
 
 his heart the blackest misgiving, a desperate half -consciousness 
 that his excellent Corn-law is indefensible, that his loud argu- 
 ments for it are of a kind to strike men too literally dumb. 
 
 To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth ? Who is 
 it that it blesses ; makes happier, wiser, beautifuler, in any way 
 better ? Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry 
 for him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-servant : 
 to do him any real service whatsoever ? As yet no one. We 
 have more riches than any Nation ever had before ; we have 
 less good of them than any Nation ever had before. Our suc- 
 cessful industry is hitherto unsuccessful ; a strange success, if 
 we stop here ! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people 
 perish ; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself 
 safe or satisfied. Workers, Master Workers, Unworkers, all 
 men, come to a pause ; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal 
 paralysis spreading inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives 
 workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if to- 
 wards the heart itself. Have we actually got enchanted, then ; 
 accursed by some god ? 
 
 Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He got 
 gold, so that whatsoever he touched became gold, and he, 
 with his long ears, was little the better for it. Midas had mis- 
 judged the celestial music-tones ; Midas had insulted Apollo 
 and the gods : the gods gave him his wish, and a pair of long 
 ears, which also were a good appendage to it. What a truth in 
 these old Fables ! 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 THE SPHINX. 
 
 How true, for example, is that other old Fable of the Sphinx, 
 who sat by the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passen- 
 gers, which if they could not answer she destroyed them r Such 
 a Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men and societies of men. 
 Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and
 
 CHAF. H. THE SPHINX. 9 
 
 tenderness ; the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in 
 claws and the body of a lioness. There is in her a celestial 
 beauty, which means celestial order, pliancy to wisdom ; but 
 there is also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are infer- 
 nal. She is a goddess, but one not yet disim prisoned ; one 
 still half-imprisoned, the articulate, lovely still encased in 
 the inarticulate, chaotic. How true ! And does she not pro- 
 pound her riddles to us ? Of each man she asks daily, in mild 
 voice, yet with a terrible significance, "Knowest thou the 
 meaning of this Day ? What thou canst do To-day ; wisely 
 attempt to do ? " Nature, Universe, Destiny, Existence, how- 
 soever we name this grand unnamable Fact in the midst of 
 which we live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest 
 to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests 
 and do them ; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. An- 
 swer her riddle, it is well with thee. Answer it not, pass on 
 regarding it not, it will answer itself ; the solution for thee is 
 a thing of teeth and claws ; Nature is a dumb lioness, deaf to 
 thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. Thou art not now her vic- 
 torious bridegroom ; thou art her mangled victim, scattered on 
 the precipices, as a slave found treacherous, recreant, ought to 
 be and must. 
 
 With Nations it is as with individuals : Can they rede the 
 riddle of Destiny ? This English Nation, will it get to know 
 the meaning of its strange new To-day ? Is there sense enough 
 extant, discoverable anywhere or anyhow, in our united twenty- 
 seven million heads to discern the same ; valor enough in our 
 twentyrseven million hearts to dare and do the bidding there- 
 of 7 It will be seen ! 
 
 The secret of gold Midas, which he with his long ears never 
 could discover, was, That he had offended the Supreme Powers ;\ 
 that he had parted company with the eternal inner Facts of 
 this Universe, and followed the transient outer Appearances 
 thereof; and so was arrived here. Properly it is the secret" 
 of all unhappy men and unhappy nations. Had they known 
 Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth would have made 
 them free. They have become enchanted; stagger spell- 
 bound, reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they were
 
 10 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK r. 
 
 not wise enough. They have forgotten the right Inner True, 
 and taken up with the Outer Sham-true. They answer the 
 Sphinx's question wrong. Foolish men cannot answer it 
 aright! Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for eter- 
 nal fact, and go astray more and more. 
 
 Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil 
 thing is delayed, there is no justice, but an accidental one, 
 here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed 
 some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, 
 it is sure as death ! In the centre of the world- whirlwind, 
 verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God. 
 The great soul of the world is just. brother, can it be need- 
 ful now, at this late epoch of experience, alter eighteen cen- 
 /turies of Christian preaching for one thing, to remind thee of 
 \such a fact; which all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan 
 Romans, Jews, Scythians and heathen Greeks, and indeed more 
 or less all men that God made, have managed at one time to see 
 into ; nay which thou thyself, till " red-tape " strangled the in- 
 ner life of thee, hadst once some inkling of : That there is jus- 
 tice here below ; and even, at bottom, that there is nothing else 
 but justice ! Forget that, thou hast forgotten all. Success will 
 never more attend thee : how can it now ? Thou hast the w,hole 
 Universe against thee. No more success : mere sham-success, 
 for a day and days ; rising ever higher, towards its Tarpeian 
 Rock. Alas, how, in thy soft-hung Longacre vehicle, of pol- 
 ished leather to the bodily eye, of red-tape philosophy, of 
 expediences, club-room moralities, Parliamentary majorities 
 to the mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest : but knowest thou 
 whitherward ? It is towards the road's end. Old use-and- 
 wont ; established methods, habitudes, once true and wise ; 
 man's noblest tendency, his perseverance, and man's ignoblest, 
 his inertia; whatsoever of noble and ignoble Conservatism 
 there is in men and Nations, strongest always in the strongest 
 men and Nations : all this is as a road to thee, paved smooth 
 through the abyss, till all this end. Till men's bitter neces- 
 sities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience with 
 thee is done ; and there is no road or footing any farther, and 
 the abyss yawns sheer !
 
 CHAP. II. THE SPHINX. 11 
 
 Parliament and the Courts of Westminster are venerable to 
 me ; how venerable ; gray with a thousand years of honorable 
 age ! For a thousand years and more, Wisdom and faithful 
 Valor, struggling amid much Folly and greedy Baseness, not 
 without most sad distortions in the struggle, have built them 
 up ; and they are as we see. For a thousand years, this Eng- 
 lish Nation has found them useful or supportable ; they have 
 served this English Nation's want ; been a road to it through 
 the abyss of Time. They are venerable, they are great and 
 strong. And yet it is good to remember always that they are 
 not the venerablest, nor the greatest, nor the strongest ! Acts 
 of Parliament are venerable ; but if they correspond not with 
 the writing on the " Adamant Tablet," what are they ? Prop- 
 erly their one element of venerableness, of strength or great- 
 ness, is, that they at all times correspond therewith as near as 
 by human possibility they can. They are cherishing destruc- 
 tion in their bosom every hour that they continue otherwise. 
 
 Alas, how many causes that can plead well for themselves 
 in the Courts of Westminster ; and yet in the general Court 
 of the Universe, and free Soul of Man, have no word to utter ! 
 Honorable Gentlemen may find this worth considering, in 
 times like ours. And truly, the din of triumphant Law-logic, 
 and all shaking of horse-hair wigs and learned-Serjeant gowns 
 having comfortably ended, we shall do well to ask ourselves 
 withal, What says that high and highest Court to the verdict ? 
 For it is the Court of Courts, that same ; where the universal 
 soul of Fact and very Truth sits President ; and thither- 
 ward, more and more swiftly, with a really terrible increase of 
 swiftness, all causes do in these days crowd for revisal, for 
 confirmation, for modification, for reversal with costs. Dost 
 thou know that Court ; hast thou had any Law-practice there '' 
 What, didst thou never enter ; never file any petition of re- 
 dress, reclaimer, disclaimer or demurrer, written as in thy 
 heart's blood, for thy own behoof or another's ; and silently 
 await the issue ? Thou knowest not such a Court ? Hast 
 merely heard of it by faint tradition as a thing that was or 
 had been ? Of thee, I think, we shall get little benefit. 
 
 For the gowns of learned-serjeants are good : parchment
 
 12 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 records, fixed forms, and poor terrestrial Justice, with or 
 
 (without horse-hair, what sane man will not reverence these ? 
 And yet, behold, the man is not sane but insane, who considers 
 these alone as venerable. Oceans of horse-hair, continents of 
 parchment, and learned-serjeant eloquence, were it continued 
 \ till the learned tongue wore itself small in the indefatigable 
 j learned mouth, cannot make unjust just. The grand question 
 ' still remains, Was-the -judgment just ? If unjust, it will not 
 and cannot get harbor for itself, or continue to have footing 
 in this Universe, which was made by other than One Unjust. 
 Enforce it by never such statuting, three readings, royal as- 
 sents ; blow it to the four winds with all manner of quilted 
 trumpeters and pursuivants, in the rear of them never so 
 many gibbets and hangmen, it will not stand, it cannot stand. 
 From all souls of men, from all ends of Nature, from the 
 Throne of God above, there are voices bidding it : Away, 
 away ! Does it take no warning ; does it stand, strong in its 
 three readings, in its gibbets and artillery-parks ? The more 
 woe is to it, the frightfuler woe. It will continue standing 
 for its day, for its year, for its century, doing evil all the 
 while ; but it has One enemy who is Almighty : dissolution, 
 explosion, and the everlasting Laws of Nature incessantly 
 advance towards it ; and the deeper its rooting, more obsti- 
 nate its continuing, the deeper also and huger will its ruin 
 and overturn be. 
 
 In this God's-world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad 
 foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, 
 and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost 
 thou think that there is therefore no justice ? It is what the 
 fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, 
 were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. 
 I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong 
 tiling I find here below : the just thing, the true thing. My 
 friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling 
 at thy back in support of an unjust thing ; and infinite bon- 
 fires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for 
 thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, 
 to fling down thy baton, and say, " In God's name, No ! "
 
 CHAP. II. THE SPHINX. 13 
 
 Thy " success " ? Poor devil, what will thy success amount 
 to ? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded ; no, not 
 though bonfires blazed from North to South, and bells rang, 
 and editors wrote leading-articles, and the just thing lay 
 trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and 
 annihilated thing. Success ? In few years thou wilt be dead 
 and dark, all cold, eyeless, deaf ; no blaze of bonfires, ding- 
 dong of bells or leading-articles visible or audible to thee again 
 at all forever : "What kind of success is that ! 
 
 It is true, all goes by approximation in this world ; with 
 any not insupportable approximation we must be patient. 
 There is a noble Conservatism as well as an ignoble. Would 
 to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone 
 were left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were 
 ruthlessly lopped away, forbidden evermore to show itself ! 
 For it is the right and noble alone that will have victory in 
 this struggle ; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postpone- 
 ment and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an i 
 eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only,, is all V 
 this confusion tending. We already know whither it is all 
 tending ; what will have victory, what will have none ! The 
 Heaviest will reach the centre. The Heaviest, sinking through 
 coinj)lex_fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflections, its 
 obstructions, nay "at times its resiliences, its reboundings ; 
 whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, " See, 
 your Heaviest ascends!" but at all moments it is moving 
 centreward, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and, 
 by laws older than the World, old as the Maker's first Plan of 
 the World, it has to arrive there. 
 
 Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each 
 fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and 
 his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. 
 He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to 
 all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory 
 over him. He dies indeed ; but his work lives, very truly 
 lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot/ 
 hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England ft
 
 14 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, 
 a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his 
 old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just 
 real union as of brother and brother, not a false and merely 
 semblant one as of slave and master. If the union with Eng- 
 land be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank 
 Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is 
 not Ireland : no, because brave men rose there, and said, 
 " Behold, ye must not tread us down like slaves ; and ye shall 
 not, and cannot!" Fight on, thou brave true heart, and 
 falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The 
 cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no farther, yet pre- 
 cisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of 
 it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be : but 
 the truth of it is part of Nature's own Laws, co-operates with 
 , the World's eternal Tendencies, and cannot be conquered. 
 
 The dust of controversy, what is it but the falsehood flying 
 off from all manner of conflicting true forces, and making such 
 a loud dust- whirlwind, that so the truths alone may remain, 
 and embrace brother-like in some true resulting-force ! It is 
 ever so. Savage fighting Heptarchies : their fighting is an 
 ascertainment, who has the right to rule over whom ; that out 
 of such waste-bickering Saxondom a peacefully co-operating 
 England may arise. Seek through this Universe ; if with 
 other than owl's eyes, thou wilt find nothing nourished there, 
 nothing kept in life, but what has right to nourishment and 
 life. The rest, look at it with other than owl's eyes, is not 
 living ; is all dying, all as good as dead ! Justice was ordained 
 from the foundations of the world; and will last with the 
 world and longer. 
 
 From which I infer that the inner sphere of Fact, in this 
 present England as elsewhere, differs infinitely from the outer 
 sphere and spheres of Semblance. That the Temporary, here 
 as elsewhere, is too apt to carry it over the Eternal. That he 
 who dsvells in the temporary Semblances, and does not pene- 
 trate into the eternal Substance, will not answer the Sphinx- 
 riddle of To-day, or of any Day. For the substance alone is
 
 CHAP. 11 THE SPHINX. 15 
 
 substantial ; that is the law of Fact ; if you discover not 
 that, Fact, who already knows it, will let you also know it 
 by and by ! 
 
 What is Justice ? that, on the whole, is the question of the 
 Sphinx to us. The law of Fact is, that Justice must and will 
 be done. The sooner the better ; for the Time grows stringent, 
 frightfully pressing ! " What is Justice ? " ask many, to 
 whom cruel Fact alone will be able to prove responsive. It 
 is like jesting Pilate asking, What is Truth ? Jesting Pilate 
 had not the smallest chance to ascertain what was Truth. He 
 could not have known it, had a god shown it to him. Thick 
 serene opacity, thicker than amaurosis, veiled those smiling 
 eyes of his to Truth ; the inner retina of them was gone para- 
 lytic, dead. He looked at Truth ; and discerned her not, 
 there where she stood. " What is Justice ? " The clothed 
 embodied Justice that sits in Westminster Hall, with penal- 
 ties, parchments, tipstaves, is very visible. But the unem-J 
 bodied Justice, whereof that other is either an emblem, or else 
 is a fearful indescribability, is not so visible ! For the unem- 
 Ixxlied Justice is of Heaven ; a Spirit, and Divinity of Heaven, 
 ///visible to all but the noble and pure of soul. The impure 
 ignoble gaze with eyes, and she is not there. They will prove 
 it to you by logic, by endless Hansard Debatings, by bursts 
 of Parliamentary eloquence. It is not consolatory to behold ! 
 For properly, as many men as there are in a Nation who can 
 withal see Heaven's invisible Justice, and know it to be on 
 Earth also omnipotent, so many men are there who stand 
 between a Nation and perdition. So many, and no more. 
 Heavy-laden England, how many hast thou in this hour ? 
 The Supreme Power sends new and ever new, all born at least 
 with hearts of flesh and not of stone ; and heavy Misery 
 itself, once heavy enough, will prove didactic !
 
 16 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MANCHESTER INSURRECTION. 
 
 BLTJSTEROWSKI, Colacorde, and other Editorial prophets of 
 the Continental-Democratic Movement, have in their leading- 
 articles shown themselves disposed to vilipend the late Man- 
 chester Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme 
 backwardness to battle; nay as betokening, in the English 
 People itself, perhaps a want of the proper animal courage 
 indispensable in these ages. A million hungry operative men 
 started up, in utmost paroxysm of desperate protest against 
 their lot ; and, ask Colacorde and company, How many shots 
 were fired ? Very few in comparison ! Certain hundreds of 
 drilled soldiers sufficed to suppress this million-headed hydra, 
 and tread it down, without the smallest appeasement or hope 
 of such, into its subterranean settlements again, there to recon- 
 sider itself. Compared with our revolts in Lyons, in Warsaw 
 and elsewhere, to say nothing of incomparable Paris City past 
 or present, what a lamblike Insurrection ! 
 
 The present Editor is not here, with his readers, to vindi- 
 cate the character of Insurrections ; nor does it matter to us 
 whether Blusterowski and the rest may think the English a 
 courageous people or not courageous. In passing, however, let 
 us mention that, to our view, this was not an unsuccessful In- 
 surrection ; that as Insurrections go, we have not heard lately 
 of any that succeeded so well. 
 
 A million of hungry operative men, as Blusterowski says, 
 rose all up, came all out into the streets, and stood there. 
 What other could they do ? Their wrongs and griefs were 
 bitter, insupportable, their rage against the same was just : but 
 who are they that cause these wrongs, who that will honestly 
 make effort to redress them ? Our enemies are we know not 
 who or what ; our friends are we know not where ! How shall
 
 CHAP. III. MANCHESTER INSURRECTION. 17 
 
 we attack any one, shoot or be shot by any one ? Oh, if the 
 accursed invisible Nightmare, that is crushing out the life of 
 us and ours, would take a shape ; approach us like the Hyrca- 
 oian tiger, the Behemoth of Chaos, the Archfiend himself ; iu 
 -uiy shape that we could see, and fasten on ! ^uiaiican have 
 himself shot with cheerfulness ; but it needs first that he see 
 clearly for what. Show him the divine face of Justice, then 
 the diabolic monster which is eclipsing that : he will fly at the 
 throat of such monster, never so monstrous, and need no bid- 
 ding to do it. Woolwich grape-shot will sweep clear all streets, 
 blast into invisibility so many thousand men : but if your 
 Woolwich grape-shot be. but eclipsing Divine Justice, and the 
 God's-radiance itself gleam recognizable athwart such grape- 
 shot, then, yes then is the time come for fighting and attack- 
 ing. All artillery-parks have become weak, and are aboiit to 
 dissipate : iu the God's-thunder, their poor thunder slackens, ( 
 ceases ; finding that it is, in all senses of the term, a brute 
 one ! 
 
 That the Manchester Insurrection stood still, on the streets, 
 with an indisposition to fire and bloodshed, was wisdom for it " 
 even as an Insurrection. Insurrection, never so necessary, is 
 a most sad necessity ; and governors who wait for that to in- 
 struct them, are surely getting into the fatalest courses, 
 proving themselves Sons of Nox and Chaos, of blind Cowardice, 
 not of seeing Valor ! How can there be any remedy in insur- 
 rection ? It is a mere announcement of the disease, visible 
 now even to Sons of Night?~ Insurrection usually " gains " 
 little ; usually wastes how much ! One of its worst kinds of 
 waste, to say nothing of the rest, is that of irritating and ex- 
 asperating men against each other, by violence done ; which is 
 always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even justice 
 unjustly. 
 
 Who shall compute the waste and loss, the obstruction of 
 every sort, that was produced in the Manchester region by 
 Peterloo alone ! Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut 
 down, the number of the slain and maimed is very count- 
 able: but the treasury of rag*, burning hidden or visible in all 
 hearts ever since, more or less perverting the effort and aim of 
 
 VOL. Til. 2
 
 18 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 all hearts ever since, is of unknown extent. " How ye came 
 among us, in your cruel armed blindness, ye unspeakable 
 County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing, hoofs prancing, and 
 slashed us down at your brute pleasure ; deaf, blind to all our 
 claims and woes and wrongs ; of quick sight and sense to your 
 own claims only ! There lie poor sallow work-worn weavers, 
 and complain no more now ; women themselves are slashed 
 and sabred, howling terror fills the air ; and ye ride prosperous, 
 very victorious, ye unspeakable : give us sabres too, and 
 then come on a little ! " Such are Peterloos. In all hearts 
 that witnessed Peterloo, stands written, as in fire-characters, 
 or smoke-characters prompt to become fire again, a legible 
 balance-account of grim vengeance ; very unjustly balanced, 
 much exaggerated, as is the way with such accounts : but pay- 
 able readily at sight, in full with compound interest! Such 
 things should be avoided as the very pestilence ! For men's 
 hearts ought not to be set against one another ; but set with 
 one another, and all against the Evil Thing only. Men's souls 
 ought to be left to see clearly ; not jaundiced, blinded, twisted 
 all awry, by revenge, mutual abhorrence, and the like. An 
 Insurrection that can announce the disease, and then retire 
 with no such balance-account opened anywhere, has attained 
 the highest success possible for it. 
 
 And this was what these poor Manchester operatives, with 
 all the darkness that was in them and round them, did manage 
 to perform. They put their huge inarticulate question, " What 
 do you mean to do with us ? " in a manner audible to every 
 reflective soul in this kingdom ; exciting deep pity in all good 
 men, deep anxiety in all men whatever ; and no conflagration 
 or outburst of madness came to cloud that feeling anywhere, 
 but everywhere it operates unclouded. All England heard the 
 question : it is the first practical form of our Sphinx-riddle. 
 England will answer it ; or, on the whole, England will perish ; 
 one does not yet expect the latter result ! 
 
 For the rest, that the Manchester Insurrection could yet dis- 
 cern no radiance of Heaven on any side of its horizon ; but 
 feared that all lights, of the O'Connor or other sorts, hitherto 
 kindled, were but deceptive fish-oil transparencies, or bog will-
 
 CHAP. III. MANCHESTER INSURRECTION. 19 
 
 o'-wisp lights, and no dayspring from on high : for this also 
 we will honor the poor Manchester Insurrection, and augur 
 well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong men, 
 inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they can articulate of it 
 is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right noble instinct 
 of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes them : 
 the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom Fact patronizes ; 
 of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good 
 augury ! This work too is to be done : Governors and Govern- 
 ing Classes that can articulate and utter, in any measure, what 
 the law of Fact and Justice is, may calculate that here is a 
 Governed Class who will listen. 
 
 And truly this first practical form of the Sphinx-question, 
 inarticulately and so audibly put there, is one of the most im- 
 pressive ever asked in the world. " Behold us here, so many 
 thousands, millions, and increasing at the rate of fifty every 
 hour. We are right willing and able to work ; and on the 
 Planet Earth is plenty of work and wages for a million times 
 as many. We ask, If you mean to lead us towards work ; to 
 try to lead us, by ways new, never yet heard of till this new 
 unheard-of Time ? Or if you declare that you cannot lead 
 us ? And expect that we are to remain quietly unled, and in 
 a composed manner perish of starvation ? What is it you ex- 
 pect of us ? What is it you mean to do with us ? " This ques- 
 tion, I say, has been put in the hearing of all Britain ; and will 
 be again put, and ever again, till some answer be given it. 
 
 Unhappy Workers, unhappier Idlers, unhappy men and 
 women of this actual England. We are yet very far from 
 an answer, and there will be no existence for us without find- 
 ing one. " A fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work : " it is as 
 just a demand as Governed men ever made of Governing. It 
 is the everlasting right of man. Indisputable as Gospels, as 
 arithmetical multiplication-tables : it must and will have itself 
 fulfilled ; and yet, in these times of ours, with what enor- 
 mous difficulty, next door to impossibility ! For the times are 
 really strange ; of a complexity intricate with all the new 
 width of the ever-widening world ; times here of half-frantic 
 velocity of impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness
 
 20 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 paralysis ; times definable as showing two qualities, Dilettant- 
 ism and Majnmonism ; most intricate obstructed times ! 
 Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of Justice, pro- 
 phetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible behind all these confused 
 world-wide entanglements, of Landlord interests, Manufactur- 
 ing interests, Tory-Whig interests, and who knows what other 
 interests, expediencies, vested interests, established posses- 
 sions, inveterate Dilettantisms, Midas-eared Mammonisms, 
 it would seem to every one a flat impossibility, which all wise 
 men might as well at once abandon. If you do not know 
 eternal Justice from momentary Expediency, and understand 
 in your heart of hearts how Justice, radiant, beneficent, as the 
 all-victorious Light-element, is also in essence, if need be, an 
 ail-victorious .Fire-element, and melts all manner of vested 
 interests, and the hardest iron cannon, as if they were soft 
 wax, and does ever in the long-run rule and reign, and allows 
 nothing else to rule and reign, you also would talk of im- 
 possibility ! But it is only difficult, it is not impossible. 
 Possible ? It is, with whatever difficulty, very clearly in- 
 evitable. 
 
 Fair day's-wages for fair day's-work ! exclaims a sarcastic 
 man : Alas, in what corner of this Planet, since Adam first 
 awoke on it, was that ever realized '! The day's-wages of 
 John Milton's day's-work, named Paradise Lost and Milton s 
 Works, were Ten Pounds paid by instalments, and a rather 
 close escape from death on the gallows. Consider that : it is 
 no rhetorical flourish ; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact, 
 emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, 
 ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his 
 farming ; undertook a Hercules' Labor and lifelong wrestle 
 with that Lernean Hydra-coil, wide as England, hissing heaven- 
 high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted 
 quack-heads ; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terri- 
 blest wrestle I have heard of ; and he wrestled it, and mowed 
 and cut it down a good many stages, so that its hissing is ever 
 since pitiful in comparison, and one can walk abroad in com- 
 parative peace from it ; and his wages, as I understand, were
 
 CHAP. III. MANCHESTER INSURRECTION. 21 
 
 burial under the gallows-tree near Tyburn Turnpike, with his 
 head on the gable of Westminster Hall, and two centuries 
 now of mixed cursing and ridicule from all manner of men. 
 His dust lies under the Edgware Road, near Tyburn Turnpike, 
 at this hour ; and his memory is Nay what matters what 
 his memory is ? His memory, at bottom, is or yet shall be as 
 that of a god : a terror and horror to all quacks and cowards 
 and insincere persons ; an everlasting encouragement, new 
 memento, battle- word, and pledge of victory to all the brave. 
 It is the natural course and history of the Godlike, in every 
 place, in every time. What god ever carried it with the Ten- 
 pound Franchisers ; in Open Vestry, or with any Sanhedrim 
 of considerable standing ? When was a god found " agree- 
 able " to everybody ? The regular way is to hang, kill, crucify 
 your gods, and execrate and trample them under your stupid 
 hoofs for a century or two ; till you discover that they are 
 gods, and then take to braying over them, still in a very 
 long-eared manner! So speaks the sarcastic man; in his 
 wild way, very mournful truths. 
 
 Day's-wages for day's-work ? continues he : The Progress 
 of Human Society consists even in this same, The better and 
 better apportioning of wages_to work. Give me this, you have 
 given me all? Pay to every man accurately what he has worked 
 for, what he has earned and done and deserved, to this man 
 broad lands and honors, to that man high gibbets and tread- 
 mills : what more have I to ask ? Heaven's Kingdom, which 
 we daily pray for, has come ; God's will is done on Earth even 
 as it is in Heaven ! This is the radiance of celestial Justice ; 
 in the light or in the fire of which all impediments, vested 
 interests, and iron cannon, are more and more melting like 
 wax, and disappearing from the pathways of men. A thing 
 ever struggling forward ; irrepressible, advancing inevitable ; 
 perfecting itself, all days, more and more, never to be per- 
 fect till that general Doomsday, the ultimate Consummation, 
 and Last of earthly Days. 
 
 True, as to " perfection " and so forth, answer we ; true 
 enough ! And yet withal we have to remark, that imperfect 
 Human Society holds itself together, and finds place under the
 
 22 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 Sun, in virtue simply of some approximation to perfection 
 being actually made and put in practice. We remark farther, 
 that there are supportable approximations, and then likewise 
 insupportable. With some, almost with any, supportable ap- 
 proximation men are apt, perhaps too apt, to rest indolently 
 patient, and say, It will do. Thus these poor Manchester 
 manual workers mean only, by day's- wages for day's-work, 
 certain coins of money adequate to keep them living; in 
 return for their work, such modicum of food, clothes and fuel 
 as will enable them to continue their work itself ! They as 
 yet clamar -foi ' && ^nore; the rest, still inarticulate, cannot 
 yet shape itself into a demand at all, and only lies in them as 
 a dumb wish ; perhaps only, still more inarticulate, as a dumb, 
 altogether unconscious want. This is the supportable approxi- 
 mation they would rest patient with, That by their work they 
 might be kept alive to work more ! This once grown unat- 
 tainable, I think your approximation may consider itself to 
 have reached the insupportable stage ; and may prepare, with 
 whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one of 
 two things, for changing or perishing! With the millions 
 no longer able to live, how can the units keep living ? It is 
 too clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death. 
 
 Shall we say then, The world has retrograded in its talent 
 of apportioning wages to work, in late days ? The world had 
 always a talent of that sort, better or worse. Time was when ' 
 the mere Aawrfworker needed not announce his claim to the 
 v world by Manchester Insurrections ! The world, with its 
 Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and such like, has of 
 late days been terribly inattentive to that question of work and 
 wages. We will not say, the poor world has retrograded even 
 here : we will say rather, the world has been rushing on with 
 such fiery animation to get work and ever more work done, it 
 has had no time to think of dividing the wages; and has 
 merely left them to be scrambled for by the Law of the 
 Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of Laissez-faire, and 
 other idle Laws and Un-laws, saying, in its dire haste to get 
 the work done, That is well enough ! 
 
 And now the world will have to pause a little, and take up
 
 CHAP. 111. MANCHESTER INSURRECTION. 23 
 
 that other side of the problem, and in right earnest strive for 
 some solution of that. For it has become pressing. What is 
 the use of your spun shirts ? They hang there by the million 
 unsalable ; and here, by the million, are diligent bare backs 
 that can get no hold of them. Shirts are useful for covering 
 human backs ; useless otherwise, an unbearable mockery other- 
 wise. You have fallen terribly behind with that side of the 
 problem !y/Manchester Insurrections, French Revolutions, and 
 thousand-fold phenomena great and small, announce loudly that 
 you must bring it forward a little again. Never till now, in 
 the history of an Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to 
 grow corn if you will plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin 
 and weave in it, did the mere manual two-handed worker 
 (however it might fare with other workers) cry in vain for 
 such " wages " as he means by " fair wages,'' namely food and 
 warmth ! The Godlike could not and cannot be paid ; but the 
 Earthly always could. Gurth, a mere swineherd, born thrall 
 of Cedric the Saxon, tended pigs in the wood, and did get some 
 parings of the pork. Why, the four-footed worker has already 
 got all that this two-handed one is clamoring for ! How often 
 must I remind you ? There is not a horse in England, able 
 and willing to work, but has due food and lodging; and goes 
 about sleek-coated, satisfied in heart. And you say, It is im- 
 possible. Brothers, I answer, if for you it be impossible, what 
 is to become of you? It is impossible for us to believe it 
 to be impossible. The human brain, looking at these sleek 
 English horses, refuses to believe in such impossibility for 
 English men. Do you depart quickly ; clear the ways soon, 
 lest worse befall. We for our share do purpose, with full 
 view of the enormous difficulty, with total disbelief in the 
 impossibility, to endeavor while life is in us, and to die en- 
 deavoring, we and our sons, till we attain it or have all died 
 and ended. Y 
 
 Such a Platitude of a World, in which all working horses 
 could be well fed, and innumerable working men should die 
 starved, were it not best to end it; to have done with it, and 
 restore it once for all to the Jiitvns, Mud-giants, Frost-giants, 
 and Chaotic Brute-gods of the Beginning ? For the old An-
 
 24 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 archie Brute-gods it may be well enough ; but it is a Platitude 
 which Men should be above countenancing by their presence 
 in it. We pray you, let the word impossible disappear from 
 your vocabulary in this matter. It is of awful omen ; to all of 
 us, and to yourselves first of all. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 MORRISON'S PILL. 
 
 WHAT is to be done, what would you have us do ? asks 
 many a one, with a tone of impatience, almost of reproach ; 
 and then, if you mention some one thing, some two things, 
 twenty things that might be done, turns round with a satirical 
 tehee, and, " These are your remedies ! " The state of mind 
 indicated by such question, and such rejoinder, is worth re- 
 flecting on. 
 
 It seems to be taken for granted, by these interrogative 
 philosophers, that there is some "thing," or handful of 
 " things," which could be done ; some Act of Parliament, 
 " remedial measure " or the like, which could be passed, 
 whereby the social malady were fairly fronted, conquered, 
 put an end to ; so that, with your remedial measure in your 
 pocket, you could then go on triumphant, and be troubled no 
 farther. " You tell us the evil," cry such persons, as if justly 
 aggrieved, " and do not tell us how it is to be cured ! " 
 
 How it is to be cured ? Brothers, I am sorry I have got no 
 Morrison's Pill for curing the maladies of Society. It were 
 infinitely handier if we had a Morrison's Pill, Act of Parlia- 
 ment, or remedial measure, which men could swallow, one good 
 time, and then go on in their old courses, cleared from all 
 miseries and mischiefs ! Unluckily we have none such ; un- 
 luckily the Heavens themselves, in their rich pharmacopoeia, 
 contain none such. There will no " thing " be done that will 
 cure you. There will a radical universal alteration of your 
 regimen and way of life take place ; there will a most agoniz-
 
 CHAP. IV. MORRISON'S PILL. 25 
 
 iug divorce between you and your chimeras, luxuries and falsi- 
 ties, take place ; a most toilsome, all but " impossible " return 
 to Nature, and her veracities and her integrities, take place : 
 that so the inner fountains of life may again begin, like eter- 
 nal Light-fountains, to irradiate and purify your bloated, 
 swollen, foul existence, drawing nigh, as at present, to name- 
 less death ! Either death, or else all this will take place. 
 Judge if, with such diagnosis, any Morrison's Pill is like to be 
 discoverable ! 
 
 But the Life-fountain within you once again set flowing, 
 what innumerable " things," whole sets and classes and conti- 
 nents of " things," year after year, and decade after decade, 
 and century after century, will then be doable and done ! Not 
 Emigration, Education, Corn-Law Abrogation, Sanitary Regu- 
 lation, Land Property -Tax ; not these alone, nor a thousand 
 times as much as these. Good Heavens, there will then be 
 light in the inner heart of here and there a man, to discern 
 what is just, what is commanded by the Most High God, what 
 must be done, were it never so "impossible." Vain_ > [arg_oiiJn 
 favor of the palpably unjust will then abridge itself within 
 limits. Vain jargon, on Hustings, in Parliaments or wher- 
 ever else, when here and there a man has vision for the essen- 
 tial God's-Truth of the things jargoned of, will become very 
 vain indeed. The silence of here and there such a man, how 
 eloquent in answer to such jargon ! Such jargon, frightened 
 at its own gaunt echo, will unspeakably abate ; nay, for a while, 
 may almost in a manner disappear, the wise answering it in 
 silence, and even the simple taking cue from them to hoot it 
 down wherever heard. It will be a blessed time ; and many 
 " things " will become doable, and when the brains are out, 
 an absurdity will die ! Not easily again shall a Corn-Law 
 argue ten years for itself; and still talk and argue, when im- 
 partial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so long back, 
 they have heard no " argument " advanced for it but such as 
 might make the angels and almost the very jackasses weep ! 
 
 Wholly a blessed time : when jargon might abate, and here 
 and there some genuine speech begin. When to the noble 
 opened heart, as to such heart they alone do, all noble things
 
 26 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 began to grow visible ; and the difference between just and 
 unjust, between true and false, between work and sham-work, 
 between speech and jargon, was once more, what to our happier 
 Fathers it used to be, infinite, as between a Heavenly thing 
 and an Infernal : the one a thing which you were not to do, 
 which you were wise not to attempt doing; which it were 
 better for you to have a millstone tied round your neck, and 
 be cast into the sea, than concern yourself with doing! 
 Brothers, it will not be a Morrison's Fill, or remedial measure, 
 that will bring all this about for us. 
 
 And yet, very literally, till, in some shape or other, it be 
 brought about, we remain cureless ; till it begin to be brought 
 about, the cure does not begin. For Nature and Fact, not 
 Red-tape and Semblance, are to this hour the basis of man's 
 life ; and on those, through never such strata of these, man 
 and his life and all his interests do, sooner or later, infallibly 
 come to rest, and to be supported or be swallowed according 
 as they agree with those. The question is asked of them, not, 
 How do you agree with Downing Street and accredited Sem- 
 blance ? but, How do you agree with God's Universe and the 
 actual Keality of things ? This Universe has its Laws. If 
 we walk according to the Law, the Law-Maker will befriend 
 us; if not, not. Alas, by no Reform Bill, Ballot-box, Five- 
 point Charter, by no boxes or bills or charters, can you per- 
 form this alchemy : " Given a world of Knaves, to produce an 
 Honesty from their united action ! " It is a distillation, once 
 for all, not possible. You pass it through alembic after 
 alembic, it comes out still a Dishonesty, with a new dress on 
 it, a new color to it. "While we ourselves continue valets, 
 how can any hero come to govern us ? " We are governed, 
 very infallibly, by the " sham-hero," whose name is Quack, 
 whose work and governance is Plausibility, and also is Falsity 
 and Fatuity ; to which Nature says, and must say when it 
 comes to her to speak, eternally No ! Nations cease to be 
 befriended of the Law-Maker, when they walk not according 
 to the Law. The Sphinx-question remains unsolved by them, 
 becomes ever more insoluble.
 
 CHAP. IV. MORRISON'S PILL. 2T 
 
 If thou ask again, therefore, on the Morrison's-Pill hypothe- 
 sis, What is to be done ? allow me to reply : By thee, for 
 the present, almost nothing. Thou there, the thing for thee 
 to do is, if possible, to cease to be a hollow sounding-shell of 
 hearsays, egoisms, purblind dilettantisms ; and become, were 
 it on the infinitely small scale, a faithful discerning soul. 
 Thou shalt descend into thy inner man, and see if there be 
 any traces of a soul there ; till then there can be nothing done ! 
 brother, we must if possible resuscitate some soul and con- 
 science in us, exchange our dilettantisms for sincerities, our 
 dead hearts of stone for living hearts of flesh. Then shall we 
 discern, not one thing, but, in clearer or dimmer sequence, a 
 whole endless host of things that can be done. Do the first 
 of these ; do it ; the second will already have become clearer, 
 doabler; the second, third and three-thousandth will then 
 have begun to be possible for us. Not any universal Morri- 
 son's Pill shall we then, either as swallowers or as venders, 
 ask after at all ; but a far different sort of remedies : Quacks 
 shall no more have dominion over us, but true Heroes and 
 Healers ! 
 
 Will not that be a thing worthy of "doing; " to deliver our- 
 selves from quacks, sham-heroes ; to deliver the whole world 
 more and more from such ? They are the one bane of the 
 world. Once clear the world of them, it ceases to be a Devil's- 
 world, in all fibres of it wretched, accursed ; and begins to be 
 a God's-world, blessed, and working hourly towards blessed- 
 ness. Thou for one wilt not again vote for any quack, do 
 honor to any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape : cant shall be 
 known to thee by the sound of it; thou wilt fly from cant 
 with a shudder never felt before ; as from the opened Mtany 
 of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil-worship of this age, 
 more horrible than any other blasphemy, profanity or genuine 
 blackgxiardism elsewhere audible among men. It is alarming 
 to witness, in its present completed state ! And Quack and 
 Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper side and under 
 of the self-same substance ; convertible personages : turn up 
 your dupe into the proper fosterirg element, ajid he himself
 
 28 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK i. 
 
 can become a quack ; there is in him the due prurient insin- 
 cerity, open voracity for profit, and closed sense for truth, 
 whereof quacks too, in all their kinds, are made. 
 
 Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero, that, of 
 right and necessity, the valet-world belongs. " What is to be 
 done ? " The reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking 
 and swallowing of some " remedial measure " ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 < ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT. 
 
 WHEN an individual is miserable, what does it most of all 
 behoove him to do ? To complain of this man or of that, of 
 this thing or of that ? To fill the world and the street with 
 lamentation, objurgation ? Not so at all ; the reverse of so. 
 All moralists advise him not to complain of any person or of 
 any thing, but of himself only. He is to know of a truth that 
 being miserable he has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully 
 followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, 
 would have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him : 
 but he has followed other than Nature's Laws ; and now Na- 
 ture, her patience with him being ended, leaves him desolate ; 
 answers with very emphatic significance to him : No. Not by 
 this road, my son ; by another road shalt thou attain well- 
 being : this, thou perceivest, is the road to ill-being ; quit this ! 
 So do all moralists advise : that the man penitently say to 
 himself first of all, Behold I was not wise enough ; I quitted 
 the laws of Fact, which are also called the Laws of God, and 
 mistook for them the Laws of Sham and Semblance, which are 
 called the Devil's Laws ; therefore am I here ! 
 
 Neither with Nations that become miserable is it funda- 
 mentally otherwise. The ancient guides of Nations, Prophets, 
 Priests, or whatever their name, were well aware of this ; and, 
 down to a late epoch, impressively taught and inculcated it,
 
 CHAP. V ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT. 29 
 
 The modern guides of Nations, who also go under a great 
 variety of names, Journalists, Political Economists, Politicians, 
 Pamphleteers, have entirely forgotten this, and are ready to 
 deny this. But it nevertheless remains eternally undeniable : 
 nor is there any doubt but we shall all be taught it yet, and 
 made again to confess it : we shall all be striped and scourged 
 till we do learn it ; and shall at last either get to know it, or be 
 striped to death in the process. For it is undeniable ! When 
 a Nation is unhappy, the old Prophet was right and not wrong 
 in saying to it : Ye have forgotten God, ye have quitted the 
 ways of God, or ye would not have been unhappy. It is not 
 according to the laws of Fact that ye have lived and guided 
 yourselves, but according to the laws of Delusion, Imposture, 
 and wilful and unwilful Mistake of Fact ; behold therefore the 
 Unveracity is worn out ; Nature's long-suffering with you is 
 exhausted ; and ye are here ! 
 
 Surely there is nothing very inconceivable in this, even to 
 the Journalist, to the Political Economist, Modern Pamphlet- 
 eer, or any two-legged animal without feathers ! If a country 
 finds itself wretched, sure enough that country has been mis- 
 guided : it is with the wretched Twenty -seven Millions, fallen 
 wretched, as with the Unit fallen wretched : they, as he, have 
 quitted the course prescribed by Nature and the Supreme 
 Powers, and so are fallen into scarcity, disaster, infelicity; 
 and pausing to consider themselves, have to lament and say : 
 Alas, we were not wise enough ! We took transient superfi- 
 cial Se.mbla.nce fQr._ev.exlasting central Substance; we have 
 departed far away from the Laws of this Uiuyersejjand behold 
 now lawless Chaos and inane Chirnera_is ready to devour us ! 
 "Nature in late centuries," says Sauerteig, " was universally 
 supposed to be dead ; an old eight-day clock, made many thou- 
 sand years ago, and still ticking, but dead as brass, which 
 the Maker, at most, sat looking at, in a distant, singular and 
 indeed incredible manner : but now I am happy to observe, 
 she is everywhere asserting herself to be not dead and brass 
 at all, but alive and miraculous, celestial-infernal, with an em- 
 phasis that will again penetrate the thickest head of this 
 Planet by and by ! "
 
 30 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 Indisputable enough to all mortals now, the guidance of this 
 country has not been sufficiently wise ; men too foolish have 
 been set to the guiding and governing of it, and have guided 
 it hither ; we must h'nd wiser, wiser, or else we perish ! To 
 this length of insight all England has now advanced ; but as 
 v et no farther. All England stands wringing its hands, ask- 
 ..jg itself, nigh desperate, What farther? Reform Bill proves 
 to be a failure; Benthamee Radicalism, the gospel of "En- 
 lightened Selfishness," dies out, or dwindles into Five-point 
 Chartism, amid the tears and hootings of men : what next are 
 we to hope or try ? Five-point Charter, Free-trade, Church- 
 extension, Sliding-scale ; what, in Heaven's name, are we next 
 to attempt, that we sink not in inane Chimera, and be devoured 
 of Chaos ? The case is pressing, and one of the most com- 
 plicated in the world. A God's-message never came to thicker- 
 skinned people ; never had a God's-message to pierce through 
 thicker integuments, into heavier ears. It is Fact, speaking 
 once more, in miraculous thunder- voice, from out of the centre 
 of the world ; how unknown its language to the deaf and 
 foolish many ; how distinct, undeniable, terrible and yet benefi- 
 cent, to the hearing few : Behold, ye shall grow wiser, or ye 
 shall die ! Truer to Nature's Fact, or inane Chimera will swal- 
 low you; in whirlwinds of fire, you and your Mammonisms, 
 Dilettantisms, your Midas-eared philosophies, double-barrelled 
 Aristocracies, shall disappear ! Such is the God's-message to 
 us, once more, in these modern days. 
 
 We must have more Wisdom to govern us, we must be 
 governed by the Wisest, we must have an Aristocracy of 
 Talent ! cry many. True, most true ; but how to get it ? Tljo 
 following extract from our young friend of the Houndsditth' 
 Indicator is worth perusing : " At this time," says he, " while 
 there is a cry everywhere, articulate or inarticulate, for an 
 'Aristocracy of Talent,' a Governing Class namely which did 
 govern, not merely which took the wages of governing, and 
 could not with all our industry be kept from misgoverning, 
 corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce with us, it may not 
 be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed 
 sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an
 
 CHAP. V. ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT. 31 
 
 Aristocracy is ! Do you expect, my friends, that your indis- 
 pensable Aristocracy of Talent is to be enlisted straightway, 
 by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general 
 population ; arranged. in supreme regimental order; and set to 
 rule over us ? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out of 
 chaff, from the Twenty-seven Million British subjects ; that 
 any Ballot-box, Reform Bill, or other Political Machine, with 
 Force of Public Opinion never so active on it, is likely to per- 
 form said process of sifting ? Would to Heaven that we had 
 a sieve ; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, 
 wind-fanners, or ne-plus-ultra of machinery, devisable by man, 
 that would do it ! 
 
 "Done nevertheless, sure enough, it must be; it shall and 
 will be. We are rushing swiftly on the road to destruction : 
 every hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure, 
 done. The doing of it is not doubtful ; only the method and 
 the costs ! Nay I will even mention to you an infallible sift- 
 ing-propess whereby he that has ability will be sifted out to 
 rule among us, and that same blessed Aristocracy of Talent 
 be verily, in an approximate degree, vouchsafed us by and by : 
 an infallible sifting-process ; to which, however, no soul can help 
 his neighbor, but each must, with devout prayer to Heaven, 
 endeavor to help himself. It is, friends, that all of us, that 
 many of us, should acquire the true eye for talent, which is 
 dreadfully wanting at present ! The true eye for talent pre- 
 supposes the true reverence for it, Heavens, presupposes 
 so many things ! 
 
 "For example, you Bobus Higgins, Sausage-maker on the 
 great scale, who are raising such a clamor for this Aris- 
 tocracy of Talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart 
 of yours, chiefly in very fact pay reverence to ? Is it to talent, 
 intrinsic manly worth of any kind, you unfortunate Bobus? 
 The manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did 
 you ever reverence him ; did you so much as know that he was 
 a manly man at all, till his coat grew better ? Talent ! I 
 understand you to be able to worship the fame of talent, the 
 power, cash, celebrity or other success of talent ; but the talent 
 itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay what is it in
 
 32 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 yourself that you are proudest of, that you take most pleasure 
 in surveying meditatively in thoughtful moments ? Speak now, 
 is it the bare Bobus stript of his very name and shirt, and 
 turned loose upon society, that you admire and thank Heaven 
 for ; or Bobus with his cash-accounts and larders dropping fat- 
 ness, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony- 
 chaise, admirable in some measure to certain of the flunky 
 species ? Your own degree of worth and talent, is it of infinite 
 value to you; or only of finite, measurable by the degree 
 of currency, and conquest of praise or pudding, it has brought 
 you to ? Bobus, you are in a vicious circle, rounder than one of 
 your own sausages ; and will never vote for or promote any 
 talent, except what talent or sham-talent has already got itself 
 voted for!" We here cut short the Indicator; all readers 
 perceiving whither he now tends. 
 
 " More Wisdom " indeed : but where to find more Wisdom ? 
 We have already a Collective Wisdom, after its kind, though 
 "class-legislation," and another thing or two, affect it some- 
 what ! On the whole, as they say, Like people like priest ; 
 so we may say, Like people like king. The man gets himself 
 appointed and elected who is ablest to be appointed and 
 elected. What can the incorruptiblest Boluses elect, if it be 
 not some Bobissimus, should they find such ? 
 
 Or again, perhaps there is not, in the whole Nation, Wisdom 
 enouglj, " collect" it as we may, to make an adequate Col- 
 lective! That too is a case which may befall: a ruined man 
 staggers down to ruin because there was not wisdom enough 
 in him ; so, clearly also, may Twenty-seven Million collective 
 men ! But indeed one of the infalliblest fruits of Unwisdom 
 in a Nation is that it cannot get the use of what Wisdom is 
 actually in it : that it is not governed by the wisest it has, 
 who alone have a divine right to govern in all Nations ; but 
 by the sham-wisest, or even by the openly not-so-wise if they 
 are handiest otherwise ! This is the infalliblest result of 
 Unwisdom; and also the balefulest, immeasurablest, not so 
 much what we can call a poison-/wiV, as a universal death- 
 disease, and poisoning of the whole tree. For hereby are
 
 CHAP. V. ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT. 
 
 fostered, fed into gigantic bulk, all manner of Unwisdoms, 
 poison-fruits ; till, as we say, the life-tree everywhere is made 
 a upas-tree, deadly Unwisdom overshadowing all things ; and 
 there is done what lies in human skill to stifle all Wisdom 
 everywhere in the birth, to smite our poor world barren of 
 Wisdom, and make your utmost Collective Wisdom, were 
 it collected and elected by Rhadamanthus, ^Eacus and Minos, 
 not to speak of drunken Tenpound Franchisers with their 
 ballot-boxes, an inadequate Collective ! The Wisdom is not 
 now there : how will you " collect " it ? As well wash Thames 
 mud, by improved methods, to find more gold in it. 
 
 Truly, the first condition is indispensable, That Wisdom be 
 there : but the second is like unto it, is properly one with it; 
 these two conditions act and react through every fibre of them, 
 and go inseparably together. If you have much Wisdom in 
 your Nation, you will get it faithfully collected ; for the wise 
 love Wisdom, and will search for it as for life and salvation. 
 If you have little Wisdom, you will get even that little ill- 
 collected, trampled under foot, reduced as near as possible to 
 annihilation ; for fools do not love Wisdom ; they are foolish, 
 first of all, because they have never loved Wisdom, but have 
 loved their own appetites, ambitions, their coroneted coaches, 
 tankards of heavy-wet. Thus is your candle lighted at both 
 ends, and the progress towards consummation is swift. Thus 
 is fulfilled that saying in the Gospel : To him that hath shall 
 be given; and from him that hath not shall be taken away 
 even that which he hath. Very literally, in a very fatal 
 manner, that saying is here fulfilled. 
 
 Our " Aristocracy of Talent " seems at a considerable dis- 
 tance yet ; does it not, Bobus ? 
 
 TOL. XII.
 
 34 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 To the present Editor, not less than to Bobus, a Govern- 
 ment of the Wisest, what Bobus calls an Aristocracy of Talent, 
 seems the one healing remedy : but he is not so sanguine as 
 Bobus with respect to the means of realizing it. He thinks 
 that we have at once missed realizing it, and come to need it 
 so pressingly, by departing far from the inner eternal Laws, 
 and taking up with the temporary outer semblances of Laws. 
 He thinks that " enlightened Egoism," never so luminous, is 
 not the rule by which man's life can be led. That " Laissez- 
 faire," " Supply-and-demand," " Cash payment for the sole 
 nexus," and so forth, were not, are not and will never be, a 
 practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men. That Poor 
 and Rich, that Governed and Governing, cannot long live 
 together on any such Law of Union. Alas, he thinks that 
 man has a soul in him, different from the stomach in any 
 sense of this word; that if said soul be asphyxied, and lie 
 quietly forgotten, the man and his affairs are in a bad way. 
 He thinks that said soul will have to be resuscitated from its 
 asphyxia ; that if it prove irresuscitable, the man is not long 
 for this world. In brief, that Midas-eared Mammonism, double- 
 barrelled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corol- 
 laries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed 
 this his Universe to go. That, once for all, these are not the 
 Law : and then farther that we shall have to return to what 
 is the Law, not by smooth flowery paths, it is like, and with 
 " tremendous cheers " in our throat ; but over steep untrodden 
 places, through storm-clad chasms, waste oceans, and the bosom 
 of tornadoes ; thank Heaven, if not through very Chaos and 
 the Abyss ! The resuscitating of a soul that has gone U' 
 asphyxia is no momentary or pleasant process, but a long 
 and terrible one.
 
 CHAP. VI. HERO-WORSHIP. 35 
 
 To the present Editor, " Hero-worship," as he has elsewhere 
 named it, means much more than an elected Parliament, or 
 stated Aristocrat}-, of the Wisest ; for in his dialect it is the ( 
 summary, ultimate essence, and supreme practical perfection 
 of all manner of " worship," and true worthships and noble- 
 nesses whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it once 
 in perfection, blessed Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-honored 
 and man-honored, he does look for, more and more perfected, 
 as the topmost blessed practical apex of a whole world reformed 
 from sham-worship, informed anew with worship, with truth 
 and blessedness ! He thinks that Hero-worship, done differ- 
 ently in every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all 
 social business among men ; that the doing of it well, or the 
 doing of it ill, measures accurately what degree of well- 
 being or of ill-being there is in the world's affairs. He 
 thinks that we, on the whole, do our Hero-worship worse than 
 any Nation in this world ever did it before : that the BurnB 
 an Exciseman, the Byron a Literary Lion, are intrinsically, 
 all things considered, a baser and falser phenomenon than 
 the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet of God. It is thia 
 Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we must learn to do 
 our Hero-worship better ; that to do it better and better, 
 means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its asphyxia, 
 and the return of blessed life to us, Heaven's blessed lif s, 
 not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the 
 Asphyxied, apparently now moribund and in the last agony 
 if not resuscitated : such and no other seems the consum- 
 mation. 
 
 "Hero-worship," if you will, yes, friends; but, first of 
 all, by being ourselves of heroic mind. A whole world of 
 Heroes; a world not of Flunkies, where no Hero-King can 
 reign : that is what we aim at ! We, for our share, will put 
 away all Flunkyism, Baseness, Unveracity from us ; we shall 
 then hope to have Noblenesses and Veracities set over us ; nevei 
 till then. Let Bobus and Company sneer, " That is your Be 
 form ! " YeSy-Eobus^ that is our Reform ; and except in that 
 and what will follow out of that, we have no hope at all. 
 Reform, like Charity, Bobus, must begin at home. Once
 
 36 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK l. 
 
 well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into 
 all that we touch and handle, speak and work ; kindling ever 
 new light, by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric 
 ratio, far and wide, doing good only, wheresoever it spreads, 
 and not evil. 
 
 By Reform Bills, Anti-Corn-Law Bills, and thousand other 
 bills and methods, we will demand of our Governors, with 
 emphasis, and for the first time not without effect, that they 
 cease to be quacks, or else depart ; that they set no quackeries 
 and blocklieadismg auywher.e_jto rule over us, that they utter 
 or_acjb_n caut_ tp us, it will be better if they do not. For 
 we shall now know quacks when we see them ; cant, when we 
 hear it, shall be horrible to us ! We will say, with the poor 
 Frenchman at the Bar of the Convention, though in wiser 
 style than he, and " for the space " not " of an hour " but of a 
 lifetime: "Je demands I 'arrestation des corjuins et des laches" 
 " Arrestment of the knaves and dastards : " ah, we know what 
 a work that is ; how long it will be before they are all or 
 mostly got " arrested : " but here is one ; arrest him, in 
 God's name; it is one fewer! We will, in all practicable 
 ways, by word and silence, by act and refusal to act, ener 
 getically demand that arrestment, "je demande cette arresta- 
 tion-laf" and by degrees infallibly attain it. Infallibly: 
 for light spreads ; all human souls, never so bedarkened, love 
 light; light once kindled spreads, till all is luminous; till 
 the cry, " Arrest your knaves and dastards " rises imperative 
 from millions of hearts, and rings and reigns from sea to sea. 
 Nay how many of them may we not "arrest; " with our own 
 hands, even now; we ! Do not countenance them, thou there: 
 turn away from their lacquered sumptuosities, their belauded 
 sophistries, their serpent graciosities, their spoken and acted 
 cant, with a sacred horror, with an Apage Satanas. Bobus 
 and Company, and all men will gradually join us. We demand 
 arrestment of the knaves and dastards, and begin by arresting 
 our own poor selves out of that fraternity. There is no other 
 reform conceivable. Thou and I, my friend, can, in the most 
 flunky world, make, each of us, one non-flunky, one hero, if wfe 
 like : that will be two heroes to begin with : Courage ! everi
 
 CHAP. VI. HERO-WORSHIP. 37 
 
 that is a whole world of heroes to end with, or what we poor 
 Two can do in furtherance thereof! 
 
 Yes, friends : Hero-Kings, and a whole world not unheroic, 
 there lies the port and happy haven, towards which, through 
 all these storm-tost seas, French Kevolutions, Chartisms, Man- 
 chester Insurrections, that make the heart sick in these bad 
 days, the Supreme Powers are driving us. On the whole, 
 blessed be the Supreme Powers, stern as they are ! Towards 
 that haven will we, friends ; let all true men, with what of 
 faculty is in them, bend valiantly, incessantly, with thousand- 
 fold endeavor, thither, thither ! There, or else in the Ocean- 
 abysses, it is very clear to me, we shall arrive. 
 
 Well ; here truly is no answer to the Sphinx-question ; not 
 the answer a disconsolate public, inquiring at the College of 
 Health, was in hopes of ! A total change of regimen, change 
 of constitution and existence from the very centre of it; a 
 new body to be got, with resuscitated soul, not without 
 convulsive travail-throes; as all birth and new-birth presup- 
 poses travail ! This is sad news to a disconsolate discerning 
 Public, hoping to have got off by some Morrison's Pill, some 
 Saint-John's corrosive mixture and perhaps a little blistery 
 friction on the back ! We were prepared to part with our 
 Corn-Law, with various Laws and Unlaws : but this, what is 
 this? 
 
 Nor has the Editor forgotten how it fares with your ill- 
 boding Cassandras in Sieges of Troy. Imminent perdition is 
 not usually driven away by words of warning. Didactic Des- 
 tiny has other methods in store ; or these would fail always. 
 Such words should, nevertheless, be uttered, when they dwell 
 truly in the soul of any man. Words are hard, are importu- 
 nate ; but how much harder the importunate events they fore- 
 shadow ! Here and there a human soul may listen to the 
 words, who knows how many human souls ? whereby the 
 importunate events, if iiot diverted and prevented, will be 
 rendered less hard. The present Editor's purpose is to him- 
 self full of hope. 
 
 For though fierce travails, though wide seas and roaring 
 gulfs lie before us, is it not something if a Loadstar, in the
 
 38 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK I. 
 
 eternal sky, do once more disclose itself ; an everlasting light, 
 shining through all cloud-tempests and roaring billows, ever 
 as we emerge from the trough of the sea : the blessed beacon, 
 far off on the edge of far horizons, towards which we are to 
 steer incessantly for life ? Is it not something ; O Heavens, 
 is it not all ? There lies the Heroic Promised Laud ; under 
 that Heaven's-light, my brethren, bloom the Happy Isles, 
 there, oh there ! Thither will we ; 
 
 " There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew." J 
 
 There dwell all Heroes, and will dwell : thither, all ye heroic- 
 minded ! The Heaven's Loadstar once clearly in our eye, ho\v 
 will each true man stand truly to his work in the ship ; how, 
 with undying hope, will all things be fronted, all be conquered. 
 Nay. with the ship's prow once turned in that direction, is not 
 all, as it were, already well ? Sick wasting misery has become 
 noble manful effort with a goal in our eye. " The choking 
 Nightmare chokes us no longer ; for we stir under it ; the 
 Nightmare has already fled." 
 
 Certainly, could the present Editor instruct men how to 
 know Wisdom, Heroism, when they see it, that they might do 
 reverence to it only, and loyally make it ruler over them, 
 yes, he were the living epitome of all Editors, Teachers, 
 Prophets, that now teach and prophesy ; he* were an Apollo- 
 Morrison, a Trismegistus and effective Cassandra ! Let no 
 Able Editor hope such things. It is to be expected the pres- 
 ent laws of copyright, rate of reward per sheet, and other con- 
 siderations, will save him from that peril. Let no Editor 
 hope such things : no ; and yet let all Editors aim towards 
 such things, and even towards such alone ! One knows not 
 what the meaning of editing and writing is, if even this be 
 not it. 
 
 Enough, to the present Editor it has seemed possible som<; 
 glimmering of light, for here and there a human soul, might 
 lie in these confused Paper-Masses now intrusted to him ; 
 wherefore he determines to edit the same. Out of old Books 
 new Writings, and much Meditation not of yesterday, he will 
 
 1 Tennyson's Puems (Ulysses).
 
 CHAP. VI. HERO-WORSHIP. 39 
 
 endeavor to select a thing or two ; and from the Past, in a 
 circuitous way, illustrate the Present and the Future. The 
 Past is a dim indubitable fact : the .Future too is one, only 
 dimmer; nay properly it is the same fact in new dress and 
 development. For the Present holds it in both the whole 
 Past and J;he whole Future ; as the LIFE-TREE IGDRASIL, 
 wide-waving, inanv-toned, has its roots down deep in the 
 Death-Kingdoms, among the oldest dead dust of men, and 
 with its boughs reaches always beyond the stars ; and in all 
 times and places is one and the same Life-tree !
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE ANCIENT MONK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JOCELIN OF BKAKELOND. 
 
 WE will, in this Second Portion of our Wort, strive to 
 penetrate a little, by means of certain confused Papers, printed 
 and other, into a somewhat remote Century ; and to look face 
 to face on it, in hope of perhaps illustrating our own poor 
 Century thereby. It seems a circuitous way ; but it may 
 prove a~way nevertheless. For man has ever been a striving, 
 struggling, and, in spite of wide-spread calumnies to the con- 
 trary, a veracious creature : the Centuries too are all lineal 
 children of one another; and often, in the portrait of early 
 grandfathers, this and the other enigmatic feature of the 
 newest grandson shall disclose itself, to mutual elucidation. 
 This Editor will venture on such a thing. 
 
 Besides, in Editors' Books, and indeed everywhere else in 
 the world of To-day, a certain latitude of movement grows 
 more and more becoming for the practical man. Salvation 
 lies not in tight lacing, in these times; how far from that, 
 in any province whatsoever ! Readers and men generally are 
 getting into strange habits of asking all persons and things, 
 from poor Editors' Books up to Church Bishops and State 
 Potentates, not, By what designation art thou called ; in what 
 wig and black triangle dost thou walk abroad ? Heavens, I 
 know thy designation and black triangle well enough ! But, 
 in God's name, what art thou ? Not Nothing, sayest thou ! 
 Then, How much and what ? This is the thing I would
 
 . L JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND. 41 
 
 know ; and even must soon know, such a pass am I come 
 to! What weather-symptoms. not for the poor Editor of 
 Books alone! The Editor of Books may understand withal 
 that if, as is said, " many kinds are permissible," there is one 
 kind not permissible, "the kind that has nothing in it, U 
 genre ennuyeux ; " and go on his way accordingly. 
 
 A certain Jocelinus de Brakelonda, a natural-born English- 
 man, has left us an extremely foreign Book, 1 which the labors 
 of the Camden Society have brought to light in these days. 
 Jocelin's Book, the " Chronicle," or private Boswellian Note- 
 book, of Jocelin, a certain old St. Edrnundsbury Monk and 
 Boswell, now seven centuries old, how remote is it from us ; 
 exotic, extraneous ; in all ways, coming from far abroad ! The 
 language of it is not foreign only but dead : Monk-Latin lies 
 across not the British Channel, but the ninefold Stygian 
 Marshes, Stream of Lethe, and one knows not where ! 
 Roman Latin itself, still alive for us in the Elysian Fields of 
 Memory, is domestic in comparison. And then the ideas, life- 
 furniture, whole workings and ways of this worthy Jocelin; 
 covered deeper than Pompeii with the lava-ashes and inarticu- 
 late wreck of seven hundred years ! 
 
 Jocelin of Brakelond cannot be called a conspicuous literary 
 character ; indeed few mortals that have left so visible a work, 
 or footmark, behind them can be more obscure. One other 
 of those vanished Existences, whose work has not yet van- 
 ished ; almost a pathetic phenomenon, were not the whole 
 world full of such ! The builders of Stonehenge, for example : 
 or, alas, what say we, Stonehenge and builders ? The 
 writers of the Universal Review and Homer's Iliad ; the paviors 
 of London streets ; sooner or later, the entire Posterity of 
 Adam ! It is a pathetic phenomenon ; but an irremediable, 
 nay, if well meditated, a consoling one. 
 
 By his dialect of Monk-Latin, and indeed by his name, this 
 Jocelin seems to have been a Norman Englishman; the sur- 
 
 1 C'fironictt JocELixi DE BRAKELONUA, de rebus gestis Sanisonls Abbatis 
 Monasterii Sanrti Edmundi : mine fjrimum typis tnandata, curante Johannt Gagf 
 Rokewood. (Camden Society, London, 1840.)
 
 42 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 name de Brakelonda indicates a native of St. Edmundsbury 
 itself, Brakelond being the known old name of a street or 
 quarter in that venerable Town. Then farther, sure enough, 
 our Jocelin was a Monk of St. Edmundsbury Convent ; held 
 some " obedientia," subaltern officiality there, or rather, in suc- 
 cession several ; was, for one thing, " chaplain to my Lord 
 Abbot, living beside him night and day for the space of six 
 years;" which last, indeed, is the grand fact of Joceliivs 
 existence, and properly the origin of this present Book, and 
 of the chief meaning it has for us now. He was, as we have 
 hinted, a kind of born Boswell, though an infinitesimally small 
 one ; neither did he altogether want his Johnson even there 
 and then. Johnsons are rare; yet, as has been asserted, 
 Boswells perhaps still rarer, the more is the pity on both 
 sides ! This Jocelin, as we can discern well, was an ingenious 
 and ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd, 
 noticing, quick-witted man ; and from under his monk's cowl 
 has looked out on that narrow section of the world in a really 
 human manner ; not in any simial, canine, ovine, or otherwise 
 mhuman manner, afflictive to all that have humanity ! The 
 man is of patient, peaceable, loving, clear-smiling nature ; open 
 for this and that. A wise simplicity is in him ; much natural 
 sense ; a veracity that goes deeper than words. Veracity : it 
 is the basis of all ; and, some say, means genius itself ; the 
 prime essence of all genius whatsoever. Our Jocelin, for 
 the rest, has read his classical manuscripts, his Virgilius, his 
 Flaccus, Ovidius Naso ; of course still more, his Homilies 
 and Breviaries, and if not the Bible, considerable extracts of 
 the Bible. Then also he has a pleasant wit; and loves a 
 timely joke, though in mild subdued manner : very amiable 
 to see. A learned grown man, yet with the heart as of a 
 good child; whose whole life indeed has been that of a 
 child, St. Edmundsbury Monastery a larger kind of cradle 
 for him, in which his whole prescribed duty was to .sleep 
 kindly, and love his mother well ! This is the Biography of 
 Jocelin; "a man of excellent religion," says one of his con- 
 temporary Brother Monks, " eximia; reJirjionis, potens sermons 
 et opere"
 
 CHAP. I. JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND. 43 
 
 For one thing, he had learned to write a kind of Monk or 
 Dog-Latin, still readable to mankind ; and, by good luck for 
 us, had bethought him of noting down thereby what things 
 seemed notablest to him. Hence gradually resulted a Chronica 
 Jocelini ; new Manuscript in the Liber Albus of St. Edmunds- 
 bury. Which Chronicle, once written in its childlike trans- 
 parency, in its innocent good-humor, not without touches of 
 ready pleasant wit and many kinds of worth, other men liked 
 naturally to read : whereby it failed not to be copied, to be 
 multiplied, to be inserted in the Liber Albus ; and so surviving 
 Henry the Eighth, Putney Cromwell, the Dissolution of Mon- 
 asteries, and all accidents of malice and neglect for six centu- 
 ties or so, it got into the Harleian Collection, and has now 
 therefrom, by Mr. Rokewood of the Cauiden Society, been 
 leciphered into clear print; and lies before us, a dainty thin 
 quarto, to interest for a few minutes whomsoever it can. 
 
 Here too it will behoove a just Historian gratefully to say 
 that Mr. Rokewood, Jocelin's Editor, has done his editorial 
 function well. Not only has he deciphered his crabbed Manu- 
 script into clear print ; but he has attended, what his fellow 
 editors are not always in the habit of doing, to the important 
 truth that the Manuscript so deciphered ought to have a 
 meaning for the reader. Standing faithfully by his text, and 
 printing its very errors in spelling, in grammar or otherwise, 
 he has taken care by some note to indicate that they are errors, 
 and what the correction of them ought to be. Jocelin's Monk- 
 Latin is generally transparent, as shallow limpid water. But 
 at any stop that may occur, of which there are a few, and only 
 a very few, we have the comfortable assurance that a meaning 
 does lie in the passage, and may by industry be got at ; that a 
 faithful editor's industry had already got at it before passing on. 
 A compendious useful Glossary is given ; nearly adequate to 
 help the uninitiated through : sometimes one wishes it had been 
 a trifle larger ; but, with a Spelman and Ducange at your elbow, 
 how easy to have made it far too large ! Notes are added, gen- 
 erally brief ; sufficiently explanatory of most points. Lastly, 
 ti copious correct Index ; which no such Book should want, 
 and which unluckily very few possess. And so, in a word, the
 
 44 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK rr. 
 
 Chronicle ofJocelin is, as it professes to be, unwrapped from its 
 thick cerements, and fairly brought forth into the common day- 
 light, so that he who runs, and has a smattering of grammar, 
 may read. 
 
 We have heard so much of Monks ; everywhere, in real and 
 fictitious History, from Muratori Annals to Radeliffe Eomances, 
 these singular two-legged animals, with their rosaries and bre-A 
 viaries, with their "shaven crowns, hair-cilities, and vows of 
 poverty, masquerade so strangely through our fancy ; and they/ 
 are in fact so very strange an extinct species of the human 
 family, a veritable Monk of Bury St. Edmunds is worth at- 
 tending to, if by chance made visible and audible. Here he is ; 
 and in his hand a magical speculum, much gone to rust indeed, 
 yet in fragments still clear ; wherein the marvellous image of 
 his existence does still shadow itself, though fitfully, and as 
 with an intermittent light ! Will not the reader peep with 
 us into this singular camera lucida, where an extinct species, 
 though fitfully, can still be seen alive ? Extinct species, we 
 say; for the live specimens which still go about under that 
 character are too evidently to be classed as spurious in Natural 
 History : the Gospel of Kichard Arkwright once promulgated, 
 no Monk of the old sort is any longer possible in this world. 
 But fancy a deep-buried Mastodon, some fossil Megatherion, 
 Ichthyosaurus, were to begin to speak from amid its rock-swath- 
 ings, never so indistinctly ! The most extinct fossil species of 
 Men or Monks can do, and does, this miracle, thanks to the 
 Letters of the Alphabet, good for so many things. 
 
 Jocelin, we said, was somewhat of a Boswell ; but unfortu- 
 nately, by Nature, he is none of the largest, and distance has 
 now dwarfed him to an extreme degree. His light is most 
 feeble, intermittent, and requires the intensest kindest inspec- 
 tion ; otherwise it will disclose mere vacant haze. It must bo j 
 owned, the good Jocelin, spite of his beautiful childlike char- / 
 acter, is but an altogether imperfect "mirror" of these old- 
 world things ! The good man, he looks on us so clear and 
 cheery, and in his neighborly soft-smiling eyes we see so well 
 our own shadow, we have a longing always to cross-question
 
 CHAP. I. JOCELIN OF BRAKELOND. 45 
 
 him, to force from him an explanation of much. But no ; 
 Jocelin, though he talks with such clear familiarity, like a 
 next-door neighbor, will not answer any question : that is the 
 peculiarity of him, dead these six hundred and fifty years, and 
 quite deaf to us, though still so audible ! The good man, he 
 cannot help it, nor can we. 
 
 But truly it is a strange consideration this simple one, as 
 we go on with him, or indeed with any lucid simple-hearted 
 soul like him : Behold therefore, this England of the Year v 
 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with 
 mere vaporous Phantasms, Rymer's Fredera, and Doctrines of < 
 the Constitution ; but a green solid place, that grew corn and 
 several other things. The Sun shone on it ; the vicissitude of 
 seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn j 
 ditches were dug, furrow-fields ploughed, and houses built. 
 Day by day all men and cattle rose to labor, and night by 
 night returned home weary to their several lairs. In won- \ 
 drous Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men ; j 
 alternating, in all ways, between Light and Dark ; between I 
 joy and sorrow, between rest and toil, between hope, hope 
 reaching high as Heaven, and fear deep as very Hell. Not 
 vapor Phantasms, Rymer's Fredera at all ! Cceur-de-Lion was not 
 a theatrical popinjay with greaves and steel-cap on it, but a 
 man living upon victuals, not imported by Peel's Tariff. Coeur- 
 de-Lion came palpably athwart tnis Jocelin at St. Edmunds- 
 bury ; and had almost peeled the sacred gold " Feretrum" or 
 St. Edmund Shrine itself, to ransom him out of the Danuba 
 Jail. 
 
 These clear eyes of neighbor Jocelin looked on the bodily \ 
 presence of King John ; the very John Sansterre, or Lackland. \ 
 who signed Magna Charta afterwards in Runnymedo. Lack- 
 land, with a great retinue, boarded once, for the matter of a 
 fortnight, in St. Edmundsbury Convent ; daily in the very 
 eyesight, palpable to the very fingers of our Jocelin : Joce 
 lin, what did he say, what did he do ; how looked ho, lived he, 
 at the very lowest, what coat or breeches had he on ? Joce- 
 lin is obstinately silent. Jocelin marks down what interests 
 him ; entirely deaf to us. With Jocelin's eyes we discern
 
 4b PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK it. 
 
 almost nothing of John Lackland. As through a glass darkly, 
 we with our own eyes and appliances, intensely looking, dis- 
 cern at most : A blustering, dissipated human figure, with a 
 kind of blackguard quality air, in cramoisy velvet, or other un- 
 certain texture, uncertain cut, with much plumage and fring- 
 ing; amid numerous other human figures of the like; riding 
 abroad with hawks ; talking noisy nonsense ; tearing out the 
 bowels of St. Edmundsbury Convent (its larders namely and 
 cellars) in the most ruinous way, by living at rack and manger 
 there. Jocelin notes only, with a slight subacidity of manner, 
 that the King's Majesty, Domimts Rex, did leave, as gift for 
 our St. Edmund Shrine, a handsome enough silk cloak, or 
 rather pretended to leave, for one of his retinue borrowed it of 
 us, and ive never got sight of it again ; and, on the whole, that 
 the Do minus Rex, at departing, gave us ''thirteen sterlingii" 
 one shilling and one penny, to say a mass for him ; and so de- 
 parted, like a shabby Lackland as he was ! " Thirteen pence 
 sterling," this was what the Convent got from Lackland, for 
 all the victuals he and his had made away with. We of course 
 said our mass for him, having covenanted to do it, but let 
 impartial posterity judge with what degree of fervor ! 
 
 And in this manner vanishes King Lackland ; traverses 
 swiftly our strange intermittent magic-mirror, jingling the 
 shabby thirteen pence merely ; and rides with his hawks into 
 Egyptian night again. It is' Jocelin's manner with all things ; 
 and it is men's manner and men's necessity. How intermit- 
 tent is our good Jocelin; marking down, without eye to i/s, 
 what he finds interesting ! How much in Jocelin, as in all 
 History, and indeed in all Nature, is at once inscrutable and 
 certain ; so dim, yet so indubitable ; exciting us to endless con- 
 siderations. For King Lackland was there, verily he ; and did 
 leave these tredecim sterlingii, if nothing more, and did live and 
 look in one way or the other, and a whole world was living and 
 looking along with him ! There, we say, is the grand pecu- 
 liarity; the immeasurable one; distinguishing, to a really 
 infinite degree, the poorest historical Fact from all Fiction 
 whatsoever. Fiction, "Imagination," " Imaginative Poetry," 
 &c. &c., except as the vehicle for truth, or fact of some sort,
 
 CHAP. II. ST. EDMUNDSBURY. 47 
 
 which surely a man should first try various other ways 
 of vehiculating, and conveying safe, what is it ? Let the 
 Minerva and other Presses respond ! 
 
 But it is time we were in St. Edmundsbury Monastery, and 
 Seven good Centuries off. If indeed it be possible, by any 
 aid of Jocelin, by any human art, to get thither, with a reader 
 or two still following us ? 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ST. EDMUXDSBURY. 
 
 THE Bury, Bury, or " Berry " as they call it, of St. Edmund 
 is still a prosperous brisk Town ; beautifully diversifying, with 
 its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and twenty or fit- 
 teen thousand busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk ; 
 looking out right pleasantly, from its hill-slope, towards the 
 rising Sun : and on the eastern edge of it, still runs, long, 
 black and massive, a range of monastic ruins ; into the wide 
 internal spaces of which the stranger is admitted on payment 
 of one shilling. Internal spaces laid out, at present, as a 
 botanic garden. Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at 
 his leisure amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may per- 
 suade himself that an Abbey of St. Edmundsbury did once 
 exist ; nay there is no doubt of it : see here the ancient mas- 
 sive Gateway, of architecture interesting to the eye of Dilet- 
 tantism ; and farther on, that other ancient Gateway, now 
 about to tumble, unless Dilettantism, in these very months, 
 can subscribe money to cramp it and prop it ! 
 
 Here, sure enough, is an Abbey; beautiful in the eye of 
 Dilettantism. Giant Pedantry also will step in, with its huge 
 Dugdale and other enormous Monast icons under its arm, and 
 cheerfully apprise you, That this was a very great Abbey, 
 owner and indeed creator of St. Edmund's Town itself, owner 
 of wide lands and revenues ; nay that its lands were once p.
 
 48 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 county of themselves ; that indeed King Canute or Knut was 
 very kind to it, and gave St. Edmund his own gold crown off 
 his head, on one occasion : for the rest, that the Monks were 
 of such and such a genus, such and such a number ; that they 
 had so many carucates of laud in this hundred, and so many 
 in that ; and then farther that the large Tower or Belfry was 
 built by such a one, and the smaller Belfry was built by &c. 
 &c. Till human nature can stand no more of it ; till human 
 nature desperately take refuge in forgetfulness, almost in flat 
 disbelief of the whole business, Monks, Monastery, Belfries, 
 Carucates and all ! Alas, what mountains of dead ashes, 
 wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous Pedantry dig up from 
 the Past Time, and name it History, and Philosophy of His- 
 tory ; till, as we say, the human soul sinks wearied and bewil- 
 dered; till the Past Time seems all one infinite incredible 
 gray void, without sun, stars, hearth-fires, or candle-light ; dim 
 offensive dust-whirlwinds filling universal Nature ; and over 
 your Historical Library, it is as if all the Titans had written 
 for themselves : DRY RUBBISH SHOT HERE ! 
 
 And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and 
 dubiety ; they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and 
 serious purpose they were built for ! Yes, another world it 
 was, when these black ruins, white in their new mortar and 
 fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge 
 not, with thy dilettante compasses, with that placid dilettante 
 simper, the Heaven's Watch-tower of our Fathers, the fallen 
 God's-Houses, the Golgotha of true Souls departed ! 
 
 Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates ? Yes, and 
 that is but a small item of the matter. Does it never give 
 thee pause, this other strange item of it, that men then had a 
 soul, not by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech ; but as 
 a truth that they knew, and practically went upon ! Verily it 
 was another world then. Their Missals have become incredi- 
 ble, a sheer platitude, sayest thou ? Yes, a most poor plat- 
 itude ; and even, if thou wilt, an idolatry and blasphemy, 
 should any one persuade thee to believe them, to pretend 
 praying by them. But yet it is pity we had lost tidings of 
 our souls : actually we shall have to go in quest of them
 
 CHAP. ii. ST. EDMUNDSBURY. 49 
 
 again, or worse in all ways will befall ! A certain degree of 
 soul, as Ben Jonson reminds us, is indispensable to keep the 
 very body from destruction of the frightfulest sort ; to " save 
 us," says he, " the expense of salt." Ben has known men 
 who had soul enough to k^ep their body and five senses 
 from becoming carrion, and save salt : men, and also Na- 
 tions. You may look in Manchester Hunger-mobs and Corn- 
 law . Commons Houses, and various other quarters, and say 
 whether either soul or else salt is not somewhat wanted at 
 present ! 
 
 Another world, truly: and this present poor distressed 
 world might get some profit by looking wisely into it, instead 
 of foolishly. But at lowest, dilettante friend, let us know 
 always that it was a world, and not a void infinite of gray 
 haze with phantasms swimming in it. These old St. Edmunds- 
 bury walls, I say, were not peopled with phantasms ; but with 
 men of flesh and blood, made altogether as we are. Had thou 
 and I then been, who knows but we ourselves had taken ref- 
 uge from an evil Time, and fled to dwell here, and meditate 
 on an Eternity, in such fashion as we could ? Alas, how like 
 an old osseous fragment, a broken blackened shin-bone of the 
 old dead Ages, this black min looks out, not yet covered by 
 the soil ; still indicating what a once gigantic Life lies buried 
 there ! It is dead now, and dumb ; but was alive once, and 
 spake. For twenty generations, here was the earthly arena 
 where painful living men worked out their life-wrestle, 
 looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled to 
 prayers ; and men, of many humors, various thoughts, chanted 
 vespers, matins; and round the little islet of their life 
 rolled forever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind 
 and deaf) the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with its 
 eternal hues and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! 
 How silent now ; all departed, clean gone. The World- 
 Dramaturgist has written : Exeunt. The devouring Time- 
 Demons have made away with it all : and in its stead, there 
 is either nothing ; or what is worse, offensive universal dust- 
 clouds, and gray eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from "dry 
 rubbish shot here ! " 
 
 VOL. XII. 4
 
 50 PAST AND PKESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 Truly it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven 
 Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps, 
 is not a Boswell the welcomest ; even a small Boswell ? 
 Veracity, true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these 
 always ! He that speaks what in really in him, will find men 
 to listen, though under never such impediments. Even gossip, 
 springing free and cheery from a human heart, this too is 
 a kind of veracity and speech ; much preferable to pedantry 
 and inane gray haze ! Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he 
 is human. Through the thin watery gossip of our Joceliu, 
 we do get some glimpses of that deep-buried Time ; discern 
 veritably, though in a fitful intermittent manner, these an- 
 tique figures and their life-method, face to face ! Beautifully, 
 in our earnest loving glance, the old centuries melt from 
 opaque to partially translucent, transparent here and there ; 
 and the void black Night, one finds, is but the summing-up of 
 innumerable peopled luminous Days. Not parchment Chartu- 
 laries, Doctrines of the Constitution, Dryasdust ; not alto- 
 gether, my erudite friend ! 
 
 Readers who please to go along with us into this poor 
 Jocelini Chronica shall wander inconveniently enough, as in 
 wintry twilight, through some poor stript hazel-grove, rust- 
 ling with foolish noises, and perpetually hindering the eye- 
 sight; but across which, here and there, some real human 
 figure is seen moving : very strange ; whom we could hail if 
 he would answer; and we look into a pair of eyes deep as 
 our own, imaging our own, but all unconscious of us ; to whom 
 we, for the time, are become as spirits and invisible !
 
 CHAP. III. LANDLORD EDMUND. 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LANDLORD EDMUND. 
 
 SOME three centuries or so had elapsed since Beodric's-worth l 
 became St. Edmund's Stow, St. Edmund's Town and Monas- 
 tery, before Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. " It was," 
 says he, " the year after the Flemings were defeated at Forn- 
 ham St. Genevieve." 
 
 Much passes away into oblivion : this glorious victory over 
 the Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly 
 dimmed itself out of the minds of men. A victory and battle 
 nevertheless it was, in its time : some thrice-renowned Earl 
 of Leicester, not of the De Moutfort breed (as may be read in 
 Philosophical and other Histories, could any human memory 
 retain such things), had quarrelled with his sovereign, Henry 
 Second of the name ; had been worsted, it is like, and mal- 
 treated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts ; but had rallied 
 there into new vigor ; and so, in the year 1173, returns across 
 the German Sea with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, 
 to the coast of Suffolk ; to Framlingham Castle, where he is 
 
 1 Dryasdust puzzles aud pokes for some biography of this Beodric ; and 
 repugns to consider him a mere East-Anglian Person of Condition, not in 
 need of a biography, whose peop^, weortfi or worth, that is to say, Growth, 
 Increase, or as we should now name it, Estate, that same Hamlet and wood 
 Mansion, now St. Edmund's Bury, originally was. For, adds our erudite 
 Friend, the Saxon peopttan, equivalent to the German iverden, means to grow, 
 to become ; traces of which old vocable are still found in the North-country 
 dialects ; as, " What is word of him ? " meaning, " What is become of him ? " 
 and the like. Nay we in modern English still say, " Woe worth the hour " 
 (Woe befall the hour), and speak of the " Weird Sisters ; " not to mention the 
 innumerable other names of places still ending in wforth or worth. And in- 
 deed, our common noun worth, in the sense of value, does not this mean simply. 
 What a thing has grown to, What a man has (frown to, How much he amount," 
 to, by the Threadneedle-street standard or another !
 
 52 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK it 
 
 welcomed ; westward towards St. Edmundsbury and Fornham 
 Church, where he is met by the constituted authorities with 
 posse comitatus ; and swiftly cut in pieces, he and his, or laid 
 by the heels ; on the right bank of the obscure river Lark, 
 as traces still existing will verify. 
 
 For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs 
 or stagnates in that country ; and the battle-ground is there ; 
 serving at present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace of North- 
 umberland. Copper pennies of Henry II. are still found there ; 
 rotted out from the pouches of poor slain soldiers, who had 
 not had time to buy liquor with them. In the river Lark itself 
 was fished up, within man's memory, an antique gold ring ; 
 which fond Dilettantism can almost believe may have been the 
 very ring Countess Leicester threw away, in her flight, into 
 that same Lark river or ditch. 1 Kay, few years ago, in tear-- 
 ing out an enormous superannuated ash-tree, now grown quite 
 corpulent, bursten, superfluous, but long a fixture in the soil, 
 and not to be dislodged without revolution, there was laid 
 bare, under its roots, " a circular mound of skeletons wonder- 
 fully complete," all radiating from a centre, faces upwards, 
 feet inwards ; a " radiation " not of Light, but of the Nether 
 Darkness rather ; and evidently the fruit of battle ; for " many 
 of the heads were cleft, or had arrow-holes in them." The 
 Battle of Fornham, therefore, is a fact, though a forgotten 
 one ; no less obscure than undeniable, like so many other 
 facts. 
 
 Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself ! Who can doubt, 
 after what we have said, that there was a Monastery here at 
 one time ? No doubt at all there was a Monastery here ; no 
 doubt, some three centuries prior to this Fornham Battle, there 
 dwelt a man in these parts of the name of Edmund, King, 
 Landlord, Duke or whatever his title was, of the Eastern 
 Counties ; and a very singular man and landlord he must 
 have been. 
 
 For his tenants, it would appear, did not in the least com- 
 plain of him ; his laborers did not think of burning his wheat- 
 i Lyttelton'a History of Hen ry If. (2d edition), v. 169, &c.
 
 CHAP. in. LANDLORD EDMUND. 53 
 
 stacks, breaking into his game-preserves ; very far the reverse 
 of all that. Clear evidence, satisfactory even to my friend 
 DryasdusJ^-exists that, on the contrary, they honored, loved, 
 admired this ancient Landlord to a quite astonishing degree, 
 
 and indeed at last to an immeasurable and inexpressible 
 degree ; for, finding no limits or utterable words for their 
 sense of his worth, they took to beatifying and adoring him ! 
 " Infinite admiration," we are taught, " means worship." 
 
 Very singular, could we discover it ! What Edmund's 
 specific duties were ; above all, what his method of discharg- 
 ing them with such results was, would surely be interesting 
 to know ; but are not very discoverable now. His Life has 
 become a poetic, nay a religious Mi/thus ; though, undeniably 
 enough, it was once a prose Fact, as our poor lives are ; and 
 even a very rugged unmanageable one. This landlord Edmund 
 did go about in leather shoes, vritib femoralia and body -coat of 
 some sort on him ; and daily had his breakfast to procure ; 
 and daily had contradictory speeches, and most contradictory 
 facts not a few, to reconcile with himself. No man becomes 
 a Saint in his sleep. Edmund, for instance, instead of recon- 
 ciling those same contradictory facts and speeches to himself, 
 
 which means subduing, and in a manlike and godlike man- 
 ner conquering them to himself, might have merely thrown 
 new contention into them, new unwisdom into them, and so 
 been conquered by them ; much the commoner case ! In that 
 way he had proved no " Saint," or Divine-looking Man, but a 
 mere Sinner, and unfortunate, blamable, more or less Diabolic- 
 looking man ! No landlord Edmund becomes infinitely admi- 
 rable in his sleep. 
 
 With what degree of wholesome rigor his rents were col- 
 lected, we hear not. Still less by what methods he preserved 
 his game, whether by " bushing '' or how, and if the par- 
 tridge-seasons were " excellent," or were indifferent. Neither 
 do \ve ascertain what kind of Corn-bill he passed, or wisely 
 adjusted Sliding-scale : but indeed there were few spinners 
 in those days ; and the nuisance of spinning, and other dusty 
 labor, was not yet so glaring a one. 
 
 How then, it may be asked, did this Edmund rise into favor;
 
 54 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 become to such astonishing extent a recognized Farmer's 
 Friend ? Really, except it were by doing justly and loving 
 mercy to an unprecedented extent, one does not know. The 
 man, it would seem, "had walked," as they, say, "humbly 
 
 ' with God ; " humbly and valiantly with God ; struggling to 
 make the Earth heavenly as he could : instead of walking 
 
 , sumptuously and pridefully with Mammon, leaving the Earth 
 to grow hellish as it liked. Not sumptuously with Mammon ? 
 How then could he " encourage trade," cause Howel and 
 James, and many wine-merchants, to bless him, and the tailor's 
 heart (though in a very short-sighted manner) to sing for joy ? 
 Much in this Edmund's Life is mysterious. 
 
 That he could, on occasion, do what he liked with his own, 
 is meanwhile evident enough. Certain Heathen Physical- 
 Force Ultra-Chartists, " Danes " as they were then called, 
 coming into his territory with their "rive points," or rather 
 with their five-and-twenty thousand points and edges too, of 
 pikes namely and battle-axes ; and proposing mere Heathen- 
 ism, confiscation, spoliation, and fire and sword, Edmund an- 
 swered that he would oppose to the utmost such savagery. 
 They took him prisoner ; again required his sanction to said 
 proposals. Edmund again refused. Cannot we kill you ? cried 
 they. Cannot I die ? answered he. My life, I think, is my 
 own to do what I like with ! And he died, under barbarous 
 tortures, refusing to the last breath ; and the Ultra-Chartist 
 Danes lost their propositions ; and went with their " points " 
 and other apparatus, as is supposed, to the Devil, the Father 
 of them. Some say, indeed, these Danes were not Ultra- 
 Chartists, but Ultra-Tories, demanding to reap where they had 
 not sown, and live in this world without working, though all 
 the world should starve for it ; which likewise seems a possible 
 hypothesis. Be what they might, they went, as we say, to the 
 Devil ; and Edmund doing what he liked with his own, the 
 Earth was got cleared of them. 
 
 Another version is, that Edmund on this and the like occa- 
 sions stood by his order; the oldest, and indeed only true 
 order of Nobility known under the stars, that of Just Men 
 and Sons of God, in opposition to Unjust and Sons of Belial,
 
 CHAP. III. LANDLORD EDMUND. 55 
 
 which latter indeed are seco?id-o\dest, but yet a very un ven- 
 erable order. This, truly, seems the likeliest hypothesis of 
 all. Names and appearances alter so strangely, in some half- 
 score centuries ; and all fluctuates chameleon-like, taking now 
 this hue, now that. Thus much is very plain, and does not 
 change hue : Landlord Edmund was seen and felt by all men 
 to have done verily a man's part in this life-pilgrimage of his ; 
 and benedictions, and outflowing love and admiration from 
 the universal heart, were his meed. Well done ! Well done ! 
 cried the hearts of all men. They raised his slain and mar- 
 tyred body ; washed its wounds with fast-flowing universal 
 tears ; tears of endless pity, and yet of a sacred joy and tri- 
 umph. The beautif ulest kind of tears, indeed perhaps the 
 beautifulest kind of thing : like a sky all flashing diamonds 
 and prismatic radiance; all weeping, yet shone on by the 
 everlasting Sun: and this is not a sky, it is a Soul and 
 living Face ! Nothing liker the Temple of the Hiyhest, bright 
 with some real effulgence of the Highest, is seen in this 
 world. 
 
 Oh, if all Yankee-land follow a small good " Sehniispel the 
 distinguished Novelist" with blazing torches, dinner-invita- 
 tions, universal hep-hep-hurrah, feeling that he, though small, 
 is something ; how might all Angle-land once follow a hero- 
 martyr and great true Son of Heaven ! It is the very joy of 
 man's heart to admire, where he can ; nothing so lifts him 
 from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as 
 true admiration. Thus it has been said, "all men, especially 
 all women, are born worshippers ; " and will worship, if it be 
 but possible. Possible to worship a Something, even a small 
 one ; not so possible a mere loud-blaring Nothing ! What 
 sight is more pathetic than that of poor multitudes of persons 
 met to gaze at Kings' Progresses, Lord Mayors' Shows, and 
 other gilt-gingerbread phenomena of the worshipful sort, in 
 these times ; each so eager to worship ; each, with a dim fatal 
 sense of disappointment, finding that he cannot rightly here ! 
 These be thy gods, O Israel ? And thou art so willing to 
 worship, poor Israel ! 
 
 In this manner, however, did the men of the Eastern Coun-
 
 56 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 ties take up the slain body of their Edmund, where it lay 
 cast forth in the village of Hoxne ; seek out the severed head, 
 and reverently reunite the same. They embalmed him with 
 myrrh and sweet spices, with love, pity, and all high and 
 awful thoughts ; consecrating him with a very storm of melo- 
 dious adoring admiration, and sun-dyed showers of tears ; 
 joyfully, yet with awe (as all deep joy has something of the 
 awful in it), commemorating his noble deeds and godlike walk 
 and conversation while on Earth. Till, at length, the very 
 Pope and Cardinals at Koine were forced to hear of it ; and 
 they, summing up as correctly as they well could, with Adco- 
 catus-Diaboli pleadings and their other forms of process, the 
 general verdict of mankind, declared : That he had, in very 
 fact, led a hero's life in this world ; and being now gone, was 
 gone, as they conceived, to God above, and reaping his reward 
 there. Such, they said, was the best judgment they could form 
 of the case ; and truly not a bad judgment. Acquiesced in, 
 zealously adopted, with full assent of " private judgment," by 
 all mortals. 
 
 The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has 
 now become a Saint, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence 
 provided him a loculus, a ferctrtim or shrine ; built for him a 
 wooden chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing by 
 new pious gifts; such the overflowing heart feels it a bless- 
 edness to solace itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glit- 
 ters now with diamond flowerages, with a plating of wrought 
 gold. The wooden chapel, as we say, has 'become a stone 
 temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches, cloisters, sound- 
 ing aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide. Kegimented 
 companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote them- 
 selves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Noble- 
 ness and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, 
 as they best can, thinking they will do it better here, in 
 presence of God the Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble 
 made by Him. In one word, St. Edmund's Body has raised 
 a Monastery round it. To such length, in such manner, has 
 the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and crystallized
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 ABBOT HUGO. 5T 
 
 itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, katalla 1 come ever in. 
 King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the Ocean-tide 
 would not be forbidden to wet, we heard already of this 
 wise King, with his crown and gifts ; but of many others, 
 Kings, Queens, wise men and noble loyal women, let Dryas- 
 dust and divine Silence be the record ! Beodric's- Worth has 
 become St. Edmund's Bury ; and lasts visible to this hour. 
 All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury Town, is prop- 
 erly the Funeral Monument o f Saint or Landlord Edmund. 
 The present respectable Mayor of Bury may be said, like a 
 Fakeer (little as he thinks of it), to have his dwelling in the 
 extensive, many-sculptured Tombstone of St. Edmund ; in one 
 of the brick niches thereof dwells the present respectable 
 Mayor of Bury. 
 
 Certain Times do crystallize themselves in a magnificent 
 manner ; and others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a 
 shabby one ! But Richard Arkwright too will have his Mon- 
 ument, a thousand years hence : all Lancashire and Yorkshire, 
 and how many other shires and countries, with their machi- 
 neries and industries, for his monument ! A true j//ramid or 
 ",/Zame-mountain," flaming with steam fires and useful labor 
 over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain 
 height ; how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyra- 
 mids or Sakhara clay ones! Let us withal be hopeful, be 
 content or patient. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ABBOT HUGO. 
 
 IT is true, all things have two faces, a light one and a dark 
 It is true, in three centuries much imperfection accumulates ; 
 many an Ideal, monastic or other, shooting forth into practice 
 as it can, grows to a strange enough Reality ; and we have to 
 
 1 Goods, properties; what we now coll chattels, and still more singularh 
 cattle, says my erudite friend !
 
 58 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK It. 
 
 ask with amazement, Is this your Ideal ! For, alas, the Ideal 
 always has to grow in the Real, and to seek out its bed and 
 board there, often in a very sorry way. No beautifulest Poet 
 is a Bird-of-Paradise, living on perfumes ; sleeping in the ether 
 with outspread wings. The Heroic, independent of bed and 
 board, is found in Drury-Lane Theatre only ; to avoid disap- 
 pointments, let us bear this in mind. 
 
 By the law of Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their 
 fatal limits and lot ; their appointed periods, of youth, of 
 maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final deafch 
 and disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. 
 Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in 
 this world ; do find it more and more successfully ; do get at 
 length too intent on finding it, exclusively intent on that. 
 They are then like diseased corpulent bodies fallen idiotic, 
 which merely eat and sleep; ready for "dissolution," by a 
 Henry the Eighth or some other. Jocelin's St. Edmundsbury 
 is still far from this last dreadful state : but here too the 
 reader will prepare himself to see an Ideal not sleeping in 
 the ether like a bird-of-paradise, but roosting as the common 
 wood-fowl do, in an imperfect, uncomfortable, more or less 
 contemptible manner ! 
 
 Abbot Hugo, as Jocelin, breaking at once into the heart of 
 the business, apprises us, had in those days grown old, grown 
 rather blind, and his eyes were somewhat darkened, aliquan- 
 tulum ((difjuvewint ocull ejus. He dwelt apart very much, 
 in his Talamus or peculiar Chamber ; got into the hands of 
 flatterers, a set of mealy-mouthed persons who strove to make 
 the passing hour easy for him, for him easy, and for them- 
 selves profitable ; accumulating in the distance mere mountains 
 of confusion. Old Dominus Hugo sat inaccessible in this way, 
 far in the interior, wrapt in his warm flannels and delusions ; 
 inaccessible to all voice of Fact ; and bad grew ever worse 
 with us. Not that our worthy old Dominus Abbas was inat- 
 tentive to the divine offices, or to tin; maintenance of a devout 
 spirit in us or in himself; but the Account-Books of the Con- 
 vent fell into the frightfulest state, and Hugo's annual Budget
 
 CHAF. IV. 
 
 ABBOT HUGO. 59 
 
 grew yearly emptier, or filled with futile expectations, fatal 
 deficit, wind and debts ! 
 
 His one worldly care was to raise ready money ; sufficient 
 for the day is the evil thereof. And how he raised it : From 
 usurious insatjable_jlaw-r every fresh Jew sticking on him 
 like a fresh liorseleech, sucking his and our life out ; crying 
 continually, Give, give ! Take one example instead of scores. 
 Our Camera having fallen into ruin, William the Sacristan 
 received charge to repair it ; strict charge, but no money ; 
 Abbot Hugo would, and indeed could, give him no fraction 
 of money. The Camera in ruins, and Hugo penniless and 
 inaccessible, Willelmus Sacrista borrowed Forty Marcs (some 
 Seven-and-twenty Pounds) of Benedict the Jew, and patched 
 up our Camera again. But the means of repaying him ? There 
 were no means. Hardly could Sacrista, Cellerarir-s, or any 
 public officer, get ends to meet, on the indispensallest scale, 
 with their shrunk allowances : ready money had var \shed. 
 
 Benedict's Twenty-seven pounds grew rapidly at compound- 
 interest ; and at length, when it had amounted to a Hundred 
 pounds, he, on a day of settlement, presents the '< ccount to 
 Hugo himself. Hugo already owed him another B'.rndred of 
 Ixis own; and so here it has become Two Hundred! 'lugo, in 
 a fine frenzy, threatens to depose the Sacristan, to do this and 
 do that ; but, in the mean while, How to quiet your insatiable 
 Jew ? Hugo, for this couple of hundreds, grants the Jew his 
 bond for Four hundred payable at the end of four years. At 
 the end of four years there is, of course, still no monev ; and 
 the Jew now gets a bond for Eight hundred and eighty pounds, 
 to be paid by instalments, Fourscore pounds every year. Here 
 was a way of doing business ! 
 
 Neither yet is this insatiable Jew satisfied or settled with : 
 he had papers against us of " small debts fourteen years old ; " 
 his modest claim amounts finally to " Twelve hundred pounds 
 besides interest ; " and one hopes he never got satisfied in 
 this world ; one almost hopes he was one of those beleaguered 
 Jews who hanged themselves in York Castle shortly after- 
 wards, and had his usances and quittances and horseleech 
 papers summarily set fire to! For approximate justice \vili
 
 60 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II 
 
 strive to accomplish itself ; if not in one way, then in anothe* 
 Jews, and also Christians and Heathens, who accumulate in 
 this manner, though furnished with never so many parchments, 
 do, at times, " get their grinder-teeth successively pulled out 
 of their head, each day a new grinder," till they consent to 
 disgorge again. A sad fact, worth reflecting on. 
 
 Jocelin, we see, is not without secularity : Our Dominus 
 Abbas was intent enough on the divine offices ; but then his 
 Account-Books ? One of the things ''tljat strike us most, 
 throughout, in Jocelin's Chronicle) and irideefl in Eadiner's 
 Anselm, and other old monastic Books, written evidently by 
 pious men, is this, That there is almost no mention whatever of 
 " personal religion " in them ; that the whole gist of their think- 
 ing and speculation seems to be the " privileges of our order," 
 "strict exaction of our dues," " God's honor " (meaning the honor 
 of our Saint), and so forth. Is not this singular ? A body of 
 men, set apart for perfecting and purifying their own souls, do 
 not seem disturbed about that in any measure : the " Ideal " 
 says nothing about its idea ; says much about finding bed and 
 board for itself ! How is this ? 
 
 Why, for one thing, bed and board are a matter very apt to 
 come to speech : it is much easier to speak of them than of 
 ideas ; and they are sometimes much more pressing with some ! 
 Nay, for another thing, may not this religious reticence, in 
 these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and sign of health 
 in them ? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious men, have as 
 yet nothing of " Methodism ; " no Doubt or even root of Doubt. 
 Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an agonizing in- 
 quiry : their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme good 
 plain, indisputable, and they are travelling on it. Religion 
 lies over them like an all-embracing heavenly eanopy, like an 
 atmosphere and life-element, which is not spoken of, which in 
 all things is presupposed without speech. Is not serene or 
 complete Religion the highest aspect of human nature ; as 
 serene Cant, or complete No-religion, is the lowest and mis- 
 erablest ? Between which two, all manner of earnest Method- 
 isms, introspections, agonizing inquiries, never so morbid, shall 
 play their respective parts, not without approbation.
 
 CHAP. IV. ABBOT HUGO. 61 
 
 But let any reader fancy himself one of the Brethren in 
 St. Edmundsbury Monastery under such circumstances ! How 
 can a Lord Abbot, all stuck over with horseleeches of this 
 nature, front the world ? He is fast losing his life-blood, 
 and the Convent will be as one of Pharaoh's lean kine. Old 
 monks of experience draw their hoods deeper down ; careful 
 what they say : the monk's first duty is obedience. Our Lord 
 the King, hearing of such work, sends down his Almoner to 
 make investigations : but what boots it ? Abbot Hugo assem- 
 bles us in Chapter ; asks, " If there is any complaint ? " Not 
 a soul of us dare answer, " Yes, thousands ! " but we all stand 
 silent, and the Prior even says that things are in a very com- 
 fortable condition. Whereupon old Abbot Hugo, turning to 
 the royal messenger, says, " You see ! " and the business 
 terminates in that way. I, as a brisk-eyed noticing youth and 
 novice, could not help asking of the elders, asking of Magister 
 Samson in particular : Why he, well instructed and a knowing 
 man, had not spoken out, and brought matters to a bearing ? 
 Magister Samson was Teacher of the Novices, appointed to 
 breed us up to the rules, and I loved him well. "Fill mi,' 1 
 answered Samson, "the burnt child shuns the fire. Dost thou 
 not know, our Lord the Abbot sent me once to Acre in Norfolk, 
 to solitary confinement and bread-and-water, already ? The 
 Hinghams, Hugo and Kobert, have just got home from banish- 
 ment for speaking. This is the hour of darkness : the hour 
 when flatterers rule and are believed. Videat Domimts, let 
 the Lord see, and judge." 
 
 In very truth, what could poor old Abbot Hugo do ? A frail 
 old man, and the Philistines were upon him, that is to say, 
 the Hebrews. He had nothing for it but to shrink away from 
 them ; get back into his warm flannels, into his warm delusions 
 again. Happily, before it was quite too late, he bethought him 
 of pilgriming to St. Thomas of Canterbury. He set out, with a 
 fit train, in the autumn days of the year 1180; near Rochester 
 City, his mule threw him, dislocated his poor knee-pan, raised 
 incurable inflammatory fever ; and the poor old man got his 
 dismissal from the whole ooil at once. St. Thomas k Beeket, 
 though in a circuitous way, had brought deliverance !
 
 62 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 Jew usurers, nor grumbling monks, nor other importunate 
 despicability of men or mud-elements afflicted Abbot Hugo 
 any more ; but he dropt his rosaries, closed his a.ccount-books, 
 closed his old eyes, and lay down into the long sleep. Heavy- 
 laden hoary old Dominus Hugo, fare thee well. 
 
 One thing we cannot mention without a due thrill of horror : 
 namely, that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there 
 was not found one penny to distribute to the Poor that they 
 might pray for his soul ! By a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings 
 did, in the very nick of time, fall due, or seem to fall due, from 
 one of his Farmers (the Firmarius de Palegrava), and he paid 
 it, and the Poor had it ; though, alas, this too only seemed to 
 fall due, and we had it to pay again afterwards. Dominus 
 Hugo's apartments were plundered by his servants, to the 
 last portable stool, in a few minutes after the breath was out 
 of his body. Forlorn old Hugo, fare thee well forever. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TWELFTH CENTURY. 
 
 OUR Abbot being dead, the Dominus Rex, Henry II., or 
 Hanulf de Glanvill Justicianus of England for him, set In- 
 spectors or Custodiars over us ; not in any breathless haste 
 to appoint a new Abbot, our revenues coming into his own 
 Scaccari'itm, or royal Exchequer, in the mean while. They 
 proceeded with some rigor, these Custodiars ; took written 
 inventories, clapt on seals, exacted everywhere strict tale and 
 measure : but wherefore should a living monk complain ? 
 The living monk has to do his devotional drill-exercise ; con- 
 sume his allotted pitantia, what we call pittance, or ration 
 of victual ; and possess his soul in patience. 
 
 Dim, as through a long vista of Seven Centuries, dim and 
 very strange looks that monk-life to us ; the ever-surprising 
 circumstance this, That it is a fact and no dream, that we see
 
 CHAP. V. TWELFTH CENTURY. G3 
 
 it there, and gaze into the very eyes of it ! Smoke rises 
 daily from those culinary chimney-throats ; there are living 
 human beings there, who chant, loud-braying, their matins, 
 nones, vespers ; awakening ecJioes, not to the bodily ear alone. 
 St. Edmund's Shrine, perpetually illuminated, glows ruddy 
 through the Night, and through the Night of Centui-ies 
 withal ; St. Edmundsbury Town paying yearly Forty pounds 
 for that express end. Bells clang out; on great occasions, 
 all the bells. We have Processions, Preachings, Festivals, 
 Christmas Plays, Mysteries shown in the Churchyard, at which 
 latter the Townsfolk sometimes quarrel. Time was, Time 
 is, as Friar Bacon's Brass Head remarked ; and withal Time 
 will be. There are three Tenses, Tenywra, or Times ; and 
 there is one Eternity ; and as for us, 
 
 " We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! " 
 
 Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its 
 hill-slope that same Bury, Stow, or Town of St. Edmund ; 
 already a considerable place, not without traffic, nay manu- 
 factures, would Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally 
 careless of telling : but, through dim fitful apertures, we can 
 see FuHones, "Fullers," see cloth-making; looms dimly going, 
 dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too, 
 Nundimr, in due course ; and the Londoners give us much 
 trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are 
 exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with 
 perplexed settlement of Convent rents : corn-ricks pile them- 
 selves within burgh, in their season; and cattle depart and 
 enter ; and even the poor weaver has his cow, " dung-heaps " 
 lying quiet at most doors (ante foras, says the incidental 
 Jocelin), for the Town has yet no improved police. Watch 
 and ward nevertheless we do keep, and have Gates, as what 
 Town must not ; thieves so abounding ; war, irerra, such a 
 frequent thing! Our thieves, at the Abbot's judgment-bar, 
 deny ; claim wager of battle ; fight, are beaten, and then 
 hanged. " Ketel, the thief,'' took this course .; and it did 
 nothing for him, merely brought us, and indeed himself, 
 new trouble !
 
 64 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n. 
 
 Every way a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for ex- 
 ample, has our Cellerarius to collect the repselver, "reaping 
 silver," or penny, which each householder is by law bound 
 to pay for cutting down the Convent grain! Kicher people 
 pretend that it is commuted, that it is this and the other; 
 that, in short, they will not pay it. Our Cellerarius gives up 
 calling on the rich. In the houses of the poor, our Cellerarius 
 finding, in like manner, neither penny nor good promise, 
 snatches, without ceremony, what vadium (pledge, wad) he 
 can come at : a joint-stool, kettle, nay the very house-door, 
 " hostium ; " and old women, thus exposed to the unfeeling 
 gaze of the public, rush out after him with their distaffs and 
 the angriest shrieks : " vetulcc exibant cum, colis suis," says 
 Jocelin, " minantes et exprobrantes." 
 
 What a historical picture, glowing visible, as St. Edmund's 
 Shrine by night, after Seven long Centuries or so ! Vetulce 
 cum colis : My venerable ancient spinning grandmothers, 
 ah, and ye too have to shriek, and rush out with your distaffs ; 
 * 'and become Female Chartists, and scold all evening with void 
 doorway ; and in old Saxon, as we in modern, would fain 
 demand some Five-point Charter, could it be fallen in with, 
 the Earth being too tyrannous! Wise Lord Abbots, hearing 
 of such phenomena, did in time abolish or commute the reap- 
 penny, and one nuisance was abated. But the image of these 
 justly offended old women, in their old wool costumes, with 
 their angry features, and spindles brandished, lives forever 
 in the historical memory. Thanks to thee, Jocelin Bos well. 
 Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders, and again lost by 
 them ; and Richard Coeur-de-Lion " veiled his face " as he 
 passed in sight of it: but how many other things went on, 
 the while ! 
 
 Thus, too, our trouble with the Lakenheath eels is very 
 great. King Knut namely, or rather his Queen who also did 
 herself honor by honoring St. Edmund, decreed by authentic 
 deed yet extant on parchment, that the Holders of the Town 
 Fields, once Beodric's, should, for one thing, go yearly and 
 catch us four thousand eels in the marsh-pools of Lakenheath. 
 Well, they went, they continued to go; but, in later times,
 
 CHAP. V. TWELFTH CENTURY. 65 
 
 got into the way of returning with a most short account of 
 eels. Not the due sixscore apiece; no, Here are twoscore, 
 Here are twenty, ten, sometimes, Here are none at all ; 
 Heaven help us, we could catch no more, they were not there ! 
 What is a distressed Cellerarius to do ? We agree that each 
 Holder of so many acres shall pay one penny yearly, and let 
 go the eels as too slippery. But, alas, neither is this quite 
 effectual : the Fields, in my time, have got divided among so 
 many hands, there is no catching of them either ; I have 
 known our Cellarer get seven-and-twenty pence formerly, and 
 now it is much if he get ten pence farthing (vix decent denarios 
 et obolum). And then their sheep, which they are bound to 
 fold nightly in our pens, for the manure's sake ; and, I fear, 
 do not always fold : and their aver-pennies, and their avra 
 yiums, and their fodercoms, and mill-and-market dues ! Thus, 
 in its undeniable but dim manner, does old St. Edmundsbury 
 spin and till, and laboriously keep its pot boiling, and St. 
 Edmund's Shrine lighted, under such conditions and averages 
 as it can. 
 
 How much is still alive in England ; how much has not yet 
 come into life ! A Feudal Aristocracy is still alive, in the 
 prime of life ; superintending the cultivation of the land, and 
 less consciously the distribution of the produce of the land, 
 the adjustment of the quarrels of the land ; judging, soldier- 
 ing, adjusting; everywhere governing the people, so that 
 even a Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, lacks not his due parings 
 of the pigs he tends. Governing ; and, alas, also game- 
 preserving; so that a Robert Hood, a William Scarlet and 
 others have, in these days, put on Lincoln coats, and taken to 
 living, in some universal-suffrage manner, under the green- 
 wood-tree ! 
 
 How silent, on the other hand, lie all Cotton -trades and 
 such like ; not a steeple-chimney yet got on end from sea to 
 sea ! North of the IIuml>er, a stern Willelmus Conqturstor 
 burnt the Country, finding it unruly, into very stern rej>ose. 
 Wild fowl scream in those ancient silences, wild cattle roam 
 in those ancient solitudes ; the scanty sulky Norse-bred popn- 
 vm xii. 5
 
 66 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 lation all coerced into silence, feeling that, under these new 
 Norman Governors, their history has probably as good as 
 ended. Men and Northumbrian Norse populations know little 
 what has ended, what is but beginning ! The Kibble and the 
 Aire roll down, as yet unpolluted by dyers' chemistry ; tenanted 
 by merry trouts and piscatory otters ; the sunbeam and the 
 vacant wind's-blast alone traversing those moors. Side by side 
 sleep the coal-strata and the iron-strata for so many ages ; no 
 Steam-Demon has yet risen smoking into being. Saint Mungo 
 rules in Glasgow ; James Watt still slumbering in the deep of 
 Time. Mancunium, Manceaster, what we now call Manchester, 
 spins no cotton, if it be not wool " cottons," clipped from 
 the backs of mountain sheep. The Creek of the Mersey gur- 
 gles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, 
 clangorous with sea-fowl ; and is a Lither-Pool, a lazy or sullen 
 Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Sea-haven of the world ! 
 The Centuries are big ; and the birth-hour is coming, not yet 
 come. Tempus ferax, tempus edax rerum. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MONK SAMSON. 
 
 WITHIN doors, down at the hill-foot, in our Convent here, 
 we are a peculiar people, hardly conceivable in the Ark- 
 wright Corn-Law ages, of mere Spinning-Mills and Joe- 
 Mantons ! There is yet no Methodism among us, and wo 
 speak much of Secularities : no Methodism ; our Religion is 
 not yet a horrible restless Doubt, still less a far horrible r com- 
 posed Cant; but a great heaven-high Unquestionability, en- 
 compassing, interpenetrating the whole of Life. Imperfect as> 
 we may be, we are here, with our litanies, shaven crowns, 
 vows of poverty, to testify incessantly and indisputably to 
 every heart, That this Earthly Life and its riches and posses- 
 sions, and good and evil hap, are not intrinsically a reality at
 
 CHAP. VI. MONK SAMSON. 67 
 
 all, but are a shadow of realities eternal, infinite ; that this 
 Time-world, as an air-image, fearfully emblematic, plays and 
 flickers in the grand still mirror of Eternity ; and man's little 
 Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up 
 to Heaven and down to Hell. This, with our poor litanies, we 
 testify, and struggle to testify. 
 
 Which, testified or not, remembered by all men or forgotten 
 by all men, does verily remain the fact, even in Arkwright 
 Joe-Manton ages ! But it is incalculable, when litanies have 
 grown obsolete ; when fodercorns, avrayiums, and all humar 
 dues .and reciprocities have been fully changed into one grest 
 due of cash payment ; and man's duty to man reduces itself t. 
 handing him certain metal coins, or covenanted money-wagea 
 and then shoving him out of doors ; and man's chity to God 
 becomes a cant, a doubt, a dim inanity, a " pleasure of virtue " 
 or such like ; and the thing a man does infinitely fear (the real 
 Hell of a man) is, " that he do not make money and advance 
 himself," I say, it is incalculable what a change has intro- 
 duced itself everywhere into human affairs ! How human af- 
 fairs shall now circulate everywhere not healthy life-blood in 
 them, but, as it were, a detestable copperas banker's ink ; and 
 all is grown acrid, divisive, threatening dissolution ; and the 
 huge tumultuous Life of Society is galvanic, devil-ridden, too 
 truly possessed by a devil ! For, in short, Mammon is not a 
 god at all ; but a devil, and even a very despicable devil. 
 Follow the Devil faithfully, you are sure enough to go to the 
 Devil: whither else can you go? In such situations, men 
 look back with a kind of mournful recognition even on poof 
 limited Monk-figures, with their poor litanies; and reflect, 
 with Ben Jonson, that soul is indispensable, some degree ol 
 soul, even to save you the expense of salt ! 
 
 For the rest, it must be owned, we Monks of St. Edmunds- 
 bury are but a limited class of creatures, and seem to have a 
 somewhat dull life of it. Much given to idle gossip ; having 
 indeed no other work, when our chanting is over. Listless 
 gossip, for most part, and a mitigated slander ; the fruit of 
 idleness, not of spleen. We are dull, insipid men, many of us ; 
 asy -minded ; whom prayer and digestion of food will avail
 
 68 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK a 
 
 for a life. We have to receive all strangers in our Convent, 
 and lodge them gratis ; such and such sorts go by rule to the 
 Lord Abbot and his special revenues ; such and such to us 
 and our poor Cellarer, however straitened. Jews themselves 
 send their wives and little ones hither in war-time, into our 
 Pitcmceria ; where they abide safe, with due pittances, for a 
 consideration. We have the fairest chances for collecting 
 news. Some of us have a turn for reading Books ; for medi- 
 tation, silence ; at times we even write Books. Some of us 
 can preach, in English-Saxon, in Norman-French, and even in 
 Monk-Latin ; others cannot in any language or jargon, being 
 stupid. 
 
 Failing all else, what gossip about one another ! This is a 
 perennial resource. How one hooded head applies itself to 
 the ear of another, and whispers tacenda. Willelmus Sa- 
 crista, for instance, what does he nightly, over in that Sacristy 
 of his ? Frequent bibations, " frey uentes bihationes et qucedam 
 tacenda" eheu ! We have " tempora minutionis." stated sea- 
 sons of blood-letting, when we are all let blood together ; and 
 then there is a general free-conference, a sanhedrim of clatter. 
 Notwithstanding our vow of poverty, we can by rule amass to 
 the extent of " two shillings ; " but it is to be given to our 
 necessitous kindred, or in charity. Poor Monks ! Thus too a 
 certain Canterbury Monk was in the habit of "slipping, clan- 
 culo, from his sleeve," five shillings into the hand of his 
 mother, when she came to see him, at the divine offices, every 
 two months. Once, slipping the money clandestinely, just in 
 the act of taking leave, he slipt it not into her hand but on 
 the floor, and another had it ; whereupon the poor Monk, com- 
 ing to know it, looked mere despair for some days ; tillLanfranc 
 the noble Archbishop, questioning his secret from him, nobly 
 made the sum seven shillings, 1 and said, Never mind ! 
 
 One Monk, of a taciturn nature, distinguishes himself among 
 these babbling ones : the name of him Samson ; he that an- 
 swered Jocelin, " Fili mi, a burnt child shuns the fire." 
 They call him " Norfolk Barrator," or litigious person ; foi 
 
 1 Eadmeri Hist. p. 8.
 
 CHAP. VI. MONK SAMSON. 69 
 
 indeed, being of grave taciturn ways, he is not universally a 
 favorite ; he has been in trouble more than once. The reader 
 is desired to mark this Monk. A personable man of seven- 
 and-forty ; stout-niade, stands erect as a pillar ; with bushy 
 eyebrows, the eyes of him beaming into you iu a really strange 
 way ; the face massive, grave, with " a very eminent nose ; ' 
 his head almost bald, its auburn remnants of hair, and the 
 Copious ruddy beard, getting slightly streaked with gray. 
 This is Brother Samson ; a man worth looking at. 
 
 He is from Norfolk, as the nickname indicates ; from Totting- 
 ton in Norfolk, as we guess ; the son of poor parents there. 
 lie has told me Jocelin, for I loved him much, That once in 
 his ninth year he had an alarming dream ; as indeed we are 
 all somewhat given to dreaming here. Little Samson, lying 
 uneasily in his crib at Tottington, dreamed that he saw the 
 Arch Enemy in person, just alighted in front of some grand 
 building, with outspread bat-wings, and stretching forth de- 
 testable clawed hands to grip him, little Samson, and fly off 
 with him : whereupon the little dreamer shrieked desperate 
 to St. Edmund for help, shrieked and again shrieked ; and St. 
 Edmund, a reverend heavenly figure, did come, and indeed 
 poor little Samson's mother, awakened by his shrieking, did 
 come ; and the Devil and the Dream both fled away fruitless. 
 On the morrow, his mother, pondering such an awful dream, 
 thought it were good to take him over to St. Edmund's own 
 Shrine, and pray with him there. See, said little Samson at 
 sight of the Abbey-Gate ; see, mother, this is the building I 
 dreamed of ! His poor mother dedicated him to St. Edmund, 
 left him there with prayers and tears : what better could she 
 lo ? The exposition of the dream, Brother Samson used to say, 
 was this : Dinbolua with outspread bat-wings shadowed forth 
 the pleasures of this world, rotuptofwi hujus strnifi, which 
 were about to snatch and fly away with me, had not St. Ed- 
 mund flung his arms round me, that is to say, made me a monk 
 of his. A monk, accordingly, Brother Samson is ; and here 
 to this day where his mother left him. A learned man, of 
 devout grave nature ; has studied at Paris, has taught in the 
 Town Schools here, and done much else ; can preach in three
 
 70 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 languages, and, like Dr. Cains, " has had losses " in his time. 
 A thoughtful, firm-standing man ; much loved by some, not 
 loved by all ; his clear eyes flashing into you, in an almost 
 inconvenient way ! 
 
 Abbot Hugo, as we said, had his own difficulties with him ; 
 Abbot Hugo had him in prison once, to teach him what au- 
 thority was, and how to dread the fire in future. For Brother 
 Samson, in the time of the Autipopes, had been sent to Kome 
 on business ; and, returning successful, was too late, the 
 business had all misgone in the interim ! As tours to Rome 
 are still frequent with us English, perhaps the reader will not 
 grudge to look at the method of travelling thither in those 
 remote ages. We happily have, in small compass, a personal 
 narrative of it. Through the clear eyes and memory of Brother 
 Samson one peeps direct into the very bosom of that Twelfth 
 Century, and finds it rather curious. The actual Papa, Father, 
 or universal President of Christendom, as yet not grown chi- 
 merical, sat there ; think of that only ! Brother Samson went 
 to Rome as to the real Light-fountain of this lower world ; we 
 now ! But let us hear Brother Samson, as to his mode of 
 travelling : 
 
 " You know what trouble I had for that Church of Woolpit ; 
 how I was despatched to Kome in the time of the Schism 
 between Pope Alexander and Octavian ; and passed through 
 Italy at that season, when all clergy carrying letters for our 
 Lord Pope Alexander were laid hold of, and some were clapt 
 in prison, some hanged ; and some, with nose and lips cut off, 
 were sent forward to our Lord the Pope, for the disgrace and 
 confusion of him (in dedecus et confusionem ejm). I, however, 
 pretended to be Scotch, and putting on the garb of a Scotch- 
 man, and taking the gesture of one, walked along ; and when 
 anybody mocked at me, I would brandish my staff in the 
 manner of that weapon they call yaveloc, 1 uttering cominina- 
 tory words after the way of the Scotch. To those that met 
 and questioned me who I was, I made no answer but : Rule., 
 ride Rome ; turne Cantivereberei. 2 Thus did I, to conceal myself 
 
 1 Javelin, missile pike. Gaveloc is .still the Scotch name for crowbar. 
 
 * Does this mean, "Koine forever; Canterbury not " (which claims an
 
 CHAP. VI. MONK SAMSON. 71 
 
 and my errand, and get safer to Rome under the guise of a 
 Scotchman. 
 
 " Having at last obtained a Letter from our Lord the Pope 
 according to my wishes, I turned homewards again. I had to 
 pass through a certain strong town on my road ; and lo, the 
 soldiers thereof surrounded me, seizing me, and saying : ' This 
 vagabond (Iste golivagus), who pretends to be Scotch, is either 
 a spy, or has Letters from the false Pope Alexander.' And 
 whilst they examined every stitch and rag of me, my leggings 
 (rnligas), breeches, and even the old shoes that I carried over 
 my shoulder in the way of the Scotch, I put my hand into 
 the leather scrip I wore, wherein our Lord the Pope's Letter 
 lay, close by a little jug (ciffus) I had for drinking out of; and 
 the Lord God so pleasing, and St. Edmund, I got out both the 
 Letter and the jug together; in such a way that, extending my 
 arm aloft, I held the Letter hidden between jug and hand : they 
 saw the jug, but the Letter they saw not. And thus I escaped 
 out of their hands in the name of the Lord. Whatever money 
 I had, they took from me ; wherefore I had to beg from door 
 to door, without any payment (sine omni expensa) till I came 
 to England again. But hearing that the Woolpit Church was 
 already given to Geoffry Kidell, my soul was struck with sor- 
 row because I had labored in vain. Coming home, therefore, 
 I sat me down secretly under the Shrine of St. Edmund, 
 fearing lest our Lord Abbot should seize and imprison me, 
 though I had done no mischief; nor was there a monk who 
 durst speak to me, nor a laic who durst bring me food except 
 by stealth." l 
 
 Such resting and welcoming found Brother Samson, with his 
 worn soles, and strong heart ! He sits silent, revolving many 
 thoughts, at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine. In the wide 
 Earth, if it be not St. Edmund, what friend or refuge has he ? 
 Our Lord Abbot, hearing of him, sent the proper officer to lead 
 him down to prison, and clap "foot-gyves on him" there. 
 
 unjust supremacy over us) ! Mr. Rokewood is silent. Dryasdust would per- 
 haps explain it, in the course of a week or two of talking; did one dare t 
 question him ! 
 1 Jocelini (Jhrunicn, p. 36.
 
 72 PAST AND PEESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 Another poor official furtively brought him a cup of wine ; 
 bade him " be comforted in the Lord." Samson utters no 
 soinplaint ; obeys in silence. " Our Lord Abbot, taking coun- 
 sel of it, banished me to Acre, and there I had to stay long." 
 
 Our Lord Abbot next tried Samson \vith promotions ; made 
 him Subsacristan, made him Librarian, which he liked best 
 of all, being passionately fond of Books : Samson, with many 
 thoughts in him, again obeyed in silence ; discharged his offices 
 to perfection, but never thanked our Lord Abbot, seemed 
 rather as if looking into him, with those clear eyes of his. 
 Whereupon Abbot Hugo said, Se nunguam vidisse, He had 
 never seen such a man ; whom no severity would break to 
 complain, and no kindness soften into smiles or thanks : a 
 questionable kind of man ! 
 
 In this way, not without troubles, but still in an erect clear- 
 standing manner, has Brother Samson reached his forty-seventh 
 year ; and his ruddy beard is getting slightly grizzled. He 
 is endeavoring, in these days, to have various broken things 
 thatched in ; nay perhaps to have the Choir itself completed, 
 for he can bear nothing ruinous. He has gathered " heaps of 
 lime and sand ; " has masons, slaters working, he and War-bius 
 monachus noster, who are joint keepers of the Shrine ; paying 
 out the money duly, furnished by charitable burghers of 
 St. Edmundsbury, they say. Charitable burghers of St. Ed- 
 mundsbury ? To me Jocelin it seems rather, Samson> and 
 Warinus whom he leads, have privily hoarded the oblations at 
 the Shrine itself, in these late years of indolent dilapidation, 
 while Abbot Hugo sat wrapt inaccessible ; and are struggling, 
 in this prudent way, to have the rain kept out ! * Under 
 what conditions, sometimes, has Wisdom to struggle with 
 Folly ; get Folly persuaded to so much as thatch out the rain 
 from itself ! For, indeed, if the Infant govern the Nurse, what 
 dexterous practice on the Nurse's part will not be necessary ! 
 
 It is a new regret to us that, in these circumstances, our 
 
 Lord the King's Custodiars, interfering, prohibited all building 
 
 or thatching from whatever source; and no Choir shall be 
 
 completed, and Rain and Time, for the present, shall have 
 
 1 Jocelini t'hronica, p. 7.
 
 CHAP. VH. THE CANVASSING. 78 
 
 their way. Willelmus Sacrista, he of " the frequent bibations 
 and some things not to be spoken of ; " he, with his red nose, 
 I am of opinion, had made complaint to the Custodiars ; wish- 
 ing to do Samson an ill turn :. Samson his w6-sacristan, with 
 those clear eyes, could not be a prime favorite of his ! Samson 
 again obeys in sileuce. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 THE CANVASSING. 
 
 f v 
 
 Now, however, come great news to St. Edmundsbury : That 
 there is to be an Abbot elected ; that our interlunar obscura- 
 tion is to cease ; St. Edmund's Convent no more to be a dole- 
 ful widow, but joyous and once again a bride ! Often in our 
 widowed state had we prayed to the Lord and St. Edmund, 
 singing weekly a matter of " one-and-twenty penitential Psalms, 
 on our knees in the Choir," that a fit Pastor might be vouch- 
 safed us. And, says Jocelin, had some known what Abbot we 
 were to get, they had not been so devout, I believe ! Bozzy 
 Jocelin opens to mankind the floodgates of authentic Convent 
 gossip ; we listen, as in a Dionysius' Ear, to the inanest hub- 
 bub, like the voices at Virgil's Horn-Gate of Dreams. Even 
 gossip, seven centuries off, has significance. List, list, how 
 like men are to one another in all centuries : 
 
 " Dixit quidum de quodam, A certain person said of a cer- 
 tain person, ' He, that Frnter, is a good monk, probabilis per- 
 sona ; knows much of the order and customs of the church ; 
 and, though not so perfect a philosopher as some others, would 
 make a very good Abbot. Old Abbot Ording, still famed 
 among us, knew little of letters. Besides, as we read in Fables, 
 it is better to choose a log for king, than a serpent never so 
 wise, that will venomously hiss and bite his subjects.' 'Im- 
 possible ! ' answered the other : ' How can such a man make a 
 sermon in the Chapter, or to the people on festival-days, when 
 he is without letters ? How can he have the skill to bind
 
 74 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 and to loose, he who does not understand the Scriptures ? 
 How ?"' 
 
 And then "another said of another, alius de alio, 'That 
 Prater is a homo literatus, eloquent, sagacious ; vigorous in 
 discipline; loves the Convent much, has suffered much for 
 its sake.' To which a third party answers, ' From all your 
 great clerks, good Lord deliver us ! From Norfolk barrators 
 and surly persons, That it would please thee to preserve us, 
 We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord ! ' Then another 
 quidam said of another quodam, ' That Prater is a good man- 
 ager (husebondus) ; ' but was swiftly answered, ' God forbid 
 that a man who can neither read nor chant, nor celebrate the 
 divine offices, an unjust person withal, and grinder of the 
 faces of the poor, should ever be Abbot ! ' ' One man, it ap- 
 pears, is nice in his victuals. Another is indeed wise, but apt 
 to slight inferiors ; hardly at the pains to answer, if they 
 argue with him too foolishly. And so each aliquis concerning 
 his aliquo, through whole pages of electioneering babble. 
 " For," says Jocelin, " So many men, as many minds." Our 
 Monks " at time of blood-letting, tempore minutionis" holding 
 their sanhedrim of babble, would talk in this manner : Brother 
 Samson, I remarked, never said anything; sat silent, some- 
 times smiling ; but he took good note of what others said, and 
 :7ould bring it up, on occasion, twenty years after. As for me 
 Jocelin, I was of opinion that " some skill in Dialectics, to dis- 
 tinguish true from false," would be good in an Abbot. L 
 spake, as a rash Novice in those days, some conscientious 
 words of a certain benefactor of mine ; " and behold, one of 
 those sons of Belial " ran and reported them to him, so that 
 he never after looked at me with the same face again ! Poor 
 Bozzy ! 
 
 Such is the buzz and frothy simmering ferment of the gen- 
 eral mind and no-mind ; struggling to " make itself up," as 
 the phrase is, or ascertain what it does really want : no easy 
 matter, in most cases. St. Edmundsbury, in that Candlemas 
 season of the year 1182, is a busily fermenting place. The 
 very cloth-makers sit meditative at their looms ; asking, Who 
 shall be Abbot ? The sochemanni speak of it, driving tlu-ir
 
 JHAP. VTI. THE CANVASSING. 75 
 
 ox-teams afield ; the old women with their spindles : and none 
 yet knows what the days will bring forth. 
 
 The Prior, however, as our interim chief, must proceed to 
 work ; get ready " Twelve Monks," and set off with them to 
 his Majesty at Waltham, there shall the election be made. 
 An election, whether managed directly by ballot-box on public 
 hustings, or indirectly by force of public opinion, or were it 
 even by open alehouses, landlords' coercion, popular club-law, 
 or whatever electoral methods, is always an interesting phe- 
 nomenon. A mountain tumbling in great travail, throwing 
 up dust-clouds and absurd noises, is visibly there ; .uncertain 
 yet what mouse or monster it will give birth to. 
 
 Besides, it is a most important social act ; nay, at bottom, 
 the one important social act. Given the men a People choose, 
 the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is 
 given. A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy ; a valet 
 or flunky people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, 
 thinking them heroes, and is not happy. The grand summary 
 of a man's spiritual condition, what brings out all his herohood 
 and insight, or all his flunky-hood and horn-eyed dimness, is 
 this question put to him, "What man dost thou honor ? Which 
 is thy ideal of a man ; or nearest that ? So too of a People : 
 for a People too, every People, speaks its choice, were it 
 only by silently obeying, and not revolting, in the course 
 of a century or so. Nor are electoral methods, Reform Bills 
 and such like, unimportant. A People's electoral methods 
 are, in the long-run, the express image of its electoral talent ; 
 tending and gravitating perpetually, irresistibly, to a conform- 
 ity with that : and are, at all stages, very significant of the 
 People. Judicious readers, of these times, are not disinclined 
 to see how Monks elect their Abbot in the Twelfth Century : 
 how the St. Edmundsbury mountain manages its midwifery ; 
 and what mouse or man the outcome is.
 
 76 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ELECTION. 
 
 ACCORDINGLY our Prior assembles us in Chapter ; and, we 
 adjuring him before God to do justly, nominates, not by our 
 selection, yet with our assent, Twelve Monks, moderately sat- 
 isfactory. Of whom are Hugo Third-Prior, Brother Dennis, 
 a venerable man, Walter the Medicus, Samson Subsacrista, and 
 other esteemed characters, though Willelmus Sacrista, of 
 the red nose, too is one. These shall proceed straightway to 
 Waltham ; and there elect the Abbot as they may and can. 
 Monks are sworn to obedience ; must not speak too loud, 
 under penalty of foot-gyves, limbo, and bread-and-water : yet 
 monks too would know what it is they are obeying. The St. 
 Edmundsbury Community has no hustings, ballot-box, indeed 
 no open voting : yet by various vague manipulations, pulse- 
 feelings, we struggle to ascertain what its virtual aim is, and 
 succeed better or worse. 
 
 This question, however, rises ; alas, a quite preliminary 
 question : Will the Domimis Rex allow us to choose freely ? 
 It is to be hoped ! Well, if so, we agree to choose one of 
 our own Convent. If not, if the Domimis Rex will force a 
 stranger on us, we decide on demurring, the Prior and his 
 Twelve shall demur : we can appeal, plead, remonstrate ; 
 appeal even to the Pope, but trust it will not be necessary. 
 Then there is this other question, raised by Brother Samson : 
 What if the Thirteen should not themselves be able to agree ? 
 Brother Samson Subsaerista, one remarks, is ready oftenest 
 with some question, some suggestion, that has wisdom in it. 
 Though a servant of servants, and saying little, his words all 
 tell, having sense in them ; it seems by his light mainly that 
 we steer ourselves in this great dimness.
 
 CHAP. VIII. THE ELECTION. 77 
 
 What if the Thirteen should not themselves be able to 
 agree ? Speak, Samsou, and advise. Could not, hints Sam- 
 son, Six of our venerablest elders be chosen by us, a kind of 
 electoral committee, here and now: of these, "with their 
 hand on the Gospels, with their eye on the Sacrosancta" we 
 take oath that they will do faithfully ; let these, in secret 
 and as before God, agree on Three whom they reckon fittest ; 
 write their names in a Paper, and deliver the same sealed, 
 forthwith, to the Thirteen : one of those Three the Thirteen 
 shall fix on, if permitted. If not permitted, that is to say, 
 if the Dominus Rex force us to demur, the paper shall be 
 brought back unopened, and publicly burned, that no man's 
 secret bring him into trouble. 
 
 So Samson advises, so we act ; wisely, in this and in other 
 crises of the business. Our electoral committee, its eye on 
 the Sacrosancta, is soon named, soon sworn ; and we, striking 
 up the Fifth Psalm, " Verba mea, 
 
 Give ear unto my words, O Lord, 
 My meditation weigh," 
 
 march out chanting, and leave the Six to their work in the 
 Chapter here. Their work, before long, they announce as 
 finished : they, with their eye on the Sacrosancta, imprecat- 
 ing the Lord to weigh and witness their meditation, have 
 fixed on Three Names, and written them in this Sealed Paper. 
 Let Samson Subsacrista, general servant of the party, take 
 charge of it. On the morrow morning, our Prior and his 
 Twelve will be ready to get under way. 
 
 This, then, is the ballot-box and electoral winnowing- 
 machine they have at St. Edmundslmry : a mind fixed on the 
 Thrice Holy, an appeal to God on high to witness their medi- 
 tation : by far the best, and indeed the only good electoral 
 winnow ing-machine, if men have souls in them. Totally 
 worthless, it is true, and even hideous and poisonous, if men 
 have no souls. But without soul, alas, what winnowing- 
 machine in human elections can be of avail ? We cannot get 
 along without soul ; we stick fast, the mournfulest spectacle ; 
 and salt itself will not save us!
 
 78 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set 
 forth ; or rather our Prior and Eleven ; for Samson, as gen- 
 eral servant of the party, has to linger, settling many things. 
 At length he too gets upon the road ; and, " carrying the 
 sealed Paper in a leather pouch hung round his neck ; and 
 froccum bajutans in ulnis [thanks to thee, Bozzy Jocelin], his 
 frock-skirts looped over his elbow," showing substantial stern- 
 works, tramps stoutly along. Away across the Heath, not yet 
 of Newmarket and horse-jockeying ; across your Fleam-dike 
 and Pevil's-dike, no longer useful as a Mercian East-Anglian 
 boundary or bulwark : continually towards Waltham, and the 
 Bishop of Winchester's House there, for his Majesty is in 
 that. Brother Samson, as purse-bearer, has the reckoning 
 always, when there is one, to pay ; " delays are numerous," 
 progress none of the swiftest. 
 
 But, in the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and 
 in her birthtime, what gossiping, what babbling, what dream- 
 ing of dreams ! The secret of the Three our electoral elders 
 alone know : some Abbot we shall have to govern us ; but 
 which Abbot, oh, which ! One Monk discerns in a vision of 
 the night-watches, that we shall get an Abbot of our own 
 body, without needing to demur : a prophet appeared to him 
 clad all in white, and said, " Ye shall have one of yours, and 
 he will rage among you like a wolf, sceviet ut lupus." Verily ! 
 then which of ours ? Another Monk now dreams : he has 
 seen clearly which ; a certain Figure taller by head and shoul- 
 ders than the other two, dressed in alb and pallium, and with 
 the attitude of one about to fight ; which tall Figure a wise 
 Editor would rather not name at this stage of the business ! 
 Enough that the vision is true : that St. Edmund himself, 
 pale and awful, seemed to rise from his Shrine, with naked 
 feet, and say audibly, " He, ille, shall veil my feet ; " which 
 part of the vision also proves true. Such guessing, vision- 
 ing, dim perscrutation of the momentous future : the very 
 cloth-makers, old women, all townsfolk speak of it, "and 
 more than once it is reported in St. Edmundsbury, This 
 one is elected; and then, This one, and That other." Who 
 knows ?
 
 CHAP. VIII. THE ELECTION. 79 
 
 But now, sure enough, at Waltham " on the Second Sunday 
 of Quadragesima," which Dryasdust declares to mean the 22d 
 day of February, year 1182, Thirteen St. Edmuudsbury Monks 
 are, at last, seen processioning towards the Winchester Manor- 
 house ; and, in some high Presence-chamber and Hall of State, 
 get access to Henry II. in all his glory. What a Hall, not 
 imaginary in the least, but entirely real and indisputable, 
 though so extremely dim to us ; sunk in the deep distances of 
 Night ! The Winchester Manor-house has fled bodily, like a 
 Dream of the old Night; not Dryasdust himself can show a 
 wreck of it. House and people, royal and episcopal, lords and 
 varlets, where are they '.' Why there. I say, Seven Centuries 
 off; sunk so far in the Night, there they are ; peep through 
 the blankets of the old Night, and thou wilt see ! King 
 Henry himself is visibly there ; a vivid, noble-looking man, 
 with grizzled beard, in glittering uncertain costume ; with 
 earls round him, and bishops, and dignitaries, in the like. 
 The Hall is large, and has for one thing an altar near it, 
 chapel and altar adjoining it ; but what gilt seats, carved 
 tables, carpeting of rush-cloth, what arras-hangings, and 
 huge fire of logs: alas, it has Human Life in it; and is 
 not that the grand miracle, in what hangings or costume 
 soever ? 
 
 The Dominus Rex, benignantly receiving our Thirteen with 
 their obeisance, and graciously declaring that he will strive to 
 act for God's honor and the Church's good, commands, "by 
 the Bishop of Winchester and Geoffrey the Chancellor," 
 Galfridus Canceilarius, Henry's and the Fair Rosamond's 
 authentic Son present here! commands, "That they, the said 
 Thirteen, do now withdraw, and fix upon Three from their 
 own Monastery." A work soon done ; the Three hanging 
 ready round Samson's neck, in that leather pouch of his. 
 Breaking the seal, we find the names, what think ye of it, 
 ye higher dignitaries, thou indolent Prior, thou Willelinus 
 Saerista with the red bottle-nose ? the names, in this order : 
 of Samson Suksacrista, of Roger the distressed Cellarer, of 
 Hugo Tertius-Prior. 
 
 The higher dignitaries, all omitted here, "flush suddenly
 
 80 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 red in the face ; " but have nothing to say. One curious fact 
 and question certainly is, How Hugo Third-Prior, who was 
 of the electoral committee, came to nominate himself as one 
 of the Three ? A curious fact, which Hugo Third-Prior has 
 never yet entirely explained, that I know of ! However, we 
 return, and report to the King our Three names ; merely alter- 
 ing the order; putting Samson last, as lowest of all. The 
 King, at recitation of our Three, asks us : " Who are they ? 
 Were they born in my domain ? Totally unknown to me ! 
 You must nominate three others." Whereupon Willelinus 
 Sacrista says, " Our Prior must be named, quia caput nostrum 
 est, being already our head." And the Prior responds, " Willel- 
 mus Sacrista is a fit man, bonus vir est" for all his red hose. 
 Tickle me, Toby, and I '11 tickle thee ! Venerable Dennis too 
 is named ; none in his conscience can say nay. There are now 
 Six on our List. "Well," said the King, "they have done 
 it swiftly, they ! Deus est cum eis." The Monks withdraw 
 again ; and Majesty revolves, for a little, with his Pares and 
 Episcopi, Lords or " Law-wards " and Soul-Overseers, the 
 thoughts of the royal breast. The Monks wait silent in an 
 outer room. 
 
 In short while, they are next ordered, To add yet another 
 three ; but not from their own Convent ; from other Convents, 
 " for the honor of my kingdom." Here, what is to be done 
 here ? We will demur, if need be ! We do name three, how- 
 ever, for the nonce : the Prior of St. Faith's, a good Monk of 
 St. Neot's, a good Monk of St. Alban's ; good men all ; all 
 made abbots and dignitaries since, at this hour. There are 
 now Nine upon our List. What the thoughts of the Domi- 
 nus Kex may be farther ? The Dominus Rex, thanking gra- 
 ciously, sends out word that we shall now strike off three. 
 The three strangers are instantly struck off. Willelmus Sa- 
 crista adds, that he will of his own accord decline, a touch 
 of grace and respect for the Sacrosancta, even in Willelmus ! 
 The King then orders us to strike off a couple more ; then yet 
 one more : Hugo Third-Prior goes, and Roger Cellerarius, and 
 venerable Monk Dennis ; and now there remain on our List 
 two only, Samson Subsacrista and the Prior.
 
 CHAP. VIII. THE ELECTION. 81 
 
 Which of these two ? It were hard to say, by Monks 
 who may get themselves foot-gyved and thrown into limbo for 
 speaking ! We humbly request that the Bishop of Winchester 
 and Geoffrey the Chancellor may again enter, and help us to 
 decide. " Which do you want ? " asks the Bishop. Venerable 
 Dennis made a speech, " commending the persons of the Prior 
 and Samson ; but always in the corner of his discourse, in 
 anyulo sui sermonis, brought Samson in." " I see ! " said the 
 Bishop: "We are to understand that your Prior is somewhat 
 remiss ; that you want to have him you call Samson for 
 Abbot/' "Either of them is good," said venerable Dennis, 
 almost trembling; "but we would have the better, if it pleased 
 God.' v "Which of the two do you want?" inquires the Bishop 
 pointedly. " Samson ! " answered Dennis ; " Samson ! " echoed 
 all of the rest that durst speak or echo anything : and Samson 
 is reported to the King accordingly. His Majesty, advising of 
 it for a moment, orders that Samson be brought in with the 
 other Twelve. 
 
 The King's Majesty, looking at us somewhat sternly, then 
 says : " You present to me Samson ; I do not know him : had 
 it been your Prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted 
 him: however, I will now do as you wish. But have a care 
 of yourselves. By the true eyes of God, per veros oculos Dei, 
 if you manage badly, I will be upon you ! " Samson, there- 
 fore, steps forward, kisses the King's feet ; but swiftly rises 
 erect again, swiftly turns towards the altar, uplifting with the 
 other Twelve, in clear tenor-note, the Fifty -first Psalm, "Mis- 
 erere mei Deus, 
 
 After thy loving-kindness, Lord, 
 Have mercy upon mr, ; " 
 
 with firm voice, firm step and head, no change in his coun- 
 tenance whatever. "By God's eyes," said the King, "that 
 one, I think, will govern the Abbey well." By the same oath 
 (charged to your Majesty's account), I too am precisely of that 
 opinion ! It is some while since I fell in with a likelier man 
 anywhere than this new Ablnit Samson. Long life to him, 
 and may the Lord hare mercy on him as Abbot! 
 
 TOL. XII.
 
 82 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 
 
 Thus, then, have the St. Edmuudsbury Monks, without ex- 
 press ballot-box or other good winnowing-machine, contrived 
 to accomplish the most important social feat a body of men 
 can do, to winnow out the man that is to govern them : and 
 truly one sees not that, by any winnowing-machine whatever, 
 they could have done it better. ye kind Heavens, there 
 is in every Nation and Community a fittest, a wisest, bravest, 
 best ; whom could we find and make King over us, all were in 
 very truth well; the best that God and Nature had per- 
 mitted us to make it ! By what art discover him ? Will 
 the Heavens in their pity teach us no art; for our need of 
 him is great! 
 
 Ballot-boxes, Eeform Bills, winnowing-machines : all these 
 are good, or are not so good; alas, brethren, how can these, 
 I say, be other than inadequate, be other than failures, melan- 
 choly to behold ? Dim all souls of men to the divine, the 
 high and awful meaning of Human Worth and Truth, we shall 
 never, by all the machinery in Birmingham, discover the True 
 and Worthy. It is written, " if we are ourselves valets, there 
 shall exist no hero for us ; we shall not know the hero when 
 we see him ; " we shall take the quack for a hero ; and cry, 
 audibly through all ballot-boxes and machinery whatsoever, 
 Thou art he ; be thou King over us ! 
 
 What boots it ? Seek only deceitful Speciosity, money with 
 gilt carriages, "fame" with newspaper-paragraphs, whatever 
 name it bear, you will find only deceitful Speciosity ; godlike 
 Reality will be forever far from you. The Quack shall be 
 legitimate inevitable King of you ; no earthly machinery able 
 to exclude the Quack. Ye shall be born thralls of the Quack, 
 and suffer under him, till your hearts are near broken, and no 
 French Revolution or Manchester Insurrection, or partial or 
 universal volcanic combustions and explosions, never so many, 
 can do more than " change the figure of your Quack ; " the 
 essence of him remaining, for a time and times. "How long, 
 O Prophet ? " say some, with a rather melancholy sneer. Alas, 
 ye ^prophetic, ever till this come about : Till deep misery, if 
 nothing softer will, have driven you out of your Speciosities 
 info your Sincerities ; and you find that there either is a God-
 
 CHAP. IX. ABBOT SAMSON. 
 
 like in the world, or else ye are an unintelligible madness; 
 that there is a God, as well as a Mammon and a Devil, and a 
 Genius of Luxuries and canting Dilettantisms and Vain Shows ! 
 How long that will be, compute for yourselves. My unhappy 
 brothers ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ABBOT SAMSON. 
 
 So, then, the bells of St. Edmundsbury clang out one and 
 all, and in church and chapel the organs go : Convent and 
 Town, and all the west side of Suffolk, are in gala; knights, 
 viscounts, weavers, spinners, the entire population, male and 
 female, young and old, the very sockmen with their chubby 
 infants, out to have a holiday, and see the Lord Abbot 
 arrive ! And there is " stripping barefoot " of the Lord Ab- 
 bot at the Gate, and solemn leading of him in to the High 
 Altar and Shrine ; with sudden " silence of all the bells and 
 organs," as we kneel in deep prayer there ; and again with 
 outburst of all the bells and organs, and loud Te Deum from 
 the general human windpipe ; and speeches by the leading 
 viscount, and giving of the kiss of brotherhood; the whole 
 wound up with popular games, and dinner within doors of 
 more than a thousand strong, plus yuam millc comedcntibus in 
 fjnudio mayno. 
 
 In such manner is the self-same Samson once again re- 
 turning to us, welcomed on this occasion. He that went away 
 with his frock-skirts looped over his arm, comes back riding 
 high ; suddenly made one of the dignitaries of this world. 
 Reflective readers will admit that here was a trial for a man. 
 Yesterday a poor mendicant, allowed to possess not above 
 two shillings of money, and without authority to bid a dog 
 run for him. this man to-day finds himself a Dnminus AMxtx, 
 mitred Peer of Parliament, Lord of manor-houses, farms,
 
 84 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 manors, and wide lands ; a man with " Fifty Knights under 
 him," and dependent, swiftly obedient multitudes of men. 
 It is a change greater than Napoleon's ; so sudden withal. 
 As if one of the Chandos day-drudges had, on awakening some 
 morning, found that he overnight was become Duke ! Let 
 Samson with his clear-beaming eyes see into that, and dis- 
 cern it if he can. We shall now get the measure of him by 
 a new scale of inches, considerably more rigorous than the 
 former was. For if a noble soul is rendered tenfold beauti- 
 fuler by victory and prosperity, springing now radiant as 
 into his own due element and sun-throne ; an ignoble one is 
 rendered tenfold and hundred-fold uglier, pitifuler. What- 
 soever vices, whatsoever weaknesses were in the man, the 
 parvenu will show us them enlarged, as in the solar micro- 
 scope, into frightful distortion. Nay, how many mere semi- 
 nal principles of vice, hitherto all wholesomely kept latent, 
 may we now see unfolded, as in the solar hot-house, into 
 growth, into huge universally-conspicuous luxuriance and de- 
 velopment ! 
 
 But is not this, at any rate, a singular aspect of what politi- 
 cal and social capabilities, nay, let us say, what depth and 
 opulence of true social vitality, lay in those old barbarous 
 ages, That the fit Governor could be met with under such dis- 
 guises, could be recognized and laid hold of under such ? 
 Here he is discovered with a maximum of two shillings in 
 his pocket, and a leather scrip round his neck ; trudging 
 along the highway, his frock-skirts looped over his arm. 
 They think this is he nevertheless, the true Governor ; and 
 he proves to be so. Brethren, have we no need of discovering 
 true Governors, but will sham ones forever do for us ? These 
 were absurd superstitious blockheads of Monks ; and we are 
 enlightened Tenpound Franchisers, without taxes on knowl- 
 edge ! Where, I say, are our superior, are our similar or at 
 all comparable discoveries ? We also have eyes, or ought to 
 have; we have hustings, telescopes; we have lights, link- 
 lights and rush-lights of an enlightened free Press, burning 
 and dancing everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance ; singe-
 
 CHAP. IX. ABBOT SAMSON. 85 
 
 ing your whiskers as you traverse the public thoroughfares in 
 town and country. Great souls, true Governors, go about 
 under all manner of disguises now as then. Such telescopes, 
 such enlightenment, and such discovery ! How conies it, I 
 say ; how comes it ? Is it not lamentable ; is it not even, in 
 some sense, amazing ? 
 
 Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is 
 less a defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those super- 
 stitious blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, 
 but they had still an eye ; not ballot-boxes ; only reverence 
 for Worth, abhorrence of Uuworth. It is the way with all 
 barbarians. Thus Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes 
 would gather in liveliest gaudeamus, and sing, and kindle bon- 
 fires, and wreathe crowns of honor, and solemnly thank the 
 gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shown himself. As 
 indeed they well might ; for what usef uler, I say not nobler 
 and heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kind- 
 est, send to any Tribe or Nation, in any time or circum- 
 stances ? I declare to thee, my afflicted quack-ridden brother, 
 in spite of thy astonishment, it is very lamentable ! We 
 English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been made for 
 a hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun ; and do we 
 kindle bonfires, or thank the gods ? Not at all. We, taking 
 due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the 
 Burgh of Dumfries ; and pique ourselves on our " patronage of 
 genius." 
 
 Genius, Poet : do we know what these words mean ? An 
 inspired Soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's 
 own great fire-heart, to see the Truth, and speak it, and do it ; 
 Nature's own sacred voice heard once more athwart the dreary 
 boundless element of hearsay ing and canting, of twaddle and 
 poltroonery, in which the bewildered Earth, nigh perishing, 
 has lost its u-ay. Hear once more, ye bewildered benighted 
 mortals ; listen once again to a voice from the inner Light-sea 
 and Flame-sea, Nature's and Truth's own heart ; know the 
 Fact of your Existence what it is, put away the Cant of it 
 which it is not ; and knowing, do, and let it be well with 
 you !
 
 86 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 George the Third is Defender of something we call "the 
 Faith " in those years ; George the Third is head charioteer of 
 the Destinies of England, to guide them through the gulf of 
 French Revolutions, American Independences ; and Eobert 
 Burns is Gauger of ale in Dumfries. It is an Iliad in a nut- 
 shell. The physiognomy of a world now verging towards 
 dissolution, reduced now to spasms and death-throes, lies pic- 
 tured in that one fact, which astonishes nobody, except at 
 me for being astonished at it. The fruit of long ages of con- 
 
 confirmed as inia-a_Lassr_of-Nature ; 
 
 cloth-worship and o^uack-worship : entirely confirmed Valet- 
 hood, which will have to imconfirm itself again ; God knows, 
 with difficulty enough ! 
 
 Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation ; 
 rain beating through it, material rain and metaphorical, from 
 all quarters of the compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking 
 nightly, and doing mere tacenda. Our larders are reduced to 
 leanness, Jew harpies and unclean creatures our purveyors ; 
 in our basket is no bread. Old women with their distaffs rush 
 out on a distressed Cellarer in shrill Chartism. " You cannot 
 stir abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon you with un- 
 settled bonds ; " debts boundless seemingly as the National 
 Debt of England. For four years our new Lord Abbot never 
 went abroad but Jew creditors and Christian, and all manner 
 of creditors, were about him ; driving him to very despair. 
 Our Prior is remiss ; our Cellarers, officials are remiss ; our 
 monks are remiss : what man is not remiss ? Front this, 
 Samson, thou alone art there to front it ; it is thy task to 
 front and fight this, and to die or kill it. May the Lord have 
 mercy on thee ! 
 
 To our antiquarian interest in poor Jocelin and his Convent, 
 where the whole aspect of existence, the whole dialect, of 
 thought, of speech, of activity, is so obsolete, strange, long- 
 vanished, there now superadds itself a mild glow of human 
 interest for Abbot Samson ; a real pleasure, as at sight of 
 man's work, especially of governing, which is man's highest 
 work, done well. Abbot Samson had no experience in govern-
 
 CHAP. IX. ABBOT SAMSON. 87 
 
 ing; had served no apprenticeship to the trade of governing, 
 alas, only the hardest apprenticeship to that of obeying. 
 He had never in any court given radium or plegium, says Joce- 
 lin ; hardly ever seen a court, when he was set to preside in 
 one. But it is astonishing, continues Jocelin, how soon he 
 learned the ways of business ; and, in all sort of affairs, became 
 expert beyond others. ( )f the many persons offering him their 
 service, " he retained one Knight skilled in taking vadia and 
 pley'ia ; " and within the year was himself well skilled. Nay, 
 by and by, the Pope appoints him Justiciary in certain causes ; 
 /the King one of his new Circuit Judges ; official Osbert is 
 heard saying, " That Abbot is one of your shrewd ones, dis- 
 putator est ; if he go on as he begins, he will cut out every 
 lawyer of us ! " * 
 
 Why not ? "What is to hinder this Samson from govern- 
 ing? There is in him what far transcends all apprentice- 
 ships ; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, 
 something to govern by ! There exists in him a heart-abhor- 
 rence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious, 
 that is to say, chaotic, ?igoverned ; of the Devil, not of God. 
 A man of this kind cannot help governing ! He lias the living 
 ideal of a governor in him ; and the incessant necessity of 
 struggling to unfold the same out of him. Not the Devil or 
 Chaos, for any wages, will he serve ; no, this man is the born 
 servant of Another than them. Alas, how little avail all aj>- 
 prenticeships, when there is in your governor himself what 
 we may well call nothing to govern by : nothing ; a gen- 
 eral gray twilight, looming with shapes of expediencies, par- 
 liamentary traditions, division-lists, election-funds, leading- 
 articles; this, with what of vulpine alertness and adroitness 
 soever, is not much! 
 
 But indeed what say we, apprenticeship ? Had not this 
 Samson served, in his way, a right good apprenticeship to 
 governing; namely, the harshest slave-apprenticeship to obey- 
 ing ! Walk this world with no friend in it but God and 
 St. Edmund, you will either fall into the ditch, or learn a 
 good many things. X^p leajn_oJjeyig-4--4he^fiindamental art 
 1 Jocelini L'hronica, p. 25.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II 
 
 of governing;'- How much would many a Serene Highness 
 have learned, had he travelled through the world with water- 
 jug and empty wallet, sine omni expensa and, at his victorious 
 return, sat down not to newspaper-paragraphs and city-illumi- 
 nations, but at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles 
 and bread-and-water ! He that cannot be servant of many, 
 will never be master, true guide and deliverer of many ; 
 that is the meaning of true mastership. Had not the Monk- 
 life extraordinary " political capabilities " in it ; if not imitable 
 by us, yet enviable ? Heavens, had a Duke of Logwood, now 
 rolling sumptuously to his place in the Collective Wisdom, but 
 himself happened to plough daily, at one time, on seveu-and- 
 sixpence a week, with no outdoor relief, what a light, un- 
 quenchable by logic and statistic and arithmetic, would it have 
 thrown on several things for him ! 
 
 In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious 
 Mrs. Glass : " First catch your hare ! " First get your man ; 
 all is got : he can learn to do all things, from making boots, 
 to decreeing judgments, governing communities ; and will do 
 them like a man. Catch your no-man, alas, have you not 
 caught the terriblest Tartar in the world ! Perhaps all the 
 terribler, the quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief 
 that one blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so 
 feracious, teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering 
 will sum up. The quack bootmaker is considerable ; as corn- 
 cutters can testify, and desperate men reduced to buckskin 
 and list-shoes. But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the 
 quack king ! Why do not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, 
 to stop him, as they would a conflagration ? Surely a just 
 citizen is admonished by God and his own Soul, by all silent 
 and articulate voices of this Universe, to do what in him lies 
 towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of a world 
 that groans under him. Run swiftly ; relieve him, were it 
 even by extinguishing him ! For all things have grown so old. 
 tinder-dry, combustible ; and he is more ruinous than confla- 
 gration. Sweep him down, at least ; keep him strictly within 
 the hearth : he will then cease to be conflagration ; he will 
 then become useful, more or less, as culinary tire. Fire is
 
 CHAP. X. GOVERNMENT. 89 
 
 the best of servants ; but what a master ! This poor block- 
 head too is born for uses : why, elevating him to mastership, 
 will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or world-curse 
 of him? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 How Abbot Samson, giving his new subjects seriatim the 
 kiss of fatherhood in the St. Edmundsbury chapter-house, 
 proceeded with cautious energy to set about reforming their 
 disjointed distracted way of life ; how he managed with his 
 Fifty rough Milites (Feudal Knights), with his lazy Farmers, 
 remiss refractory Monks, with Pope's Legates, Viscounts, 
 Bishops, Kings ; how on all sides he laid about him like a 
 man, and putting consequence on premise, and everywhere 
 the saddle on the right horse, struggled incessantly to educe 
 organic method out of lazily fermenting wreck, the careful 
 reader will discern, not without true interest, in these pages 
 of Jocelin Boswell. In most antiquarian quaint costume, not 
 of garments alone, but of thought, word, action, outlook and 
 position, the substantial figure of a man with eminent nose, 
 busliy brows and clear-flashing eyes, his russet beard growing 
 daily grayer, is visible, engaged in true governing of men. It 
 is beautiful how the chrysalis governing-soul, shaking off its 
 dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a tme royal 
 soul ! Our new Abbot has a right honest unconscious fooling, 
 without insolence as without fear or flutter, of what he is and 
 what others are. A courage to quell the proudest, an honest 
 pity to encourage the humblest. Withal there is a noble 
 reticence in this Lord Abbot : much vain unreason ho hoars ; 
 lays up without response. He is not there to expect reason 
 and nobleness of others ; he is there to give them of his own 
 roason and nobleness. Is he not their servant, as wo said, 
 who can suffer from them, and for them ; lx?ar the burden 
 their poor spindle-limbs totter and stagger under ; and, in
 
 90 PAST AND PRESENT. BOO* II. 
 
 virtue of being their servant, govern them, lead them out of 
 weakness into strength, out of defeat into victory ! 
 
 One of the first Herculean Labors Abbot Samson under- 
 took, or the very first, was to institute a strenuous review 
 and radical reform of his economics. It is the first labor 
 of every governing man, from Paterfamilias to Dominus Rex. 
 To get the rain thatched out from you is the preliminary of 
 whatever farther, in the way of speculation or of action, you 
 may mean to do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw, had 
 become empty, filled with deficit and wind. To see his 
 account-books clear, be delivered from those ravening flights 
 of Jew and Christian creditors, pouncing on him like obscene 
 harpies wherever he showed face, was a necessity for Abbot 
 Samson. 
 
 On the morrow after his instalment he brings in a load of 
 money-bonds, all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other 
 Convent Seal : frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless con- 
 fusion of Convent finance. There they are j but there at 
 least they all are ; all that shall be of them. Our Lord Abbot 
 demands that all the official seals in use among us be now 
 produced and delivered to him. Three-and-thirty seals turn 
 up ; are straightway broken, and shall seal no more : the 
 Abbot only, and those duly authorized by him, shall seal any 
 bond. There are but two ways of paying debt: increase 
 of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it 
 out. With iron energy, in slow but steady undeviating per- 
 severance, Abbot Samson sets to work in both directions. 
 His troubles are manifold : cunning mHites, unjust bailiffs, 
 lazy sockmen, he an inexperienced Abbot ; relaxed lazy monks, 
 not disinclined to mutiny in mass : but continued vigilance, 
 rigorous method, what we call " the eye of the master," work 
 wonders. The clear-beaming eyesight of Abbot Samson, stead- 
 fast, severe, all-penetrating, it is like Fiat hix in that inor- 
 ganic waste whirlpool ; penetrates gradually to all nooks, and 
 of the chaos makes a kosmos or ordered world ! 
 
 He arranges everywhere, struggles uuweariedly to arrange, 
 and place on some intelligible footing, the " affairs and dues,
 
 CHAP. X. GOVERNMENT. 91 
 
 res ac redditus," of his dominion. The Lakenheath eels cease 
 to breed squabbles between human beings ; the penny of reap- 
 rilver to explode into the streets the Female Chartism of St. 
 Edmundsbury. These and innumerable greater things. Where- 
 soever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care ; here is 
 the man that has declared war with it, that never will make 
 peace with it. Man is the Missionary of Order ; he is the 
 servant not of the Devil and Chaos, but of God and the Uni- 
 verse ! Let all sluggards and cowards, remiss, false-spoken, 
 unjust, and otherwise diabolic persons have a care : this is 
 a dangerous man for them. He has a mild grave face ; a 
 thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity : but there is a terrible 
 Hash of anger in him too ; lazy monks often have to mmrmur, 
 " Sccvit ut lupus, He rages like a wolf ; was not our Dream 
 true ! " " To repress and hold in such sudden anger he was 
 continually careful," and succeeded well : right, Samson ; 
 that it may become in thee as noble central heat, fruitful, 
 strong, beneficent ; not blaze out, or the seldomest possible 
 blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to scorch and consume ! 
 
 " We must first creep, and gradually learn to walk," had 
 Abbot Samson said of himself, at starting. In four years he 
 has become a great walker ; striding prosperously along ; 
 driving much before him. In less than four years, says Joce- 
 lin, the Convent Debts were all liquidated : the harpy Jews 
 not only settled with, but banished, bag and baggage, out of 
 the Bannuleiiffi (Liberties, Banlieue) of St. Edmundsbury, 
 so has the King's Majesty been persuaded to permit. Fare- 
 well to yon, at any rate ; let us, in no extremity, apply again 
 to you ! Armed men march them over the borders, dismiss 
 them under stern penalties, sentence of excommunication 
 on all that shall again harbor them here : there were many 
 dry eyes at their departure. 
 
 New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the Incu- 
 bus of Debt once rolled away. Samson hastes not ; but neither 
 does he pause to rest. This of the Finance is a life-long busi- 
 ness with him ; Jocelin's anecdotes are filled to weariness with 
 it. As indeed to Jocelin it was of very primary interest.
 
 92 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that 
 spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery 
 as material. With due rigor, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bi- 
 bations and tacenda are, at the earliest opportunity, softly yet 
 irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end ; 
 even the building where they used to be carried on was razed 
 from the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and " on its place grow rows 
 of beans : " Willelmus himself, deposed from the Sacristy and 
 all offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute taciturnity un- 
 broken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor Willel- 
 mus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some 
 slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor, now grown, in 
 a manner, indispensable to the poor man ? Jocelin hints not ; 
 one knows not how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, 
 it was in silence and darkness ; with an ever-present feeling 
 that teetotalism was his only true course. Drunken disso- 
 lute Monks are a class of persons who had better keep out 
 of Abbot Samson's way. Scevit ut lupus ; was not the Dream 
 true ! murmured many a Monk. Nay Kanulf de Glanvill, 
 Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these strict 
 ways ; and watched farther with suspicion : but discerned 
 gradually that there was nothing wrong, that there was much 
 the opposite of wrong. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE ABBOT'S WAYS. 
 
 ABBOT SAMSON showed no extraordinary favor to the Monks 
 who had been his familiars of old ; did not promote them to 
 offices, nisi essent idonei, unless they chanced to be fit men ! 
 Whence great discontent among certain of these, who had con- 
 tributed to make him Abbot : reproaches, open and secret, of 
 his being "ungrateful, hard-tempered, unsocial, a Norfolk 
 barrator and paltenerius." 
 
 Indeed, except it were for idonei, " fit men," in all kinds, it
 
 CHAP. XL THE ABBOT'S WAYS. 93 
 
 was hard to say for whom Abbot Samson had much favor. He 
 loved his kindred well, and tenderly enough acknowledged 
 the poor part of them j with the rich part, who in old days 
 had never acknowledged him, he totally refused to have any 
 business. But even the former he did not promote into offices ; 
 finding none of them idonei. " Some whom he thought suit- 
 able he put into situations in his own household, or made 
 keepers of his country places : if they behaved ill, he dis- 
 missed them without hope of return." In his promotions, 
 nay almost in his benefits, you would have said there was a 
 certain impartiality. " The official person who had, by Abbot 
 Hugo's order, put the fetters on him at his return from Italy, 
 was now supported with food and clothes to the end of his 
 days at Abbot Samson's expense." 
 
 Yet he did not forget benefits; far the reverse, when an 
 opportunity occurred of paying them at his own cost. How 
 pay them at the public cost ; how, above all, by setting fire 
 to the public, as we said ; clapping " conflagrations " on the 
 public, which the services of blockheads, non-idonei, intrinsi- 
 cally are ! He was right willing to remember friends, when 
 it could be done. Take these instances : " A certain chaplain 
 who had maintained him at the Schools of Paris by the sale 
 of holy water, qurrstu aqua* benedicta* ; to this good chaplain 
 he did give a vicarage, adequate to -the comfortable sustenance 
 of him." " The Son of Elias too, that is, of old Abbot Hugo's 
 Cupbearer, coming to do homage for his Father's land, our 
 Lord Abbot said to him in full Court : ' I have, for these seven 
 years, put off taking thy homage for the land which Abbot 
 Hugo gave thy Father, because that gift was to the damage 
 of Elmswell, and a questionable one : but now I must profess 
 myself overcome ; mindful of the kindness thy Father did me 
 when I was in bonds ; because he sent me a cup of the very 
 wine his master had been drinking, and bade me be comforted 
 in God.' " 
 
 "To Magister Walter, son of Magister William de Dice, who 
 wanted the vicarage of Chevington, he answered : 'Thy Father 
 was Master of the Schools ; and when I was an indigent 
 clcricus, he granted me freely and in charity an entrance to
 
 94 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n. 
 
 liis School, and opportunity of learning; wherefore I now, 
 for the sake of God, grant to thee what thou askest.' " Or 
 lastly, take this good instance, and a glimpse, along with 
 it, into long-obsolete times : " Two Milites of Kisby, Willelm 
 and Norman, being adjudged in Court to come under his 
 mercy, in misericordia ejus," for a certain very considerable 
 fine of twenty shillings, "he thus addressed them publicly 
 on the spot : ' When I was a Cloister-monk, I was once sent 
 to Durham on business of our Church; and coming home 
 again, the dark night caught me at Kisby, and I had to beg 
 a lodging there. I went to Dominus Norman's, and he gave 
 me a flat refusal. Going then to Dominus Willelm's, and 
 begging hospitality, I was by him honorably received. The 
 twenty shillings therefore of mercy, I, without mercy, will 
 exact from Dominus Norman; to Dominus Willelm, on the 
 other hand, I, with thanks, will wholly remit the said sum.' " 
 Men know not always to whom they refuse lodgings ; men 
 have lodged Angels unawares ! 
 
 It is clear Abbot Samson had a talent ; he had learned to 
 judge better than Lawyers, to manage better than bred Bai- 
 liffs : a talent shining out indisputable, on whatever side 
 you took him. "An eloquent man he was," says Jocelin, 
 " both in French and Latin ; but intent more on the substance 
 and method of what was to be said, than on the ornamental 
 way of saying it. He could read English Manuscripts very 
 elegantly, elegantissime : he was wont to preach to the people 
 in the English tongue, though according to the dialect of Nor- 
 folk, where he had been brought up ; wherefore indeed he had 
 caused a Pulpit to be erected in our Church both for ornament, 
 of the same, and for the use of his audiences." There preached 
 he, according to the dialect of Norfolk : a man worth going to 
 hear. 
 
 That he was a just clear-hearted man, this, as the basis of all 
 true talent, is presupposed. How can a man, without clear 
 vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the 
 head ? It is impossible ! Abbot Samson was one of the just- 
 est of judges ; insisted on understanding the case to the bottom,
 
 CHAT. XI. THE ABBOT'S WAYS. 95 
 
 and then swiftly decided without feud or favor. For which 
 reason, indeed, the Doininus Rex, searching for such men, as 
 for hidden treasure and healing to his distressed realm, had 
 made him one of the new Itinerant Judges, such as continue 
 to this day. " My curse on that Abbot's court," a suitor was 
 heard imprecating, " Maledicta sit curia istius Abbatis, where 
 neither gold nor silver can help me to confound my enemy ! " 
 And old friendships and all connections forgotten, when you 
 go to seek an office from him ! " A kinless loon," as the 
 Scotch said of Cromwell's new judges, intent on mere indif- 
 ferent fair-play ! 
 
 Eloquence in three languages is good ; but it is not the best. 
 To us, as already hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less 
 admirable than his /^eloquence, his great invaluable ''talent of 
 silence " ! " ' Deus, Deris,' said the Lord Abbot to me once, 
 when he heard the Convent were murmuring at some act of 
 his, ' I have much need to remember that Dream they had of 
 me, that I was to rage among them like a wolf. Above all 
 earthly things I dread their driving me to do it. How much 
 do I hold in, and wink at ; raging and shuddering in my own 
 secret mind, and not outwardly at all ! ' He would boast to 
 me at other times: 'This and that I have seen, this and that 
 I have heard ; yet patiently stood it.' He had this way, too, 
 which I have never seen in any other man, that he affection- 
 ately loved many persons to whom he never or hardly ever 
 showed a countenance of love. Once on my venturing to 
 expostulate with him on the subject, he reminded me of Solo- 
 mon : ' Many sons I have ; it is not fit that I shoulc 1 . smile on 
 them.' He would suffer faults, damage from his servants, and 
 know what he suffered, and not speak of it ; but I think the 
 reason was, he waited a good time for speaking of it, and in 
 a wise way amending it. He intimated, openly in chapter to 
 us all, that he would have no eavesdropping : ' Let none,' said 
 he, 'come to me secretly accusing another, unless he will pub- 
 licly stand to the same ; if he come otherwise, I will openly 
 proclaim the name of him. I wish, too, that every Monk of 
 you have free access to me, to speak of your needs or griev- 
 ances when you will,'"
 
 96 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 The kinds of people Abbot Samson liked worst were these 
 three : " Mendaces, ebriosi, verbosi, Liars, drunkards and wordy 
 or windy persons ; " not good kinds, any of them ! He also 
 much condemned " persons given to murmur at their meat or 
 drink, especially Monks of that disposition." We remark, 
 from the very first, his strict anxious order to his servants to 
 provide handsomely for hospitality, to guard " above all things 
 that there be no shabbiness in the matter of meat and drink ; 
 no look of mean parsimony, in novitate meet, at the beginning 
 of my Abbotship ; " and to the last he maintains a due opu- 
 lence of table and equipment for others ; but he is himself in 
 the highest degree indifferent to all such things. 
 
 " Sweet milk, honey and other naturally sweet kinds of food, 
 were what he preferred to eat : but he had this virtue," says 
 Jocelin, " he never changed the dish (ferculum) you set before 
 him, be what it might. Once when I, still a novice, happened 
 to be waiting table in the refectory, it came into my head 
 [rogue that I was !] to try if this were true ; and I thought 
 I would place before him a ferculum that would have dis- 
 pleased any other person, the very platter being black and 
 broken. But he, seeing it, was as one that saw it not : and 
 BOW some little delay taking place, my heart smote me that 
 I had done this ; and so, snatching up the platter (discris), I 
 changed both it and its contents for a better, and put down 
 that instead ; which emendation he was angry at, and rebuked 
 me for," the stoical monastic man ! " For the first seven 
 years he had commonly four sorts of dishes on his table ; after- 
 wards only three, except it might be presents, or venison from 
 his own parks, or fishes from his ponds. And if, at any time, 
 he had guests living in his house at the request of some great 
 person, or of some friend, or had public messengers, or had 
 harpers (citharordos), or any one of that sort, he took the first 
 opportunity of shifting to another of his Manor-houses, and so 
 got rid of such superfluous individuals," 1 very prudently, 
 I think. 
 
 As to his parks, of these, in the general repair of buildings, 
 general improvement and adornment of the St. Edmund 
 1 Jocclini Chrom'ca. p. 31.
 
 CHAP. XI. THE ABBOT'S WAYS. 97 
 
 Domains, " he had laid out several, and stocked them with ani- 
 mals, retaining a proper huntsman with hounds : and, if any 
 guest of great quality were there, our Lord Abbot with his 
 Monks would sit in some opening of the woods, and see the 
 dogs run ; but he himself never meddled with hunting, that I 
 saw. 
 
 " 
 
 " In an opening of the woods ; " for the country was still 
 dark with wood in those days ; and Scotland itself still rustled 
 shaggy and leafy, like a damp black American Forest, with 
 cleared spots and spaces here and there. Dryasdust advances 
 several absurd hypotheses as to the insensible but almost total 
 disappearance of these woods ; the thick wreck of which now 
 lies as peat, sometimes with huge heart-of-oak timber-logs 
 imbedded in it, on many a height and hollow. The simplest 
 reason doubtless is, that by increase of husbandry, there was 
 increase of cattle ; increase of hunger for green spring food ; 
 and so, more and more, the new seedlings got yearly eaten out 
 in April ; and the old trees, having only a certain length of life 
 in them, died gradually, no man heeding it, and disappeared 
 into peat. 
 
 A sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbrage ! Yes, but a 
 very common one; the course of most things in this world. 
 Monachism itself, so rich and fruitful once, is now all rotted 
 into peat ; lies sleek and buried, and a most feeble bog-grass 
 of Dilettantism all the crop we reap from it ! That also was 
 frightful waste ; perhaps among the saddest our England ever 
 saw. Why will men destroy noble Forests, even when in part 
 a nuisance, in such reckless manner ; turning loose four-footed 
 cattle and Henry-the-Eighths into them ! The fifth part of our 
 English soil, Dryasdust computes, lay consecrated to " spiritual 
 uses," better or worse ; solemnly set apart to foster spiritual 
 growth and culture of the soul, by the methods then known : 
 and now it too, like the four-fifths, fosters what? Gentle 
 shepherd, tell me what ! 
 
 1 Jocelini Chronica, p. 21, 
 TOL. ij. 7
 
 98 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 THE troubles of Abbot Samson, as he went long in this 
 abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue can 
 tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head, he knew rest no 
 more. Double, double toil and trouble ; that is the life of all 
 governors that really govern : not the spoil of victory,, only the 
 glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot Samson found all 
 men more or less headstrong, irrational, prone to disorder ; 
 continually threatening to prove imgovernable. 
 
 His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. "My heart is tor- 
 tured," said he, " till we get out of debt, cor meum o-uciatum 
 est" Your heart, indeed ; but not altogether ours ! By no 
 devisable method, or none of three or four that he devised, 
 could Abbot Samson get these Monks of his to keep their ac- 
 counts straight ; but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius 
 at the end of the term is in* a coil, in a flat deficit, verging 
 again towards debt and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last de- 
 clares sternly he will keep our accounts too himself ; will ap- 
 point an officer of his own to see our Cellerarius keep them. 
 Murmurs thereupon among us : Was the like ever heard ? 
 Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very Townsfolk know it: sub- 
 sannatio et derisio sumus, we have become a laughing-stock to 
 mankind. The Norfolk barrator and paltener ! 
 
 And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere 
 economic department, how much in more complex ones, in 
 spiritual ones perhaps ! He wears a stern calm face ; raging 
 and gnashing teeth, fremens and frendens, many times, in the 
 secret of his mind. Withal, however, there is a noble slow 
 perseverance in him ; a strength of " subdued rage " calculated 
 to subdue most things : always, in the long-run, he contrives 
 to gain his point.
 
 CHAP. XII. THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES. 99 
 
 Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail; ever 
 deeper murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on 
 slight cause, some drop making the cup run over, they burst 
 into open mutiny : the Cellarer will not obey, prefers arrest on 
 bread-and-water to obeying ; the Monks thereupon strike work ; 
 refuse to do the regular chanting of the day, at least the 
 younger part of them with loud clamor and uproar refuse : 
 Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence, acting only 
 by messengers : the awful report circulates through St. Ed- 
 mundsbury that the Abbot is in danger of being murdered by 
 the Monks with their knives ! How wilt thou appease this, 
 Abbot Samson ! Return ; for the Monastery seems near catch- 
 ing fire ! 
 
 Abbot Samson returns ; sits in his Talamus, or inner room, 
 hurls out a bolt or two of excommunication : lo, one disobe- 
 dient Monk sits in limbo, excommunicated, with foot-shackles 
 on him, all day ; and three more our Abbot has gyved " with 
 the lesser sentence, to strike fear into the others " ! Let the 
 others think with whom they have to do. The others think ; 
 and fear enters into them. " On the morrow morning we 
 decide on humbling ourselves before the Abbot, by word and 
 gesture, in order to mitigate his mind. And so accordingly 
 was done. He, on the other side, replying with much humility, 
 yet always alleging his own justice and turning the blame on 
 us, when he saw that we were conquered, became himself con- 
 quered. And bursting into tears, perfusus lachrymis, he swore 
 that he had never grieved so much for anything in the world 
 as for this, first on his own account, and then secondly and 
 chiefly for the public scandal which had gone abroad, that St. 
 Edmund's Monks were going to kill their Abbot. And when 
 he had narrated how he went away on purpose till his anger 
 should cool, repeating this word of the philosopher, 'I would 
 have taken vengeance on thee, had not I been angry,' he 
 arose weeping, and embraced each and all of us with the kiss 
 of peace. He wept ; we all wept : " * what a picture ! Be- 
 have better, ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an 
 Abbot ; or know at least that ye must and shall obey him. 
 
 1 Jocrlini Chronica, p. 85.
 
 100 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 Worn down in this manner, with incessant toil and tribula- 
 tion, Abbot Samson had a sore time of it ; his grizzled hair and 
 beard grew daily grayer. Those Jews, in the first four years, 
 had " visibly emaciated him : " Time, Jews, and the task of 
 Governing, will make a man's beard very gray ! "In twelve 
 years," says Jocelin, " our Lord Abbot had grown wholly white 
 as snow, totus efficitur alb us sicut nix." White atop, like the 
 granite mountains: but his clear-beaming eyes still look out, 
 in their stern clearness, in their sorrow and pity ; the heart 
 within him remains unconquered. 
 
 Nay sometimes there are gleams of hilarity too; little 
 snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. ' Once 
 my Lord Abbot and I, coining down from London through the 
 Forest, I inquired of an old woman whom we came up to, 
 Whose wood this was, and of what manor; who the master, 
 who the keeper ? " All this I knew very well beforehand, 
 and my Lord Abbot too, Bozzy that I was ! But " the old 
 woman answered, The wood belonged to the new Abbot of St. 
 Edmund's, was of the manor of Harlow, and the keeper of it 
 was one Arnald. How did he behave to the people of the 
 manor ? I asked farther. She answered that he used to be a 
 devil incarnate, daemon vivus, an enemy of God, and flayer of 
 the peasants' skins," skinning them like live eels, as the 
 manner of some is : " but that now he dreads the new Abbot, 
 knowing him to be a wise and sharp man, and so treats the 
 people reasonably, tractat homines pacifice." Whereat the 
 Lord Abbot factus est hilaris, could not but take a trium- 
 phant laugh for himself ; and determines to leave that Har- 
 low manor yet unmeddled with, for a while. 1 
 
 A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little tri- 
 umph now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we 
 try at least to give the adversary as good as he brings ; and, 
 with swift force or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish this 
 and the other solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Crea- 
 tion ; and so proceed with our battle, not slacken or surrender 
 in it ! The Fifty feudal Knights, for example, were of unjust 
 greedy temper, and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten 
 
 1 Jocelini Chronicci, p. 24.
 
 CHAP. XII. THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES. 101 
 
 knights'-fees ; but they know now whether that has profited 
 them aught, and I Jocelin know. Our Lord Abbot for the 
 moment had to endure it, and say nothing ; but he watched 
 his time. 
 
 Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue 
 " debt " in the Court of Witham, with barons and apparatus, 
 gets a Roland for his Oliver ! Jocelin shall report : " The 
 Earl, crowded round (constipatus) with many barons and men- 
 at-arms, Earl Alberic and others standing by him, said, 'That 
 his bailiffs had given him to understand they were wont an- 
 nually to receive for his behoof, from the Hundred of Rise- 
 bridge and the bailiffs thereof, a sum of five shillings, which 
 sum was now unjustly held back ; ' and he alleged farther that 
 his predecessors had been infeft, at the Conquest, in the lands 
 of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was lord of that Hundred, as may 
 be read in Domesday Book by all persons. The Abbot, re- 
 flecting for a moment, without stirring from his place, made 
 answer : ' A wonderful deficit, my Lord Earl, this that thou 
 mentionest ! King Edward gave to St. Edmund that entire 
 Hundred, and confirmed the same with his Charter ; nor is 
 there any mention there of those five shillings. It will be- 
 hoove thee to say, for what service, or on what ground, thou 
 exactest those five shillings.' Whereupon the Earl, consulting 
 with his followers, replied, That he had to carry the Banner 
 of St. Edmund in war-time, and for this duty the five shillings 
 were his. To which the Abbot : 'Certainly, it seems inglori- 
 ous, if so great a man, Earl of Clare no less, receive so small 
 a gift for such a service. To the Abbot of St. Edmund's it is 
 no unbearable burden to give five shillings. But Roger Earl 
 Bigot holds himself duly seised, and asserts that he by such 
 seisin has the office of carrying St. Edmund's Banner ; and lie 
 did carry it when the Earl of Leicester and his Flemings wen- 
 beaten at Fornham. Then again Thomas de Mendham says 
 that the right is his. When you have made out with one 
 another, that this right is thine, come then and claim the five 
 shillings, and I will promptly pay them ! ' Whereupon the 
 Earl said, He would speak with Earl Roger his relative ; and 
 so the matter crpit dilationem," and lies undecided to the end
 
 102 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n. 
 
 of the world. Abbot Samson answers by word or act, in this 
 or the like pregnant manner, having justice on his side, in- 
 numerable persons : Pope's Legates, King's Viscounts, Canter- 
 bury Archbishops, Cellarers, Sochemanni ; and leaves many 
 a solecism extinguished. 
 
 On the whole, however, it .is and remains sore work. " One 
 time, during my chaplaincy, I ventured to say to him : ' Domine, 
 I heard thee, this night, after matins, wakeful, and sighing 
 deeply, valde suspirantem, contrary to thy usual wont.' He, 
 answered : ' No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin, sharest in my good 
 things, in food and drink, in riding and such like; but thou 
 little thinkest concerning the management of House and Fam- 
 ily, the various and arduous businesses of the Pastoral Care, 
 which harass me, and make my soul to sigh and be anxious.' 
 Whereto I, lifting up my hands to Heaven : ' From such 
 anxiety, Omnipotent merciful Lord deliver me ! ' I have 
 heard the Abbot say, If he had been as he was before he be- 
 came a Monk, and could have anywhere got five or six marcs 
 of income," some three-pound ten of yearly revenue, "whereby 
 to support himself in the schools, he would never have been 
 Monk nor Abbot. Another time he said with an oath, If he 
 had known what a business it was to govern the Abbey, he 
 would rather have been Almoner, how much rather Keeper 
 of the Books, than Abbot and Lord. That latter office he 
 said he had always longed for, beyond any other. Quls 
 talia crederet?" concludes Jocelin, "Who can believe such 
 things?" 
 
 Three-pound ten, and a life of Literature, especially of quiet 
 Literature, without copyright, or world-celebrity of literary- 
 gazettes, yes, thou brave Abbot Samson, for thyself it had 
 been better, easier, perhaps also nobler ! But then, for thy 
 disobedient Monks, unjust Viscounts; for a Domain of St. 
 Edmund overgrown with Solecisms, human and other, it had 
 not been so well. Nay neither could thy Literature, never so 
 quiet, have been easy. Literature, when noble, is not easy ; 
 but only when ignoble. Literature too is a quarrel, and in- 
 ternecine duel, with the whole World of Darkness that lies 
 without one and within one ; rather a hard fight at times,
 
 CHAP. Xin. IN PARLIAMENT. 103 
 
 even with the three-pound ten secure. Thou, there where 
 thou art, wrestle and duel along, cheerfully to the end ; and 
 make no remarks ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 OF Abbot Samson's public business we say little, though 
 that also was great. He had to judge the people as Justice 
 Errant, to decide in weighty arbitrations and public controver- 
 sies ; to equip his milites, send them duly in war-time to the 
 King ; strive every way that the Commonweal, in his quarter 
 of it, take no damage. 
 
 Once, in the contused days of Lackland's usurpation, while 
 Coeur-de-Lion was away, our brave Abbot took helmet himself, 
 having first excommunicated all that should favor Lackland ; 
 and led his men in person to the siege of Windleshora, what 
 we now call Windsor ; where Lackland had intrenched himself, 
 the centre of infinite confusions ; some Reform Bill, then as 
 now, being greatly needed. There did Abbot Samson " fight 
 the battle of reform," with other ammunition, one hopes, 
 than " tremendous cheering " and such like ! For these things 
 he was called ' the magnanimous Abbot." 
 
 He also attended duly in his place in Parliament de arduis 
 regni ; attended especially, as in arduissimo, when "the news 
 reached London that King Richard was a captive in Germany." 
 Here "while all the barons sat to consult," and many of them 
 looked blank enough, "the Abbot started forth, prosiliit coram 
 omnibus, in his place in Parliament, and said, That he was 
 ready to go and seok his Lord the King, either clandestinely 
 by subterfugo (in f}>!iHi<jio'), or by any other method ; and 
 search till ho found him, and got certain notice of him ; he for 
 one ! By which word." says .Tor-el in, " he acquired great praise 
 for himself," unfeigned commendation from the Able Editors 
 of that age.
 
 104 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n. 
 
 By which, word ; and also by which deed : for the Abbot 
 actually went " with rich gifts to the King in Germany ; " 1 
 Usurper Lackland being first rooted out from Windsor, and 
 the King's peace somewhat settled. 
 
 As to these "rich gifts," however, we have to note one thing : 
 In all England, as appeared to the Collective Wisdom, there 
 was not like to be treasure enough for ransoming King Rich- 
 ard ; in which extremity certain Lords of the Treasury, Jus- 
 tif/iarii ad Scaccarium, suggested that St. Edmund's Shrine, 
 covered with thick gold, was still untouched. Could not it, in 
 this extremity, be peeled off, at least in part ; under condition, 
 of course, of its being replaced when times mended ? The 
 Abbot, starting plumb up, se erigens, answered : " Know ye for 
 certain, that I will in nowise do this thing ; nor is there any 
 man who could force me to consent thereto. But I will open 
 the doors of the Church : Let him that likes enter ; let him 
 that dares come forward ! " Emphatic words, which created 
 a sensation round the woolsack. For the Justiciaries of the 
 Scaccarium answered, " with oaths, each for himself : ' I won't 
 come forward, for my share ; nor will I, nor I ! The distant 
 and absent who offended him, St. Edmund has been known 
 to punish fearfully ; much more will he those close by, who 
 lay violent hands on his coat, and would strip it off ! ' These 
 things being said, the Shrine was not meddled with, nor any 
 ransom levied for it." 2 
 
 For Lords of the Treasury have in all times their impassable 
 limits, be it by ( - force of public opinion " or otherwise ; and 
 in those days a heavenly Awe overshadowed and encompassed, 
 as it still ought and must, all earthly Business whatsoever. 
 
 1 Jocdini Chronicn, pp. 39, 40. - Ib. p. 71.
 
 CHAP. XIV. HENRY OF ESSEX. 10.') 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HENRY OF ESSEX. 
 
 OF St. Edmund's fearful avengements have they not the 
 remarkablest instance still before their eyes ? He that will go 
 to Reading Monastery may find there, now tonsured into a 
 mournful penitent Monk, the once proud Henry Earl of Es- 
 sex ; and discern how St. Edmund punishes terribly, yet with 
 mercy ! This Narrative is too significant to be omitted as a 
 document of the Time. Our Lord Abbot, once on a visit at 
 Reading, heard the particulars from Henry's own mouth ; 
 and thereupon charged one of his jnonks to write it down ; 
 as accordingly the Monk has done, in ambitious rhetorical 
 Latin ; inserting the same, as episode, among Jocelin's garru- 
 lous leaves. Read it here ; with ancient yet with modern 
 eyes. 
 
 Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of England, had high 
 places and emoluments; had a haughty high soul, yet with 
 various flaws, or rather with one many-branched flaw and 
 crack, running through the texture of it. For example, did 
 he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most shocking manner ? 
 He cast Gilbert into prison; and, with chains and slow tor- 
 ments, wore the life out of him there. And Gilbert's crime 
 was understood to be only that of innocent Joseph : the Lady 
 Essex was a Potiphar's Wife, and had accused poor Gilbert ! 
 Other cracks, and branches of that wide-spread flaw in the 
 Standard-bearer's soul we could point out : but indeed the 
 main stem and trunk of all is too visible in this, That he had 
 no right reverence for the Heavenly in Man, that far from 
 showing due reverence to St. Edmund, he did not even show 
 him common justice. "\Vhile others in the Eastern Counties 
 were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's
 
 106 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 resting-place, which had become a city of refuge for many 
 things, this Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or 
 quirk of law, of five shillings yearly, and converted said sum 
 to his own poor uses ! Nay, in another case of litigation, the 
 unjust Standard-bearer, for his own profit, asserting that the 
 cause belonged not to St. Edmund's Court, but to his in Lai- 
 land Hundred," "involved us in travellings and innumerable 
 expenses, vexing the servants of St. Edmund for a long tract 
 of time." In short, he is without reverence for the Heavenly, 
 this Standard-bearer; reveres only the Earthly, Gold-coined; 
 and has a most morbid lamentable flaw in the texture of him. 
 It cannot come to good. 
 
 Accordingly, the same flaw, or St.-Vitus' tic, manifests itself 
 ere long in another way. In the year 1157, he went with his 
 Standard to attend King Henry, our blessed Sovereign (whom 
 we saw afterwards at Waltham), in his War with the Welsh. 
 A somewhat disastrous War ,* in which while King Henry and 
 his force were struggling to retreat Parthian-like, endless 
 clouds of exasperated Welshmen hemming them in, and now 
 we had come to the " difficult pass of Coleshill," and as it were 
 to the nick of destruction, Henry Earl of Essex shrieks out 
 on a sudden (blinded doubtless by his inner flaw, or " evil 
 genius " as some name it), That King Henry is killed, That 
 all is lost, and flings down his Standard to shift for itself 
 there ! And, certainly enough, all had been lost, had all men 
 been as he; had not brave men, without such miserable 
 jerking tic-douloureux in the souls of them, come dashing up, 
 with blazing swords and looks, and asserted, That nothing was 
 lost yet, that all must be regained yet. In this manner King 
 Henry and his force got safely retreated, Parthian-like, from 
 the pass of Coleshill and the Welsh War. 1 But, once home 
 again, Earl Robert de Montfort, a kinsman of this Standard- 
 bearer's, rises up in the King's Assembly to declare openly 
 that such a man is unfit for bearing English Standards, being 
 in fact either a special traitor, or something almost worse, a 
 coward namely, or universal traitor. Wager of Battle in con- 
 sequence; solemn Duel, by the King's appointment, "in a 
 1 See Lyttelton's Henry 1L, ii. 384.
 
 CHAP. XIV. HENRY OF ESSEX. 107 
 
 certain Island of the Thames-stream at Reading, apud Radhi- 
 gasy short way from the Abbey there.'' King, Peers, and an 
 immense multitude of people, on such scaffoldings and heights 
 as they can come at, are gathered round, to see what issue the 
 business will take. The business takes this bad issue, in our 
 Monk's own words faithfully rendered : 
 
 " And it came to pass, while Eobert de Montfort thundered 
 on him manfully (ciriliter intonassef) with hard and frequent 
 strokes, and a valiant beginning promised the fruit of victory, 
 Henry of Essex, rather giving way, glanced round on all sides ; 
 and lo, at the rim of the horizon, on the confines of the River 
 and land, he discerned the glorious King and Martyr Edmund, 
 in shining armor, and as if hovering in the air ; looking 
 towards him with severe countenance, nodding his head with 
 a mien and motion of austere anger. At St. Edmund's hand 
 there stood also another Knight, Gilbert de Cereville, whose 
 armor was not so splendid, whose stature was less gigantic : 
 casting vengeful looks at him. This he seeing with his eyes, 
 remembered that old crime brings new shame. And now 
 wholly desperate, and changing reason into violence, he took 
 the part of one blindly attacking, not skilfully defending. 
 Who while he struck fiercely was more fiercely struck ; and 
 so, in short, fell down vanquished, and it was thought slain. 
 As he lay there for dead, his kinsmen. Magnates of England, 
 besought the King, that the Monks of Reading might have 
 leave to bury him. However, he proved not to be dead, but 
 got well again among them ; and now, with recovered health, 
 assuming the Regular Habit, he strove to wipe out the stain 
 of his former life, to cleanse the long week of his dissolute 
 history by at least a purifying sabbath, and cultivate the 
 studies of Virtue into fruits of eternal Felicity." l 
 
 Thus does the Conscience of man project itself athwart 
 whatsoever of knowledge or surmise, of imagination, under- 
 standing, faculty, acquirement, or natural disposition, he has 
 in him ; and, like light through colored glass, paint strange 
 pictures " on the rim of the horizon " and elsewhere ! Truly, 
 
 1 Jocelini Ctironiai, p. 52.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 this same " sense of the Infinite nature of Duty " is the cen- 
 tral part of all with us ; a ray as of Eternity and Immortality, 
 immured in dusky many-colored Time, and its deaths and 
 births. Your " colored glass " varies so much from century to 
 century; and, in certain money-making, game-preserving 
 centuries, it gets so terribly opaque ! Not a Heaven with 
 cherubim s surrounds you then, but a kind of vacant leaden- 
 colored Hell. One day it will again cease to be opaque, this 
 " colored glass." Nay, may it not become at once translucent 
 and tmcolored ? Painting no Pictures more for us, but only 
 the everlasting Azure itself ? That will be a right glorious 
 consummation ! 
 
 St. Edmund from the horizon's edge, in shining armor, 
 threatening the misdoer in his hour of extreme need : it is 
 beautiful, it is great and true. So old, yet so modern, actual ; 
 true yet for every one of us, as for Henry the Earl and Monk ! 
 A glimpse as of the Deepest in Man's Destiny, which is the 
 same for all times and ages. Yes, Henry my brother, there in 
 thy extreme need, thy soul is lamed and behold thou canst not 
 so much as fight ! For Justice and Reverence are the everlasting 
 central Law of this Universe ; and to forget them, and have all 
 the Universe against one, God and one's own Self for enemies, 
 and only the Devil and the Dragons for friends, is not that a 
 " lameness " like few ? That some shining armed St. Edmund 
 hang minatory on thy horizon, that infinite sulphur-lakes hang 
 minatory, or do not now hang, this alters no whit the eternal 
 fact of the thing. I say, thy soul is lamed, and the God and 
 all Godlike in it marred : lamed, paralytic, tending towards 
 baleful eternal death, whether thou know it or not ; nay 
 hadst thou never known it, that surely had been worst of 
 all! 
 
 Thus, at any rate, by the heavenly Awe that overshadows 
 earthly Business, does Samson, readily in those days, save 
 St. Edmund's Shrine, and innumerable still more precious 
 things.
 
 CHAP. XV. PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. 
 
 HERE indeed, by rule of antagonisms, may be the place to 
 mention that, after King Richard's return, there was a liberty 
 of tourneying given to the fighting-men of England : that a 
 Tournament was proclaimed in the Abbot's domain, " between 
 Thetford and St. Edmundsbury," perhaps in the Euston 
 region, on Fakenham Heights, midway between these two 
 localities : that it was publicly prohibited by our Lord Abbot ; 
 and nevertheless was held in spite of him, and by the par- 
 ties, as would seem, considered " a gentle and free passage of 
 arms." 
 
 Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty 
 young men, sons of Nobles, for another passage of arms ; who, 
 having completed the same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to 
 lodge for the night. Here is modesty ! Our Lord Abbot, be- 
 ing instructed of it, ordered the Gates to be closed ; the whole 
 party shut in. The morrow was the Vigil of the Apostles 
 Peter and Paul: no outgateonthe morrow. Giving their prom- 
 ise not to depart without permission, those four-and-tweuty 
 young bloods dieted all that day (manducavenint) with the 
 Lord Abbot, waiting for trial on the morrow. "But after 
 dinner," mark it, posterity ! " the Lord Abbot retiring 
 into his Talamiu, they all started up, and began carolling and 
 singing (carolare et cantare) ; sending into the Town for wine ; 
 drinking, and afterwards howling (ululantes) ; totally de- 
 priving the Abbot and Convent of their afternoon's nap ; doing 
 all this in derision of the Lord Abbot, and spending in such 
 fashion the whole day till evening, nor would they desist at 
 the Lord Abbot's order ! Night coming on, they broke the 
 bolts of the Town-Gates, and went off by violence ! " * Was 
 
 1 Jocelini Chronica, p. 40.
 
 110 PAST AND PRESENT. Book lr. 
 
 the like ever heard of ? The roisterous young dogs ; carol- 
 ling, howling, breaking the Lord Abbot's sleep, after that 
 sinful chivalry cockfight of theirs ! They too are a feature of 
 distant centuries, as of near ones. St. Edmund on the edge 
 of your horizon, or whatever else there, young scamps, in the 
 dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin to 
 caper and carol on the green Earth ! Our Lord Abbot excom- 
 municated most of them ; and they gradually came in for 
 repentance. 
 
 Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot ; 
 the prevailing purifier in those ages. Thus when the Towns- 
 folk and Monks' menials quarrelled once at the Christmas 
 Mysteries in St. Edmund's Churchyard, and "from words it 
 came to cuffs, and from cuffs to cutting and the effusion of 
 blood," our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the rioters, 
 with bell, book and candle (accensis candeUs), at one stroke. 1 
 Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked, 
 "nothing on but their breeches, omnino nudi prceter femoralia, 
 and prostrate themselves at the Church-door." Figure that ! 
 
 In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity 
 of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now be- 
 coming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains 
 master at last. He tempers his medicine to the malady, now 
 hot, now cool ; prudent though fiery, an eminently practical 
 man. Nay sometimes in his adroit practice there are swift 
 turns almost of a surprising nature ! Once, for example, it 
 chanced that Geoffry Ridell, Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather 
 troublesome to our Abbot, made a request of him for timber 
 from his woods towards certain edifices going on at Glemsford. 
 The Abbot, a great builder himself, disliked the request ; could 
 not, however, give it a negative. While he lay, therefore, at 
 his Manor-house of Melford not long after, there comes to him 
 one of the Lord Bishop's men or monks, with a message from 
 his Lordship, "That he now begged permission to cut down 
 the requisite trees in Elmswell Wood," so said the monk 
 ~E,lmswell, where there are no trees but scrubs and shrubs, in- 
 stead of ~E\mset, our true nemus and high-towering oak-wood, 
 
 1 Jocelini Chronica, p. 68.
 
 CHAP. XV. PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. Ill 
 
 here on Melford Manor ! Elmswell ? The Lord Abbot, in 
 surprise, inquires privily of Richard his Forester; Kichurd 
 answers that my Lord of Ely has already had his carpentarii 
 in Elmsc'f, and marked out for his own use all the best trees in 
 the compass of it. Abbot Samson thereupon answers the monk : 
 " Elmswell ? Yes surely, be it us my Lord Bishop wishes." 
 The successful monk, 0:1 the morrow morning, hastens home to 
 Ely ; but, on the morrow morning, '' directly after mass," Abbot 
 Samson too was busy ! The successful monk, arriving at Ely, 
 is rated for a goose and an owl ; is ordered back to say that Elm- 
 set was the place meant. Alas, oil arriving at Eluiset, he finds 
 the Bishop's trees, they "and a hundred more,*' all felled and 
 piled, and the stamp of St. Edmund's Monastery burnt into 
 them, for rooting of the great tower we are building there ! 
 Your importunate Bishop must seek wood for Glemsford edi- 
 fices in some other nemus than this. A practical Abbot ! 
 
 We said withal there was a terrible flash of anger in him : 
 witness his address to old Herbert the Dean, who in a too 
 thrifty manner has erected a windmill for himself on his 
 glebe-lands at Haberdou. On the morrow, after mass, our 
 Lord Abbot orders the Cellerarius to send off his carpenters 
 to demolish the said structure brevl manu, and lay up the 
 wood in safe keeping. Old Dean Herbert, hearing what was 
 toward, comes tottering along hither, to plead humbly for 
 himself and his mill. The Abbot answers : " I am obliged to 
 thee as if thou hadst cut off both my feet ! By God's face, 
 per os Del, I will not eat bread till that fabric be torn in pieces. 
 Thou art an old man, and shouldst have known that neither 
 the King nor his Justiciary dare change aught within the 
 Liberties without consent of Abbot and Convent : and thou 
 hast presumed on such a thing? I tell thee, it will not be 
 without damage to my mills ; for the Townsfolk will go to 
 thy mill, and grind their corn (Madum mtuni) at their own 
 good pleasure; nor can I hinder them, since they are free 
 men. I will allow no new mills on such principle. Away, 
 away ; before thou gettest home again, thou shalt see what 
 thy mill has grown to ! " l The very reverend the old Dean 
 
 1 Jooelini Chronica, p. 43.
 
 112 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 totters home again, in all haste ; tears the mill in pieces by 
 his own carpentarii, to save at least the timber ; and Abbot 
 Samson's workmen, coming up, find the ground already clear 
 of it. 
 
 Easy to bully down poor old rural Deans, and blow their 
 windmills away : but who is the man that dare abide King 
 Richard's anger ; cross the Lion in his path, and take him 
 by the whiskers ! Abbot Samson too ; he is that man, with 
 justice on his side. The case was this. Adam de Cokefield, 
 one of the chief feudatories of St. Edmund, and a principal 
 man in the Eastern Counties, died, leaving large possessions, 
 and for heiress a daughter of three months ; who by clear law, 
 as all men know, became thus Abbot Samson's ward ; whom 
 accordingly he proceeded to dispose of to such person as 
 seemed fittest. But now King Eichard has another person 
 in view, to whom the little ward and her great possessions 
 were a suitable thing. He, by letter, requests that Abbot 
 Samson will have the goodness to give her to this person. 
 Abbot Samson, with deep humility, replies that she is already 
 given. New letters from Richard, of severer tenor ; answered 
 with new deep humilities, with gifts and entreaties, with no 
 promise of obedience. King Richard's ire is kindled; mes- 
 sengers arrive at St. Edmundsbury, with emphatic message 
 to obey or tremble ! Abbot Samson, wisely silent as to the 
 King's threats, makes answer : " The King can send if he will, 
 and seize the ward : force and power he has to do his pleasure, 
 and abolish the whole Abbey. But I, for my part, never can 
 be bent to wish this that he seeks, nor shall it by me be ever 
 done. For there is danger lest such things be made a prece- 
 dent of, to the prejudice of my successors. Videat Altissimus, 
 Let the Most High look on it. Whatsoever thing shall befall 
 I will patiently endure." 
 
 Such was Abbot Samson's deliberate decision. Why not ? 
 Coeur-de-Lion is very dreadful, but not the dreadfulest. Videat 
 Altissimm. I reverence Coeur-de-Lion to the marrow of my 
 bones, and will in all right things be homo suus ; but it is not, 
 properly speaking, with terror, with any fear at all. On the
 
 r. XV. PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. 113 
 
 , have I not looked on the face of " Satan with outspread 
 wings;" steadily into Hell-fire these seven-and-forty years; 
 and was not melted into terror even at that, such the Lord's 
 goodness to me ? Coeur-de-Lion ! 
 
 Richard swore tornado oaths, worse than our armies in 
 Flanders, To be revenged on that proud Priest. But in the 
 end he discovered that the Priest was right ; and forgave him, 
 and even loved him. " King Richard wrote, soon after, to 
 Abbot Samson, That he wanted one or two of the St. Edmunds- 
 bury dogs, which he heard were good.'' Abbot Samson sent 
 him dogs of the best ; Richard replied by the present of a 
 ring, which Pope Innocent the Third had given him. Thou 
 brave Richard, thou brave Samson ! Richard too, I suppose, 
 " loved a man," and knew one when he saw him. 
 
 No one will accuse our Lord Abbot of wanting worldly 
 wisdom, due interest in worldly things. A skilful man ; full 
 of cunning insight, lively interests ; always discerning the 
 road to his object, be it circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously 
 travelling forward thereon. Nay rather it might seem, from 
 Jocel in's Narrative, as if he had his eye all but exclusively 
 directed on terrestrial matters, and was much too secular for 
 a devout man. But this too, if we examine it, was right. 
 For it is in the world that a man, devout or other, has his life 
 to lead, his work waiting to be done. The basis of Abbot 
 Samson's, we shall discover, was truly religion, after all. 
 Returning from his dusty pilgrimage, with such welcome as 
 we saw, "he sat down at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine." 
 Not a talking theory, that ; no, a silent practice : Thou, St. 
 Edmund, with what lies in thee, thou now must help me, or 
 none will ! 
 
 This also is a significant fact : the zealous interest our 
 Abbot took in the Crusades. To all noble Christian hearts of 
 that era, what earthly enterprise so noble ? " When Henry II., 
 having taken the cross, came to St. Edmund's, to pay his 
 devotions before setting out, the Abbot secretly made for 
 himself a cross of linen cloth : and, holding this in one hand 
 and a threaded needle in the other, asked leave of the King 
 
 VOL. XII. 8
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II 
 
 to assume it." The King could not spare Samson out of Eng- 
 land ; the King himself indeed never went. But the Abbot's 
 eye was set on the Holy Sepulchre, as on the spot of this 
 Earth where the true cause of Heaven was deciding itself. 
 " At the retaking of Jerusalem by the Pagans, Abbot Samson 
 put on a cilice and hair-shirt, and wore under-garments of 
 hair-cloth ever after ; he abstained also from flesh and flesh- 
 meats (came et camels) thenceforth to the end of his life." 
 Like a dark cloud eclipsing the hopes of Christendom, those 
 tidings cast their shadow over St. Edmundsbury too : Shall 
 Samson Abbas take pleasure while Christ's Tomb is in the 
 hands of the Infidel ? Samson, in pain of body, shall daily be 
 reminded of it, daily be admonished to grieve for it. 
 
 The great antique heart: how like a child's in its simplicity, 
 like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth ! Heaven lies 
 over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth ; making 
 all the Earth a mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all 
 a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the 
 common sunlight ; angels yet hover doing God's messages 
 among men : that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand 
 of God ! Wonder, miracle encompass the man ; he lives in an 
 element of miracle ; Heaven's splendor over his head, Hell's 
 darkness under his feet. A great Law of Duty, high as these 
 two Infinitudes, dwarfing all else, annihilating all else, mak- 
 ing royal Richard as small as peasant Samson, smaller if need 
 be ! The " imaginative faculties ? " " Rude poetic ages ? " 
 The " primeval poetic element ? " Oh, for God's sake, good 
 reader, talk no more of all that ! It was not a Dilettantism 
 this of Abbot Samson. It was a Reality, and it is one. The 
 garment only of it is dead ; the essence of it lives through all 
 Time and all Eternity ! 
 
 And truly, as we said above, is not this comparative silence 
 of Abbot Samson as to his religion precisely the healthiest 
 sign of him and of it ? " The Unconscious is the alone Com- 
 plete." Abbot Samson all along a busy working man, as all 
 men are bound to be, his religion, his worship was like his 
 daily bread to him ; which he did not take the trouble to
 
 CHAP. XV. PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. 115 
 
 talk much about ; which he merely ate at stated intervals, and 
 lived and did his work upon ! This is Abbot Samson's Ca- 
 tholicism of the Twelfth Century ; something like the Ism 
 of all true men in all true centuries, I fancy ! Alas, compared 
 with any of the Isms current in these poor days, what a thing ! 
 Compared with the respectablest, morbid, struggling Method- 
 ism, never so earnest ; with the respectablest, ghastly, dead or 
 galvanized Dilettantism, never so spasmodic ! 
 
 Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own navel ; 
 asking itself with torturing anxiety of Hope and Fear, " Am 
 I right ? am I wrong ? Shall I be saved ? shall I not be 
 damned ? " what is this, at bottom, but a new phasis of 
 Egoism,' stretched out into the Infinite ; not always the heaveii- 
 lier for its infinitude ! Brother, so soon as possible, endeavor 
 to rise above all that. " Thou art wrong ; thou art like to be 
 damned : " consider that as the fact, reconcile thyself even to 
 that, if thou be a man ; then first is the devouring Universe 
 subdued under thee, and from the black murk of midnight and 
 noise of greedy Acheron, dawn as of an everlasting morning, 
 how far above all Hope and all Fear, springs for thee, en- 
 tighteniug thy steep path, awakening in thy heart celestial 
 Memnon's music ! 
 
 But of our Dilettantisms, and galvanized Dilettantisms ; of 
 Puseyism Heavens, what shall we say of Puseyism, in 
 comparison to Twelfth-Century Catholicism ? Little or noth- 
 ing ; for indeed it is a matter to strike one dumb. 
 
 The Builder of this Universe was wise, 
 
 He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles : 
 
 The Plau He shap'd all Worlds and vKons by, 
 
 Was Heavens ! Was thy small Nine-aud-thirty Articles ? 
 
 That certain human souls, living on this practical Earth, 
 should think to save themselves and a ruined world by noisy 
 theoretic demonstrations and laudations of the Church, instead 
 of some unuoisy, unconscious, but practical, total, heart-and- 
 soul demonstration of a Church : this, in the circle of revolv- 
 ing ages, this also was a thing we were to see. A kind of 
 penultimate thing, precursor of very strange consummations ;
 
 116 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 last thing but one ? If there is no atmosphere, what will it 
 serve a man to demonstrate the excellence of lungs ? How 
 much profitabler, when you can, like Abbot Samson, breathe ; 
 and go along your way ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ST. EDMUND. 
 
 ABBOT SAMSOX built many useful, many pious edifices ; hu- 
 man dwellings, churches, church-steeples, barns ; all fallen 
 now and vanished, but useful while they stood. He built and 
 endowed " the Hospital of Babwell ; " built " fit houses for 
 the St. Edmuudsbury Schools." Many are the roofs once 
 " thatched with reeds " which he ' caused to be covered with 
 tiles ; " or if they were churches, probably " with lead." For 
 all ruinous incomplete things, buildings or other, were an 
 eye-sorrow to the man. We saw his " great tower of St. 
 Edmund's ; " or at least the roof-timbers of it, lying cut and 
 stamped in Elmset Wood. To change combustible decaying 
 reed-thatch into tile or lead ; and material, still more, moral 
 wreck into rain-tight order, what a comfort to Samson ! 
 
 One of the things he could not in any wise but rebuild was 
 the great Altar, aloft on which stood the Shrine itself; the 
 great Altar, which had been damaged by fire, by the careless 
 rubbish and careless candle of two somnolent Monks, one 
 night, the Shrine escaping almost as if by miracle ! Abbot 
 Samson read his Monks a severe lecture : " A Dream one of us 
 had, that he saw St. Edmund naked and in lamentable plight. 
 Know ye the interpretation of that Dream ? St. Edmund pro- 
 claims himself naked, because ye defraud the naked Poor of 
 your old clothes, and give with reluctance what ye are bound 
 to give them of meat and drink : the idleness moreover and 
 negligence of the Sacristan and his people is too evident 
 from the -late misfortune by fire. Well might our Holy
 
 CHAP. XVI. ST. EDMUND. 117 
 
 Martyr seem to lie cast out from his Shrine, and say with 
 groans that he was stript of his garments, and wasted with 
 hunger and thirst ! " 
 
 This is Abbot Samson's interpretation of the Dream; 
 diametrically the reverse of that given by the Monks them- 
 selves, who scruple not to say privily, " It is we that are the 
 naked and famished limbs of the Martyr; we whom the Abbot 
 curtails of all our privileges, setting his own official to control 
 our very Cellarer ! " Abbot Samson adds, that this judgment 
 by tire has fallen upon them for murmuring about their meat 
 and drink. 
 
 Clearly enough, meanwhile, the Altar, whatever the burning 
 of it mean or foreshadow, must needs be re-edified. Abbot 
 Samson re-edifies it, all of polished marble ; with the highest 
 stretch of art and sumptuosity, re-embellishes the Shrine for 
 which it is to serve as pediment. Nay farther, as had ever 
 been among his prayers, he enjoys, he sinner, a glimpse of the 
 glorious Martyr's very Body in the process ; having solemnly 
 opened the Loculus, Chest or sacred Coffin, for that purpose. 
 It is the culminating moment of Abbot Samson's life. Bozzy 
 Jocelin himself rises into a kind of Psalmist solemnity on this 
 occasion ; the laziest monk " weeps " warm tears, as Te Deum 
 is sung. 
 
 Very strange ; how far vanished from us in these un wor- 
 shipping ages of ours ! The Patriot Hampden, best beatified 
 man we have, had lain in like manner some two centuries in 
 his narrow home, when certain dignitaries of us, "and twelve 
 grave-diggers with pulleys," raised him also up, under clone 1 
 of night, cut off his arm with penknives, pulled the scalp off 
 his head, and otherwise worshipped our Hero Saint in the 
 most amazing manner ! 1 Let the modern eye look earnestly 
 on that old midnight hour in St. Edmundsbury Church, shin- 
 ing yet on us, ruddy-bright, through the depths of seven 
 hundred years ; and consider mournfully what our Hero- 
 worship once was, and what it now is ! We translate with 
 all the fidelity we can : 
 
 " The Festival of St. Edmund now approaching, the marble 
 
 1 Annual Regi$ttr (year 1828, Chronicle, p. 9.1), flfntleman's Magazine, &c. Ac.
 
 118 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK ir. 
 
 blocks are polished, and all things are in readiness for lifting 
 of the Shrine to its new place. A fast of three days was held 
 by all the people, the cause and meaning thereof being publicly 
 set forth to them. The Abbot announces to the Convent that 
 all must prepare themselves for transferring of the Shrine, 
 and appoints time and way for the work. Coming therefore 
 that night to matins, we found the great Shrine (feretrum 
 magnum) raised upon the Altar, but empty ; covered all over 
 with white doeskin leather, fixed to the wood with silver 
 nails ; but one panel of the Shrine was left down below, and 
 resting thereon, beside its old column of the Church, the 
 Loculus with the Sacred Body yet lay where it was wont. 
 Praises being sung, we all proceeded to commence our disci- 
 plines (ad disciplinas suscipiendas). These finished, the Abbot 
 and certain with him are clothed in their albs ; and, approach- 
 ing reverently, set about uncovering the Loculus. There was 
 an outer cloth of linen, enwrapping the Loculus and all ; this 
 we found tied on the upper side with strings of its own. 
 within this was a cloth of silk, and then another linen clotk, 
 and then a third ; and so at last the Loculus was uncovered, 
 and seen resting on a little tray of wood, that the bottom of 
 it might not be injured by the stone. Over the breast of the 
 Martyr, there lay, fixed to the surface of the Loculus, a Golden 
 Angel about the length of a human foot ; holding in one hand 
 a golden sword, and in the other a banner : under this there 
 was a hole in the lid of the Loculus, on which the ancient 
 servants of the Martyr had been wont to lay their hands for 
 touching the Sacred Body. And over the figure of the Angel 
 was this verse inscribed : 
 
 Martin's ecce zoma servat Michaelis agnlma. 1 
 
 At the head and foot of the Loculus were iron rings whereby 
 it could be lifted. 
 
 " Lifting the Loculus and Body, therefore, they carried it to 
 
 the Altar; and I put to my sinful hand to help in carrying, 
 
 though the Abbot had commanded that none should approach 
 
 except called. And the Loculus was placed in the Shrine; 
 
 1 " This is the Martyr's Garment, which Michael's Image guards."
 
 CHAP. XVI. ST. EDMUND. 119 
 
 and the panel it had stood on was put in its place, and the 
 Shrine for the present closed. We all thought that the Abbot 
 would show the Loculus to the people ; and bring out the 
 Sacred Body again, at a certain period of the Festival. But 
 in this we were wofully mistaken, as the sequel shows. 
 
 "For in the fourth holiday of the Festival, while the Con- 
 vent were all singing Completorium, our Lord Abbot spoke 
 privily with the Sacristan and Walter the Medicus; and order 
 was taken that twelve of the Brethren should be appointed 
 against midnight, who were strong for carrying the panel- 
 planks of the Shrine, and skilful in unfixing them, and put- 
 ting them together again. The Abbot then said that it was 
 among his prayers to look once upon the Body of his Patron ; 
 and that he wished the Sacristan and Walter the Medicus to 
 be with him. The Twelve appointed Brethren were these: 
 The Abbot's two Chaplains, the two Keepers of the Shrine, 
 the two Masters of the Vestry ; and six more, namely, the 
 Sacristan Hugo, Walter the Medicus, Augustin, William of 
 Dice, Robert, and Richard. I, alas, was not of the number. 
 
 "The Convent therefore being all asleep, these Twelve, 
 clothed in their albs, with the Abbot, assembled at the Altar ; 
 and opening a panel of the Shrine, they took out the Loculus ; 
 laid it on a table, near where the Shrine used to be ; and made 
 ready for unfastening the lid, which was joined and fixed to 
 the Loculus with sixteen very long nails. Which when, with 
 difficulty, they had done, all except the two forenamed asso- 
 ciates are ordered to draw back. The Abbot and they two 
 were alone privileged to look in. The Loculus was so filled 
 with the Sacred Body that you could scarcely put a needle 
 between the head and the wood, or between the feet and the 
 wood : the head lay united to the body, a little raised witlx 
 a small pillow. But the Abbot, looking close, found now a 
 silk cloth veiling the whole Body, and then a linen cloth of 
 wondrous whiteness ; and upon the head was spread a small 
 linen cloth, and then another small and most fine silk cloth, 
 as if it were the veil of a nun. These coverings being lifted 
 off, they found now the Sacred Body all wrapt in linen ; and 
 so at length the lineaments of the same appeared. But here
 
 120 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n 
 
 the Abbot stopped ; saying he durst not proceed farther, or 
 look at the sacred flesh naked. Taking the head between 
 his hands, he thus spake, groaning : ' Glorious Martyr, holy 
 Edmund, blessed be the hour when thou wert born. Glorious 
 Martyr, turn it not to my perdition that I have so dared to 
 touch thee, I miserable and sinful ; thou knowest my devout 
 love, and the intention of my mind.' And proceeding, he 
 touched the eyes ; and the nose, which was very massive and 
 prominent (yalde grossum et valde eminentem) ; and then he 
 touched the breast and arms ; and raising the left arm he 
 touched the fingers, and placed his own ringers between the 
 sacred ringers. And proceeding he found the feet standing 
 stiff up, like the feet of a man dead yesterday ; and he touched 
 the toes and counted them (tanyendo numeravit). 
 
 " And now it was agreed that the other Brethren should be 
 called forward to see the miracles ; and accordingly those ten 
 now advanced, and along with them six others who had stolen 
 in without the Abbot's assent, namely, Walter of St. Alban's, 
 Hugh the Infirmirarius, Gilbert brother of the Prior, Richard 
 of Henham, Jocellus our Cellarer, and Turstan the Little ; and 
 all these saw the Sacred Body, but Turstan alone of them put 
 forth his hand, and touched the Saint's knees and feet. And 
 that there might be abundance of witnesses, one of our Breth- 
 ren, John of Dice, sitting on the roof of the Church, with the 
 servants of the Vestry, and looking through, clearly saw all 
 these things." 
 
 What a scene ; shining luminous effulgent, as the lamps of 
 St. Edmund do, through the dark Night ; John of Dice, with 
 vestrymen, clambering on the roof to look through ; the Con- 
 vent all asleep, and the Earth all asleep, and since then, 
 Seven Centuries of Time mostly gone to sleep ! Yes, there, 
 sure enough, is the martyred Body of Edmund, landlord of the 
 Eastern Counties, who, nobly doing what he liked with his 
 own, was slain three hundred years ago : and a noble awe sur- 
 rounds the memory of him, symbol and promoter of many 
 other right noble things. 
 
 But have not we now advanced to strange new stages of
 
 CHAP. XVI. ST. EDMUND. 121 
 
 Hero-worship, now in the little Church of Hampden, with our 
 penknives out, and twelve grave-diggers with pulleys ? The 
 manner of men's Hero-worship, verily it is the innermost fact 
 of their existence, and determines all the rest, at public 
 hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church, in market, and 
 wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is in- 
 separable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well ; have 
 sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong 
 man, then all is ill, and there is nothing well. Alas, if Hero- 
 worship become Dilettantism, and all except Mammonism be 
 a vain grimace, how much, in this most earnest Earth, has 
 gone and is evermore going to fatal destruction, and lies wast- 
 ing in quiet lazy ruin, no man regarding it ! Till at length no 
 heavenly Ism any longer coming down upon us, Isms from the 
 other quarter have to mount up. For the Earth, I say, is an 
 earnest place ; Life is no grimace, but a most serious fact. 
 And so, under universal Dilettantism much having been stript 
 bare, not the souls of men only, but their very bodies and 
 bread-cupboards having been stript bare, and life now no longer 
 possible, all is reduced to desperation, to the iron law of 
 Necessity and very Fact again ; and to temper Dilettantism, 
 and astonish it, and burn it up with infernal fire, arises Chart- 
 ism, Bare-back-um, Sansculottism so' called ! May the gods, 
 and what of unworshipped heroes still remain among us, avert 
 the omen ! 
 
 But however this may be, St. Edmund's Loculus, we find, 
 has the veils of silk and linen reverently replaced, the lid 
 fastened down again with its sixteen ancient nails ; is wrapt 
 in a new costly covering oi' silk, the gift of Hubert Archbishop 
 of Canterbury : and through the sky-window John of Dice sees 
 it lifted to its place in the Shrine, the panels of this latter 
 duly refixed, fit parchment documents being introduced withal ; 
 and now John and his vestrymen can slide down from the 
 roof, for all is over, and the Convent wholly awakens to matins. 
 " When we assembled to sing matins," says Jocelin, " and 
 understood what had been done, grief took hold of all that 
 had not seen these things, each saying to himself, ' Alas, I was
 
 122 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 deceived.' Matins over, the Abbot called the Convent to the 
 great Altar ; and briefly recounting the matter, alleged that it 
 had not been in his power, nor was it permissible or fit, to 
 invite us all to the sight of such things. At hearing of which, 
 we all wept, and with tears sang Te Deum laudamus ; and 
 hastened to toll the bells in the Choir." 
 
 Stupid blockheads, to reverence their St. Edmund's dead Body 
 in this manner ? Yes, brother ; and yet, on the whole, who 
 knows how to reverence the Body of a Man? It is the most 
 reverend phenomenon under this Sun. For the Highest God 
 dwells visible in that mystic unfathomable Visibility, which 
 calls itself " I " on the Earth. " Bending before men," says 
 Novalis, " is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. 
 We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human Body." 
 And the Body of one Dead ; a temple where the Hero-soul 
 once was and now is not : Oh, all mystery, all pity, all mute 
 awe and wonder ; *S v w/jernaturalism brought home to the very 
 dullest ; Eternity laid open, and the nether Darkness and the 
 upper Light-Kingdoms, do conjoin there, or exist nowhere . 
 Sauerteig used to say to me, in his peculiar way : " A Chancery 
 Lawsuit ; justice, nay justice in mere money, denied a man, 
 for all his pleading, till twenty, till forty years of his Life are 
 gone seeking it : and a Cockney Funeral, Death reverenced by 
 hatchments, horse-hair, brass-lacquer, and unconcerned bipeds 
 carrying long poles and bags of black silk : are not these two 
 reverences, this reverence for Death and that reverence for 
 Life, a notable pair of reverences among you English ? " 
 
 Abbot Samson, at this culminating point of his existence, 
 may, and indeed must, be left to vanish with his Life-scenery 
 from the eyes of modern men. He had to run into France, to 
 settle with King Richard for the military service there of his 
 St. Edmundsbury Knights ; and with groat labor got it done. 
 He had to decide on the dilapidated Coventry Monks ; and 
 with great labor, and much pleading and journeying, got them 
 reinstated ; dined with them all, and with the " Masters of the 
 Schools of Oxneford," the veritable Oxford Caput sitting 
 there at dinner, in a dim but undeniable manner, in the City 
 of Peeping Tom ! He had, not without labor, to controvert
 
 CHAP. XVII. THE BEGINNINGS. 123 
 
 the intrusive Bishop of Ely, the intrusive Abbot of Cluny. 
 Magnanimous Samson, his life is but a labor and a journey ; a 
 bustling and a justling, till the still Xight come. He is sent 
 for again, over sea, to advise King Richard touching certain 
 Peers of England, who had taken the Cross, but never followed 
 it to Palestine ; whom the Pope is inquiring after. The mag- 
 nanimous Abbot makes preparation for departure ; departs, 
 and And Jocelin's Boswellian Narrative, suddenly shorn 
 through by the scissors of Destiny, ends. There are no words 
 more ; but a black line, and leaves of blank paper. Irremedi- 
 able : the miraculous hand, that held all this theatric-machinery, 
 suddenly quits hold ; impenetrable Time-Curtains rush down ; 
 in the mind's eye all is again dark, void ; with loud dinning in 
 the mind's ear, our real-phantasmagory of St. Edmundsbury 
 plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century again, and 
 all is over. Monks, Abbot, Hero-worship, Government, Obe- 
 dience, Cosur-de-Lion and St. Edmund's Shrine, vanish like 
 Mirza's Vision ; and there is nothing left but a mutilated black 
 Kuin amid green botanic expanses, and oxen, sheep and dilet- 
 tanti pasturing in their places. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS. 
 
 WHAT a singular shape of a Man, shape of a Time, have we 
 in this Abbot Samson and his history ; how strangely do modes, 
 creeds, formularies, and the date and place of a man's birth, 
 modify the figure of the man ! 
 
 Formulas too, as we call them, have a reality in Human Life. 
 They are real as the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's 
 Life ; and a most blessed indispensable thing, so long as they 
 have vitality withal, and are a living skin and tissue to him ! 
 No man, or man's life, can go abroad and do business in the 
 world without skin and tissues. No ; first of all, these hav?
 
 124 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IL 
 
 to fashion themselves, as indeed they spontaneously and 
 inevitably do. Foam itself, and this is worth thinking of, can 
 harden into oyster-shell ; all living objects do by necessity 
 form to themselves a skin. 
 
 And yet, again, when a man's Formulas become dead ; as all 
 Formulas, in the progress of living growth, are very sure to 
 do ! When the poor man's integuments, no longer nourished 
 from within, become dead skin, mere adscititious leather and 
 callosity, wearing thicker and thicker, uglier and uglier ; till 
 no heart any longer can be felt beating through them, so thick, 
 callous, calcined are they ; and all over it has now grown mere 
 calcined oyster-shell, or were it polished mother-of-pearl, in- 
 wards almost to the very heart of the poor man : yes then, 
 you may say, his usefulness once more is quite obstructed ; 
 once more, he cannot go abroad and do business in the world ; 
 it is time that he take to bed, and prepare for departure, which 
 cannot now be distant ! 
 
 Ubi homines sunt modi sunt. Habit is the deepest law of 
 human nature. It is our supreme strength; if also, in cer- 
 tain circumstances, our miserablest weakness. From Stoke to 
 Stowe is as yet a field, all pathless, untrodden : from Stoke 
 where I live, to Stowe where I have to make my merchandises, 
 perform my businesses, consult my heavenly oracles, there is 
 as yet no path or human footprint ; and I, impelled by such 
 necessities, must nevertheless undertake the journey. Let me 
 go once, scanning my way with any earnestness of outlook, and 
 successfully arriving, my footprints are an invitation to me a 
 second time to go by the same way. It is easier than any other 
 way : the industry of " scanning " lies already invested in it 
 for me ; I can go this time with less of scanning, or without 
 scanning at all. Nay the very sight of my footprints, what a 
 comfort for me ; and in a degree, for all my brethren of man- 
 kind ! The footprints are trodden and retrodden ; the path 
 wears ever broader, smoother, into a broad highway, where 
 even wheels can run; and many travel it; till till the 
 Town of Stowe disappear from that locality (as towns have 
 been known to do), or no merchandising, heavenly oracle, or 
 real business any longer exist for one there : then why should
 
 CHAP. XVII. THE BEGINNINGS. 125 
 
 anybody travel the way ? Habit is our primal, fundamental 
 law ; Habit and Imitation, there is nothing more perennial in 
 us than these two. They are the source of all Working and 
 all Apprenticeship, of all Practice and all Learning, in this 
 world. 
 
 Yes, the wise man too speaks, and acts, in Formulas ; all men 
 do so. And in general, the more completely cased with For- 
 mulas a man may be, the safer, happier is it for him. Thou 
 who, in an All of rotten Formulas, seemest to stand nigh bare, 
 having indignantly shaken off the superannuated rags and un- 
 sound callosities of Formulas, consider how thou too art still 
 clothed ! This English Nationality, whatsoever from uncounted 
 ages is genuine and a fact among thy native People, in their 
 words and ways : all this, has it not made for thee a skin or 
 second-skin, adhesive actually as thy natural skin ? This 
 thou hast not stript off, this thou wilt never strip off : the 
 humor that thy mother gave thee has to show itself through 
 this. A common, or it may be an uncommon Englishman thou 
 art : but, good Heavens, what sort of Arab, Chinaman, Jew- 
 Clothesman, Turk, Hindoo, African Mandingo, wouldst thou 
 have been, thou with those mother-qualities of thine ! 
 
 It strikes me dumb to look over the long series of faces, 
 such as any full Church, Court-house, London-Tavern Meeting, 
 or miscellany of men will show them. Some score or two of 
 years ago, all these were little red-colored pulpy infants ; each 
 of them capable of being kneaded, baked into any social form 
 you chose : yet see now how they are fixed and hardened, 
 into artisans, artists, clergy, gentry, learned Serjeants, unlearned 
 dandies, and can and shall now be nothing else henceforth ! 
 
 Mark on that nose the color left by too copious port and 
 viands ; to which the profuse cravat with exorbitant breastpin, 
 and the fixed, forward, and as it were menacing glance of the 
 eyes correspond. That is a " Man of Business ; " prosperous 
 manufacturer, house-contractor, engineer, law-manager ; his 
 eye, nose, cravat have, in such work and fortune, got such a 
 character : deny him npt thy praise, thy pity. Pity him too, 
 tho Hard-handed, with l>ony brow, rudely combed hair, eyes 
 looking out as in labor, in difficulty and uncertainty ; rude
 
 126 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 mouth, the lips coarse, loose, as in hard toil and lifelong fatigue 
 they have got the habit of hanging : hast thou seen aught 
 more touching than the rude intelligences, so cramped, yet 
 energetic, unsubduable, true, which looks out of that marred 
 visage ? Alas, and his poor wife, with her own hands, washed 
 that cotton neck-cloth for him, buttoned that coarse shirt, sent 
 him forth creditably trimmed as she could. In such imprison- 
 ment lives he, for his part ; man cannot now deliver him : the 
 red pulpy infant has been baked and fashioned so. 
 
 Or what kind of baking was it that this other brother mortal 
 got, which has baked him into the genus Dandy? Elegant 
 Vacuum ; serenely looking down iipon all Plenums and Entities 
 as low and poor to his serene Chimeraship and Nonentity labo- 
 riously attained ! Heroic Vacuum ; inexpugnable, while purse 
 and present condition of society hold out ; curable by no 
 ' hellebore. The doom of Fate was, Be thou a Dandy ! Have 
 thy eye-glasses, opera-glasses, thy Long- Acre cabs with white- 
 breeched tiger, thy yawning impassivities, pococurantisms ; 
 fix thyself hi Dandyhood, undeliverable ; it is thy doom. 
 
 And all these, we say, were red-colored infants ; of the same 
 pulp and stuff, few years ago ; now irretrievably shaped and 
 kneaded as we see ! Formulas ? There is no mortal extant, 
 out of the depths of Bedlam, but lives all skinned, thatched, 
 covered over with Formulas ; and is, as it were, held in from 
 delirium and the Inane by his Formulas ! They are withal 
 the most beneficent, indispensable of human equipments : 
 blessed he who has a skin and tissues, so it be a living one, 
 and the heart-pulse everywhere discernible through it. Mona- 
 chism, Feudalism, with a real King Plantagenet, with real 
 Abbots Samson, and their other living realities, how blessed ! 
 
 Not without a mournful interest have we surveyed that 
 authentic image of a Time now wholly swallowed. Mournful 
 reflections crowd on us ; and yet consolatory. How many 
 brave men have lived before Agamemnon ! Here is a brave 
 governor Samson, a man fearing God, and fearing nothing else ; 
 of whom as First Lord of the Treasury, as King, Chief Editor, 
 High Priest, we could be so glad and proud ; of whom never- 
 theless Fame has altogether forgotten to make mention ! The
 
 CHAP. XVII. THE BEGINNINGS. 127 
 
 i'aint image of him, revived in this hour, is found in the gossip 
 of one poor Monk, and in Nature nowhere else. Oblivion had 
 so nigli swallowed him altogether, even to the echo oi' his ever 
 having existed. What regiments and hosts and generations 
 of such has Oblivion already swallowed ! Their crumbled dust 
 makes up the soil our life-fruit grows on. Said I not, as my 
 old Norse Fathers taught me, The Life-tree Igdrasil, which 
 waves round thee in this hour, whereof thou in this hour art 
 portion, has its roots down deep in the oldest Death-King- 
 doms ; and grows ; the three Nornas, or Times, Past, Present, 
 Future, watering it from the Sacred Well ! 
 
 For example, who taught thee to speak ? From the day when 
 two hairy-naked or fig-leaved Human Figures began, as uncom- 
 fortable dummies, anxious no longer to be dumb, but to impart 
 themselves to one another ; and endeavored, with gaspings, ges- 
 turings, with unsyllabled cries, with painful pantomime and in- 
 terjections, in a very unsuccessful manner, up to the writing 
 of this present copyright Book, which also is not very success- 
 ful ! Between that day and this, I say, there has been a pretty- 
 space of time ; a pretty spell of work, which somebody has done ! 
 Thinkest thou there were no poets till Dan Chaucer ? No 
 heart burning with a thought, which it could not hold, and had 
 no word for ; and needed to shape and coin a word for, what 
 thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like ? For every word 
 we have, there was such a man and poet. The coldest word 
 was once a glowing new metaphor, and bold questionable 
 originality. " Thy very ATTENTION, does it not mean an 
 nttentio, a STRETCHING-TO ? " Fancy that act of the mind, 
 which all were conscious of, which none had yet named, 
 when this new " poet " first felt bound and driven to name it ! 
 His questionable originality, and new glowing metaphor, was 
 found adoptable, intelligible ; and remains our name for it to 
 this day. 
 
 Literature : and look at Paul's Cathedral, and the Ma- 
 sonries and Worships and Quasi-Worships that are there ; not 
 to speak of Westminster Hall and its wigs ! Men had not a 
 hammer to begin with, not a syllabled articulation: they had 
 it all to make ; and they have made it. \Vhat thousand thou-
 
 128 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II. 
 
 sand articulate, semi-articulate, earnest-stammering Prayers 
 ascending up to Heaven, from hut and cell, in many lands, in 
 many centuries, from the fervent kindled souls of innumerable 
 men, each struggling to pour itself forth incompletely, as it 
 might, before the incompletest Liturgy could be compiled ! 
 The Liturgy, or adoptable and generally adopted Set of Prayers 
 and Prayer-Method, was what we can call the Select Adopta- 
 bilities, " Select Beauties " well edited (by (Ecumenic Councils 
 and other Useful-Knowledge Societies) from that wide waste 
 imbroglio of Prayers already extant and accumulated, good 
 and bad. The good were found adoptable by men ; were 
 gradually got together, well-edited, accredited : the bad, found 
 inappropriate, unadoptable, were gradually forgotten, disused 
 and burnt. It is the way with human things. The first man 
 who, looking with open soul on this august Heaven and Earth, 
 this Beautiful and Awful, which we name Nature, Universe 
 and such like, the essence of which remains forever UNNAM- 
 ABLE; he who first, gazing into this, fell on his knees awe- 
 struck, in silence as is likeliest, he, driven by inner necessity, 
 the " audacious original " that he was, had done a thing, too, 
 which all thoughtful hearts saw straightway to be an expres- 
 sive, altogether adoptable thing ! To bow the knee was ever 
 since the attitude of supplication. Earlier than any spoken 
 Prayers, Litanias, or Leitourgias ; the beginning of all Wor- 
 ship, which needed but a beginning, so rational was it. 
 What a poet he ! Yes, this bold original was a successful one 
 withal. The well-head this one, hidden in the primeval dusks 
 and distances, from whom as from a Nile-source all Forms of 
 Worship flow : such a Nile-river (somewhat muddy and 
 malarious now !) of Forms of Worship sprang there, and flowed, 
 and flows, down to Puseyisin, Rotatory Calabash, Archbishop 
 Laud at St. Catherine Creed's, and perhaps lower ! 
 
 Things rise, I say, in that way. The Iliad Poem, and 
 indeed most other poetic, especially epic things, have risen 
 as the Liturgy did. The great Iliad in Greece, and the small 
 Robin Hood's Garland in. England, are each, as I understand, 
 the well-edited " Select Beauties " of an immeasurable waste 
 imbroglio of Heroic Ballads in their respective centuries and
 
 THAI-. XVII. THE BEGINNINGS. 129 
 
 countries. Think what strumming of the seven-stringed he- 
 roic lyre, torturing of the less heroic fiddle-catgut, in Hellenic 
 Kings' Courts, and English wayside Public Houses ; and beat- 
 ing of the studious Poetic brain, and gasping here too in the 
 semi-articulate windpipe of Poetic men, before the Wrath of a 
 Divine Achilles, the Prowess of a Will Scarlet or Wakefield 
 Pindar, could be adequately sung ! Honor to you, ye nameless 
 great and greatest ones, ye long-forgotten brave ! 
 
 Nor was the Statute De Tallagio -non concedendo, nor any 
 Statute, Law-method, Lawyer's-wig, much less were the Stat- 
 ute-Book and Four Courts, with Coke upon Lyttelton and 
 Three Estates of Parliament in the rear of them, got together 
 without human labor, mostly forgotten now ! From the 
 time of Cain's slaying Abel by swift head-breakage, to this 
 time of killing your man in Chancery by inches, and slow 
 heart-break for forty years, there too is an interval ! Ven- 
 erable Justice herself began by Wild-Justice ; all Law is as 
 a tamed furrow-field, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, 
 from the waste jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling 
 and draining ; escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and 
 vulturish and many other forms of Folly ; the valiant Hus- 
 bandman assiduously tilling ; the blind greedy enemy too 
 assiduously sowing tares ! It is because there is yet in vener- 
 able wigged Justice some wisdom, amid such mountains of 
 wiggeries and folly, that men have not cast her into the 
 River ; that she still sits there, like Dryden's Head in the 
 Battle of the Books, a huge helmet, a huge mountain of 
 greased parchment, of unclean horse-hair, first striking the 
 eye ; and then in the innermost corner, visible at last, in size 
 as a hazelnut, a real fraction of God's Justice, perhaps not 
 yet unattainable to some, surely still indispensable to all ; 
 and men know not what to do with her ! Lawyers were not 
 all pedants, voluminous voracious persons ; Lawyers too were 
 poets, were heroes, or their Law had been past the Nore 
 long before this time. Their Owlisms, Vulturisms, to an in- 
 credible extent, will disappear by and by, their Heroisms only 
 remaining, and the helmet lie reduced to something like the 
 size of the head, we hope ! 
 
 VOL. XII.
 
 130 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK II 
 
 t 
 It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed. 
 
 articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The 
 hands of forgotten brave men, have made it a World for us ; 
 they, honor to them ; they, in spite of the idle and the 
 dastard. This English Land, here and now. is the summary 
 of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with 
 God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our 
 English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets 
 of our blood and lineage ; speakable in proportion to the 
 number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, 
 possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to 
 day ; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprie- 
 tors are these following, and their representatives if you can 
 find them : All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, 
 each in their degree ; all the men that ever cut a thistle, 
 drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in 
 England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England. I 
 tell thee, they had not a hammer to begin with; and yet 
 Wren built St. Paul's : not an articulated syllable ; and yet 
 there have come English Literatures, Elizabethan Literatures, 
 Satanic-School, Cockney-School, and other Literatures ; once 
 more, as in the old time of the Leitourgia, a most waste im- 
 broglio, and world-wide jungle and jumble ; waiting terribly 
 to be " well-edited " and " well-burnt " ! Arachne started with 
 forefinger and thumb, and had not even a distaff; yet thou 
 seest Manchester, and Cotton Cloth, which will shelter naked 
 backs, at twopence an ell. 
 
 Work ? The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies 
 silent under my feet in this world, and escorts and attends 
 me, and supports and keeps me alive, wheresoever I walk or 
 stand, whatsoever I think or do, gives rise to reflections ! Is 
 , it not enough, at any rate, to strike the thing called " Fame " 
 into total silence for a wise man ? For fools and unreflective 
 persons, she is and will be very noisy, this " Fame," and talks 
 of her " immortals " and so forth : but if you will consider it, 
 what is she ? Abbot Samson was not nothing because nobody 
 said anything of him. Or thinkest thou, the Right Honor- 
 able Sir Jabesh Windbag can be made something by Parlia-
 
 CHAP. XVII. THE BEGINNINGS. 131 
 
 mentary Majorities and Leading Articles ? Her " immortals " ! 
 Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recollect articu- 
 lately at all ; and there she but maunders and mumbles. She 
 manages to recollect a Shakspeare or so ; and prates, consid- 
 erably like a goose, about him ; and in the rear of that, 
 onwards to the birth of Theuth, to Heugst's Invasion, and the 
 bosom of Eternity, it was all blank ; and the respectable 
 Teutonic Languages, Teutonic Practices, Existences, all came 
 of their own accord, as the grass springs, as the trees grow ; 
 no Poet, no work from the inspired heart of a Man needed 
 there ; and Fame has not an articulate word to say about it ! 
 Or ask her, What, with all conceivable appliances and mne- 
 monics, including apotheosis and human sacrifices among the 
 number, she carries in her head with regard to a Wodan, 
 even a Moses, or other such ? She begins to be uncertain 
 as to what they were, whether spirits or men of mould, 
 gods, charlatans ; begins sometimes to have a misgiving that 
 they were mere symbols, ideas of the mind ; perhaps non- 
 entities and Letters of the Alphabet ! She is the noisiest, 
 inarticulately babbling, hissing, screaming, foolishest, unmu- 
 sicalest of fowls that fly ; and needs no " trumpet," I think, 
 but her own enormous goose-throat, measuring several 
 degrees of celestial latitude, so to speak. Her " wings," in 
 these days, have grown far swifter than ever ; but her goose- 
 throat hitherto seems only larger, louder and foolisher than 
 ever. She is transitory, futile, a goose-goddess : if she were 
 not transitory, what would become of us ! It is a chief com- 
 fort that she forgets us all ; all, even to the very Wodans ; 
 and grows to consider us, at last, as probably nonentities and 
 Letters of the Alphabet. 
 
 Yes, a noble Abbot Samson resigns himself to Oblivion 
 too ; feels it no hardship, but a comfort ; counts it as a still 
 resting-place, from much sick fret and fever and stupidity, 
 which in the night-watches often made his strong heart sigh. 
 Your most sweet voices, making one enormous goose-voice, 
 O Bobus and Company, how can they be a guidance for any 
 Son of Adam ? In silence of you and the like of you, the 
 " small still voices " will speak to him better ; in which does 
 lie guidance.
 
 132 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK n. 
 
 My friend, all speech and rumor is short-lived, foolish, un- 
 true. Genuine WORK alone, what thou workest faithfully, 
 that is eternal, as the Almighty Founder and World-Builder 
 himself. Stand thou by that ; and let " Fame " and the rest 
 of it go prating. 
 
 " Heard are the Voices, 
 Heard are tiie Sages, 
 The Worlds and the Ages : 
 ' Choose well , your choice is 
 Brief and yet endless. 
 
 " ' Here eyes do regard you, 
 lu Eternity's stillness ; 
 Here is all fulness, 
 Ye brave, to reward you ; 
 Work, and despair not.' " 
 
 GOETHB.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE MODERN WORKER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PHENOMENA. 
 
 BUT, it is said, our religion is gone : we no longer believe 
 in St. Edmund, no longer see the figure of him " on the rim 
 of the sky," minatory or confirmatory ! God's absolute Laws, 
 sanctioned by an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell, have 
 become Moral Philosophies, sanctioned by able computations 
 of Profit and Loss, by weak considerations of Pleasures of 
 Virtue and the Moral Sublime. 
 
 It is even so. To speak in the ancient dialect, we " have 
 forgotten God ; " in the most modern dialect and very truth 
 of the matter, we have taken up the Fact of this Universe as 
 it w not. We have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal Sub- 
 stance of things, and opened them only to the Shows ;md 
 Shams of things. We quietly believe this Universe to be 
 intrinsically a great unintelligible PERHAPS ; extrinsic-ally, 
 clear enough, it is a great, most extensive Cattle-fold and 
 Workhouse, with most extensive Kitchen-ranges, Dining- 
 tables, whereat he is wise who can find a place ! All the 
 Truth of this Universe is uncertain ; only the profit and loss 
 of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and remain very visi- 
 ble to the practical man. 
 
 There is no longer any God for ns ! God's Laws are be- 
 come a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expe- 
 diency : the Heavens overarch us only as an Astronomical
 
 134 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 Time-keeper; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science 
 at, to shoot sentimentalities at : in our and old Jonson's 
 dialect, man has lost the soul out of him ; and now, after the 
 due period, begins to find the want of it ! This is verily 
 the plague-spot ; centre of the universal Social Gangrene, 
 threatening all modern things with frightful death. To him 
 that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and 
 tap-root, with its world-wide upas-boughs and accursed poison- 
 exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy 
 and agony. You touch the focal-centre of all our disease, 
 of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand 
 on this. There is no religion ; there is no God ; man has 
 lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly : in 
 killing Kings, in passing Reform Bills, in French Revolutions, 
 Manchester Insurrections, is found no remedy. The foul ele- 
 phantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, reappears in new 
 force and desperateness next hour. 
 
 For actually this is not the real fact of the world ; the 
 world is not made so, but otherwise ! Truly, any Society 
 setting out from this No-God hypothesis will arrive at a result 
 or two. The ?7/iveracities, escorted, each Uuveracity of them 
 by its corresponding Misery and Penalty ; the Phantasms and 
 Fatuities, and ten-years Corn-Law Debatings, that shall walk 
 the Earth at noonday, must needs be numerous ! The 
 Universe being intrinsically a Perhaps, being too probably an / 
 " infinite Humbug," why should any minor Humbug astonish 
 us ? It is all according to the order of Nature ; and Phan- 
 tasms riding with huge clatter along the streets, from end to 
 end of our existence, astonish nobody. Enchanted St. Ives' 
 Workhouses and Joe-Manton Aristocracies ; giant Working 
 Mammonism near strangled in the partridge-nets of giant- 
 looking Idle Dilettantism, this, in all its branches, in its 
 thousand-thousand modes and figures, is a sight familiar 
 to us. 
 
 The Popish Religion, we are told, flourishes extremely in 
 these years ; and is the most vivacious-looking religion to be 
 met with at present. '' Elle a trois cents ans dans le venire,"
 
 CHAP. I. PHENOMENA 135 
 
 counts M. Jouffroy ; " c'est pouryuoi je la respecte ! " The 
 old Pope of Rome, finding it laborious to kneel so long while 
 they cart him through the streets to bless the people on 
 Corpus-Christi Day, complains of rheumatism ; whereupon his 
 Cardinals consult ; construct him, after some study, a stuffed 
 cloaked figure, of iron and wood, with wool or baked hair; 
 and place it in a kneeling posture. Stuffed figure, or rump of 
 a figure ; to this stuffed rump he. sitting at his ease on a lower 
 level, joins, by the aid of cloaks and drapery, his living head 
 and outspread hands : the rump with its cloaks kneels, the 
 Pope looks, and holds his hands spread; and so the two in 
 concert bless the lioman population on Corpus- Christi Day, as 
 well as they can. 
 
 I have considered this amphibious Pope, with the wool-and- 
 iron back, with the flesh head and hands ; and endeavored 
 to calculate his horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest 
 Pontiff that has darkened God's daylight, or painted himself 
 in the human retina, for these several thousand years. Nay, 
 since Chaos first shivered, and " sneezed," as the Arabs say, 
 with the first shaft of sunlight shot through it, what stranger 
 product was there of Nature and Art working together ? 
 Here is a Supreme Priest who believes God to be What, in 
 the name of God, does he believe God to be ? and discerns 
 that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax- 
 candles, organ-blasts, Gregorian chants, mass-bray ings, purple 
 monsignorij wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to 
 save the ignorant from worse. 
 
 reader, I say not who are Belial's elect. This poor am- 
 phibious Pope too gives loaves to the Poor ; has in him more 
 good latent than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, 
 in the late Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, 
 the only creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad : 
 they descended fearless into all gulfs and bedlams ; watched 
 over the pillow of the dying, with help, with counsel and 
 hope; shone as luminous fixed stars, when all else had gone 
 out in chaotic night : honor to them ! This poor Pope, who 
 knows what good is in him ? In n. Time otherwise too prone 
 to forget, he keeps up the mournfulest ghastly memorial of
 
 136 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 the Highest, Blessedest, which once was ; which, in new fit 
 forms, will again partly have to be. Is he not as a perpetual 
 death's-head and cross-bones, with their Resurgam, on the 
 grave of a Universal Heroism, grave of a Christianity? 
 Such Noblenesses, purchased by the world's best heart's-blood, 
 must not be lost ; we cannot afford to lose them, in what con- 
 fusions soever. To all of us the day will come, to a few of us 
 it has already come, when no mortal, with his heart yearning 
 for a " Divine Humility," or other " Highest form of Valor," 
 will need to look for it in. death's-heads, but will see it round 
 him in here and there a beautiful living head. 
 
 Besides, there is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the 
 Scenic Theory of Worship, a frankness which I rather honor. 
 Not half and half, but Avith undivided heart does he set about 
 worshipping by stage-machinery ; as if there were now, and 
 could again be, in Nature no other. He will ask you, What 
 other ? Under this my Gregorian Chant, and beautiful wax- 
 light Phantasm agory, kindly hidden from you is an Abyss, 
 of Black Doubt, Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism ; an 
 Orcus that has no bottom. Think of that. Groby Pool is 
 thatched with pancakes," as Jeannie Deans's Innkeeper 
 defied it to be ! The Bottomless of Scepticism, Atheism, 
 Jacobinism, behold, it is thatched over, hidden from your de- 
 spair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed 
 rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you 
 also from what other isms! In this your Life-pilgrimage 
 No-\vhither, a fine Squallacci marching-music, and Gregorian 
 Chant, accompanies you, and the hollow Night of Orcus is 
 well hid ! 
 
 Yes truly, few men that worship by the rotatory Calabash 
 of the Calmucks do it in half so great, frank or effectual a 
 way. Drury-Lane, it is said, and that is saying much, might 
 learn from him in the dressing of parts, in the arrangement 
 of lights and shadows. He is the greatest Play-actor that 
 at present draws salary in this world. Poor Pope ; and I am 
 told he is fast growing bankrupt too ; and will, in a measura- 
 ble term of years (a great way within the "three hundred"), 
 not have a penny to make his pot boil ! His old rheumatic
 
 CHAP. I. PHENOMENA. 137 
 
 back will then get to rest ; and himself and his stage-proper- 
 ties sleep well in Chaos forevermore. 
 
 Or, alas, why go to Rome for Phantasms walking the 
 streets ? Phantasms, ghosts, in this midnight hour, hold jubi- 
 lee, and screech and jabber; and the question rather were, 
 What high Reality anywhere is yet awake ? Aristocracy has 
 Income Phantasm-Aristocracy, no longer able to do its work, 
 not in the least conscious that it has any work longer to do. 
 Unable, totally careless to do its work ; careful only to clamor 
 for the wayes of doing its work, nay for higher, and palpably 
 undue wages, and Corn-Laws and increase of rents ; the old 
 rate of wages not being adequate now ! In hydra-wrestle, 
 giant " Millocrsicy " so called, a real giant, though as yet a 
 blind one and but half awake, wrestles and wrings in choking 
 nightmare, " like to be strangled in the partridge-nets of Phan- 
 tasm-Aristocracy," as we said, which fancies itself still to be a 
 giant. Wrestles, as under nightmare, till it do awaken ; and 
 gasps and struggles thousand-fold, we may say, in a truly pain- 
 ful manner, through all fibres of our English Existence, in 
 these hours and years ! Is our poor English Existence wholly 
 becoming a Nightmare ; full of mere Phantasms ? 
 
 The Champion of England, cased in iron or tin, rides into 
 Westminster Hall, " being lifted into his saddle with little 
 assistance," and there asks, If in the four quarters of the 
 world, under the cope of Heaven, is any man or demon that 
 dare question the right of this King ? Under the cope of 
 Heaven no man makes intelligible answer, as several men 
 ought already to have done. Does not this 'Champion too 
 know the world ; that it is a huge Imposture, and bottomless 
 Inanity, thatched over with bright cloth and other ingenious 
 tissues ? Him let us leave there, questioning all men and 
 demons. 
 
 Him we have left to his destiny ; but whom else have we 
 found ? From this the highest apex of things, downwards 
 through all strata and breadths, how many fully awakened 
 Realities have we fallen in with : alas, on the contrary, 
 what troops and populations of Phantasms, not God-Veracities
 
 138 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 but Devil-Falsities, down to the very lowest stratum, which 
 now, by such superincumbent weight of Unveracities, lies 
 enchanted in St. Ives' Workhouses, broad enough, helpless 
 enough ! You will walk in no public thoroughfare or remotest 
 byway of English Existence but you will meet a man, an in- 
 terest of men, that has given up hope in the Everlasting, True, 
 and placed its hope in the Temporary, half or wholly False. 
 The Honorable Member complains unmusically that there is 
 " devil's-dust " in Yorkshire cloth. Yorkshire cloth, why, 
 the very Paper I now write on is made, it seems, partly of 
 plaster-lime well smoothed, and obstructs my writing! You 
 are lucky if you can find now any good Paper, any work 
 really done; search where you will, from highest Phantasm 
 apex to lowest Enchanted basis. 
 
 Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which 
 now perambulates London Streets : which my Friend Sauerteig 
 regarded justly as one of our English notabilities ; " the top- 
 most point as yet," said he, "would it were your culminating 
 and returning point, to which English Puffery has been ob- 
 served to reach!" The Hatter in the Strand of London, 
 instead of making better felt-hats than another, mounts a huge 
 lath-and-plaster Hat, seven feet high, upon wheels ; sends a 
 man to drive it through the streets ; hoping to be saved thereby. 
 He has not attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed 
 by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he 
 could very probably have done ; but his whole industry is 
 turned to persuade us that he has made such ! He too knows 
 that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at him, reader ; 
 or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic ; he is fast 
 becoming tragic. To me this all-deafening blast of Puffery, 
 of poor Falsehood grown necessitous, of poor Heart- A theism 
 fallen now into Enchanted Workhouses, sounds too surely like 
 a Doom's-blast ! I have to say to myself in old dialect : 
 "God's blessing is not written on all this; His curse is written 
 on all this!" Unless perhaps the Universe be a chimera ; 
 some old totally deranged eight-day clock, dead as brass ; which 
 the Maker, if there ever was any Maker, has long ceased to 
 meddle with? To my Friend Sauerteig this poor seven-feet
 
 CHAP. I. PHENOMENA. 139 
 
 Hat-manufacturer, as the topstone of English Puffery, was 
 very notable. 
 
 Alas, that we natives note him little, that we view him as a 
 thing of course, is the very burden of the misery. We take it 
 for granted, the most rigorous of us, that all men who have 
 made anything are expected and entitled to make the loudest 
 possible proclamation of it, and call on a discerning public to 
 reward them for it. Every man his own trumpeter ; that is, 
 to a really alarming extent, the accepted rule. Make loudest 
 possible proclamation of your Hat : true proclamation if that 
 will do ; if that will not do, then false proclamation, to such 
 extent of falsity as will serve your purpose ; as will not seem 
 too false to be credible ! I answer, once for all, that the fact 
 is not so. Nature requires no man to make proclamation of 
 his doings and hat-makings ; Nature forbids all men to make 
 such. There is not a man or hat-maker born into the world 
 but feels, or has felt, that he is degrading himself if he speak 
 of his excellencies and prowesses, and supremacy in his craft : 
 his inmost heart says to him, " Leave thy friends to speak of 
 these; if possible, thy enemies to speak of these; but at all 
 events, thy friends ! " He feels that he is already a poor 
 braggart ; fast hastening to be a falsity and speaker of the 
 Untruth. 
 
 Nature's Laws, I must repeat, are eternal : her small still 
 Iroice, speaking from the inmost heart of us, shall not, under 
 terrible penalties, be disregarded. No one man can depart 
 from the truth without damage to himself; no one million of 
 men ; no Twenty -seven Millions of men. Show me a Nation 
 fallen everywhere into this course, so that each expects it, 
 permits it to others and himself, I will show you a Nation 
 travelling with one assent on the broad way. The broad way. 
 however many Banks of England, Cotton-Mills and Duke's 
 Palaces it may have. Not at happy Elysian fields, and ever- 
 lasting crowns of victory, earned by silent Valor, will this 
 Nation arrive ; but at precipices, devouring gulfs, if it pause 
 not. Nature has appointed happy fields, victorious laurel- 
 crowns ; but only to the brave and true : T/wnature, what we 
 Chaos, holds nothing in it but vacuities, devouring gulfs.
 
 140 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 What are Twenty-seven Millions, and their unanimity ? Be- 
 lieve them not: the Worlds and the Ages, God and Nature 
 and All Men say otherwise. 
 
 " Rhetoric all this ? " No, my brother, very singular to say, 
 it is Fact all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is not truer. Forgot- 
 ten in these days, it is old as the foundations of the Universe, 
 and will endure till the Universe cease. It is forgotten now ; 
 and the first mention of it puckers thy sweet countenance into 
 a sneer : but it will be brought to mind again, unless indeed 
 the Law of Gravitation chance to cease, and men rind that 
 they can walk on vacancy. Unanimity of the Twenty-seven 
 Millions will do nothing ; walk not thou with them ; fly from 
 them as for thy life. Twenty-seven Millions travelling on 
 such courses, with gold jingling in every pocket, with vivats 
 heaven-high, are incessantly advancing, let me again remind 
 thee, towards the firm-land's end, towards the end and ex- 
 tinction of what Faithfulness, Veracity, real Worth, was in 
 their way of life. Their noble ancestors have fashioned for 
 them a " life-road;" in how many thousand senses, this! 
 There is not an old wise Proverb on their tongue, an honest 
 Principle articulated in their hearts into utterance, a wise true 
 method of doing and despatching any work or commerce of 
 men, but helps yet to carry them forward. Life is still pos- 
 sible to them, because all is not yet Puffery, Falsity, Mammon- 
 worship and Unnature ; because somewhat is yet Faithfulness, 
 Veracity and Valor. With a certain very considerable finite 
 quantity of Unveracity and Phantasm, social life is still pos- 
 sible ; not with an infinite quantity ! Exceed your certain 
 quantity, the seven-feet Hat, and all things upwards to the 
 very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and flounder, in 
 Manchester Insurrections, Chartisms, Sliding-scales ; the Law 
 of Gravitation not forgetting to act. You advance incessantly 
 towards the land's end; you are, literally enough, '"consuming 
 the way." Step after step, Twenty-seven Million unconscious 
 men ; till you are at the land's end ; till there is not Faith- 
 fulness enough among you any more : and the next step now 
 is lifted not over land, but into air, over ocean-deeps and roar- 
 ing abysses : unless perhaps the Law of Gravitation have 
 forgotten to act?
 
 CHAP. II. GOSPEL OF MAMMONISM. 141 
 
 Oh, it is frightful when a whole Nation, as our Fathers used 
 to say, has " forgotten God ; " has remembered only Mammon, 
 and what Mammon leads to ! When your self-trumpeting 
 Hat-maker is the emblem of almost all makers, and workers, 
 and men, that make anything, from soul-overseerships, body- 
 overseerships, epic poems, acts of parliament, to hats ani 1 
 shoe-blacking ! Not one false man but does uncountable mis 
 chief: how much, in a generation or two, will Twenty -seven 
 Millions, mostly false, manage to accumulate? The sum of it, 
 visible in every street, market-place, senate-house, circulating- 
 library, cathedral, cotton-mill, and union-workhouse, fills one 
 not with a comic feeling ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GOSPEL OF MAMMONISM. 
 
 READER, even Christian Reader as thy title goes, hast thou 
 any notion of Heaven and Hell ? I rather apprehend, not. 
 Often as the words are on our tongue, they have got a fabu- 
 lous or semi-fabulous character for most of us, and pass on 
 like a kind of transient similitude, like a sound signifying 
 little. 
 
 Yet it is well worth while for us to know, once and always, 
 that they are not a similitude, nor a fable nor semi-fable ; that 
 they are an everlasting highest fact ! " No Lake of Sicilian 
 or other sulphur burns now anywhere in these ages," sayest 
 thou ? Well, and if there did not ! Believe that there does 
 not ; believe it if thou wilt, nay hold by it as a real increase, 
 a rise to higher stages, to wider horizons and empires. All 
 this has vanished, or has not vanished ; believe as thou wilt 
 as to all this. But that an Infinite of Practical Importance, 
 speaking with strict arithmetical exactness, an Infinite, lias 
 vanished or can vanish from the Life of any Man : this thou 
 shalt not believe ! brother, the Infinite of Terror, of Hope,
 
 14'2 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK Hi. 
 
 of Pity, did it not at any moment disclose itself to thee, 
 indxibitable, unnamable ? Came it never, like the gleam of 
 preternatural eternal Oceans, like the voice of old Eternities, 
 far-sounding through thy heart of hearts ? Never ? Alas, it 
 was not thy Liberalism, then ; it was thy Animalism ! The 
 Infinite is more sure than any other fact. But only men can 
 discern it; mere building beavers, spinning arachnes, much 
 more the predatory vulturous and vulpine species, do not dis- 
 cern it well ! 
 
 " The word Hell," says Sauerteig, " is still frequently in 
 use among the English people : but I could not without diffi- 
 culty ascertain what they meant by it. Hell generally signi- 
 fies the Infinite Terror, the thing a man is infinitely afraid of, 
 and shudders and shrinks from, struggling with his whole soul 
 to escape from it. There is a Hell therefore, if you will con- 
 sider, which accompanies man, in all stages of his history, and 
 religious or other development : but the Hells of men and 
 Peoples differ notably. With Christians it is the infinite ter- 
 ror of being found guilty before the Just Judge. With old 
 Romans, I conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom 
 probably they cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing un- 
 virtuously, which was their word for unlawfully. And now 
 what is it, if you pierce through his Cants, his oft-repeated 
 Hearsays, what he calls his Worships and so forth, what is 
 it that the modern English soul does, in very truth, dread in- 
 finitely, and contemplate with entire despair ? What is his 
 Hell, after all these reputable, oft-repeated Hearsays, what is 
 it ? With hesitation, with astonishment, I pronounce it to be : 
 The terror of 'Not succeeding;' of not making money, fame, 
 or some other figure in the world, chiefly of not making 
 money ! Is not that a somewhat singular Hell ? " 
 
 Yes, Sauerteig, it is very singular. If we do not " suc- 
 ceed," where is the use of us ? We had better never have been 
 born. " Tremble intensely," as our friend the Emperor of 
 China says : there is the black Bottomless of Terror ; what 
 Sauerteig calls the " Hell of the English " ! But indeed this 
 Hell belongs naturally to the Gospel of Mammonism, which 
 also has its corresponding Heaven. For there is one Reality
 
 CHAT. Ii. GOSPEL OF MAMMONISH. 143 
 
 among so many Phantasms ; about one thing we are entirely 
 in earnest : The making of money. Working Mammonism 
 does divide the world with idle game-preserving Dilettantism : 
 thank Heaven that there is even a Mammonism, anything 
 we are in earnest about ! Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is 
 without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees 
 learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in 
 work, were it even work at making money. 
 
 True, it must be owned, we for the present, with our Mam- 
 mon-Gospel, have come to strange conclusions. We call it a 
 Society ; and go about professing openly the totalest separa- 
 tion, isolation. Our life, is not a mutual helpfulness ; but 
 rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named "fair competi- 
 tion " and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. We have profoundly 
 forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole rela- 
 tion of human beings ; we think, nothing doubting, that it 
 absolves and liquidates all engagements of man. " My starv- 
 ing workers ? " answers the rich mill-owner : " Did not I hire 
 them fairly in the market ? Did I not pay them, to the last 
 sixpence, the sum covenanted for ? What have I to do with 
 them more?" Verily Mammon-worship is a melancholy 
 creed. When Cain, for his own behoof, had killed Abel, and 
 was questioned, " Where is thy brother ? " he too made an- 
 swer, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " Did I not pay my brother 
 his wages, the thing he had merited from me ? 
 
 sumptuous Merchant-Prince, illustrious game-preserving 
 Duke, is there no way of " killing " thy brother but Cain's 
 rude way ! " A good man by the very look of him, by his 
 very presence with us as a fellow wayfarer in this Life- 
 pilgrimage, promises so much : " woe to him if he forget all 
 such promises, if he never know that they were given ! To a 
 deadened soul, seared with the brute Idolatry of Sense, to 
 whom going to Hell is equivalent to not making money, all 
 "promises," and moral duties, that cannot be pleaded for in 
 Courts of Requests, address themselves in vain. Money he 
 can be ordered to pay, but nothing more. I have not heard 
 in all Past History, and expect not to hear in all Future His- 
 tory, of any Society anywhere under God's Heaven supporting
 
 144 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 itself on such Philosophy. The Universe is not made so ; it 
 is made otherwise than so. The man or nation of men that 
 thinks it is made so, marches forward nothing doubting, step 
 after step ; but marches whither we know ! In these last 
 two centuries of Atheistic Government (near two centuries 
 now, since the blessed restoration of his Sacred Majesty, and 
 Defender of the Faith, Charles Second), I reckon that we 
 have pretty well exhausted what of " firm earth " there was 
 for us to march on ; and are now, very ominously, shudder- 
 ing, reeling, and let us hope trying to recoil, on the cliff's 
 edge ! 
 
 For out of this that Ave call Atheism come so many other 
 isms and falsities, each falsity with its misery at its heels ! 
 A SOUL is not like wind (spiritus, or breath) contained within 
 a capsule ; the ALMIGHTY MAKER is not like a Clock-maker 
 that once, in old immemorial ages, having made his Horologe 
 of a Universe, sits ever since and sees it go ! Xot at all. 
 Hence comes Atheism ; come, as we say, many other isms ; and 
 as the sum of all, comes Valetism, the reverse of Heroism ; sad 
 root of all woes whatsoever. For indeed, as no man ever saw 
 the above-said wind-element enclosed within its capsule, and 
 finds it at bottom more deniable than conceivable ; so too he 
 finds, in spite of Bridgewater Bequests, your Clock-maker Al- 
 mighty an entirely questionable affair, a deniable affair ; and 
 accordingly denies it, and along with it so much else. Alas, 
 one knows not what and how much else ! For the faith in an 
 Invisible, Unnamable, Godlike, present everywhere in all that 
 we see and work and suffer, is the essence of all faith whatso- 
 ever ; and that once denied, or still worse, asserted with lips 
 only, and out of bound prayer-books only, what other thing re- 
 mains believable ? That Cant well-ordered is marketable Cant ; 
 that Heroism means gas-lighted Histrionism ; that seen with 
 " clear eyes " (as they call Valet-eyes), no man is a Hero, or ever 
 was a Hero, but all men are Valets and Varlets. The accursed 
 practical quintessence of all sorts of Unbelief ! For if there be 
 now no Hero, and the Histrio himself begin to be seen into, 
 what hope is there for the seed of Adam here below ? We 
 arc the doomed everlasting prey of the Quack ; who, now in
 
 CHAI-. ii. GOSPEL OF MAMMONISH. 145 
 
 this guise, now in that, is to filch us, to pluck and eat us, by 
 such modes as are convenient for him. For the modes and 
 guises I care little. The Quack once inevitable, let him come 
 swiftly, let him pluck and eat me; swiftly, that I may at 
 least have done with him ; for in his Quack-world I can have 
 no wish to linger. Though he slay me, yet will I not trust in 
 him. Though he conquer nations, and have all the Flunkies 
 of the Universe shouting at his heels, yet will I know well 
 that he is an Inanity ; that for him and his there is no con- 
 tinuance appointed, save only in Gehenna and the Pool. Alas, 
 the Atheist world, from its utmost summits of Heaven and 
 Westminster-Hall, downwards through poor seven-feet Hats 
 and " Unveracities fallen hungry," down to the lowest cellars 
 and neglected hunger-dens of it, is very wretched. 
 
 One of Dr. Alison's Scotch facts struck us much. 1 A poor 
 Irish Widow, her husband having died in one of the Lanes of 
 Edinburgh, went forth with her three children, bare of all 
 resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments 
 of that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at 
 that she was refused ; referred from one to the other, helped 
 by none ; till she had exhausted them all ; till her strength 
 and heart failed her : she sank down in typhus-fever ; died, 
 and infected her Lane with fever, so that " seventeen other 
 persons " died of fever there in consequence. The humane 
 Physician asks thereupon, as with a heart too full for speak- 
 ing, Would it not have been economy to help this poor Widow ? 
 She took typhus-fever, and killed seventeen of you ! Very 
 curious. The forlorn Irish Widow applies to her fellow- 
 creatures, as if saying, "Behold I am sinking, bare of help: 
 ye must help me ! I am your sister, bone of your bone ; one 
 God made us : ye must help me ! " They answer, " No, im- 
 possible ; tliou art no sister of ours." But she proves her 
 sisterhood ; her typhus-fever kills them : they actually were 
 her brothers, though denying it ! Had human creature ever 
 to go lower for a proof ? 
 
 For, as indeed was very natural in such case, all govern- 
 
 1 Observations on the Mtinuyrmtnt of the Poor in Scotland: by William Fulte 
 ney Alison. M.D. (Edinburgh, 1840.) 
 
 VOL. XII. 10
 
 146 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 ment of the Poor by the Rich has long ago been given over 
 to Supply-and-demand, Laissez-faire and such like, and uni- 
 versally declared to be " impossible." " You are no sister of 
 ours ; what shadow of proof is there ? Here are our parch- 
 ments, our padlocks, proving indisputably our money-safes to 
 be ours, and you to have no business with them. Depart ! It 
 is impossible ! " Nay, what wouldst thou thyself have us 
 do ? cry indignant readers. Nothing, my friends, till you 
 have got a soul for yourselves again. Till then all things are 
 '' impossible." Till then I cannot even bid you buy, as the 
 old Spartans would have done, twopence worth of powder and 
 lead, and compendiously shoot to death this poor Irish Widow : 
 even that is " impossible " for you. Nothing is left but that 
 she prove her sisterhood by dying, and infecting you with 
 typhus. Seventeen of you lying dead will not deny such 
 proof that she ivas flesh of your flesh ; and perhaps some of 
 the living may lay it to heart. 
 
 " Impossible : " of a certain two-legged animal with feathers 
 it is said, if you draw a distinct chalk-circle round him, lie sits 
 imprisoned, as if girt with the iron ring of Fate ; and will die 
 there, though within sight of victuals, or sit in sick misery 
 there, and be fatted to death. The name of this poor two- 
 legged animal is Goose ; and they make of him, when well 
 fattened, Putt de foie gras, much prized by some 1 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 GOSPEL OF DILETTAXTISM. 
 
 BUT after all, the Gospel of Dilettantism, producing a Gov- 
 erning Class who do not govern, nor understand in the least 
 that they are bound or expected to govern, is still mournfuler 
 than that of Mammonism. Mammonism, as wo said, at least 
 works ; this goes idle. Mammonism has seized some portion 
 of the message of Nature to man ; and seizing that, and fol-
 
 CHAP. III. GOSPEL OF DILETTANTISM. 147 
 
 lowing it, will seize and appropriate more and more of Nature's 
 message : but Dilettantism has missed it wholly. " Make 
 money:" that will mean withal, "Do work in order to make 
 money.'' But, " Go gracefully idle in May fair," what does or 
 can that mean ? An idle, game-preserving and even eorn- 
 lawing Aristocracy, in such an England as ours : has the world, 
 if we take thought of it, ever seen such a phenomenon till 
 very lately ? Can it long continue to see such? 
 
 Accordingly the impotent, insolent Donothingism in Prac- 
 tice and Saynothingisin in Speech, which we have to witness 
 on that side of our affairs, is altogether amazing. A Corn- 
 Law demonstrating itself openly, for ten years or more, with 
 " arguments " to make the angels, and some other classes of 
 creatures, weep ! For men are not ashamed to rise in Parlia- 
 ment and elsewhere, and speak the things they do not think. 
 "Expediency," "Necessities of Party," &c. &c. ! It is not 
 known that the Tongue of Man is a sacred organ ; that Man 
 himself is definable in Philosophy as an "Incarnate Word;" 
 the Word not there, you have no Man there either, but a 
 Phantasm instead ! In this way it is that Absurdities may 
 live long enough, still walking, and talking for themselves, 
 years and decades after the brains are quite out ! How are 
 " the knaves and dastards '" ever to be got " arrested " at that 
 rate ? 
 
 "No man in this fashionable London of yours," friend 
 Sauerteig would say, "speaks a plain word to me. Every 
 man feels bound to be something more than plain ; to be 
 pungent withal, witty, ornamental. His poor fraction of 
 sense has to be perked into some epigrammatic shape, that 
 it may prick into me; perhaps (this is the commonest) to 
 l>e topsy-turvied, left standing on its head, that I may remem- 
 ber it the better ! Such grinning inanity is very sad to the 
 soul of man. Human faces should not grin on one like masks ; 
 they should look on one like faces ! I love honest laughter, 
 as I do sunlight; but not dishonest: most kinds of dancing 
 too ; but the St.-Vitus kind not at all ! A fashionable wit, 
 ach Himmel .' if you ask, Which, he or a Death's-head, will be 
 the cheerier company for me ? pray send not him ! "
 
 148 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III 
 
 Insincere Speech, truly, is the prime material of insincere 
 Action. Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in Speech, in 
 Thought whereof Speech is the Shadow ; and precipitates 
 itself therefrom. The kind of Speech iii a man betokens 
 the kind of Action you will get from him. Our Speech, in 
 these modern days, has become amazing. Johnson complained, 
 " Nobody speaks in earnest, Sir ; there is no serious conversa- 
 tion." To us all serious speech of men, as that of Seventeenth- 
 Century Puritans, Twelfth-Century Catholics, German Poets 
 of this Century, has become jargon, more or less insane. Crom- 
 well was mad and a quack; Anselm, Becket, Goethe, ditto 
 ditto. 
 
 Perhaps few narratives in History or Mythology are more 
 significant than that Moslem one, of Moses and the Dwellers by 
 the Dead Sea. A tribe of men dwelt on the shores of that same 
 Asphaltic Lake ; and having forgotten, as we are all too prone 
 to do, the inner facts of Nature, and taken up with the falsities 
 arid outer semblances of it, were fallen into sad conditions, 
 verging indeed towards a certain far deeper Lake. Whereupon 
 it pleased kind Heaven to send them the Prophet Moses, with 
 an instructive word of warning, out of which might have 
 sprung " remedial measures " not a few. But no : the men of 
 the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always does in 
 heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses ; listened with real 
 tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs 
 and sneers, affecting even to yawn ; and signified, in short, 
 that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such was 
 the candid theory these men of the Asphalt Lake formed to 
 themselves of Moses, That probably he was a humbug, that 
 certainly he was a bore. 
 
 Moses withdrew; but Nature and her rigorous veracities 
 did not withdraw. The men of the Dead Sea, when we next 
 went to visit them, were all " changed into Apes ; " * sitting 
 on the trees there, grinning now in the most unaffected man- 
 ner ; gibbering and chattering very genuine nonsense ; finding 
 the whole Universe now a most indisputable Humbug ! The 
 Universe has become a Humbug to these Apes who thought it 
 1 Sale's Koran (Introduction).
 
 CHAP. IV. HAPPY. 149 
 
 one. There they sit and chatter, to this hour : only, I be- 
 lieve, every Sabbath there returns to them a bewildered half- 
 consciousness, half-reminiscence ; and they sit, with their 
 wizened smoke-dried visages, and such an air of supreme 
 tragicality as Apes may ; looking out through those blinking 
 smoke-bleared eyes of theirs, into the wonderfulest universal 
 smoky Twilight and undecipherable disordered Dusk of Things ; 
 wholly an Uncertainty, Unintelligibility, they and it ; and for 
 commentary thereon, here and there an unmusical chatter or 
 mew : truest, tragicalest Humbug conceivable by the mind 
 of man or ape ! They made no use of their souls ; and so 
 have lost them. Their worship on the Sabbath now is to roost 
 there, with unmusical screeches, and half remember that they 
 had souls. 
 
 Didst thou never, O Traveller, fall in with parties of this 
 tribe ? Meseems they are grown somewhat numerous in our 
 day. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HAPPY. 
 
 ALL work, even cotton-spinning, is noble ; work is alone 
 noble : be that here said and asserted once more. And in like 
 manner too, all dignity is painful ; a life of ease is not for 
 any man, nor for any god. The life of all gods figures itself 
 to us as a Sublime Sadness, earnestness of Infinite Battle 
 against Infinite Labor. Our highest religion is named the 
 " Worship of Sorrow." For the son of man there is no noble 
 crown, well worn or even ill worn, but is a crown of thorns ! 
 These things, in spoken words, or still better, in felt instincts 
 alive in every heart, were once well known. 
 
 Does not the whole wretchedness, the whole Atheism as I 
 call it, of man's ways, in these generations, shadow itself for 
 us in that unspeakable Life-philosophy of his : The pretension 
 to be what he calls " happy " ? Every pitifulest whipster that 
 walks within a skin has his head filled with the notion that
 
 150 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be 
 "happy." His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be ful- 
 filled for him ; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on 
 in ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the 
 gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy ; 
 thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people 
 clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things ? 
 
 We construct our theory of Human Duties, not on any 
 Greatest-Nobleness Principle, never so mistaken ; no, but on a 
 Greatest-Happiness Principle. " The word Soul with us, as in 
 some Slavonic dialects, seems to be synonymous with Stomach." 
 We plead and speak, in our Parliaments and elsewhere, not as 
 from the Soul, but from the Stomach ; wherefore indeed our 
 pleadings are so slow to profit. We plead not for God's Jus- 
 tice ; we are not ashamed to stand clamoring and pleading for 
 our own "interests/' 'our own rents and trade-profits ; we say, 
 They are the " interests " of so many ; there is such an intense 
 desire in us for them ! We demand Free-Trade, with much 
 just vociferation and benevolence, That the poorer classes, who 
 are terribly ill off at present, may have cheaper New-Orleans 
 bacon. Men ask on Free-Trade Platforms, How can the indomi- 
 table spirit of Englishmen be kept up without plenty of bacon ? 
 We shall become a ruined Nation ! Surely, my friends, plenty 
 of bacon is good and indispensable : but, I doubt, you will 
 never get even bacon by aiming only at that. You are men, 
 not animals of prey, well-used or ill-used ! Your Greatest- 
 Happiness Principle seems to me fast becoming a rather un- 
 happy one. What if we should cease babbling about " happi- 
 ness," and leave it restirf^ on its own basis, as it used to do ! 
 
 A gifted Byron rises in his wrath ; and feeling too surely 
 that he for his part is not " happy," declares the same in very 
 violent language, as a piece of news that may be interesting. 
 It evidently has surprised him much. One dislikes to see a 
 man and poet reduced to proclaim on the streets such tidings : 
 but on the whole, as matters go, that is not the most dislikable. 
 Byron speaks the truth in this matter. Byron's large audience 
 indicates how true it is felt to be. 
 
 " Happy," my brother ? First of all, what difference is it
 
 CHAP. IV. HAPPY. 151 
 
 whether thou art happy or not ! To-day becomes Yesterday 
 so fast, all To-morrows become Yesterdays ; and then there is 
 no question whatever of the " happiness," but quite another 
 question. Nay, thou hast such a sacred pity left at least for 
 thyself, thy very pains, once gone over into Yesterday, become 
 joys to thee. Besides, thou knowest not what heavenly bless- 
 edness and indispensable sanative virtue was in them ; thou 
 shalt only know it after many days, when thou art wiser ! 
 A benevolent old Surgeon sat once in our company, with a 
 Patient fallen sick by gourmandizing, whom he had just, too 
 briefly in the Patient's judgment, been examining. The fool- 
 ish Patient still at intervals continued to break in on our dis- 
 course, which rather promised to take a philosophic turn : " But 
 I have lost my appetite," said he, objnrgatively, with a tone of 
 irritated pathos ; " I have no appetite ; I can't eat ! " " My 
 dear fellow," answered the Doctor in mildest tone, " it is n't of 
 the slightest consequence ; " and continued his philosophical 
 discoursings with us ! 
 
 Or does the reader not know the history of that Scottish 
 iron Misanthrope ? The inmates of some town-mansion, in 
 those Northern parts, were thrown into the fearfulest alarm 
 by indubitable symptoms of a ghost inhabiting the next house. 
 or perhaps even the partition-wall ! Ever at a certain hour, 
 with preternatural gnarring, growling and screeching, which 
 attended as running bass, there began, in a horrid, semi-articu- 
 late, unearthly voice, this song : " Once I was hap-hap-happy, 
 but now I 'm weeserable ! Clack-clack-clack, gnarr-r-r, whuz-z : 
 Once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I 'm weeserable ! " - Kest, 
 rest, perturbed spirit ; or indeed, as the good old Doctor said : 
 -My dear fellow, it is n't of the slightest consequence ! But 
 no ; the perturbed spirit could not rest ; and to the neighbors, 
 fretted, affrighted, or at least insufferably bored by him, itww? 
 of such consequence that they had to go and examine in his 
 haunted chamber. Tn his haunted chamber, they find that 
 the perturbed spirit is an unfortunate Imitator of Byron ? 
 No, is an unfortunate rusty Meat-jack, gnarring and creaking 
 with rust and work ; and this, in Scottish dialect, is Its Byro- 
 nian musical Life-philosophy, sung according to ability !
 
 152 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 Truly, I think the man who goes abtmt pothering and up- 
 roaring for his " happiness," pothering, and were it ballot- 
 boxing, poem-making, or in what way soever fussing and 
 exerting himself, he is not the man that will help us to " get 
 our knaves and dastards arrested " ! No ; he rather is on the 
 way to increase the number, by at least one unit and his 
 tail ! Observe, too, that this is all a modern affair : belongs 
 not to the old heroic times, but to these dastard new times. 
 " Happiness our being's end and aim," all that very paltry 
 speculation is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two 
 centuries old in the world. 
 
 The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with 
 asking much about was, happiness enough to get his work done. 
 Not " I can't eat ! " but " I can't work ! " that was the burden 
 of all wise complaining among men. It is, after all, the one 
 unhappiness of a man. That he cannot work ; that he cannot 
 get his destiny as a man fulfilled. Behold, the day is passing 
 swiftly over, our life is passing swiftly over ; and the night 
 cometh, Avherein no man can work. The night once come, our 
 happiness, our unhappiness, it is all abolished ; vanished, 
 clean gone ; a thing that has been : " not of the slightest con- 
 sequence " whether we were happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the 
 fattest pig of Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, as 
 musical Byron with Giaours nnd sensibilities of the heart; as 
 the unmusical Meat-jack with hard labor and rust ! But our 
 work, behold that is not abolished, that has not vanished : 
 our work, behold, it remains, or the want of it remains ; 
 for endless Times and Eternities, remains ; and that is 
 now the sole question with us forevermure ! Brief brawling 
 Day, with its noisy phantasms, its poor paper-crowns tinsel- 
 gilt, is gone ; and divine everlasting Night, with her star-dia- 
 dems, with her silences and her veracities, is come ! What 
 hast thou done, and how ? Happiness, unhappiness : all 
 that was but the wages thou hadst ; thou hast spent 
 nil that, in sustaining thyself hitherward ; not a coin of 
 it remains with thee, it is all spent, eaten : and now thy 
 work, where is thy work ? Swift, out with it ; let us see thy 
 work !
 
 CHAP. V. THE ENGLISH. 153 
 
 Of a truth, if man were not a poor hungry dastard, and even 
 much of a blockhead withal, he would cease criticising his 
 victuals to such extent ; and criticise himself rather, what he 
 does with his victuals ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 
 
 THE KXGLISH. 
 
 AND yet, with all thy theoretic platitudes, what a depth of 
 practical sense in thee, great England ! A depth of sense, 
 nf justice, and courage ; in which, under all emergencies 
 ;ind world-bewilderments, and under this most complex of 
 emergencies we now live in, there is still hope, there is still 
 assurance ! 
 
 The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, 
 but not describe them. Like the old Romans, and some few 
 others, their Epic Poem is written on the Earth's surface : 
 England her Mark ! It is complained that they have no art- 
 ists : one Shakspeare indeed ; but for Raphael only a Reynolds ; 
 for Mozart nothing but a Mr. Bishop : not a picture, not a song. 
 And yet they did produce one Shakspeare : consider how the 
 element of Shakspearian melody does lie imprisoned in their 
 nature ; reduced to unfold itself in mere Cotton-mills, Con- 
 stitutional Governments, and such like: all the more inter- 
 esting when it does become visible, as even in such unexpected 
 shapes it succeeds in doing ! Goethe spoke of the Horse, liow 
 impressive, almost affecting it was that an animal of such 
 qualities should stand obstructed so; its speech nothing but 
 an inarticulate neighing, its handiness mere /</>o/iness, the 
 lingers all constricted, tied together, the finger-nails coagulated 
 into a mere hoof, shod with iron. The more significant, thinks 
 lie, are those eye-flashings of the generous noble quadruped ; 
 those pranciugs, curvings of the neck clothed with thunder. 
 
 A Dog of Knowledge has free utterance ; but the War-horse 
 is almost mute, very far from free ! It is even so. Truly,
 
 154 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 your freest utterances are not by any means always the best : 
 they are the worst rather ; the feeblest, trivialest ; their mean- 
 ing prompt, but small, ephemeral. Commend me to the silent 
 English, to the silent Romans. Nay the silent Russians, too, 
 I believe to be worth something : are they not even now drill- 
 ing, under much obloquy, an immense semi-barbarous half- 
 world from Finland to Kamtschatka, into rule, subordination, 
 civilization, really in an old Roman fashion ; speaking no 
 word ?-bout it ; quietly hearing all manner of vituperative Able 
 Editors speak ! While your ever-talking, ever-gesticulating 
 French, for example, what are they at this moment drilling ? 
 
 Nay of all animals, the freest of utterance, I should judge, 
 is the ; }enus Simla : go into the Indian woods, say all Travel- 
 lers, a? d look what a brisk, adroit, unresting Ape-population 
 it is! 
 
 The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome 
 of the man ; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of 
 morality and of intelligence ; what of patience, perseverance, 
 faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy ; in a word, 
 whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will lie written in 
 the Work he does. To work : why, it is to try himself against 
 Nature, and her everlasting unerring Laws ; these will tell a 
 true verdict as to the man. So much of virtue and of faculty 
 did ice find in him ; so much and no more ! He had such 
 capacity of harmonizing himself with me and my unalterable 
 ever-\ sracious Laws ; of co-operating and working as / bade 
 him ; and has prospered, and has not prospered, as you see ! 
 
 Wi Tking as great Nature bade him : does not that mean 
 virtue of a kind ; nay of all kinds ? Cotton can be spun 
 and sold, Lancashire operatives can be got to spin it, and at 
 length one has the woven webs and sells them, by following 
 Nature's regulations in that matter : by not following Nature's 
 regulations, you have them not. You have them not ; there 
 is no Cotton-web to sell : Nature finds a bill against you ; your 
 " Strength " is not Strength, but Futility ! Let faculty l>e 
 honored, so far as it is faculty. A man that can succeed in 
 waking is to me always a man.
 
 CHAF . v. THE ENGLISH. 155 
 
 How one loves to see the burly figure of him, this thick- 
 skinned, seemingly opaque, perhaps sulky, almost stupid Man 
 of Practice, pitted against some light adroit Man of Theory, 
 all equipt with clear logic, and able anywhere to give you 
 Why for Wherefore ! The adroit Man of Theory, so light of 
 movement, clear of utterance, with his bow full-bent and quiver 
 full of arrow-arguments, surely he will strike down the game, 
 transfix everywhere the heart of the matter ; triumph every- 
 where, as he proves that he shall and must do? To your 
 astonishment, it turns out oi'tenest No. The cloudy-browed, 
 thick-soled, opaque Practicality, with no logic-utterance, in 
 silence mainly, with here and there a low grunt or growl, has 
 in him what transcends all logic-utterance : a Congruity with 
 the Unuttered. The Speakable, which lies atop, as a superfi- 
 cial film, or outer skin, is his or is not his : but the Doable, 
 which reaches down to the World's centre, you find him 
 there ! 
 
 The rugged Brindley has little to say for himself; the 
 .rugged Brindley, when difficulties accumulate on him, retires 
 silent, " generally to his bed ; " retires " sometimes for three 
 days together to his bed, that he may be in perfect privacy 
 there/' and ascertain in his rou^h head how the difficulties can 
 be overcome. The ineloquent Jirindley, behold he has chained 
 seas together ; his ships do visibly float over valleys, invisibly 
 through the hearts of mountains ; the Mersey and the Thames, 
 the Humber and the Severn have shaken hands : Nature most 
 audibly answers, Yea ! The Man of Theory twangs his full- 
 bent bow : Nature's Fact ought to fall stricken, but does not : 
 his logic-arrow glances from it as from a scaly dragon, and the 
 obstinate Fact keeps walking its way. How singular ! At 
 bottom, you will have to grapple closer with the dragon ; take 
 it home to you, by real faculty, not by seeming faculty ; try 
 whether you are stronger, or it is stronger. Close with it, 
 wrestle it : sheer obstinate toughness of muscle ; but much 
 more, what we call toughness of heart, which will mean per- 
 sistence hopeful and even desperate, unsubduable patience, 
 composed candid openness, clearness of mind : all this shall 
 be "strength" in wrestling your dragon; the whole man's
 
 156 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK HI. 
 
 real strength is in this work, we shall get the measure of him 
 here. 
 
 Of all the Nations in the world at present the English are 
 the stupidest in speech, the wisest in action. As good as a 
 " dumb " Nation, I say, who cannot speak, and have never yet 
 spoken, spite of the Shakspeares and Miltons who show us 
 what possibilities there are ! Mr. Bull, I look in that surly 
 face of thine with a mixture of pity and laughter, yet also with 
 wonder and veneration. Thou complainest not, my illustrious 
 friend ; and yet I believe the heart of thee is full of sorrow, 
 of unspoken sadness, seriousness, profound melancholy (as 
 some have said) the basis of thy being. Unconsciously, for 
 thou speakest of nothing, this great Universe is great to thee. 
 Not by levity of floating, but by stubborn force of swimming, 
 shalt thou make thy way. The Fates sing of "thee that thou 
 shalt many times be thought an ass and a dull ox, and shalt 
 with a godlike indifference believe it. My friend, and it is 
 all untrue, nothing ever falser in point of fact ! Thou art of 
 those great ones whose greatness the small passer-by does not 
 discern. Thy very stupidity is wiser than their wisdom. A 
 grand vis inertice is in thee ; how many grand qualities un- 
 known to small men ! Nature alone knows thee, acknowl- 
 edges the bulk and strength of thee : thy Epic, unsung in 
 words, is written in huge characters on the face of this Planet, 
 sea-moles, cotton-trades, railways, fleets and cities, Indian 
 Empires, Americas, New Hollands ; legible throughout the 
 Solar System ! 
 
 But the dumb Russians too, as I said, they, drilling all wild 
 Asia and wild Europe into military rank and file, a terrible yet 
 hitherto a prospering enterprise, are still dumber. The old 
 Romans also could not speak, for many centuries : not till 
 the world was theirs ; and so many speaking Greekdoms, their 
 logic-arrows all spent, had been absorbed and abolished. The 
 logic-arrows, how they glanced futile from obdurate thick- 
 skinned Facts ; Facts to be wrestled down only by the real 
 vigor of Roman thews ! As for me, I honor, in these loud- 
 babbling days, all the Silent rather. A grand Silence that of 
 Romans ; nay the grandest of all, is it not that of the gods I
 
 CHAP. V. THE ENGLISH. 157 
 
 Even Triviality, Imbecility, that can sit silent, how respectable 
 is it ill comparison ! The " talent of silence " is our funda- 
 mental one. Great honor to him whose Epic is a melodious 
 hexameter Iliad ; not a jingling Sham-Iliad, nothing true in 
 it but the hexameters and forms merely. But still greater 
 honor, if his Epic be a mighty Empire slowly built together, 
 a mighty Series of Heroic Deeds, a mighty Conquest over 
 Chaos ; whlck Epic the " Eternal Melodies " have, and must 
 have, informed and dwelt in, as it sung itself ! There is no 
 mistaking that latter Epic. Deeds are greater than Words. 
 Deeds have such a life, mute but undeniable, and grow as 
 living trees and fruit-trees do ; they people the vacuity of 
 Time, and make it green and worthy. Why should the oak 
 prove logically that it ought to grow, and will grow ? Plant 
 it, try it ; what gifts of diligent judicious assimilation and 
 secretion it has, of progress and resistance, of force to grow, 
 will then declare themselves. My much-honored, illustrious, 
 extremely inarticulate Mr. Bull ! 
 
 Ask Bull his spoken opinion of any matter, oftentimes 
 the force of dulness can no farther go. You stand silent, 
 incredulous, as over a platitude that borders on the Infinite. 
 The man's Churchisms, Dissenterism s, Puseyisms, Bentham- 
 isms, College Philosophies, Fashionable Literatures, are unex- 
 ampled in this world. Fate's prophecy is fulfilled ; you call 
 the man an ox and an ass. But set him once to work, re- 
 spectable man ! His spoken sense is next to nothing, nine- 
 tenths of it palpable nonsense: but his unspoken sense, his 
 inner silent feeling of what is true, what does agree with fact, 
 what is doable and what is not doable, this seeks its fellow 
 in the world.- A terrible worker; irresistible against marshes, 
 mountains, impediments, disorder, incivilization ; everywhere 
 vanquishing disorder, leaving it behind him as method and 
 order. He "retires to his bed three days," and considers ! 
 
 Nay withal, stupid as he is, our dear John, ever, after 
 infinite tumblings, and spoken platitudes innumerable from 
 barrel-heads and parliament-benches, he does settle down 
 somewhere about the just conclusion ; you are certain that his 
 jumblings and tumblings will end. after years or centuries, in
 
 158 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK HI. 
 
 the stable equilibrium. Stable equilibrium, I say ; centre-of- 
 gravity lowest ; not the unstable, with centre-of-gravity high- 
 est, as I have known it done by quicker people ! For indeed, 
 do but jumble and tumble sufficiently, you avoid that worst 
 fault, of settling with your centre-of-gravity highest ; your 
 centre-of-gravity is certain to come lowest, and to stay there. 
 If slowness, what we in our impatience call " stupidity," be the 
 price of stable equilibrium over unstable, shall we grudge a 
 little slowness ? Not the least admirable quality of Bull is, 
 after all, that of remaining insensible to logic ; holding out for 
 considerable periods, ten years or more, as in this of the Corn- 
 Laws, after all arguments and shadow of arguments have faded 
 away from him, till the very urchins on the street titter at the 
 arguments he brings. Logic Aoyt/cr/, the " Art of Speech " 
 does indeed speak so and so ; clear enough : nevertheless 
 Bull still shakes his head ; will see whether nothing else illogi- 
 cal, not yet " spoken," not yet able to be " spoken," do not lie 
 in the business, as there so often does! My firm belief 
 is, that, finding himself now enchanted, hand-shackled, foot- 
 shackled, in Poor-Law Bastilles and elsewhere, he will retire 
 three days to his bed, and arrive at a conclusion or two ! His 
 three-years "total stagnation of trade," alas, is not that a 
 painful enough "lying in bed to consider himself"? Poor 
 Bull! 
 
 Bull is a born Conservative; for this too I inexpressibly 
 honor him. All great Peoples are conservative; slow to 
 believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities; 
 deeply and forever certain of the greatness that is in LAW, 
 in Custom once solemnly established, and now long recog- 
 nized as just and final. True, Radical Reformer, there 
 is no Custom that can, properly speaking, be final ; none. 
 And yet tliou seest Customs which, in all civilized countries, 
 are accounted final; nay, under the Old-Roman name of 
 Mores, are accounted Morality, Virtue, Laws of God Him- 
 self. Such, I assure thee, not a few of them are ; such al- 
 most all of them once were. And greatly do I respect the 
 solid character, a blockhead, thou wilt say ; yes, but a 
 well-conditioned blockhead, and the best-conditioned, who
 
 CHAP. V. THE ENGLISH. 159 
 
 esteems all " Customs once solemnly acknowledged " to be 
 ultimate, divine, and the rule for a man to walk by, nothing 
 doubting, not inquiring farther. What a time of it had we, 
 were all men's life and trade still, in all parts of it, a prob- 
 lem, a hypothetic seeking, to be settled by painful Logics and 
 Baconian Inductions ! The Clerk in Eastcheap cannot spend 
 the day in verifying his Ready-Reckoner ; he must take it 
 as verified, true and indisputable ; or his Book-keeping by 
 Double Entry will stand still. "Where is your Posted 
 Ledger ? " asks the Master at night. " Sir," answers the 
 other, " I was verifying my Ready-Reckoner, and tiud some 
 errors. The Ledger is ! " Fancy such a thing ! 
 
 True, all turns on your Ready-Reckoner being moderately 
 correct, being not insupportably incorrect ! A Ready- 
 Reckoner which has led to distinct entries in your Ledger 
 such as these : " Creditor an English People by fifteen hun- 
 dred years of good Labor ; and Debtor to lodging in enchanted 
 Poor-Law Bastilles : Creditor by conquering the largest Empire 
 the Sun ever saw ; and Debtor to Donothingism and ' Impossi- 
 ble ' written on all departments of the government thereof : 
 Creditor by mountains of gold ingots earned; and Debtor to 
 No Bread purchasable by them : " such Ready-Reckoner, 
 methinks, is beginning to be suspect; nay is ceasing, and 
 has ceased, to be suspect! Such Ready-Reckoner is a Sole- 
 cism in Eastcheap ; and must, whatever be the press of busi- 
 ness, and will and shall be rectified a little. Business can go 
 on no longer with it. The most Conservative English People, 
 thickest-skinned, most patient of Peoples, is driven alike by 
 its Logic and its Unlogic, by things " spoken," and by tilings 
 not yet spoken or very speakable, but only felt and very unen- 
 durable, to be wholly a Reforming People. Their Life, as it 
 is, has ceased to be longer possible for them. 
 
 Urge not this noble silent People ; rouse not the Berserkir 
 rage that lies in them ! Do you know their Cromwells, 
 Hampdens, their Pyms and Bradshaws ? Men very peace- 
 able, but men that can be made very terrible ! Men who, 
 like their 'old Teutsch Fathers in Agrippa's days, "have a 
 soul that despises death;" to whom "death," compared with
 
 160 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 falsehoods and injustices, is light ; " in whom there is a 
 rage unconquerable by the immortal gods ! " Before this, the 
 English People have taken very preternatural-looking Spectres 
 by the beard; saying virtually: "And if thou wart 'preter- 
 natural'? Thou with thy 'divine-rights' grown diabolic- 
 wrongs? Thou, not even 'natural;' decapitable ; totally 
 extinguishable ! " -Yes, just so godlike as this People's pa- 
 tience was, even so godlike will and must its impatience 
 b. Away, ye scandalous Practical Solecisms, children actu- 
 ally of the Prince of Darkness ; ye have near broken our 
 hearts ; we can and will endure you no longer. Begone, we 
 say j depart, while the play is good ! By the Most High God, 
 whose sons and born missionaries true men are, ye shall not 
 continue here ! You and we have become incompatible ; can 
 inhabit one house no longer. Either you must go, or we. 
 Are ye ambitious to try which it shall be ? 
 
 my Conservative friends, who still specially name and 
 struggle to approve yourselves " Conservative," would to 
 Heaven I could persuade you of this world-old fact, than 
 which Fate is not surer, That Truth and Justice alone are 
 capable .of being " conserved " and preserved ! The thing 
 which is unjust, which is not according to God's Law, will 
 you, in a God's Universe, try to conserve that ? It is so old, 
 say you ? Yes, and the hotter haste ought you, of all others, 
 to be in, to let it grow no older ! If but the faintest whisper 
 in your hearts intimate to you that it is not fair, hasten, 
 for the sake of Conservatism itself, to probe it rigorously, to 
 cast it forth at once and forever if guilty. How will or can 
 you preserve it, the thing that is not fair ? " Impossibility " 
 a thousand-fold is marked on that. And ye call yourselves 
 Conservatives, Aristocracies : ought not honor and noble- 
 ness of mind, if they had departed from all the Earth else- 
 where, to find their last refuge with you ? Ye unfortunate ! 
 
 The bough that is dead shall be cut away, for the sake of 
 the tree itself. Old ? Yes, it is too old. Many a weary 
 winter has it swung and creaked there, and gnawed and 
 fretted, with its dead wood, the organic substance and still 
 living fibre of this good tree; many a long summer has its
 
 CHAP. VI. TWO CENTURIES. 161 
 
 ugly naked brown defaced the fair green umbrage ; every day 
 it has done mischief, and that only : off with it, for the tree's 
 sake, if for nothing more ; let the Conservatism that would 
 preserve cut it away. Did no wood-forester apprise you that 
 a dead bough with its dead root left sticking there is extra- 
 neous, poisonous ; is as a dead iron spike, some horrid rusty 
 ploughshare driven into the living substance ; nay is far 
 worse ; for in every wind-storm (" commercial crisis " or the 
 like), it frets and creaks, jolts itself to and fro, and cannot 
 lie quiet as your dead iron spike would. 
 
 If I were the Conservative Party of England (which is an- 
 other bold figure of speech), I would not for a hundred thousand 
 pounds an hour allow those Corn-Laws to continue ! Potosi and 
 Golconda put together would not purchase my assent to them. 
 Do you count what treasuries of bitter indignation they are 
 laying up for you in every just English heart ? Do you know 
 what questions, not as to Corn-prices and Sliding-scales alone, 
 they are forcing every reflective Englishman to ask himself ? 
 Questions insoluble, or hitherto unsolved ; deeper than any 
 of our Logic-plummets hitherto will sound : questions deep 
 enough, which it were better that we did not name even in 
 thought ! You are forcing us to think of them, to begin utter- 
 ing them. The utterance of them is begun ; and where will 
 it be ended, think you ? When two millions of one's brother- 
 men sit in Workhouses, and five millions, as is insolently said, 
 "rejoice in potatoes," there are various things that must be 
 begun, let them end where they can. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TWO rKXTURIES. 
 
 Tnr: Settlement effected by our " Healing Parliament " in 
 the Year of Grace 1GOO, though accomplished under uni- 
 versal acclamations from the four corners of the British 
 Dominions, turns out to have been one of the mournfulpst 
 
 VOL. XII. 11
 
 162 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III 
 
 that ever took place in this land of ours. It called and 
 thought itself a Settlement of brightest hope and fulfilment, 
 bright as the blaze of universal tar-barrels and bonfires could 
 make it : and we find it now, on looking back on it with the 
 insight which trial has yielded, a Settlement as of despair. 
 Considered well, it was a Settlement to govern henceforth 
 without God, with only some decent Pretence of God. 
 
 Governing by the Christian Law of God had been found a 
 thing of battle, convulsion, confusion, an infinitely difficult 
 thing : wherefore let us now abandon it, and govern only by 
 so much of God's Christian Law as as may prove quiet and 
 convenient for us. What is the end of Government ? To 
 guide men in the way wherein they should go ; towards their 
 true good in this life, the portal of infinite good in a life to 
 come ? To guide men in such way, and ourselves in such 
 way, as the Maker of men, whose eye is upon us, will sanction 
 at the Great Day? Or alas, perhaps at bottom is there 110 
 Great Day, no sure outlook of any life to come ; but only 
 this poor life, and what of taxes, felicities, Nell-Gwynns 
 and entertainments we can manage to muster here ? In that 
 case, the end of Government will be, To suppress all noise 
 and disturbance, whether of Puritan preaching, Cameronian 
 psalm-singing, thieves'-riot, murder, arson, or what noise so- 
 ever, and be careful that supplies do not fail ! A very 
 notable conclusion, if we will think of it, and not without an 
 abundance of fruits for us. Oliver Cromwell's body hung on 
 the Tyburn gallows, as the type of Puritanism found futile, 
 inexecutable, execrable, yes, that gallows-tree has been a 
 finger-post into very strange country indeed. Let earnest 
 Puritanism die ; let decent Formalism, whatsoever cant it be 
 or grow to, live ! We have had a pleasant journey in that 
 direction ; and are arriving at our inn ? 
 
 To support the Four Pleas of the Crown, and keep Taxes 
 coming in : in very sad seriousness, has not this been, ever 
 since, even in the best times, almost the one admitted end 
 and aim of Government ? Religion, Christian Church, Moral 
 Duty ; the fact that man had a soul at all ; that in man's life 
 there was any eternal truth or justice at all, has been as
 
 CHAP. VI. TWO CENTURIES. 168 
 
 good as left quietly out of sight. Church indeed, alas, the 
 endless talk and struggle we have had of High-Church, Low- 
 Church, Church-Extension, Church-in-Danger : we invite the 
 Christian reader to think whether it has not been a too miser- 
 able screech-owl phantasm of talk and struggle, as for a 
 " Church," which one had rather not define at present ! 
 
 But now in these godless two centuries, looking at England 
 and her efforts and doings, if we ask, What of England's doings 
 the Law of Nature had accepted, Nature's King had actually 
 furthered and pronounced to have truth in them, where is 
 our answer ? Neither the "Church" of Kurd and Warburton, 
 nor the Anti-Church of Hume and Paine ; not in any shape the 
 Spiritualism of England : all this is already seen, or beginning 
 to be seen, for what it is ; a thing that Nature does not own. 
 On the one side is dreary Cant, with a reminiscence of things 
 noble and divine ; on the other is but acrid Candor, with a 
 prophecy of things brutal, infernal. Hurd and Warburton are 
 sunk into the sere and yellow leaf ; no considerable body of 
 true-seeing men looks thitherward for healing : the Paine-and- 
 Hume Atheistic theory, of "things well let^_a_lone," with 
 Liberty, Equality and the like, is also in these days declaring 
 itself nought, unable to keep the world from taking fire. 
 
 The theories and speculations of both these parties, and, 
 we may say, of all intermediate parties and persons, prove to 
 be things which the Eternal Veracity did not accept; things 
 superficial, ephemeral, which already a near Posterity, finding 
 them already dead and brown-leafed, is about to suppress and 
 forget. The Spiritualism of England, for those godless years, 
 is, as it were, all forgettable. Much has been written : but the 
 perennial Scriptures of Mankind have had small accession : from 
 all English Books, in rhyme or prose, in leather binding or in 
 paper wrappage, how many verses have been added to these ? 
 Our most melodious Singers have sung as from the throat out- 
 wards : from the inner Heart of Man, from the great Heart of 
 Nature, through no Pope or Philips, has there come any tone. 
 The Oracles have l>een dumb. In brief, the Spoken Word of 
 England has not been true. The Spoken Word of England 
 turns out to have been trivial j of short endurance j not valu
 
 164 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 able, not available as a Word, except for the passing day. It 
 lias been accordant with transitory Semblance ; discordant with 
 eternal Fact. It has been unfortunately not a Word, but a 
 Cant; a helpless involuntary Cant, nay too often a cunning 
 voluntary one : either way, a very mournful Cant ; the Voice 
 not of Nature and Fact, but of something other than these. 
 
 With all its miserable shortcomings, with its wars, contro- 
 versies, with__jj~-~fcrarh?s-Tm ions, famine-insurrections, it is 
 her Practical Material Work alone that England has to show 
 for herself! This, and hitherto almost nothing more; yet 
 actually this. The grim inarticulate veracity of the English 
 People, unable to speak its meaning in words, has turned it- 
 self silently on things ; and the dark powers of Material 
 Natijre have answered, " Yes, this at least is true, this is not 
 false '"~^Hn-.mswpvsf 7J.nt.iirp... " Waste desert-shrubs of the 
 Tropical swamps have become Cotton-trees ; and here, under 
 my furtherance, are verily woven shirts, hanging unsold, 
 undistributed, but capable to be distributed, capable to cover 
 the bare backs of my children of men. Mountains, old as the 
 Creation, I have permitted to be bored through ; bituminous 
 fuel-stores, the wreck of forests that were green a million years 
 ago, I have opened them from my secret rock-chambers, and 
 they are yours, ye English. Your huge fleets, steamships, 
 do sail the sea ; huge Indias do obey you ; from huge New 
 Englands and Antipodal Austral ias conies profit and traffic to 
 this Old England of mine ! " So answers Nature. The Prac- 
 tical Labor of England is not a chimerical Triviality : it is a 
 Fact, acknowledged by all the Worlds ; which no man and no 
 demon will contradict. It is, very audibly, though very inar- 
 ticulately as yet, the one God's Voice we have heard in these 
 two atheistic centuries. 
 
 And now to observe with what bewildering obscurations and 
 impediments all this as yet stands entangled, and is yet intelli- 
 gible to no man ! How, with our gcoss^Atheism, we hear it 
 not to be the Voice of God to us, but regard it merely as a Voice 
 of earthly ^Profit-and-Loss. And have a Hell in England, 
 the Hell of noT~"making money. And coldly see the all-con-
 
 CHAP. vil. OVER-PRODUCTION. 165 
 
 quering valiant Sons of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, 
 in their Poor-Law Bastille, as if this w<r<> Xntm-fs_J.nw j _ 
 mumbling to ourselves some vague janglement of Laissez-faire, 
 Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one nexus of man to 
 man : Free-trade, Competition, and Devil take the hindmost, 
 our latest Gospel yet preached ! 
 
 As~'it, in truth, there were no God of Labor ; as if jjodlike 
 Labor and brutal Mamrnonism were convertible terins7 A 
 serious, most earnest Mammonism grown Midas-eared ; an 
 unserious Dilettantism, earnest about nothing, grinning with 
 inarticulate incredulous incredible jargon about all things, as 
 the enchanted Dilettanti do by the Dead Sea ! It is mournful 
 enough, for the present hour ; were there not an endless hope 
 in it withal. Giant LABOR, truest emblem there is of God the 
 World- Worker, Demiurgus, and Eternal Maker ; noble LABOK, 
 which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the 
 highest throne, staggering hitherto like a blind irrational 
 giant, hardly allowed to have his common place on the street- 
 pavements ; idle Dilettantism, Dead-Sea Apism crying out, 
 " Down with him ; he is dangerous ! " 
 
 Labor must become a seeing rational giant, with a soul in 
 the body of him, and take his place on the throne of things, 
 leaving his Mammonism, and several other adjuncts/ on the 
 lower steps of said throne. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OVER-PRODUCTION. 
 
 BUT what will reflective readers say of a Governing Class, 
 such as ours, addressing its Workers with an indictment of 
 "Over-production"! Over-production: runs it not so ? " Ye 
 miscellaneous, ignoble manufacturing individuals, ye have 
 produced too much ! We accuse you of making alwve two 
 hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind.
 
 166 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 Your trousers too, which you have made, of fustian, of cassi- 
 mere, of Scotch-plaid, of jane, nankeen and woollen broadcloth, 
 are they not manifold ? Of hats for the human head, of shoes 
 for the human foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with 
 Nay, what say we hats or shoes ? You produce gold-watches, 
 jewelries, silver-forks, and epergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, 
 stuffed sofas Heavens, the Commercial Bazaar and multitu- 
 dinous Howel-and-Jameses cannot contain you. You have 
 produced, produced ; he that seeks your indictment, let him 
 look around. Millions of shirts, and empty pairs of breeches, 
 hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of over- 
 producing : you are criminally guilty of producing shirts, 
 breeches, hats, shoes and commodities, in a frightful over- 
 abundance. And now there is a glut, and your operatives 
 cannot be fed. 
 
 Never surely, against an earnest Working Mammonism was 
 there brought, by Game-preserving aristocratic Dilettantism, 
 a stranger accusation, since this world began. My lords and 
 gentlemen, why, it was you that were appointed, by the fact 
 and by the theory of your position on the Earth, to " make 
 and administer Laws," that is to say, in a world such as 
 ours, to guard against " gluts ; " against honest operatives, 
 who had done their work, remaining unfed ! I say, you were 
 appointed to preside over the Distribution and Apportion- 
 ment of the Wages of Work done ; and to see well that there 
 went no laborer without his hire, were it of money-coins, were 
 it of hemp galloAvs-ropes : that function was yours, and from 
 immemorial time has been ; yours, and as yet no other's. 
 These poor shirt-spinners have forgotten much, which by the 
 virtual unwritten law of their position they should have re- 
 membered : but by any written recognized law of their posi- 
 tion, what have they forgotten ? They were set to make 
 shirts. The Community with all its voices commanded them, 
 saying, " Make shirts ; " and there the shirts are ! Too 
 many shirts? Well, that is a novelty, in this intemperate 
 Earth, with its nine hundred millions of bare backs ! But the 
 Community commanded you, saying, " See that the shirts are 
 well apportioned, that our Human Laws be emblem of God's
 
 CHAP. VII. OVER PRODUCTION. 167 
 
 Laws ; " and where is the apportionment ? Two million 
 shirtless or ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in Workhouse 
 Bastilles, five million more (according to some) in Ugolino 
 Hunger-cellars ; and for remedy, you say, what say you ? 
 " Raise our rents: " I have not in my time heard any stranger 
 speech, not even on the Shores of the Dead Sea. You continue 
 addressing those poor shirt-spinners and over-producers in 
 realty a too triumphant manner! 
 
 " Will yon bandy accusations, will you accuse us of over- 
 production ? We take the Heavens and the Earth to witness 
 that we have produced nothing at all. Not from us proceeds 
 this frightful overplus of shirts. In the wide domains of 
 created Nature circulates no shirt or thing of our producing. 
 Certain fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of 
 fair audacity at Melton Mowbray ; these we have produced, 
 and they are openly nailed up there. He that accuses us of 
 prodxicing, let him show himself, let him name what and when. 
 We are innocent of producing ; ye ungrateful, what moun- 
 tains of things have we not, on the contrary, had to 'consume ' 
 and make away with ! Mountains of those your heaped manu- 
 factures, wheresoever edible or wearable, have they not dis- 
 appeared before us, as if we had the talent of ostriches, of 
 cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty to eat ? Ye ungrate- 
 ful ! and did you not grow under the shadow of our wings ? 
 Are not your filthy mills built on these fields of ours ; on this 
 soil of England, which belongs to whom think you ? And 
 we shall not offer you our own wheat at the price that pleases 
 us, but that partly pleases you ? A precious notion ! What 
 would become of you, if \ve chose, at any time, to decide on 
 growing no wheat more ? " 
 
 Yes, truly, here is the ultimate rock-basis of all Corn-Laws ; 
 whereon, at the bottom of much arguing, they rest, as securely 
 as they can : What would Income of you, if we decided, some 
 day, on growing no more wheat at all ? If we chose to grow 
 only partridges henceforth, and a modicum of wheat for our 
 own uses? Cannot we do what we like with our own? 
 Yes, indeed ! For my share, if I could melt Gneiss Rock, and 
 oreate Law of Gravitation ; it' I could stride out to the Dog-
 
 168 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK HI. 
 
 gerbank, some morning, and striking down my trident there 
 into the mud-waves, say, " Be land, be fields, meadows, moun- 
 tains and fresh-rolling streams ! " by Heaven, I should incline 
 to have the letting of that land in perpetuity, and sell the 
 wheat of it, or burn the wheat of it, according to my own good 
 judgment! My Corn-Lawing friends, you affright me. 
 
 To the " Millo-craey " so called, to the Working-Aristocracy, 
 steeped too deep in mere ignoble Mammonism, and as yet all 
 unconscious of its noble destinies, as yet but an irrational or 
 semi-rational giant, struggling to awake some soul in itself, 
 the world will have much to say, reproachfully, reprovingly, 
 admonishingly. But to the Idle Aristocracy, what will the 
 world have to say ? Things painful, and not pleasant ! 
 
 To the man who works, who attempts, in never so ungra- 
 cious barbarous a way, to get forward with some work, you 
 will hasten out with furtherances, with encouragements, cor- 
 rections ; you will say to him : " Welcome ; thou art ours ; our 
 care shall be of thee." To the Idler, again, never so gracefully 
 going idle, coming forward with never so many parchments, 
 you will not hasten out ; you will sit still, and be disinclined 
 to rise. You will say to him : " Not welcome, complex 
 Anomaly ; would tkou hadst stayed out of doors : for who of 
 mortals knows what to do with thee ? Thy parchments : yes, 
 they are old, of venerable yellowness ; and we too honor 
 parchment, old-established settlements, and venerable use-and- 
 wont. Old parchments in very truth : yet on the whole, if 
 thou wilt remark, they are young to the Granite Rocks, to the 
 Ground-plan of God's Universe! We advise thee to put up 
 thy parchments ; to go home to thy place, and make no need- 
 less noise whatever. Our heart's wish is to save thee : yet 
 there as thou art, hapless Anomaly, with nothing but thy 
 yellow parchments, noisy' futilities^ and shot-belts and fox- 
 brushes, who of gods or men can avert dark Fate ? Be coun- 
 selled, ascertain if no work exist for thee on God's Earth ; if 
 thou find no coinmanded-duty there but that of going grace- 
 fully idle ? Ask, inquire earnestly, with a half-frantic ear- 
 nestness ; for the answer means Existence or Annihilation to 
 thee. We apprise thee of the world-old fact, becoming sternly
 
 CHAP. VIII. UNWORKIXG ARISTOCRACY. 160 
 
 disclosed again in these clays, That he who cannot work in this 
 Universe cannot get existed in it : had he parchments to thatch 
 the face of the world, these, combustible fallible sheepskin, 
 cannot avail him. Home, thou unfortunate ; and let us have 
 at least no noise from thee ! " 
 
 Suppose the unfortunate Idle Aristocracy, as the unfor- 
 tunate Working one has done, were to "retire three days 
 to its bed," and consider itself there, what o'clock it had 
 Income ? 
 
 How have we to regret not only that men have " no relig- 
 ion," but that they have next to no reflection ; and go about 
 with heads full of mere extraneous noises, with eyes wide- 
 open but visionless, for most part in the somnambulist 
 state ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 IT is well said, " Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy ; " 
 whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any 
 other, is the Governor, Vice-king of the people on the Land. 
 It is in these days as it was in those of Henry Plantagenet 
 and Abbot Samson ; as it will in all days be. The Land is 
 Mother of us all ; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly en- 
 riches us all ; in how many ways, from our first wakening to 
 our last sleep on her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with 
 blessed mother-arms, enfold us all ! 
 
 The Hill I first saw the Sun rise over, when the Sun and 
 I and all things were yet in their auroral hour, who can 
 divorce me from it ? Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are 
 the roots I have struck into my Native Soil ; no tree that grows 
 is rooted so. From noblest Patriotism to humblest industrial 
 Mechanism ; from highest dying for your country, to lowest 
 quarrying and coal-boring for it, a Nation's Life depends upon 
 *ts Land. Again and again we have to say, there can be no 
 *,me Aristocracy but must possess the Laud.
 
 170 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 Men talk of " selling " Land. Land, it is true, like Epic 
 Poems and even higher things, in such a trading world, has 
 to be presented in the market for what it will bring, and as 
 we say be tl sold : " but the notion of " selling," for certain 
 bits of metal, the Iliad of Homer, how much more the Land 
 of the World-Creator, is a ridiculous impossibility ! We buy 
 what is salable of it ; nothing more was ever buyable. Who 
 can or could sell it to us ? Properly speaking, the Land 
 belongs to these two : To the Almighty God ; and to all His 
 Children of Men that have ever worked well on it, or that 
 shall ever work well on it. No generation of men can or could, 
 with never such solemnity and effort, sell Land on any other 
 principle : it is not the property of any generation, we say, 
 but that of all the past generations that have worked on it, 
 and of all the future ones that shall work on it. 
 
 Again, we hear it said, The soil of England, or of any 
 country, is properly worth nothing, except " the labor be- 
 stowed on it." This, speaking even in the language of East- 
 cheap, is not correct. The rudest space of country equal in 
 extent to England, could a whole English Nation, with all 
 their habitudes, arrangements, skills, with whatsoever they 
 do carry within the skins of them and cannot be stript of, 
 suddenly take wing and alight on it, would be worth a 
 very considerable thing ! Swiftly, within year and day, this 
 English Nation, with its multiplex talents of ploughing, spin- 
 ning, hammering, mining, road-making and trafficking, would 
 bring a handsome value out of such a space of country. On 
 the other hand, fancy what an English Nation, once " on the 
 wing," could have done with itself, had there been simply no 
 soil, not even an inarable one, to alight on ? Vain all its 
 talents for ploughing, hammering, and whatever else; there 
 is no Earth-room for this Nation with its talents : this Nation 
 will have to keep hovering on the wing, dolefully shrieking to 
 and fro ; and perish piecemeal ; burying itself, down to the 
 last soul of it, in the waste unfirmamented seas. Ah yes, 
 soil, with or without ploughing, is the gift of God. The soil 
 of all countries belongs evermore, in a very considerable 
 degree, to the Almighty Maker! The last stroke of labor
 
 CHAP. VIII. UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY. 171 
 
 bestowed on it is not the making of its value, but only the 
 increasing thereof. 
 
 It is very strange, the degree to which these truisms are 
 forgotten in our days ; how, in the ever-whirling chaos of 
 Formulas, we have quietly lost sight of Fact, which it is s<i 
 perilous not to keep forever in sight. Fact, if we do not 
 see it, will make us feel it by and by ! From much loud 
 controversy, and Corn-Law debating there rises, loud though 
 inarticulate, once more in these years, this very question 
 among others, Who made the Land of England ? Who made 
 it, this respectable English Land, wheat-growing, metallifer- 
 ous, carboniferous, which will let readily hand over head for 
 seventy millions or upwards, as it here lies : who did make 
 it ? " We ! " answer the much-consuming Aristocracy ; " We ! " 
 as they ride in, moist with tlie sweat of Melton Mowbray : 
 " It is we that made it ; or are the heirs, assigns and repre- 
 sentatives of those who did ! " My brothers, You ? Ever- 
 lasting honor to you, then ; and Corn-Laws as many as you 
 will, till your own deep stomachs cry Enough, or some voice 
 of Human pity for our famine bids you Hold! Ye are as 
 gods, that can create soil. Soil-creating gods there is no 
 withstanding. They have the might to sell wheat at what 
 price they list ; and the right, to all lengths, and famine* 
 lengths, if they be pitiless infernal gods ! Celestial gods, 
 I think, would stop short of the famine-price ; but no infernal 
 nor any kind of god can be bidden stop ! Infatuated mor- 
 tals, into what questions are you driving every thinking man 
 in England ? 
 
 I say, you did not make the Land of England ; and, by 
 the possession of it, you are bound to furnish guidance and 
 governance to England ! That is the law of your position on 
 this God's-Earth ; an everlasting act of Heaven's Parliament, 
 not repealable in St. Stephen's or elsewhere ! True govern- 
 ment and guidance ; not no-government and Laissez-faire ; 
 how much less, mis-government and Corn-Law ! There is not 
 an imprisoned Worker looking out from these Bastilles but 
 appeals, very audibly in Heaven's High Courts, against you, 
 and me, and every one who is not imprisoned, "Why am I
 
 172 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 here ? " His appeal is audible in Heaven ; and will become 
 audible enough on Earth too, if it remain unheeded here. His 
 appeal is against you, foremost of all ; you stand in the front 
 rank of the accused ; you, by the very place you hold, have 
 first of all to answer him and Heaven ! 
 
 What looks maddest, miserablest in these mad and miser- 
 able Corn-Laws is independent altogether of their " effect on 
 wages," their effect on "increase of trade," or any other such 
 effect : it is the continual maddening proof they protrude into 
 the faces of all men, that our Governing Class, called by God 
 and Nature and the inflexible law of Fact, either to do some- 
 thing towards governing, or to die and be abolished, have 
 not yet learned even to sit still and do no mischief ! For no 
 Anti-Corn-Law League yet asks more of them than this ; 
 Nature and Fact, very imperatively, asking so nuich more of 
 them. Anti-Corn-Law League asks not, Do something; but, 
 Cease your destructive misdoing, Do ye nothing ! 
 
 Nature's message will have itself obeyed : messages of mere 
 Free-Trade, Anti-Corn-Law League and Laissez-faire, will then 
 need small obeying ! Ye fools, in name of Heaven, work, 
 work, at the Ark of Deliverance for yourselves and us, while 
 hours are still granted you ! No : instead of working at the 
 Ark, they say, " We cannot get our hands kept rightly 
 warm ; " and sit obstinately burning the planks. No madder 
 spectacle at present exhibits itself under this Sun. 
 
 The Working Aristocracy ; Mill-owners, Manufacturers, Com- 
 manders of Working Men : Alas, against them also much shall 
 be brought in accusation ; much, and the freest Trade in 
 Corn, total abolition of Tariffs, and uttermost " Increase of 
 Manufactures" and "Prosperity of Commerce,'' will perma- 
 nently mend no jot of it. The Working Aristocracy must 
 strike into a new path ; must understand that money alone 
 is not the representative either of man's success in the world, 
 or of man's duties to man ; and reform their own selves from 
 top to bottom, if they wish England reformed. England will 
 not be habitable long, \inreformed. 
 
 The Working Aristocracy Yes, but on the threshold of
 
 CHAP. VIII. UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY. 173 
 
 all this, it is again and again to be asked, What of the Idle 
 Aristocracy? Again and again, What shall we say of the 
 Idle Aristocracy, the Owners of the Soil of England ; whose 
 recognized function is that of handsomely consuming the rents 
 of England, shooting the partridges of England, and as an 
 agreeable amusement (if the purchase-money and other con- 
 veniences serve), dilettante-ing in Parliament and Quarter- 
 Sessions for England ? We will say mournfully, in the 
 presence of Heaven and Earth, that we stand speechless, 
 stupent, and know not what to say ! That a class of men 
 entitled to live sumptuously on the marrow of the earth ; 
 permitted simply, nay entreated, and as yet entreated in vain, 
 to do nothing at all in return, was never heretofore seen on 
 the face of this Planet. That such a class is transitory, 
 exceptional, and, unless Nature's Laws fall dead, cannot con- 
 tinue. That it has continued now a moderate while ; has, 
 for the last fifty years, been rapidly attaining its state of 
 perfection. That it will have to find its duties and do them ; 
 or else that it must and will cease to be seen on the face of 
 this Planet, which is a Working one, not an Idle one. 
 
 Alas, alas, the Working Aristocracy, admonished by Trades- 
 unions, Chartist conflagrations, above all by their own shrewd 
 sense kept in perpetual communion with the fact of things, 
 will assuredly reform themselves, and a working world will 
 still be possible : but the fate of the Idle Aristocracy, as one 
 reads its horoscope hitherto in Corn-Laws and such like, is an 
 abyss that fills one with despair. Yes, my rosy fox-hunting 
 brothers, a terrible Hippoemtic look reveals itself (God knows, 
 not to my joy) through those fresh buxom countenances of 
 yours. Through your Corn-Law Majorities, Sliding-Seales, 
 Protecting-Duties, Bribery-Elections, and triumphant Kentish- 
 fire, a thinking eye discerns ghastly images of ruin, too ghastly 
 for words ; a handwriting as of MKNK, MKXE. Men and 
 brothers, on your Sliding-scale you seem sliding, and to have 
 slid, you little know whither ! Good God ! did not a French 
 Donothiug Aristocracy, hardly above half a century ago, de- 
 clare in like manner, and in its featherhead believe in like 
 manner, "We cannot exist, and continue to dress and parade
 
 174 PAST AKD PRESENT. BOOK HI. 
 
 ourselves, o& the just rent of the soil of France ; but we must 
 have farther pa7ment than rent of the soil, we must be ex- 
 empted from taxes too," we must have a Corn-Law to extend 
 our rent ? This was in 1789 : in four years more Did you 
 look into the Tanneries of Meudon, and the long-naked making 
 for themselves breeches of human skins ! May the merciful 
 Heavens avert the omen ; may we be wiser, that so we be less 
 wretched. 
 
 A High Class without duties to do is like a tree planted on 
 precipices ; from the roots of which all the earth has been 
 crumbling. Nature owns no man who is not a Martyr withal. 
 Is there a man who pretends to live luxuriously housed up ; 
 screened from all work, from want, danger, hardship, the 
 victory over which is what we name work, he himself to sit 
 serene, amid down-bolsters and appliances, and have all his 
 work and battling done by other men ? And such man calls 
 himself a noble-man ? His fathers worked for him, he says ; 
 or successfully gambled for him : here he sits ; professes, not 
 in sorrow but in pride, that he and his have done no work, time 
 out of mind. It is the law of the land, and is thought tc be 
 the law of the Universe, that he, alone of recorded men, shall 
 have no task laid on him, except that of eating his cooked 
 victuals, and not flinging himself out of window. Once more 
 I will say, there was no stranger spectacle ever shown under 
 this Sun. A veritable fact in our England of the Nineteenth 
 Century. His victuals he does eat : but as for keeping in the 
 inside of the window, have not his friends, like me, enough 
 to do ? Truly, looking at his Corn-Laws, Game-Laws, Chandos- 
 Clauses, Bribery -Elections and much else, you do shudder over 
 the tumbling and plunging he makes, held back by the lapels 
 and coat-skirts ; only a thin fence of window-glass before him, 
 and in the street mere horrid iron spikes ! My sick brother, 
 as in hospital-maladies men do, thou dreamest of Paradises 
 and Eldorados, which are far from thee. " Cannot I do what 
 I like with my own ? " Gracious Heaven, my brother, this 
 that thou seest with those sick eyes is no firm Eldorado, and 
 Corn-Law Paradise of Donothings, but a dream of thy own
 
 CHAP. vin. UNWORKING ARISTOCRACY. 175 
 
 fevered brain. It is a glass-window, I tell thee, so many sto- 
 ries from the street ; where are iron spikes and the law of 
 gravitation ! 
 
 What is the meaning of nobleness, if this be " noble " ? 
 In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making 
 others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The chief of men 
 is he who stands in the van of men ; fronting the peril which 
 frightens back all others ; which, if it be not vanquished, will 
 devour the others. Every noble crown is, and on Earth will 
 forever be, a crown of thorns. The Pagan Hercules, why was 
 he accounted a hero ? Because he had slain Nemean Lions, 
 cleansed Augean Stables, undergone Twelve Labors only not 
 too heavy for a god. In modern, as in ancient and all socie- 
 ties, the Aristocracy, they that assume the functions of an 
 Aristocracy, doing them or not, have taken the post of honor ; 
 which is the post of difficulty, the post of danger, of death, 
 if the difficulty be not overcome. H faut payer de sa vie. 
 Why was our life given us, if not that we should manfully give 
 it ? Descend, Donothing Pomp ; quit thy down-cushions ; 
 expose thyself to learn what wretches feel, and how to cure 
 it ? The Czar of Eussia became a dusty toiling shipwright ; 
 worked with his axe in the Docks of Saardam ; and his aim 
 was small to thine. Descend thou : undertake this horrid 
 "living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger" weltering round thy 
 feet ; say, " I will heal it, or behold I will die foremost in it." 
 Such is verily the law. Everywhere and everywhen a man 
 has to "pay with his life ; " to do his work, as a soldier does, 
 at the expense of life. In no Piepowder earthly Court can 
 you sue an Aristocracy to do its work, at this moment : but in 
 the Higher Court, which even it calls "Court of Honor," and 
 which is the Court of Necessity withal, and the eternal Court 
 of the Universe, in which all Fact comes to plead, and every 
 Human Soul is an apparator, the Aristocracy is answerable, 
 and even now answering, there. 
 
 Parchments ? Parchments are venerable : but they ought 
 at all times to represent, as near as they by possibility can, 
 the writing of the Adamant Tablets ; otherwise they are not
 
 176 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 so venerable ! Benedict the Jew in vain pleaded parchments ; 
 his usuries were too many. The King said, "Go to, for all 
 thy parchments, thou shalt pay just debt; down with thy 
 dust, or observe this tooth-forceps ! " Nature, a far juster 
 Sovereign, has far terribler forceps. Aristocracies, actual 
 and imaginary, reach a time when parchment pleading does 
 not avail them. " Go to, for all thy parchments, thou shalt 
 pay due debt ! " shouts the Universe to them, in an emphatic 
 manner. They refuse to pay, confidently pleading parchment : 
 their best grinder-tooth, with horrible agony, goes out of their 
 jaw. Wilt thou pay now ? A second grinder, again in hor- 
 rible agony, goes : a second, and a third, and if need be, all 
 the teeth and grinders, and the life itself with them ; and 
 then there is free payment, and an anatomist-subject into the 
 bargain ! 
 
 Reform Bills, Corn-Law Abrogation Bills, and then Land- 
 Tax Bill, Property -Tax Bill, and still dimmer list of etceteras ; 
 grinder after grinder : my lords and gentlemen, it were 
 better for you to arise and begin doing your work, than sit 
 there and plead parchments ! 
 
 We write no Chapter on the Corn-Laws, in this place 5 the 
 Corn-Laws are too mad to have a Chapter. There is a certain 
 immorality, when there is not a necessity, in speaking about 
 things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already 
 slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a 
 Solecism die ? It is at its own peril if it refuse to die ; it 
 ought to make all conceivable haste to die, and get itself 
 buried ! The trade of Anti-Corn-Law Lecturer in these days, 
 still an indispensable, is a highly tragic one. 
 
 The Corn-Laws will go, and even soon go : would we were 
 all as sure of the Millennium as they are of going ! They go 
 swiftly in these present months ; with an increase of velocity, 
 an ever-deepening, ever-widening sweep of momentum, truly 
 notable. It is at the Aristocracy's own damage and peril, still 
 more than at any other's whatsoever, that the Aristocracy 
 maintains them ; at a damage, say only, as above computed, 
 of a " hundred thousand pounds an hour"! The Corn-Laws
 
 CHAP. IX. WORKING ARISTOCRACY. 177 
 
 keep all the air hot : fostered by their fever-warmth, much 
 
 that is evil, but much also, how much that is good and indis- 
 pensable, is rapidly coming to life among us ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WORKING ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 A POOR Working Mammonism getting itself " strangled in 
 the partridge-nets of an Unworking Dilettantism," and bellow- 
 ing dreadfully, and already black in the face, is surely a dis- 
 astrous spectacle ! But of a Midas-eared Mammonism, which 
 indeed at bottom all pure Mam monisms are, what better can 
 you expect ? No better ; if not this, then something other 
 equally disastrous, if not still more disastrous. Mammonisms, 
 grown asinine, have to become human again, and rational ; they 
 have, on the whole, to cease to be Mammonisms, were it even 
 on compulsion, and pressure of the hemp round their neck ! 
 My friends of the Working Aristocracy, there are now a great 
 many things which you also, in your extreme need, will have 
 to consider. 
 
 The Continental people, it would seem, are " exporting our 
 machinery, beginning to spin cotton and manufacture for 
 themselves, to cut us out of this market and then out of that ! " 
 Sad news indeed ; but irremediable ; by no means the saddest 
 news. The saddest news is, that we should find our National 
 Existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend on selling 
 manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any 
 other People. A most narrow stand for a great Nation to base 
 itself on ! A stand which, with all the Corn-Law Abrogations 
 conceivable, I do not think will be capable of enduring. 
 
 My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we 
 came honestly down from it, and said : "This is our minimum 
 of cotton-prices. We care not, for the present, to make cot- 
 ton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so blessed to you, make 
 
 VOL. XII. \1
 
 178 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IIL 
 
 cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with cotton-fuzz, your hearts 
 with copperas-fumes, with rage and mutiny ; become ye the 
 general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp ! " I admire a 
 Nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other 
 Nations, to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to 
 undersell them ; we will be content to equal-sell them ; to be 
 happy selling equally with them! I do not see the use of 
 underselling them. Cotton-cloth is already twopence a yard 
 or lower ; and yet bare backs were never more numerous among 
 us. Let inventive men cease to spend their existence inces- 
 santly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper ; and try 
 to invent, a little, how cotton at its present cheapness could 
 he somewhat justlier divided among us. Let inventive men 
 consider, Whether the Secret of this Universe, and of Man's 
 Life there, does, after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in 
 making money ? There is One God, just, supreme, almighty : 
 but is Mammon the name of him ? With a Hell which means 
 " Failing to make money," I do not think there is any Heaven 
 possible that would suit one well ; nor so much as an Earth 
 that can be habitable long ! In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, 
 of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil 
 take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels 
 ever preached ; or altogether the shabbiest. Even with Dilet- 
 tante partridge-nets, and at a horrible expenditure of pain, 
 who shall regret to see the entirely transient, and at best 
 somewhat despicable life strangled out of it? At the best, 
 as we say, a somewhat despicable, unvenerable thing, this 
 same " Laissez-faire ; " and now, at the ivorst, fast growing an 
 altogether detestable one ! 
 
 "But what is to be done with our manufacturing population, 
 with our agricultural, with our ever-increasing population ? " 
 cry many. Ay, what ? Many things can be done with them, 
 a hundred things, and a thousand things, had we once got 
 a soul, and begun to try. This one thing, of doing for them 
 by " underselling all people," and filling our own bursten 
 pockets and appetites by the road ; and turning over all care 
 for any "population," or human or divine consideration ex- 
 cept cash only, to the winds, with a " Laissez-faire " and the
 
 CHAP. IX. WORKING ARISTOCRACY. 179 
 
 rest of it : this is evidently not the thing. Farthing cheaper 
 per yard ? No great Nation can stand on the apex of such a 
 pyramid ; screwing itself higher and higher ; balancing itself 
 on its great-toe ! Can England not subsist without being above 
 all people in working? England never deliberately purposed 
 such a thing. If England work better than all people, it shall 
 be well. England, like an honest worker, will work as well 
 as she can ; and hope the gods may allow her to live on that 
 basis. Laissez-faire and much else being once well dead, how 
 many ''impossibles" will become possible! They are impos- 
 sible, as cotton-cloth at twopence an ell was till men set 
 about making it. The inventive genius of great England will 
 not forever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, 
 straps and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inven- 
 tive genius of England is not a Beaver's, or a Spinner's or 
 Spider's genius : it is a Man's genius, I hope, with a God over 
 him! 
 
 Laissez-faire, Supply -and-demand, one begins to be weary 
 of all that. Leave all to egoism, to ravenous greed of money, 
 of pleasure, of applause : it is the Gospel of Despair ! Man 
 is a Patent-Digester, then : only give him Free Trade, Free 
 digesting-room ; and each of us digest what he can come at, 
 leaving the rest to Fate ! My unhappy brethren of the Work- 
 ing Mammonism, my unhappier brethren of the Idle Dilet- 
 tantism, no world was ever held together in that way for long. 
 A world of mere Patent-Digesters will soon have nothing to 
 digest : such world ends, and by Law of Nature must end, in 
 " over-population ; " in howling universal famine, " impossi- 
 bility," and suicidal madness, as of endless dog-kennels run 
 rabid. Supply-and-demand shall do its full part, and Free 
 Trade shall be free as air ; thou of the shot-belts, see thou 
 forbid it not, with those paltry, worse than Mammonish swind- 
 leries and Sliding-scales of thine, which are seen to be swind- 
 leries for all thy canting, which in times like ours are very 
 scandalous to see ! And Trade never so well freed, and all 
 Tariffs settled or abolished, and Rupply-and-demand in full 
 operation, let us all know that we have yet done nothing; 
 that we have merely cleared the ground for doing.
 
 180 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 Yes, were the Corn-Laws ended to-morrow, there is nothing 
 yet ended ; there is only room made for all manner of things 
 beginning. The Corn-Laws gone, and Trade made free, it is 
 as good as certain this paralysis of industry will pass away. 
 We shall have another period of commercial enterprise, of 
 victory and prosperity ; during which, it is likely, much money 
 will again be made, and all the people may, by the extant 
 methods, still for a space of years, be kept alive and physically 
 fed. The strangling band of Famine will be loosened from 
 our necks ; we shall have room again to breathe ; time to be- 
 think ourselves, to repent and consider ! A precious and thrice- 
 precious space of years ; wherein to struggle as for life in 
 reforming our foul ways ; in alleviating, instructing, regulating 
 our people ; seeking, as for life, that something like spiritual 
 food be imparted them, some real governance and guidance 
 be provided them ! It will be a priceless time. For our new 
 period or paroxysm of commercial prosperity will and can, on 
 the old methods of "Competition and Devil take the hind- 
 most," prove but a paroxysm : a new paroxysm, likely 
 enough, if we do not use it better, to be our last. In this, of 
 itself, is no salvation. If our Trade in twenty years, "nour- 
 ishing" as never Trade nourished, could double itself; yet 
 then also, by the old Laissez-faire method, our Population is 
 doubled : we shall then be as we are, only twice as many of 
 us, twice and ten times as unmanageable ! 
 
 All this dire misery, therefore ; all this of our poor Work- 
 house Workmen, of our Chartisms, Trades-strikes, Corn-Laws, 
 Toryisms, and the general downbreak of Laissez-faire in these 
 days, may we not regard it as a voice from the dumb bosom 
 of Nature, saying to us : " Behold ! Supply-and-demand is not 
 the one Law of Nature ; Cash-payment is not the sole nexus 
 of man with man, how far from it ! Deep, far deeper than 
 Supply-and-demand, are Laws, Obligations sacred as Man's 
 Life itself : these also, if you will continue to do work, yoii 
 shall now learn and obey. He that will learn them, behold 
 Nature is on his side, he shall yet work and prosper with 
 noble rewards. He that will not learn them, Nature is against
 
 CHAP. DC. WORKING ARISTOCRACY. 181 
 
 him, he shall not be able to do work iu Nature's empire, 
 not in hers. Perpetual mutiny, contention, hatred, isolation, 
 execration shall wait on his footsteps, till all men discern that 
 the thing which he attains, however golden it look or be, is 
 not success, but the want of success." 
 
 Supply-and-demand, alas ! For what noble work was ) 
 there ever yet any audible " demand " in that poor sense ? 
 The man of Macedonia, speaking in vision to an Apostle Paul, 
 " Come over and help us," did not specify what rate of wages 
 he would give ! Or was the Christian Religion itself accom- 
 plished by Prize-Essays, Bridgewater Bequests, and a "mini- 
 mum of Four thousand five hundred a year " ? No demand 
 that I heard of was made then, audible in any Labor-market, 
 Manchester Chamber of Commerce, or other the like emporium 
 and luring establishment; silent were all these from any whis- 
 per of such demand ; powerless were all these to " supply " 
 it, had the demand been in thunder and earthquake, with gold 
 Eldorados and Mahometan Paradises for the reward. Ah me, 
 into what waste latitudes, in this Time- Voyage, have we wan- 
 dered ; like adventurous Sindbads; where the men go about 
 as if by galvanism, with meaningless glaring eyes, and have 
 no soul, but only a beaver-faculty and stomach ! The haggard 
 despair of Cotton-factory, Coal-mine operatives, Chandos Farm- 
 laborers, in these days, is painful to behold ; but not so pain- 
 ful, hideous to the inner sense, as that brutish God-forgetting 
 Profit-and-Loss Philosophy and Life-theory, which we hear 
 jangled on all hands of us, in senate-houses, spouting-clubs, 
 leading-articles, pulpits and platforms, everywhere as the Ulti- 
 mate Gospel and candid Plain-English of Man's Life, from the 
 throats and j>ens and thoughts of ail-but all men ! 
 
 Enlightened Philosophies, like Moliere Doctors, will tell 
 you : " Enthusiasms. Self-sacrifice, Heaven, Hell and such 
 like : yes, all that was true enough fur old stupid times ; all 
 that used to be true : but we have changed all that, nous aeons 
 change, tout cela ! " Well ; if the heart be got round now into the 
 right side, and the liver to the left ; if man have no heroism 
 in him deeper than the wish to eat, and in his soul there 
 dwell now no Infinite of Hope and Awe, and no divine Silence
 
 182 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 can become imperative because it is not Sinai Thunder, and 
 no tie will bind if it be not that of Tyburn gallows-ropes, 
 then verily you have changed all that ; and for it, and for you, 
 and for me, behold the Abyss and nameless Annihilation is 
 ready. So scandalous a beggarly Universe deserves indeed 
 nothing else ; I cannot say I would save it from Annihila- 
 tion. Vacuum, and the serene Blue, will be much handsomer ; 
 easier too for all of us. I, for one, decline living as a Patent- 
 Digester. Patent-Digester, Spinning-Mule, Mayfair Clothes- 
 Horse : many thanks, but your Chaosships will have the good- 
 ness to excuse me ! 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT. 
 
 ONE thing I do know : Never, on this Earth, Avas the rela- 
 tion of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone. 
 If, at any time, a philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition 
 and Supply-and-demand, start up as the exponent of human 
 relations, expect that it will soon end. 
 
 Such philosophies will arise: for man's philosophies are 
 usually the " supplement of his practice ; " some ornamental 
 Logic-varnish, some outer skin of Articulate Intelligence, 
 with which he strives to render his dumb Instinctive Doings 
 presentable when they arc done. Such philosophies will 
 arise ; be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate Evan- 
 gel of the World ; be believed, with what is called belief, with 
 much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction 
 real in its way : but they are ominous gospels ! They are 
 the sure, and even swift, forerunner of great changes. Expect 
 that the old System of Society is done, is dying and fallen 
 into dotage, when it begins to rave in that fashion. Most 
 Systems that I have watched the death of, for the last three 
 thousand years, have gone just so. The Ideal, the True and 
 Noble that was in them having faded out, and nothing now 
 remaining but naked Egoism, vulturous Greediness, they can-
 
 CHAP. X. PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT. 183 
 
 not live; they are bound aiid inexorably ordained by the 
 oldest Destinies, Mothers of the Universe, to die. Curious 
 enough : they thereupon, as I have pretty generally noticed, 
 devise some light comfortable kind of " wine-and-walnuts 
 philosophy " for themselves, this of Supply-and-demand or 
 another ; and keep saying, during hours of mastication and 
 rumination, which they call hours of meditation : " Soul, take 
 thy ease ; it is all well that thou art a vulture-soul ; " and 
 pangs of dissolution come upon them, oftenest before they 
 are aware ! 
 
 Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years 
 be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one 
 man fully his deserts to another ; nor could it, nor can it, now 
 or henceforth to the end of the world. I invite his Grace of 
 Castle-Rackreut to reflect on this ; does he think that a 
 Land Aristocracy when it becomes a Land Auctioneership can 
 have long to live ? Or that Sliding-scales will increase the 
 vital stamina of it ? The indomitable Plugson too, of the re- 
 spected Firm of Plugson, Hunks and Company, in St. Dolly 
 Undershot, is invited to reflect on this ; for to him also it will 
 be new, perhaps even newer. Book-keeping by double entry 
 is admirable, and records several things in an exact manner. 
 But the Mother-Destinies also keep their Tablets ; in Heaven's 
 Chancery also there goes on a recording ; and things, as my 
 Moslem friends say, are " written on the iron leaf/' 
 
 Your Grace and Plugson, it is like, go to Church occa- 
 sionally : did you never in vacant moments, with perhaps a 
 dull parson droning to you, glance into your New Testament, 
 and the cash-account stated four times over, by a kind of 
 quadruple entry, in the Four Gospels there ? I consider 
 that a cash-account, and balance-statement of work done and 
 wages paid, worth attending to. Precisely siirh, though on 
 a smaller scale, go on at all moments under this Sun ; and the 
 statement and balance of them in the Plugson Ledgers and 
 on the Tablets of Heaven's Chancery are discrepant exceed- 
 ingly ; which ought really to teach, and to have long since 
 taught, an indomitable common-sense Plugson of Undershot, 
 much more an unattackable uncommon-sense Grace of Rack
 
 184 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK 111. 
 
 rent, a thing or two ! In brief, we shall have to dismiss the 
 Cash-Gospel rigorously into its own place : we shall have to 
 know, on the threshold, that either there is some infinitely 
 deeper Gospel, subsidiary, explanatory and daily and hourly 
 corrective, to the Cash one ; or else that the Cash one itself 
 and all others are fast travelling ! 
 
 For all human things do require to have an Ideal in them ; 
 to have some Soul in them, as we said, were it only to keep 
 the Body unputrefied. And wonderful it is to see how the 
 Ideal or Soul, place it in what ugliest Body you may, will 
 irradiate said Body with its own nobleness ; will gradually, 
 incessantly, mould, modify, new-form or reform said ugliest 
 Body, and make it at last beautiful, and to a certain degree 
 divine ! Oh, if you could dethrone that Brute-god Mammon, 
 and put a Spirit-god in his place ! One way or other, he must 
 and will have to be dethroned. 
 
 Fighting, for example, as I often say to myself, Fighting 
 with steel murder-tools is surely a much uglier operation than 
 Working, take it how you will. Yet even of Fighting, in re- 
 ligious Abbot Samson's days, see what a Feudalism there hud 
 grown, a ''glorious Chivalry," much besung down to the 
 present day. Was not that one of the " impossiblest " things ? 
 Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with 
 clenched teeth, and hell-fire eyes, hacking one another's flesh ; 
 converting precious living bodies, and priceless living souls, 
 into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip- 
 manure. How did a Chivalry ever come out of that f how 
 anything that was not hideous, scandalous, infernal ? It will 
 be a question worth considering by and by. 
 
 I remark, for the present, only two things : first, that the 
 Fighting itself was not, as we rashly suppose it, a Fighting 
 without cause, but more or less with cause. Man is created to 
 fight ; he is perhaps best of all definable as a born soldier ; 
 his life " a battle and a march," under the right General. It 
 is forever indispensable for a man to fight : now with Neces- 
 sity, with Barrenness, Scarcity, with Puddles, Bogs, tangled 
 Forests, unkempt Cotton ; now also with the hallucinations
 
 CHAP. X. PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT. 185 
 
 of his poor fellow Men. Hallucinatory visions rise in the head 
 of my poor fellow man ; make him claim over me_rights which. 
 s. All Fighting, as we noticed long ago, is the dusty 
 
 conflict of strengths, each thinking itself the strongest, or, in 
 other words, the justest ; of Mights which do in the long- 
 run, and forever will in this just Universe in the long-run, 
 mean Rights. In conflict the perishable part of them, beaten 
 sufficiently, flies off into dust : this process ended, appears the 
 imperishable, the true and exact. 
 
 And now let us remark a second thing : how, in these bale- 
 ful operations, a noble devout-hearted Chevalier will comport 
 himself, and an ignoble godless Bucanier and Choctaw Indian. 
 Victory is the aim of each. But deep in the heart of the noble 
 man it lies forever legible, that as an Invisible Just God made 
 him, so will and must God's Justice and this only, were it 
 never so invisible, ultimately prosper in all controversies and 
 enterprises and battles whatsoever. What an Influence ; ever- 
 present, like a Soul in the rudest Caliban of a l>ody ; like a 
 ray of Heaven, and illuminative creative Fiat-Liur, in the wast- 
 est terrestrial Chaos! Blessed divine Influence, traceable even 
 in the horror of Battle-fields and garments rolled in blood : how 
 it ennobles even the Battle-field ; and, in place of a Choctaw 
 Massacre, makes it a Field of Honor ! A Battle-field too is 
 great. Considered well, it is a kind of Quintessence of Labor; 
 Labor distilled into its utmost concentration ; the significance 
 of years of it compressed into an hour. Here too thou shalt 
 be strong, and not in muscle only, if thou wouldst prevail. 
 Hen; too thou shalt be strong of heart, noble of soul; thou 
 shalt dread no pain or death, thou shalt not love ease or life ; 
 in rage, thou shalt remember mercy, justice ; thou shalt be 
 a Knight and not a Choctaw, if thou wouldst prevail ! It is 
 the rule of all battles, against hallucinating fellow Men, against 
 unkempt Cotton, or whatsoever battles they may be, which a 
 man in this world has to fight. 
 
 Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian Seas with blood, piles 
 his decks with plunder ; approves himself the expertest Sea- 
 man, the claringest Sea-fighter : but he gains no lasting victory. 
 lasting victory is not possible for him. Not, had he fleets
 
 186 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK Ih. 
 
 larger than the combined British Navy all united with him in 
 bucaniering. He, once for all, cannot prosper in his duel. He 
 strikes down his man : yes ; but his man, or his man's repre- 
 sentative, has no notion to lie struck down ; neither, though 
 slain ten times, will he keep so lying; nor has the Universe 
 any notion to keep him so lying ! On the contrary, the Uni- 
 verse and he have, at all moments, all manner of motives to 
 start up again, and desperately fight again. Your Xapoleon 
 is flung out, at last, to St. Helena ; the latter end of him 
 sternly compensating the beginning. The Bucanier strikes 
 down a man, a hundred or a million men : but what profits it ? 
 He has one enemy never to be struck down ; nay two enemies : 
 Mankind and the Maker of Men. On the great scale or on the 
 small, in fighting of men or fighting of difficulties, I will not 
 embark my venture with Howel Davies : it is not the Bucanier, 
 it is the Hero only that can gain victory, that can do more 
 than seem to succeed. These things will deserve meditating ; 
 for they apply to all battle and soldiership, all struggle and 
 effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life. It is a poor Gospel, 
 Cash-Gospel or whatever name it have, that does not, with clear 
 tone, uncontradictable, carrying conviction to all hearts, for- 
 ever keep men in mind of these things. 
 
 Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plugson of Undershot 
 has, in a great degree, forgotten them ; as, alas, all the world 
 has ; as, alas, our very Dukes and Soul-Overseers have, whose 
 special trade it was to remember them ! Hence these tears. 
 Plugson, who has indomitably spun Cotton merely to gain 
 thousands of pounds, I have to call as yet a Bucanier and 
 Choctaw ; till there come something better, still more indomi- 
 table from him. His hundred Thousand-pound Notes, if there 
 be nothing other, are to me but as the hundred Scalps in a 
 Choctaw wigwam. The blind Plugson : he was a Captain of 
 Industry, born member of the Ultimate genuine Aristocracy 
 of this Universe, could he have known it ! These thousand 
 men that span and toiled round him, they were a regiment 
 whom he had enlisted, man by man ; to make war on a very 
 genuine enemy : Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton- 
 tibre, which will not, unless forced to it, consent to cover bare
 
 CHAP. X. PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT. 187 
 
 backs. Here is a most genuine enemy ; over whom all crea- 
 tures will wish him victory. He enlisted his thousand men ; 
 said to them, " Come, brothers, let us have a dash at Cotton ! " 
 They follow with cheerful shout ; they gain such a victory 
 over Cotton as the Earth has to admire and clap hands at : 
 but, alas, it is yet only of the Bucanier or Choctaw sort, as 
 good as no victory ! Foolish Flugson of St. Dolly Undershot : 
 does he hope to become illustrious by hanging up the scalps 
 in his wigwam, the hundred thousands at his banker's, and 
 sayiug, Behold my scalps ? Why, Plugson, even thy own host U 
 is all in mutiny : Cotton is conquered ; but the " bare backs " A 
 are worse covered than ever ! Indomitable Plugson, thou (I 
 must cease to be a Choctaw ; thou and others ; thou thyself, 
 if no other ! 
 
 Did William the Norman Bastard, or any of his Taillefers, 
 Ironcutters, manage so ? Ironcutter, at the end of the campaign, 
 did not turn off his thousand fighters, but said to them : " Noble 
 fighters, this is the land we have gained ; be I Lord in it, 
 what we will call Law-ward, maintainer and keeper of Heaven's 
 Laws : be I Law-ward, or in brief orthoepy Lord in it, and be 
 } r e Loyal Men around me in it ; and we will stand by one 
 another, as soldiers round a captain, for again we shall have 
 need of one another ! " Plugson, bucanier-like, says to them : 
 " Noble spinners, this is the Hundred Thousand we have / 
 gained, wherein I mean to dwell and plant vineyards ; the ( 
 hundred thousand is mine, the three and sixpence daily was 
 yours : adieu, noble spinners ; drink my health with this groat 
 each, which I give you over and above ! " The entirely unjust 
 Captain of Industry, say I ; not Chevalier, but Bucanier ! 
 " Commercial Law " does indeed acquit him ; asks, with wide 
 eyes, What else ? So too Howel Davies asks, Was it not 
 according to the strictest Bucanier Custom ? Did I depart ' 
 in any jot or tittle from the Laws of the Bucaniers ? 
 
 After all, money, as they say. is miraculous. Plugson wanted 
 victory ; as Chevaliers and Bueaniers, and all men alike do. 
 He found money recognized, by the whole world with one 
 assent, as the true symbol, exact equivalent and synonym of 
 victory ; and here we have him, a gri in -browed, indomitable
 
 188 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IIL 
 
 Bucanier, coining home to us with a " victory," which the whole 
 world is ceasing to clap hands at ! The whole world, taught 
 somewhat impressively, is beginning to recognize that such 
 victory is but half a victory ; and that now, if it please the 
 Powers, we must have the other half ! 
 
 Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it 
 yielded, will it yield us ; but also what never-imagined con- 
 fusions, obscurations has it brought in ; down almost to total 
 extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind ! 
 " Protection of property," of what is " mine," means with most 
 men protection of money, the thing which, had I a thousand 
 padlocks over it, is least of all mine; is, in a manner, scarcely 
 worth calling mine ! The symbol shall be held sacred, defended 
 everywhere with tipstaves, ropes and gibbets ; the thing signi- 
 fied shall be composedly cast to the dogs. A human being 
 who has worked with human beings clears all scores with them, 
 cuts himself with triumphant completeness forever loose from 
 them, by paying down certain shillings and pounds. Was it 
 not the wages I promised you ? There they are, to the last 
 sixpence, according to the Laws of the Bucaniers ! Yes, 
 indeed ; and, at such times, it becomes imperatively neces- 
 sary to ask all persons, bucaniers and others, Whether these 
 same respectable Laws of the Bucaniers are written on God's 
 eternal Heavens at all, on the inner Heart of Man at all ; or 
 on the respectable Bucanier Log-book merely, for the conven- 
 ience of bucaniering merely ? What a question ; whereat 
 Westminster Hall shudders to its driest parchment; and on 
 ihe dead wigs each particular horse-hair stands on end ! 
 
 The Laws of Laissez-faire, O Westminster, the laws of 
 industrial Captain and industrial Soldier, how much more of 
 idle Captain and industrial Soldier, will need to be remodelled, 
 and modified, and rectified in a hundred and a hundred ways, 
 and not in the Sliding-scale direction, but in the totally opposite 
 one ! With two million industrial Soldiers already sitting in 
 Bastilles, and five million pining on potatoes, methinks West- 
 minster cannot begin too soon ! A man has other obligations 
 laid on him, in God's Universe, than the payment of cash : 
 these also Westminster, if it will continue to exist and have
 
 CHAP. X. PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT. 189 
 
 board-wages, must contrive to take some charge of : by West- 
 minster or by another, they must and will be taken charge of ; 
 be, with whatever difficulty, got articulated, got enforced, and 
 to a certain approximate extent put in practice. And, as I say, 
 it cannot be too soon ! For Mammonism, left to itself, has 
 become Midas-eared ; and with all its gold mountains, sits 
 starving for want of bread : and Dilettantism with its par- 
 tridge-nets, in this extremely earnest Universe of ours, is play- 
 ing somewhat too high a game. " A man by the very look of 
 him promises so much : " yes ; and by the rent-roll of him doea 
 he promise nothing ? 
 
 Alas, what a business will this be, which our Continental 
 friends, groping this long while somewhat absurdly about it 
 and about it, call " Organization of Labor ; " which must be 
 taken out of the hands of absurd windy persons, and put into 
 the hands of wise, laborious, modest and valiant- men, to begin 
 with it straightway ; to proceed with it, and succeed in it more 
 and more, if Europe, at any rate if England, is to continue 
 habitable much longer. Looking at the kind of most noble 
 Corn-Law Dukes or Practical Duces we have, and also of right 
 reverend Soul-Overseers, Christian Spiritual Duces " on a mini- 
 mum of four thousand five hundred," one's hopes are a little 
 chilled. Courage, nevertheless ; there are many brave men in 
 England ! My indomitable Plugson, nay is there not even 
 in thee gome hope ? Thou art hitherto a Bucanier, as it was 
 written and prescribed for thee by an evil world : but in that 
 grim brow, in that indomitable heart which can conquer Cotton, 
 do there not perhaps lie other ten-times nobler conquests 9
 
 190 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 LABOR. 
 
 FOR there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in 
 Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high 
 calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and -ear- 
 nestly works : in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. 
 Work, never so mammonish, mean, is in communication with 
 Nature ; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one 
 more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regula- 
 tions, which are truth. 
 
 The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. 
 " Know thyself : " long enough has that poor " self " of thine 
 tormented thee ; thou wilt never get to " know " it, I believe ! 
 Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself ; thou art 
 an unknowable individual : know what thou canst work at ; 
 and work at it, like a Hercules ! That will be thy better 
 plan. 
 
 It has been written, " an endless significance lies in Work ; " 
 a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared 
 away, fair seedfields rise instead, and stately cities ; and withal 
 the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwhole- 
 some desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts 
 of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of 
 real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work ! Doubt, 
 Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all those 
 like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, 
 as of every man : but he bends himself with free valor against 
 his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring 
 far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed 
 glow of Labor in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all 
 poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made 
 bright blessed flame !
 
 CHAP. XI. LABOR. 191 
 
 Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. 
 A formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever 
 rounder; ranges itself, by mere force of gravity, into strata, 
 spherical courses ; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted 
 World. What would become of the Earth, did she cease to 
 revolve ? In the poor old Earth, so long as she revolves, all 
 inequalities, irregularities disperse themselves ; all irregulari- 
 ties are incessantly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on 
 the Potter's wheel, one of the venerablest objects; old as 
 the Prophet Ezekiel and far older ? Rude lumps of clay, how 
 they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beauti- 
 ful circular dishes. And fancy the most assiduous Potter, but 
 without his wheel ; reduced to make dishes, or rather amor- 
 phous botches, by mere kneading and baking ! Even such a 
 Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and 
 lie at ease, that would not work and spin ! Of an idle un- 
 revolving man the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous 
 Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than 
 a botch ; let her spend on him what expensive coloring, what 
 gilding and enamelling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish ; 
 no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, 
 amorphous botch, a mere enamelled vessel of dishonor ! Let 
 the idle think of this. 
 
 Blessed is he who has found his work ; let him ask no other 
 blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose ; he has found it, 
 and will follow it ! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and 
 torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's ex- 
 istence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows ; 
 draining off the sour festering water, gradually from the root 
 of the remotest grass-blade ; making, instead of pestilential 
 swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. 
 How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value 
 be great or small ! Labor is Life : from the inmost heart of 
 the Worker rises his god-given Force, the sacred celestial Life- 
 essence breathed into him by Almighty God ; from his inmost 
 heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, " self- 
 knowledge" and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. 
 Knowledge ? The knowledge that will hold good in working.
 
 192 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOB IIL 
 
 cleave thou to that ; for Nature herself accredits that, says 
 Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but 
 what thou hast got by working : the rest is yet all a hypothesis 
 of knowledge ; a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing float- 
 ing in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try it and 
 fix it. " Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action 
 alone." 
 
 And again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance, 
 Openness to light ; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do 
 better next time ? All these, all virtues, in wrestling with the 
 dim brute Powers of Fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such 
 wrestle, there and elsewhere not at all, thou wilt continually 
 learn. Set down a brave Sir Christopher in the middle of black 
 ruined Stone-heaps, of foolish unarchitectuval Bishops, red-tape 
 Officials, idle Nell-Gwynn Defenders of the Faith; and see 
 whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathedral out of all that, 
 yea or no ! Rough, rude, contradictory are all things and per- 
 sons, from the mutinous masons and Irish hodmen, up to the 
 idle Nell-Gwynn Defenders, to blustering red-tape Officials, 
 foolish unarchitectural Bishops. All these things and persons 
 are there not for Christopher's sake and his Cathedral's ; they 
 are there for their own sake mainly ! Christopher will have 
 to conquer and constrain all these, if he be able. All these 
 are against him. Equitable Nature herself, who carries her 
 mathematics and architectonics not on the face of her, but deep 
 in the hidden heart of her, Nature herself is but partially for 
 him ; will be wholly against him, if he constrain her not ! His 
 very money, where is it to come from ? The pious munificence 
 of England lies far-scattered, distant, unable to speak, and say, 
 " I am here ; " must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious 
 munificence, and all help, is so silent, invisible like the gods ; 
 impediment, contradictions manifold are so loud and near ! 
 brave Sir Christopher, trust thou in those notwithstanding, 
 and front all these ; understand all these ; by valiant patience, 
 noble effort, insight, by man's strength, vanquish and compel 
 all these, and, on the whole, strike down victoriously the 
 last topstgne of that Paul's Edifice ; thy monument for certain
 
 CHAP. XI. LABOR. 193 
 
 centuries, the stamp " Great Man " impressed very legibly on 
 Portland-stone there ! 
 
 Yes, all manner of help, and pious response from Men or 
 Nature, is always what we call silent ; cannot speak or come 
 to light, till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work 
 is at first " impossible." In very truth, for every noble work 
 the possibilities will lie diffused through Immensity ; inarticu- 
 late, undiscoverable except to faith. Like Gideon thou shalt 
 spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether 
 under the wide arch of Heaven there be any bounteous mois- 
 ture, or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a mirac- 
 ulous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven ; 
 and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind 
 Localities and town and country Parishes there never could, 
 blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen ! 
 
 Work is of a religious nature : work is of a brave nature , 
 which it is the aim of all religion to be. All work of man is 
 as the swimmer's : a waste ocean threatens to devour him ; 
 if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant 
 wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how 
 it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. 
 " It is so," says Goethe, " with all things that man undertakes 
 in this world." 
 
 Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king, Columbus, my hero, 
 royalest Sea-king of all ! it is no friendly environment this of 
 thine, in the waste deep waters ; around thee mutinous dis- 
 couraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the 
 impenetrated veil of Night. Brother, these wild water-moun- 
 tains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am 
 told), are not entirely there on thy behalf ! Meseems they have 
 other work than floating thee forward : and the huge Winds, 
 that sweep from Ursa Major to the Tropics and Equators, 
 dancing their giant-waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and 
 Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or fillhig 
 wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff 
 of thine ! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, 
 my brother ; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, 
 tumbling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far off. 
 
 VOL. XII. 13
 
 194 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them see 
 how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the 
 mad Southwester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous 
 science of defence, the while : valiantly, with swift decision, 
 wilt thou strike in, when the favoring East, the Possible, 
 springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress ; weak- 
 ness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage : thou wilt 
 swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of 
 others and thyself ; how much wilt thou swallow down ! 
 There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than this Sea, 
 which is but ten miles deep : a Silence unsoundable ; known 
 to God only. Thou shalt be a Great Man. Yes, my World- 
 Soldier, thou of the World Marine-service, thou wilt have 
 to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured World here 
 round thee is : thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, 
 shalt embrace it, harness it down ; and make it bear thee on, 
 to new Americas, or whither God wills ! 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 REWARD. 
 
 " RELIGION," I said ; for, properly speaking, all true Work 
 is Religion : and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and 
 dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, 
 or where it will ; with me it shall have no harbor. Admirable 
 was that of the old Monks, " Laborare est Orare, Work is 
 Worship." 
 
 Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, inar- 
 ticulate, but ineradicable, forever-enduring Gospel : Work, and 
 therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, 
 lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of active 
 Method, a Force for Work ; and burns like a painfully 
 smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till 
 thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee ! What is 
 immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, ara- 
 ble ; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou find-
 
 CHAP. XII. REWARD. 195 
 
 est Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy ; attack him swiftly, 
 subdue him ; make Order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but 
 of Intelligence, Divinity and Thee ! The thistle that grows in 
 thy path, dig it out, that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nour- 
 ishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste oottou-shrub, 
 gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it ; that, in place 
 of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of 
 man be covered. 
 
 Hut above all, where thou tindest Ignorance, Stupidity, 
 Brute-inindedness, yes, there, with or without Church-tithes 
 and Shovel-hat, with or without Talfourd-Mahon Copyrights, 
 or were it with mere dungeons and gibbets and crosses, attack 
 it, I say ; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while 
 thou livest and it lives ; but smite, smite, in the name of God ! 
 The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command 
 thee ; still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, 
 with his wispoken voice, awfuler than any Sinai thunders or 
 syllabled speech of Whirlwinds ; for the SILENCE of deep Eter- 
 nities, of Worlds from beyond the morning-stars, does it not 
 speak to thee ? The unborn Ages ; the old Graves, with their 
 long-mouldering dust, the very tears that wetted it now all 
 dry, do not these speak to thee, what ear hath not heard ? 
 The deep Death-kingdoms, the Stars in their never-resting 
 courses, all Space and all Time, proclaim it to thee in continual 
 silent admonition. Thou too, if ever man should, shalt work 
 while it is called To-day. For the Night cometh, wherein no 
 man can work. 
 
 All true Work is sacred ; in all true Work, were it but true 
 hand-lal)or, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as 
 the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow ; 
 and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart ; 
 which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, 
 all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyr- 
 doms, up to that "Agony of bloody sweat," which all men 
 have called divine ! brother, if this is not " worship," then 
 I say, the more pity for worship ; for this is the noblest thing 
 yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complain- 
 est of thy life of toil ? Complain not. Look up, my wearied
 
 196 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 brother ; see thy fellow Workmen there, in God's Eternity ; 
 surviving there, they alone surviving : sacred Band of the 
 Immortals, celestial Body-guard of the Empire of Mankind. 
 Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as 
 saints, as heroes, as gods ; they alone surviving ; peopling, 
 they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time ! To thee 
 Heaven, though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind, as a 
 noble Mother ; as that Spartan Mother, saying while she gave 
 her son his shield, " With it, my son, or upon it ! " Thou too 
 shalt return home in honor ; to thy far-distant Home, in honor ; 
 doubt it not, if in the battle thou keep thy shield ! Thou, in 
 the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an alien ; 
 thou everywhere art a v denizen ! Complain not ; the very 
 Spartans did not complain. 
 
 And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness; 
 complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages ; sumptuous 
 cushions ; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep ? 
 Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest 
 thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any idle hero, saint, god, 
 or even devil ? Not a vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the 
 Earth, in the Waters under the Earth, is none like unto thee. 
 Thou art an original figure in this Creation ; a denizen in May- 
 fair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century alone ! 
 One monster there is in the world : the idle man. What is his 
 " Keligion " ? That Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning beg- 
 gary or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is 
 a lie ; and that Man and his Life are a lie. Alas, alas, who of 
 us is there that can say, I have worked ? The faithfulest of us 
 are unprofitable servants ; the faithfulest of us know that best. 
 The faithfulest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel, 
 " Much of my life has been trifled away ! " But he that has, 
 and except " on public occasions " professes to have, no function 
 but that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner ; and 
 of begetting sons to go idle ; and to address Chief Spinners and 
 Diggers who at least are spinning and digging, "Ye scandalous 
 persons who produce too much " My Corn-Law friends, 
 on what imaginary still richer Eldorados, and true iron-spikes 
 with law of gravitation, are ye rushing !
 
 CHAP. XII. REWARD. 197 
 
 As to the Wages of Work there might innumerable things 
 be said ; there will and must yet innumerable things be said 
 and spoken, in St. Stephen's and out of St. Stephen's ; and 
 gradually not a few things be ascertained and written, on Law- 
 parchment, concerning this very matter : " Fair day's-wages 
 for a fair day's-work " is the most uuref usable demand ! Money- 
 wages " to the extent of keeping your worker alive that he 
 may work more ; " these, unless you mean to dismiss him 
 straightway out of this world, are indispensable alike to the 
 noblest Worker and to the least noble ! 
 
 One thing only I will say here, in special reference to the 
 former class, the noble and noblest ; but throwing light on all 
 the other classes and their arrangements of this difficult mat- 
 ter : The " wages " of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven 
 or else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's 
 Labor-bank, or any the most improved establishment of bank- 
 ing and money-changing, needest thou, heroic soul, present thy 
 account of earnings. Human banks and labor-banks know 
 thee not ; or know thee after generations and centuries have 
 passed away, and thou art clean gone from " rewarding," all 
 manner of bank-drafts, shop-tills, and Downing-street Ex- 
 chequers lying very invisible, so far from thee ! Nay, at bot- 
 tom, dost thou need any reward ? Was it thy aim and life- 
 purpose to be filled with good things for thy heroism ; to have 
 a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call " happy," in this 
 world, or in any other world ? I answer for thee deliberately, 
 No. The whole spiritual secret of the new epoch lies in this, 
 that thou canst answer for thyself, with thy whole clearness of 
 head and heart, deliberately, No ! 
 
 My brother, the brave man has to give his Life away. Give 
 it, I advise thee ; thou dost not expect to sell thy Life in an 
 adequate manner ? What price, for example, would content 
 thee? The just price of thy LIFE to thee, why, God's en- 
 tire Creation to thyself, the whole Universe of Space, the whole 
 Eternity of Time, and what they hold : that is the price which 
 would content thee ; that, and if thou wilt be candid, nothing 
 short of that ! It is thy all : and for it thou wouldst have all. 
 Thou art an unreasonable mortal ; or rather thou art a poor
 
 198 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 infinite mortal, who, in thy narrow clay-prison here, seemest so 
 unreasonable ! Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of 
 thy Life, in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart ; 
 let the price be Nothing : thou hast then, in a certain sense, 
 got All for it ! The heroic man and is not every man, God 
 de thanked, a potential hero ? has to do so, in all times and 
 circumstances. In the most heroic age, as in the most un- 
 heroic, he will have to say, as Burns said proudly and humbly 
 of his little Scottish Songs, little dewdrops of Celestial Melody 
 in an age when so much was unmelodious : " By Heaven, they 
 shall either be invaluable or of no value ; I do not need your 
 guineas for them ! " It is an element which should, and must, 
 enter deeply into all settlements of wages here below. They 
 never will be " satisfactory " otherwise ; they cannot, Mam- 
 mon Gospel, they never can ! Money for my little piece of 
 work " to the extent that will allow me to keep working ; " 
 yes, this, unless you mean that I shall go my ways before 
 the work is all taken out of me : but as to " wages " ! 
 
 On the whole, we do entirely agree with those old Monks, 
 Laborare est Orare. In a thousand senses, from one end of it 
 to the other, true Work is Worship. He that works, whatso- 
 ever be his work, he bodies forth the form of Things Unseen ; 
 a small Poet every Worker is. The idea, were it but of his poor 
 Delf Platter, how much more of his Epic Poem, is as yet 
 "seen," half -seen, only by himself ; to all others it is a thing 
 unseen, impossible ; to Nature herself it is a thing unseen, a 
 thing which never hitherto was ; very " impossible," for it 
 is as yet a No-thing ! The Unseen Powers had need to watch 
 over such a man ; he works in and for the Unseen. Alas, if 
 he look to the Seen Powers only, he may as well quit the busi- 
 ness ; his No-thing will never rightly issue as a Thing, but as 
 a Deceptivity, a Sham-thing, which it had better not do ! 
 
 Thy No-thing of an Intended Poem, O Poet who hast looked 
 merely to reviewers, copyrights, booksellers, popularities, be- 
 hold it has not yet become a Thing ; for the truth is not in it ! 
 Though printed, hot-pressed, reviewed, celebrated, sold to the 
 twentieth edition : what is all that ? The Thing, in philo- 
 sophical uncommercial language, is still a No-thing, mostly
 
 CHAP. XII. REWARD. 199 
 
 semblance, and deception of the sight ; benign Oblivion 
 incessantly gnawing at it, impatient till Chaos, to which it 
 belongs, do reabsorb it ! 
 
 He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from 
 him will never come real visibility and speech. Thou must 
 descend to the Mothers, to the Manes, and Hercules-like long 
 suffer and labor there, wouldst thou emerge with victory into 
 the sunlight. As in battle and the shock of war, for is not 
 this a battle ? thou too shalt fear no pain or death, shalt 
 love no ease or 1 if e ; the voice of festive Lubberlands, the 
 noise of greedy Acheron shall alike lie silent under thy victo- 
 rious feet. Thy work, like Dante's, shall "make thee lean 
 for many years." The world and its wages, its criticisms, 
 counsels, helps, impediments, shall be as a waste ocean-flood ; 
 the chaos through which thou art to swim and sail. Not the 
 waste waves and their weedy gulf-streams, shalt thou take for 
 guidance : thy star alone, " Se tu segui tua stella ! " Thy 
 star alone, now clear-beaming over Chaos, nay now by fits 
 gone out, disastrously eclipsed : this only shalt thou strive 
 to follow. Oh, it is a business, as I fancy, that of weltering 
 your way through Chaos and the murk of Hell ! Green-eyed 
 dragons watching you, three-headed Cerberuses, not without 
 sympathy of their sort ! " Eccovi V uom ch 1 e stnto all' Inferno" 
 For in fine, as Poet Dryden says, you do walk hand in hand 
 with sheer Madness, all the way, who is by no means pleas- 
 ant company ! You look fixedly into Madness, and her un- 
 discovered, boundless, bottomless Night-empire ; that you may 
 extort new Wisdom out of it, as an Eurydice from Tartarus. 
 The higher the Wisdom, the closer was its neighborhood and 
 kindred with mere Insanity; literally so; and thou wilt, 
 with a speechless feeling, observe how highest Wisdom, strug- 
 gling up into this world, has oftentimes carried such tinctures 
 and adhesions of Insanity still cleaving to it hither ! 
 
 All Works, each in their degree, are a making of Madness 
 sane; truly enough a religious operation; which cannot be 
 carried on without religion. You have not work otherwise ; 
 you have eye-service, greedy grasping of wages, swilt and 
 ever swifter manufacture of semblances to get hold of wages.
 
 200 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK HI. 
 
 Instead of better felt-hats to cover your head, you have bigger 
 lath-and-plaster hats set travelling the streets on wheels. 
 Instead of heavenly and earthly Guidance for the souls of 
 men, you have " Black or White Surplice " Controversies, 
 stuffed hair-and-leather Popes ; terrestrial Law-wards, Lords 
 and Law-bringers, " organizing Labor " in these years, by pass- 
 ing Corn-Laws. With all which, alas, this distracted Earth 
 is now full, nigh to bursting. Semblances most smooth to 
 the touch and eye ; most accursed, nevertheless, to body and 
 soul. Semblarifces, be they of Sham-woven Cloth or of Dilet- 
 tante Legislation, which are not real wool or substance, but 
 Devil's-dust, accursed of God and man ! No man has worked, 
 or can work, except religiously ; not even the poor day-laborer, 
 the weaver of your coat, the sewer of your shoes. All men, 
 if they work not as in a Great Taskmaster's eye, will work 
 wrong, work unhappily for themselves and you. 
 
 Industrial work, still under bondage to Mammon, the ra- 
 tional soul of it not yet awakened, is a tragic spectacle. Men 
 in the rapidest motion and self-motion ; restless, with convul- 
 sive energy, as if driven by Galvanism, as if possessed by a 
 Devil ; tearing asunder mountains, to no purpose, for Mam- 
 monism is always Midas-eared ! This is sad, on the face of it. 
 Yet courage : the beneficent Destinies, kind in their sternness, 
 are apprising us that this cannot continue. Labor is not a 
 devil, even while encased in Mammonism ; Labor is ever an 
 imprisoned god, writhing unconsciously or consciously to es- 
 cape out of Mammonism ! Plugson of Undershot, like Taille- 
 fer of Normandy, wants victory ; how much happier will even 
 Plugson be to have a Chivalrous victory than a Choctaw 
 one ! The unredeemed ugliness is that of a slothful People. 
 Show me a People energetically busy ; heaving, struggling, 
 all shoulders at the wheel ; their heart pulsing, every muscle 
 swelling, with man's energy and will ; I show you a People 
 of whom great good is already predicable ; to whom all man- 
 ner of good is yet certain, if their energy endure. By very 
 working, they will learn ; they have, Antaeus-like, their foot 
 on Mother Fact : how can they but learn ?
 
 CHAP. XII. REWARD. 201 
 
 The vulgarest Plugson of a Master- Worker, who can com- 
 mand Workers, and get work out of them, is already a consid- 
 erable man. Blessed and thrice-blessed symptoms I discern 
 of Master- Workers who are not vulgar men ; who are Nobles, 
 and begin to feel that they must act as such : all speed to 
 these, they are England's hope at present ! But in this Plug- 
 son himself, conscious of almost no nobleness whatever, how 
 much is there ! Not without man's faculty, insight, courage, 
 hard energy, is this rugged figure. His words none of the 
 wisest ; but his actings cannot be altogether foolish. Think, 
 how were it, stoodst thou suddenly in his shoes ! He has to 
 command a thousand men. And not imaginary commanding ; 
 no, it is real, incessantly practical. The evil passions of so 
 many men (with the Devil in them, as in all of us) he has to 
 vanquish j by manifold force of speech and of silence, to re- 
 press or evade. What a force of silence, to say nothing of the 
 others, is in Plugson ! For these his thousand men he has 
 to provide raw-material, machinery, arrangement, house-room ; 
 and ever at the week's end, wages by due sale. No Civil- 
 List, or Goulburn-Baring Budget has he to fall back upon, for 
 paying of his regiment ; he has to pick his supplies from the 
 confused face of the whole Earth and Contemporaneous His- 
 tory, by his dexterity alone. There will be dry eyes if he fail 
 to do it ! He exclaims, at present, " black in the face," near 
 strangled with Dilettante Legislation : " Let me have elbow- 
 room, throat-room, and I will not fail ! No, I will spin yet, 
 and conquer like a giant : what ' sinews of war ' lie in me, un- 
 told resources towards the Conquest of this Planet, if instead 
 of hanging me, you husband them, and help me ! " My in- 
 domitable friend, it is true ; and thou shalt and must be helped. 
 
 This is not a man I would kill and strangle by Corn-Laws, 
 even if I could ! No, I would fling my Corn-Laws and Shot- 
 belts to the Devil ; and try to help this man. I would teach 
 him, by noble precept and law-precept, by noble example most 
 of all, that Mammonism was not the essence of his or of my 
 station in God's Universe ; but the adscititious excrescence of 
 it ; the gross, terrene, godless embodiment of it ; which would 
 have to become, more or less, a godlike one. By noble real
 
 202 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 legislation, by true nobles-work, by unwearied, valiant, and 
 were it wageless effort, in my Parliament and in my Parish, 
 I would aid, constrain, encourage him to effect more or less 
 this blessed change. I should know that it w<5uld have to 
 be effected ; that unless it were in some measure effected, he 
 and I and all of us, I first and soonest of all, were doomed to 
 perdition ! Effected it will be ; unless it were a Demon that 
 made this Universe ; which I, for my own part, do at no 
 moment, under no form, in the least believe. 
 
 May it please your Serene Highnesses, your Majesties, 
 Lordships and Law-wardships, the proper Epic of this world 
 is not now " Arms and the Man ; " how much less, " Shirt- 
 frills and the Man : " no, it is now " Tools and the Man : " 
 that, henceforth to all time, is now our Epic j and you, first 
 of all others, I think, were wise to take note of that ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 IF the Serene Highnesses and Majesties do not take note 
 of that, then as I perceive, that will take note of itself ! The 
 time for levity, insincerity, and idle babble and play-acting, 
 in all kinds, is gone by ; it is a serious, grave time. Old long- 
 vexed questions, not yet solved in logical words or parlia- 
 mentary laws, are fast solving themselves in facts, somewhat 
 unblessed to behold ! This largest of questions, this question 
 of Work and Wages, which ought, had we heeded Heaven's 
 voice, to have begun two generations ago or more, cannot be 
 delayed longer without hearing Earth's voice. " Labor " will 
 verily need to be somewhat "organized," as they say, God 
 knows with what difficulty. Man will actually need to have 
 his debts and earnings a little better paid by man ; which, let 
 Parliaments speak of them or be silent of them, are eternally 
 his due from man, and cannot, without penalty and at length 
 not without death-penalty, be withheld. How much ought
 
 CHAP. XIII. DEMOCRACY. 203 
 
 to cease among us straightway ; how much ought to begin 
 straightway, while the hours yet are ! 
 
 Truly they are strange results to which this of leaving all 
 to " Cash ; " of quietly shutting up the God's Temple, and 
 gradually opening wide open the Mammon's Temple, with 
 " Laissez-faire, and Every man for himself," have led us 
 in these days ! We have Upper, speaking Classes, who indeed 
 do " speak " as never man spake before ; the withered flimsi- 
 ness, the godless baseness and barrenness of whose Speech 
 might of itself indicate what kind of Doing and practical Gov- 
 erning went on under it ! For Speech is the gaseous element 
 out of which most kinds of Practice and Performance, espe- 
 cially all kinds of moral Performance, condense themselves, 
 and take shape; as the one is, so will the other be. De- 
 scending, accordingly, into the Dumb Class in its Stockport 
 Cellars and Poor-Law Bastilles, have we not to announce 
 that they also are hitherto unexampled in the History of 
 Adam's Posterity. 
 
 Life was never a May-game for men: in all times the lot 
 of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold 
 sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoida- 
 ble ; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore 
 and the heart sore. As bond-slaves, vi/lani, bordarii, soche- 
 manni, nay indeed as dukes, earls and kings, men were often- 
 times made weary of their life ; and had to say, in the sweat 
 of their brow and of their soul, Behold, it is not sport, it 
 is grim earnest, and our back can bear no more ! Who knows 
 not what massaerings and harry ings there have been ; grind 
 ing, long-continuing, unbearable injustices, till the heart 
 .had to rise in madness, and some " Eu Sarftsen, nimith eiier 
 sac/ises, You Saxons, out with your gully-knives, then ! *' You 
 Saxons, some " arrestment," partial " arrestment of the Knaves 
 and Dastards " has become indispensable ! The page of Dry- 
 asdust is heavy with such details. 
 
 And yet I will venture to believe that in no time, since the 
 beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same dumb mil- 
 lions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days 
 now passing over us. It is not to die, or even to die of
 
 204 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 hunger, that makes a man wretched ; many men have died ; 
 all men must die, the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot 
 of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why ; to 
 work sore and yet gain nothing ; to be heart-worn, weary, yet 
 isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-i'aire : 
 it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, 
 Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' 
 Bull ! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men 
 whom God has made. Do we wonder at French Eevolutions, 
 Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days ? The times, if we will 
 consider them, are really unexampled. 
 
 Never before did I hear of an Irish Widow reduced to 
 " prove her sisterhood by dying of typhus-fever and infecting 
 seventeen persons," saying in such undeniable way, " You 
 see I was your sister ! " Sisterhood, brotherhood, was often 
 forgotten ; but not till the rise of these ultimate Mammon 
 and Shot-belt Gospels did I ever see it so expressly denied. If 
 no pious Lord or Law-ward would remember it, always some 
 pious Lady (" Hlaf-dig" Benefactress, " Loaf -giver ess," they 
 say she is, blessings on her beautiful heart !) was there, 
 with mild mother-voice and hand, to remember it ; some pious 
 thoughtful Elder, what we now call " Prestex," Presbyter or 
 " Priest," was there to put all men in mind of it, in the name 
 of the God who had made all. 
 
 Not even in Black Dahomey was it ever, I think, forgot- 
 ten to the typhus-fever length. Mungo Park, resourceless, 
 had sunk down to die under the Negro Village-Tree, a hor- 
 rible White object in the eyes of all. But in the poor Black 
 Woman, and her daughter who stood aghast at him, whose 
 earthly wealth and funded capital consisted of one small cala- 
 bash of rice, there lived a heart richer than Laiss&ts-faire : 
 they, with a royal munificence, boiled their riee for him; they 
 sang all night to him, spinning assiduous on their cotton dis- 
 taffs, as he lay to sleep : " Let us pity the poor white man ; 
 no mother has he to fetch him milk, no sister to grind him 
 corn ! " Thou poor black Noble One, thou Lady too : did 
 not a God make thee too ; was there not in thee too some- 
 thing of a God!
 
 CHAP. XHI. DEMOCRACY. 205 
 
 Gurth, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, has been greatly 
 pitied by Dryasdust and others. Gurth, with the brass collar 
 round his ueck, tending Cedric's pigs in the glades of the 
 wood, is not what I call an exemplar of human felicity : but 
 Gurth, with the sky above him, with the free air and tinted 
 Iwscage and umbrage round him, and in him at least the cer- 
 tainty of supper and social lodging when he came home; 
 Gurth to me seems happy, in comparison with many a Lanca- 
 shire and Buckinghamshire man of these days, not born thrall 
 of anybody ! Gurth's brass collar did not gall him : Cedric 
 deserved to be his master. The pigs were Cedric's, but Gurth 
 too would get his parings of them. Gurth had the inex- 
 pressible satisfaction of feeling himself related indissolubly, 
 though in a rude brass-collar way, to his fellow-mortals in 
 this Earth. He had superiors, inferiors, equals. Gurth is 
 now " emancipated " long since ; has what we call " Lib- *K 
 erty." Liberty, I am told, is a divine thing. Liberty when // 
 it becomes the " Liberty to die by starvation " is not so ' 
 divine ! 
 
 Liberty ? The true liberty of a man, you would say, con- 
 sisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out the right 
 path, and to walk thereon. To learn, or to be taught, what 
 work he actually was able for ; and then by permission, per- 
 suasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing of the same ! 
 That is his true blessedness, honor, " liberty " and maximum 
 of well-being: if liberty be not that, I for one have small 
 care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to 
 leap over precipices ; you violate his liberty, you that are 
 wise ; and keep him, were it in strait-waistcoats, away from 
 the precipices ! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish 
 man is but a less palpable madman : his true liberty were that 
 a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass 
 collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him 
 when he was going wrong, and order and compel him to go a 
 little righter. Oh, if thou really art my Senior, Seigneur, rny 
 Elder, Presbyter or Priest, if thou art in very deed my 
 Wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to " con- 
 quer " me, to command me ! If thou do know better than I
 
 206 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 what is good and right, I conjure thee in the name of God, 
 force me to do it ; were it by never such brass collars, whips 
 and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices ! That I 
 have been called, by all the Newspapers, a " free man " will 
 avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and 
 wreck. Oh that the Newspapers had called me slave, coward, 
 fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and 
 I had attained not death, but life! Liberty requires new 
 definitions. 
 
 A conscious abhorrence and intolerance of Folly, of Base- 
 ness, Stupidity, Poltroonery and all that brood of things, 
 dwells deep in soine men : still deeper in others an wraconscious 
 abhorrence and intolerance, clothed moreover by the benefi- 
 cent Supreme Powers in what stout appetites, energies, ego- 
 isms so called, are suitable to it ; these latter are your Con- 
 querors, Romans, Normans, Russians, Indo-English ; Founders 
 of what we call Aristocracies. Which indeed have they not 
 the most " divine right " to found; being themselves very 
 truly "Apto-rot, BRAVEST, BEST ; and conquering generally a 
 confused rabble of WORST, or at lowest, clearly enough, of 
 WORSE ? I think their divine right, tried, with affirmatory 
 verdict, in the greatest Law-Court known to me, was good ! 
 A class of men who are dreadfully exclaimed against by Dry- 
 asdust; of whom nevertheless beneficent Nature has often- 
 times had need ; and may, alas, again have need. 
 
 When, across the hundred-fold poor scepticisms, trivialisms, 
 and constitutional cobwebberies of Dryasdust, you catch any 
 glimpse of a William the Conqueror, a Tancred of Hauteville or 
 such like, do you not discern veritably some rude outline of 
 a true God-made King ; whom not the Champion of England 
 cased in tin, but all Nature and the Universe were calling to 
 the throne ? It is absolutely necessary that he get thither. 
 Nature does not mean her poor Saxon children to perish, of 
 obesity, stupor or other malady, as yet: a stern Ruler and 
 Line of Rulers therefore is called in, a stern but most be- 
 neficent perpetual House- Surgeon is by Nature herself called in, 
 and even the appropriate fees are provided for him ! Dryas- 
 dust talks lamentably about Hereward and the Fen Counties ;
 
 CHAP. XIII. DEMOCRACY. 207 
 
 fate of Earl Waltheof; Yorkshire arid the North reduced to 
 ashes : all which is undoubtedly lamentable. But even Dry- 
 asdust apprises uie of one fact : " A child, in this William's 
 reign, might have carried a purse of gold from end to end of 
 England." My erudite friend, it is a fact which outweighs a 
 thousand ! Sweep away thy constitutional, sentimental and 
 other cobwebberies ; look eye to eye, if thou still have any 
 eye, in the face of this big burly William Bastard : thou wilt 
 see a fellow of most flashing discernment, of most strong lion- 
 heart ; in whom, as it were, within a frame of oak and iron, 
 the gods have planted the soul of " a man of genius " ! Dost 
 thou call that nothing '.' I call it an immense thing ! Rage 
 enough was in this Willelinus Conqusestor, rage enough for his 
 occasions ; and yet the essential element of him, as of all 
 such men, is not scorching f re, but shining illuminative light. 
 Fire and light are strangely interchangeable ; nay, at bottom, 
 I have found them different forms of the same most godlike 
 " elementary substance " in our world : a thing worth stating 
 in these days. The essential element of this Conquaestor is, 
 first of all, the most sun-eyed perception of what is really 
 what on this God's-Earth ; which, thou wilt find, does mean 
 at l>ottom "Justice," and " Virtues " not a few : Conformity to 
 what the Maker has seen good to make ; that, I suppose, will 
 mean Justice and a Virtue or two ? 
 
 Dost thou think Willelinus Conquaestor would have toler- 
 ated ten years' jargon, one hour's jargon, on the propriety of 
 killing Cotton-manufacturers by partridge Corn-Laws ? I 
 fancy, this was not the man to knock out of his night's-rest 
 with nothing but a noisy bedlamism in your mouth ! " Assist 
 us still better to bush the partridges ; strangle Plugson who 
 spins the shirts?" "Par la Splcnrteur ae Dieu ! " Dost 
 thou think Willelmus Conquaestor, in this now time, with 
 Steam-engine Captains of Industry on one hand of him, and 
 Joe-Manton Captains of Idleness on the other, would have 
 doubted which was really the BEST ; which did deserve stran- 
 gling, and which not ? 
 
 I have a certain indestructible regard for Willelmus Con- 
 quaestor. A resident House-Surgeon, provided by nature for
 
 208 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 her beloved English People, and even furnished with the 
 requisite fees, as I said; for he by no means felt himself 
 doing Nature's work, this Willelmus, but his own work exclu- 
 sively ! And his own work withal it was ; informed "par la 
 Splendeur de Dieu." I say, it is necessary to get the work 
 out of such a man, however harsh that be ! When a world, 
 not yet doomed for death, is rushing down to ever-deeper 
 Baseness and Confusion, it is a dire necessity of Nature's 
 to bring in her ARISTOCRACIES, her BEST, even by forcible 
 methods. When their descendants or representatives cease 
 entirely to be the Best, Nature's poor world will very soon 
 rush down again to Baseness ; and it becomes a dire necessity 
 of Nature's to cast them out. Hence French Kevolutions, 
 Five- point Charters, Democracies, and a mournful list of 
 Etceteras, in these our afflicted times. 
 
 To what extent Democracy has now reached, how it ad- 
 vances irresistible with ominous, ever-increasing speed, he 
 that will open his eyes on any province of human affairs may 
 discern. Democracy is everywhere the* inexorable demand 
 of these ages, swiftly fulfilling itself. From the thunder of 
 Napoleon battles, to the jabbering of Open-vestry in St. Mary 
 Axe, all things announce Democracy. A distinguished man, 
 whom some of my readers will hear again with pleasure, thus 
 writes to me what in these days he notes from the Wahngasse 
 of Weissnichtwo, where our London fashions seem to be in 
 full vogue. Let us hear the Herr Teufelsdrockh again, were 
 it but the smallest word ! 
 
 "Democracy, which means despair of finding any Heroes 
 to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of 
 them, alas, thou too, mein Lieber, seest well how close it 
 is of kin to Atheism, and other sad Isms: he who discovers 
 no God whatever, how shall he discover Heroes, the visible 
 Temples of God ? Strange enough meanwhile it is, to ob- 
 serve with what thoughtlessness, here in our rigidly Conserva- 
 tive Country, men rush into Democracy with full cry. Beyond 
 doubt, his Excellenz the Titular-Herr Hitter Kauderwalseh 
 von Pferdefuss-Quacksalber, he our distinguished Conserva- 
 tive Premier himself, and all but the thicker-headed of his
 
 CHAI. XIII. DEMOCRACY. 209 
 
 Party, discern Democracy to be inevitable as death, and are 
 even desperate of delaying it much ! 
 
 ' You cannot walk the streets without beholding Democracy 
 announce itself: the very Tailor has become, if not properly 
 Sansculottic, which to him would be ruinous, yet a Tailor 
 unconsciously symbolizing, and prophesying with his scissors, 
 the reign of Equality. What now is our fashionable coat ? 
 A thing of superfinest texture, of deeply meditated cut ; with 
 Malines-lace cuffs; quilted Avith gold; so that a man can 
 carry, without difficulty, an estate of land on his back ? Kei- 
 nesweys, By no manner of means ! The Sumptuary Laws have 
 fallen into such a state of desuetude as was never before seen. 
 Our fashionable coat is an amphibium between barn-sack and 
 drayman's doublet. The cloth of it is studiously coarse ; the 
 color a speckled soot-black or rust-brown gray ; the nearest 
 approach to a Peasant's. And for shape, thou shouldst 
 see it ! The last consummation of the year now passing over 
 us is definable as Three Bags ; a big bag for the body, two 
 small bags for the arms, and by way of collar a hem ! The 
 first Antique Cheruscan who, of felt-cloth or bear's-hide, with 
 bone or metal needle, set about making himself a coat, before 
 Tailors had yet awakened out of Nothing, did not he make 
 it even so ? A loose wide poke for body, with two holes to 
 let out the arms ; this was his original coat : to which holes 
 it was soon visible that two small loose pokes, or sleeves, 
 easily appended, would be an improvement. 
 
 "Thus has the Tailor-art, so to speak, overset itself, like 
 most other things ; changed its centre-of-gravity ; whirled 
 suddenly over from zenith to nadir. Your Stulz, with huge 
 somerset, vaults from his high shopboard down to the depths 
 of primal savagery, carrying much along with him! For I 
 will invite thee to reflect that the Tailor, as topmost ultimate 
 froth of Human Society, is indeed swift-passing, evanescent, 
 slippery to decipher; yet significant of much, nay of all. 
 Topmost evanescent froth, he is churned up from the very 
 lees, and from all intermediate regions of the liquor. The 
 general outcome he, visible to the eye, of what men aimed to 
 do, and were obliged and enabled to do, in this one public 
 
 TOL. XII. 14
 
 210 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 department of symbolizing themselves to each other by cover- 
 ing of their skins. A smack of all Human Life lies in the 
 Tailor; its wild struggles towards beauty, dignity, freedom, 
 victory ; and how, hemmed in by Sedan and Huddersfield, 
 by Nescience, Dulness, Prurience, and other sad necessities and 
 laws of Nature, it has attained just to this : Gray savagery 
 of Three Sacks with a hem ! 
 
 "When the very Tailor verges towards Sansculottism, is 
 it not ominous ? The last Divinity of poor mankind dethron- 
 ing himself; sinking his taper too, flame downmost, like the 
 Genius of Sleep or of Death ; admonitory that Tailor time 
 shall be no more ! For, little as one could advise Sumptu- 
 ary Laws at the present epoch, yet nothing is clearer than 
 that where ranks do actually exist, strict division of costumes 
 will also be enforced; that if we ever have a new Hierarchy 
 and Aristocracy, acknowledged veritably as such, for which 
 I daily pray Heaven ; the Tailor will reawaken; and be, by 
 volunteering and appointment, consciously and unconsciously, 
 a safeguard of that same/' Certain farther observations, 
 from the same invaluable pen, on our never-ending changes 
 of mode, our " perpetual nomadic and even ape-like appetite 
 for change and mere ' change ' in all the equipments of our 
 existence, and the fatal revolutionary character " thereby 
 manifested, we suppress for the present. It may be admit- 
 ted that Democracy, in all meanings of the word, is in full 
 career ; irresistible by any Hitter Kauderwalsch or other 
 Son of Adam, as times go. " Liberty " is a thing men are 
 determined to have. 
 
 But truly, as I had to remark in the mean while, "the 
 liberty of not being oppressed by your fellow man " is an 
 indispensable, yet one of the most insignificant fractional 
 parts of Human Liberty. No man oppresses thee, can bid 
 thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shown. True ; 
 from .ill men thou art emancipated : but from Thyself and 
 from the Devil ? No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee 
 come or go : but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false 
 appetites for Money, Windsor Georges and such like ? No man
 
 CHAP. XIII. DEMOCRACY. 211 
 
 oppresses thee, free and independent Franchiser: but does 
 not this stupid Porter-pot oppress thee ? No Son of Adam 
 can bid thee come or go ; but this absurd Pot of Heavy -wet, 
 this can and does ! Thou art the thrall not of Cedric the 
 Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites and this scoured dish 
 of liquor. And thou pratest of thy " liberty " ? Thou entire 
 blockhead ! 
 
 Heavy-wet and gin: alas, these are not the only kinds of 
 thraldom. Thou who walkest in a vain show, looking out 
 with ornamental dilettante sniff and serene supremacy at all 
 Life and all Death ; and amblest jauntily ; perking up thy 
 poor talk into crotchets, thy poor conduct into fatuous som- 
 nambulisms ; and art as an " enchanted Ape " under God's 
 sky, where thou mightest have been a man, had proper School- 
 masters and Conquerors, and Constables with cat-o'-nine tails, 
 been vouchsafed thee; dost thou call that "liberty"? Or your 
 unreposing Mammon-worshipper again, driven, as if by Gal- 
 vanisms, by Devils And Fixed-Ideas, who rises early and sits 
 late, chasing the impossible ; straining every faculty to " fill 
 himself with the east-wind," how merciful were it, could 
 you, by mild persuasion, or by the severest tyranny so 
 called, check him in his mad path, and turn him into a 
 wiser one ! All painful tyranny, in that case again, were 
 but mild " surgery ; " the pain of it cheap, as health and life, 
 instead of galvanism and fixed-idea, are cheap at any price. 
 
 Sure enough, of all paths a man could strike into, there 
 w, at any given moment, a best path for every man ; a thing 
 which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to 
 do; which could he be but led or driven to do, he were 
 then doing " like a man," as we phrase it ; all men and gods 
 agreeing with him, the whole Universe virtually exclaiming 
 Well-done to him! His success, in such case, were com- 
 plete ; his felicity a maximum. This path, to find this path 
 and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him. Whatso- 
 ever forwards him in that, let it come to him even in the 
 shape of blows and spurnings, is liberty : whatsoever hinders 
 him, were it ward-motes, open-vestries, poll-booths, tremendous 
 cheers, rivers of heavy-wet, is slavery.
 
 212 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 The notion that a man's liberty consists in giving his vote at 
 election-hustings, and saying, " Behold, now I too have my 
 twenty-thousandth part of a Talker in our National Palaver ; 
 will not all the gods be good to me ? " is one of the pleasant- 
 est ! Nature nevertheless is kind at present ; and puts it into 
 the heads of many, almost of all. The liberty especially which 
 has to purchase itself by social isolation, and each man stand- 
 ing separate from the other, having " no business with him " 
 but a cash-account : this is such a liberty as the Earth seldom 
 saw ; as the Earth will not long put up with, recommend it 
 how you may. This liberty turns out, before it have long con- 
 tinued in action, with all men flinging up their caps round it, 
 to be, for the Working Millions a liberty to die by want of 
 food ; for the Idle Thousands and Units, alas, a still more fatal 
 liberty to live in want of work ; to have no earnest duty to do 
 in this God's- World any more. What becomes of a man in 
 such predicament ? Earth's Laws are silent ; and Heaven's 
 speak in a voice which is not heard. -No work, and the 
 ineradicable need of work, give rise to new very wondrous 
 life-philosophies, new very wondrous life-practices ! Dilet- 
 tantism, Pococurantism, Beau-Brummelism, with perhaps an 
 occasional, half-mad, protesting burst of Byronism, establish 
 themselves : at the end of a certain period, if you go back 
 to " the Dead Sea," there is, say our Moslem friends, a very 
 strange " Sabbath-day " transacting itself there; ! Brethren, 
 we know but imperfectly yet, after ages of Constitutional 
 Government, what Liberty and Slavery are. 
 
 Democracy, the chase of Liberty in that direction, shall 
 go its full course; unrestrainable by him of Pferdefuss- 
 Quacksalber, or any of his household. The Toiling Millions 
 of Mankind, in most vital need and passionate instinctive 
 desire of Guidance, shall cast away False-Guidance ; and hope, 
 for an hour, that No-Guidance will suffice them : but it can be 
 for an hour only. The smallest item of human Slavery is the 
 oppression of man by his Mock-Superiors ; the palpablest, but 
 I say at bottom the smallest. Let him shake off such op- 
 pression, trample it indignantly under his feet ; I blame him 
 not, I pity and commend him. But oppression by your Mock-
 
 CHAP. XIII. DEMOCRACY. 213 
 
 Superiors well shaken off, the grand problem yet remains to 
 solve : That of finding government by your Real-Superiors ! 
 Alas, how shall we ever learn the solution of that, benighted, 
 bewildered, sniffing, sneering, God-forgetting unfortunates as 
 we are ? It is a work for centuries ; to be taught us by tribu- 
 lations, confusions, insurrections, obstructions ; who knows if 
 not by conflagration and despair ! It is a lesson inclusive of 
 all other lessons ; the hardest of all lessons to learn. 
 
 One thing I do know : Those Apes, chattering on the 
 branches by the Dead Sea, never got it learned ; but chattel- 
 there to this day. To them no Moses need come a second 
 time ; a thousand Moseses would be but so many painted Phan- 
 tasms, interesting Fellow- Apes of new strange aspect, whom 
 they would " invite to dinner," be glad to meet with in lion- 
 soirees. To them the voice of Prophecy, of heavenly moni- 
 tion, is quite ended. They chatter there, all Heaven shut to 
 them, to the end of the world. The unfortunates ! Oh, what 
 is dying of hunger, with honest tools in your hand, with a 
 manful purpose in your heart, and much real labor lying round 
 you done, in comparison ? You honestly quit your tools ; quit 
 a most muddy confused coil of sore work, short rations, of 
 sorrows, dispiritments and contradictions, having now honestly 
 done with it all ; and await, not entirely in a distracted 
 manner, what the Supreme Powers, and the Silences and the 
 Eternities may have to say to you. 
 
 A second thing I know : This lesson will have to be learned, 
 under penalties ! England will either learn it, or England 
 also will cease to exist among Nations. England will either 
 learn to reverence its Heroes, and discriminate them from its 
 Sham-Heroes and Valets and gas-lighted Histrios ; and to prize 
 them as the audible God's-voice, amid all inane jargons and 
 temporary market-cries, and say to them with heart-loyalty, 
 "Be ye King and Priest, and Gospel and Guidance for us:" 
 or else England will continue to worship new and ever-new 
 forms of Quackhood, and so, with what resiliences and re- 
 Ixnmdings matters little, go down to the Father of Quacks ! 
 Can I dread such things of England ? Wretched, thick-eyed, 
 gross-hearted mortals, why will ye worship lies, and 4< Stuffed
 
 214 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III- 
 
 Clothes-suits created by the ninth-parts of men " ! It is not 
 your purses that suffer ; your farm-rents, your "commerces, your 
 mill-revenues, loud as ye lament over these ; no, it is not these 
 alone, but a far deeper than these : it is your souls that lie 
 dead, crushed down under despicable Nightmares, Atheisms, 
 Brain-fumes ; and are not souls at all, but mere succedanea for 
 salt to keep your bodies and their appetites from putrefying ! 
 Your cotton-spinning and thrice-miraculous mechanism, what 
 is this too, by itself, but a larger kind of Animalism ? Spiders 
 can spin, Beavers can build and show contrivance ; the Ant 
 lays up accumulation of capital, and has, for aught I know, 
 a Bank of Antland. If there is no soul in man higher than 
 all that, did it reach to sailing on the cloud-rack and spinning 
 sea-sand ; then I say, man is but an animal, a more cunning 
 kind of brute : he has no soul, but only a succedaneum for salt. 
 Whereupon, seeing himself to be truly of the beasts that perish, 
 he ought to admit it, I think ; and also straightway univer- 
 sally to kill himself ; and so, in a manlike manner at least end, 
 and wave these brute-worlds his dignified farewell ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SIB JABESH WINDBAG. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL, whose body they hung on their Tyburn 
 gallows because he had found the Christian Religion inexe- 
 cutable in this country, remains to me by far the remarkablest 
 iGovernor we have had here for the last five centuries or so. 
 For the last five centuries, there has been no Governor among 
 us with anything like similar talent; and for the last two 
 centuries, no Governor, we may say, with the possibility of 
 similar talent, with an idea in the heart of him capable 
 of inspiring similar talent, capable of co-existing therewith. 
 When you consider that Oliver believed in a God, the differ- 
 ence between Oliver's position and that of any subsequent
 
 CHAP. XIV. SIR JABESH WINDBAG. 215 
 
 Governor of this Country becomes, the more you reflect on it, 
 the more immeasurable ! 
 
 Oliver, no volunteer in Public Life, but plainly a balloted 
 soldier strictly ordered thither, enters upon Public Life ; com- 
 ports himself there like a man who carried his own life in his 
 hand ; like a man whose Great Commander's eye was always 
 on him. Not without results. Oliver, well advanced in years, 
 finds now, by Destiny and his own Deservings, or as he him- 
 self better phrased it, by wondrous successive "Births of 
 Providence," the Government of England put into his hands. 
 In senate-house and battle-field, in counsel and in action, in pri- 
 vate and in public, this man has proved himself a man : Eng- 
 land and the voice of God, through waste awful whirlwinds 
 and environments, speaking to his great heart, summon him 
 to assert formally, in the way of solemn Public Fact and as a 
 new piece of English Law, what informally and by Nature's 
 eternal Law needed no asserting, That he, Oliver, was the 
 Ablest Man of England, the King of England ; that he, Oliver, 
 would undertake governing England. His way of making this 
 same " assertion," the one way he had of making it, has given 
 rise to immense criticism : but the assertion itself, in what way 
 soever " made," is it not somewhat of a solemn one, somewhat 
 of a tremendous one ! 
 
 And now do but contrast this Oliver with my right hon- 
 orable friend Sir Jabesh Windbag, Mr. Facing-both-ways, 
 Viscount Mealymouth, Earl of Windlestraw, or what other 
 Cagliostro, Cagliostrino, Cagliostraccio, the course of Fortune 
 and Parliamentary Majorities has constitutionally guided to 
 that dignity, any time during these last sorrowful hundred- 
 and-tifty years ! Windbag, weak in the faith of a God, which 
 he believes only at Church on Sundays, if even then ; strong 
 only in the faith that Paragraphs and Plausibilities bring 
 votes; that Force of Public Opinion, us he calls it, is the 
 primal Necessity of Things, and highest God we have : 
 Windbag, if we will consider him, has a problem set before 
 him which may be ranged in the impossible class. He is a 
 Columbus minded to sail to the indistinct country of NOWHERE, 
 to the indistinct country of WHITHKKWARD, by the friendship
 
 216 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 of those same waste-tumbling Water- Alps and howling waltz 
 of All the Winds ; not by conquest of them and in spite of 
 them, but by friendship of them, when once they have made 
 up their mind ! He is the most original Columbus I ever saw. 
 Nay, his problem is not an impossible one : he will infallibly 
 arrive at that same country of NOWHERE ; his indistinct 
 Whitherward will be a T/i^Amvard ! In the Ocean Abysses 
 and Locker of Davy Jones, there certainly enough do he and 
 his ship's company, and all their cargo and navigatings, at last 
 find lodgment. 
 
 Oliver knew that his America lay THERE, Westward Ho ; 
 and it was not entirely by friendship of the Water-Alps, and 
 yeasty insane Froth-Oceans, that he meant to get thither ! Ho 
 sailed accordingly ; had compass-card, and Rules of Navigation, 
 older and greater than these Froth-Oceans, old as the Eter- 
 nal God ! Or again, do but think of this. W T indbag in these 
 his probable five years of office has to prosper and get Para- 
 graphs : the Paragraphs of these five years must be his salva- 
 tion, 01' he is a lost man ; redemption nowhere in the Worlds 
 or in the Times discoverable for him. Oliver too woiild like 
 his Paragraphs ; successes, popularities in these five years are 
 not undesirable to him : but mark, I say, this enormous cir- 
 cumstance : after these five years are gone and done, comes an 
 Eternity for Oliver ! Oliver has to appear before the Most 
 High Judge : the utmost flow of Paragraphs, the utmost ebb 
 of them, is now, in strictest arithmetic, verily no matter at all : 
 its exact value zero an account altogether erased ! Enor- 
 mous ; which a man, in these days, hardly fancies with an 
 effort ! Oliver's Paragraphs are all done, his battles, division- 
 lists, successes all summed : and now in that awful unerring 
 Court of Review, the real question first rises, "Whether 1 it- 
 has succeeded at all; whether he has not been defeated miser 
 ably forevermore ? Let him come with world-wide Io-Pit>ans, 
 these avail him not. Let him come covered over with the 
 world's execrations, gashed with ignominious death-wounds, 
 the gallows-rope about his neck : what avails that ? The word 
 is, Come thou brave and faithful ; the word is, Depart thou 
 quack and accursed.'
 
 CHAP. XIV. SIR JABESH WINDBAG. 217 
 
 O Windbag, my right honorable friend, in very truth I pity 
 thee. I say, these Paragraphs, and low or loud votings of thy 
 poor fellow-blockheads of mankind, will never guide thee in 
 any enterprise at all. Govern a country on such guidance ? 
 Thou canst not make a pair of shoes, sell a pennyworth of 
 tape, on such. No, thy shoes are vamped up falsely to meet 
 the market; behold, the leather only seemed to be tanned; thy 
 shoes melt under me to rubbishy pulp, and are not veritable 
 mud-defying shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of shoes, 
 thou unfortunate, and I ! my right honorable friend, 
 when the Paragraphs flowed in, who was like Sir Jabesh ? 
 On the swelling tide he mounted ; higher, higher, triumphant, 
 heaven-high. But the Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise 
 Paragraphs needs must : Sir Jabesh lies stranded, sunk and 
 forever sinking in ignominious ooze ; the Mud-nymphs, and 
 ever-deepening bottomless Oblivion, his portion to eternal 
 time. " Posterity ? " Thou appealest to Posterity, thou ? 
 My right honorable friend, what will Posterity do for thee ! 
 The voting of Posterity, were it continued through centuries 
 in thy favor, will be quite inaudible, extra-forensic, without 
 any effect whatever. Posterity can do simply nothing for a 
 man ; nor even seem to do much if the man be not brainsick. 
 Besides, to tell the truth, the bets are a thousand to one, 
 Posterity will not hear of thee, my right honorable friend ! 
 Posterity, I have found, has generally his own Windbags 
 sufficiently trumpeted in all market-places, and no leisure to 
 attend to ours. Posterity, which has made of Norse Odin 
 a similitude, and of Norman William a brute monster, what 
 will or can it make of English Jabesh ? Heavens, " Pos- 
 terity ! " 
 
 " These poor persecuted Scotch Covenanters," said I to my 
 inquiring Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at com- 
 mand, " ils i? fit apprfnient " " " A fa Poste'rife." interrupted 
 ho, helping me out. "Ah, Monsieur, non, millr fnis non ! 
 They appealed to the Eternal God ; not to Posterity at all ! 
 C'etait different."
 
 218 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK ill. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MORRISON AGAIN. 
 
 NEVERTHELESS, Advanced-Liberal, one cannot promise thee 
 any " New Religion," for some time ; to say truth, I do not 
 think we have the smallest chance of any! Will the candid 
 reader, by way of closing this Book Third, listen to a few 
 transient remarks on that subject ? 
 
 Candid readers have not lately met with any man who had 
 less notion to interfere with their Thirty -Nine or other Church- 
 Articles ; wherewith, very helplessly as is like, they may have 
 struggled to form for themselves some not inconceivable hy- 
 pothesis about this Universe, and their own Existence there. 
 Superstition, my friend, is far from me ; Fanaticism, for any 
 Fanum likely to arise soon on this Earth, is far. A man's 
 Church- Articles are surely articles of price to him ; and in 
 these, times one has to be tolerant of many strange " Articles," 
 and of many still stranger "No-articles," which go about placard- 
 ing themselves in a very distracted manner, the numerous 
 long placard-poles, and questionable infirm paste-pots, interfer- 
 ing with one's peaceable thoroughfare sometimes ! 
 
 Fancy a man, moreover, recommending his fellow men to 
 believe in God, that so Chartism might abate, and the Man- 
 chester Operatives be got to spin peaceably ! The idea is more 
 distracted than any placard-pole seen hitherto in a public 
 thoroughfare of men ! My friend, if thou ever do come to 
 believe in God, thou wilt rind all Chartism, Manchester riot, 
 Parliamentary incompetence, Ministries of Windbag, and the 
 wildest Social Dissolutions, and the burning up of this entire 
 Planet, a most small matter in comparison. Brother, this 
 Planet, I find, is but an inconsiderable sand-grain in the con- 
 tinents of Being : this Planet's poor temporary interests, thy 
 interests and my interests there, when I look fixedly into that
 
 CHAP. XV. MORRISON AGAIN. 210 
 
 eternal Light-Sea and Flame-Sea with its eternal interests, 
 dwindle literally into Nothing; my speech of it is silence 
 for the while. I will as soon think of making Galaxies and 
 Star-Systems to guide little herring-vessels by, as of preaching 
 Religion that the Constable may continue possible. my 
 Advanced-Liberal friend, this new second progress, of proceed- 
 ing " to invent God," is a very strange one ! Jacobinism un- 
 folded into Saint-Simonism bodes innumerable blessed things ; 
 but the thing itself might draw tears from a Stoic ! As for 
 me, some twelve or thirteen New Religions, heavy Packets, 
 most of them unfranked, having arrived here from various 
 parts of the world, in a space of six calendar months, I have 
 instructed my invaluable friend the Stamped Postman to intro- 
 duce no more of them, if the charge exceed one penny. 
 
 Henry of Essex, duelling in that Thames Island, " near to 
 Reading Abbey," had a religion. But was it in virtue of his 
 seeing armed Phantasms of St. Edmund " on the rim of the 
 horizon," looking minatory on him ? Had that, intrinsically, 
 anything to do with his religion at all ? Henry of Essex's 
 religion was the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of his own 
 soul ; such as is vouchsafed still to all souls of men ; which 
 Inner Light shone here " through such intellectual and other 
 media" as there were; producing "Phantasms," Kircherean 
 Visual-Spectra, according to circumstances ! It is so with all 
 men. The clearer my Inner Light may shine, through the 
 less turbid media, the fewer Phantasms it may produce, 
 the gladder surely shall I be, and not the sorrier ! Hast thou 
 reflected, serious reader, Advanced-Liberal or other, that 
 the one end, essence, use of all religion past, present and to 
 come, was this only : To keep that same Moral Conscience or 
 Inner Light of ours alive and shining; which certainly the 
 " Phantasms " and the " turbid media " were not essential for ! 
 All religion was here to remind us, better or worse, <5f what 
 we already know better or worse, of the quite infinite differ- 
 ence there is between a Good man and a Bad ; to bid us love 
 infinitely the one, abhor and avoid infinitely the other, 
 strive infinitely to be the one, and not to be the other. "All
 
 220 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 religion issues in due Practical Hero-worship." He that has 
 a soul unasphyxied will never want a religion; he that has 
 a soul asphyxied, reduced to a succedaneum for salt, will 
 never find any religion, though you rose from the dead to 
 preach him one. 
 
 But indeed, when men and reformers ask for " a religion," 
 it is analogous to their asking, " What would you have us to 
 do ? " and such like. They fancy that their religion too shall 
 be a kind of Morrison's Pill, which they have only to swallow 
 once, and all will be well. Resolutely once gulp down your 
 Religion, your Morrison's Pill, you have it all plain sailing 
 now : you can follow your affairs, your no-affairs, go along 
 money-hunting, pleasure-hunting, dilettanting, dangling, and 
 miming and chattering like a Dead-Sea Ape : your Morrison 
 will do your business for you. Men's notions are very strange ! 
 Brother, I say there is not, was not, nor will ever be, in 
 the wide circle of Nature, any Pill or Religion of that char- 
 acter. Man cannot afford thee such ; for the very gods it is 
 impossible. I advise thee to renounce Morrison ; once for 
 all, quit hope of the Universal Pill. For body, for soul, for 
 individual or society, there has not any such article been 
 made. Non extat. In Created Nature it is not, was not, will 
 not be. In the void imbroglios of Chaos only, and realms 
 of Bedlam, does some shadow of it hover, to beAvilder and 
 bemock the poor inhabitants there. 
 
 Rituals, Liturgies, Creeds, Hierarchies : all this is not re- 
 ligion ; all this, were it dead as Odinism, as Fetishism, does 
 not kill religion at all ! It is Stupidity alone, with never so 
 many rituals, that kills religion. Is not this still a World ? 
 Spinning Cotton under Arkwright and Adam Smith ; found- 
 ing Cities by the Fountain of Juturna, on the Janiculum 
 Mount; tilling Canaan under Prophet Samuel and Psalmist 
 David, man is ever man ; the missionary of Unseen Powers ; 
 and gr*at and victorious, while he continues true to his mis- 
 sion ; mean, miserable, foiled, and at last annihilated and 
 trodden out of sight and memory, when he proves untrue. 
 Brother, thou art a Man, I think; thou art not a mere build- 
 ing Beaver, or two-legged Cotton-Spider ; thou hast verily a
 
 CHAP. XV. MORRISON AGAIN. 221 
 
 Soul in thee, asphyxied or otherwise ! Sooty Manchester, 
 it too is built on the infinite Abysses ; overspanned by the 
 skyey Firmaments ; and there is birth in it, and death in it ; 
 and it is every whit as wonderful, as fearful, unimaginable, 
 as the oldest Salem or Prophetic City. Go or stand, in what 
 time, in what place we will, are there not Immensities, Eter- 
 nities over us, around us, in us : 
 
 " Solemn before as, 
 Veiled, the dark Portal, 
 Goal of all mortal : 
 Stars silent rest o'er us, 
 Graves under us silent ! " 
 
 Between these two great Silences, the hum of all our spinning 
 cylinders, Trades- Unions, Anti-Corn-Law Leagues and Carlton 
 Clubs goes on. Stupidity itself ought to pause a little and 
 consider that. I tell thee, through all thy Ledgers, Supply- 
 and-deinand Philosophies, and daily most modern melancholy 
 Business and Cant, there does shine the presence of a Pri- 
 meval Unspeakable ; and thou wert wise to recognize, not 
 with lips only, that same ! 
 
 The Maker's Laws, whether they are promulgated in Sinai 
 Thunder, to the ear or imagination, or quite otherwise pro- 
 mulgated, are the Laws of God; transcendent, evjjtjasting, 
 imperatively demanding obedience from all men. This, with- 
 out any thunder, or with never so much thunder, thou, if 
 there be any soul left in thee, canst know of a truth. The 
 Universe, I say, is made by Law ; the great Soul of the World 
 is just and not unjust. Look thou, if thou have eyes or 
 soul left, into this great shoreless Incomprehensible : in the 
 heart of its tumultuous Appearances, Embroilments, and mad 
 Ti mo- vortexes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an All- 
 beautiful; sole Reality and ultimate controlling Power "trf the 
 whole ? This is not a figure of speech ; this-is a fad?. The 
 fact of Gravitation known to all animals, is not sugar than 
 this inner Fact, which may be known to all -.men, H^ who 
 knows this, it will sink, silent, awful, unspeakabMjjE||ito his 
 heart. He will say with Faust : " Who efar*vaa||p|lfiM ? >r 
 Most rituals or "namings"he will fall in with at pr- - .
 
 222 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in. 
 
 are like to be " namings " which shall be nameless ! In 
 silence, in the Eternal Temple, let him worship, if there be 
 no fit word. Such knowledge, the crown of his whole spiritual 
 being, the life of his life, let him keep and sacredly walk by. 
 He has a religion. Hourly and daily, for himself and for the 
 whole world, a faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual prayer 
 rises, "Thy will be done." His whole work on Earth is an 
 emblematic spoken or acted prayer, Be the will of God done on 
 Earth, not the Devil's will, or any of the Devil's servants' 
 wills ! He has a religion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star 
 that beams the brighter in the Heavens, the darker here on 
 Earth grows the night around him. Thou, if thou know not 
 this, what are all rituals, liturgies, mythologies, mass-chant-' 
 ings, turnings of the rotatory calabash ? They are as noth- 
 ing ; in a good many respects they are as less. Divorced from 
 this, getting half-divorced from this, they are a thing to fill 
 one with a kind of horror ; with a sacred inexpressible pity 
 and fear. The most tragical thing^a human eye can look on. 
 It was said to the Prophet, " Behold, I will show thee worse 
 things than these : women weeping to Thammuz." That was 
 the acme of the Prophet's vision, then as now. 
 
 Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder : I know more or 
 less the history of these ; the rise, progress, decline and fall 
 of these. Can thunder from all the thirty-two azimuths, re- 
 peated daily for centuries of years, make God's Laws more 
 godlike to me ? Brother, No. Perhaps I am grown to be a 
 man now; and do not need the thunder and the terror any 
 longer! Perhaps I am above being frightened; perhaps it is 
 not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now lead me ! 
 Revelations, Inspirations ? Yes : and thy own god-created 
 Soul; dost thou not call that a "revelation"? Who made 
 THEK ? Where didst Thou come from ? The Voice of Eter- 
 nity, if thou be not a blasphemer and poor asphyxied mute, 
 speaks with that tongue of thine ! Thou art the latest Birth 
 of Nature ; it is "the Inspiration of the Almighty" that giveth 
 thee understanding ! My brother, my brother ! 
 
 Under baleful Atheisms, Mammonisms, Joe-Manton Dilet- 
 tantisms, with their appropriate Cants and Idolisms, and
 
 CHAP. XV. MORRISON AGAIN. 223 
 
 whatsoever scandalous rubbish obscures and all but extin- 
 guishes the soul of man, religion now is ; its Laws, written 
 if not on stone tables, yet on the Azure of Infinitude, in the 
 inner heart of God's Creation, certain as Life, certain as 
 Death ! I say the Laws are there, and thou shalt not disobey 
 them. It were better for thee not. Better a hundred deaths 
 than yes. Terrible " penalties," withal, if thou still need " pen- 
 alties," are there, for disobeying. Dost thou observe, red- 
 tape Politician, that fiery infernal Phenomenon, which men 
 name FKKNCH REVOLUTION', sailing, unlooked-for, unbidden ; 
 through thy inane Protocol Dominion : far-seen, with splen- 
 dor not of Heaven ? Ten centuries will see it. There were 
 Tanneries at Meudon for human skins. And Hell, very truly 
 Hell, had power over God's upper Earth for a season. The 
 cruelest Portent that has risen into created Space these ten 
 centuries : let us hail it, with awe-struck repentant hearts, as 
 the voice once more of a God, though of one in wrath. Blessed 
 be the God's- voice ; for it is true, and Falsehoods have to cease 
 before it ! But for that same preternatural quasi-infernal Por- 
 tent, one could not know what to make of this wretched world, 
 in these days, at all. The deplorablest quack-ridden, and now 
 hunger-ridden, down-trodden Despicability and Flebile Ludi- 
 brium, of red-tape Protocols, rotatory Calabashes, Poor-Law 
 Bastilles : who is there that could think of its being fated to 
 continue ? 
 
 Penalties enough, my brother ! This penalty inclusive of 
 all : Eternal Death to thy own hapless Self, if thou heed no 
 other. Eternal Death, I say, with many meanings old and 
 new, of which let this single one suffice us here : The eternal 
 impossibility for thee to be aught but a Chimera, and swift- 
 vanishing deceptive Phantasm, in God's Creation ; swift- 
 vanishing, never to reappear : why should it reappear ! Thou 
 hadst one chance, thou wilt never have another. Everlasting 
 ages will roll on, and no other be given thee. The foolishest 
 articulate-speaking soul now extant, may not he say to him- 
 self : " A whole Eternity I waited to be born ; and now I have 
 a whole Eternity waiting to see what I will do when born ! " 
 This is not Theology, this is Arithmetic. And thou but
 
 224 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOR m. 
 
 half-discernest this ; thou but half-believest it ? Alas, on 
 the shores of the Dead Sea, on Sabbath, there goes on a 
 Tragedy ! 
 
 But we will leave this of " Religion ; " of which, to say 
 truth, it is chiefly profitable in these unspeakable days to keep 
 silence. Thou needest no " New Religion ; " nor art thou 
 like to get any. Thou hast already more " religion " than thou 
 makest use of. This day thou knowest ten commanded duties, 
 seest in thy mind ten things which should be done, for one 
 that thou doest ! Do one of them ; this of itself will show 
 thee ten others which can and shall be done. " But my future 
 fate ? " Yes, thy future fate, indeed ! Thy future fate, while 
 thou makest it the chief question, seems to me extremely 
 questionable ! I do not think it can be good. Norse Odin, 
 immemorial centuries ago, did not he, though a poor Heathen, 
 in the dawn of Time, teach us that for the Dastard there was, 
 and could be, no good fate ; no harbor anywhere, save down 
 with Hela, in the pool of Night ! Dastards, Knaves, are they 
 that lust for Pleasure, that tremble at Pain. For this world 
 and for the next Dastards are a class of creatures made to be 
 " arrested ; " they are good for nothing else, can look for noth- 
 ing else. A greater than Odin has been here. A greater than 
 Odin has taught us not a greater Dastardism, I hope ! My 
 brother, thou must pray for a soul ; struggle, as with life-and- 
 death energy, to get back thy soul ! Know that " religion " is 
 no Morrison's Pill from without, but a reawakening of thy 
 own Self from within : and, above all, leave me alone of thy 
 " religions " and "new religions " here and elsewhere ! I am 
 weary of this sick croaking for a Morrison's-Pill religion ; for 
 any and for every such. I want none such ; and discern all 
 such to be impossible. The resuscitation of old liturgies 
 fallen dead ; much more, the manufacture of new liturgies that 
 will never be alive : how hopeless ! Stylitisms, eremite fanati- 
 cisms and fakirisms ; spasmodic agonistic posture-makings, 
 and narrow, cramped, morbid, if forever noble, wrestlings : 
 all this is not a thing desirable to me. It is a thing the 
 world has done once, when its beard was not grown as 
 now !
 
 CHAP. XV. MORRISON AGAIN. 225 
 
 And yet there is, at worst, one Liturgy which does remain 
 forever unexceptionable : that of Praying (as the old Monks 
 did withal) by Working. And indeed the Prayer which accom- 
 plished itself in special chapels at stated hours, and went not 
 with a man, rising up from all his Work and Action, at all 
 moments sanctifying the same, what was it ever good for ? 
 " Work is Worship ; " yes, in a highly considerable sense, 
 which, in the present state of all " worship," who is there that 
 can unfold! He that understands it well, understands the 
 Prophecy of the whole Future ; the last Evangel, which has 
 included all others. Its cathedral the Dome of Immensity, 
 hast thou seen it ? coped with the star-galaxies ; paved with 
 the green mosaic of laud and ocean ; and for altar, verily, the 
 Star-throne of the Eternal ! Its litany and psalmody the noble 
 acts, the heroic work and suffering, and true heart-utterance 
 of all the Valiant of the Sons of Men. Its choir-music the 
 ancient Winds and Oceans, and deep-toned, inarticulate, but 
 most speaking voices of Destiny and History, supernal ever 
 as of old. Between two great Silences : 
 
 " Stars silent rest o'er us, 
 Graves under us silent ! " 
 
 Between which two great Silences, do not, as we said, all 
 human Noises, in the naturalest times, most 7>referaaturally 
 march and roll ? 
 
 I will insert this also, in a lower strain, from Sauerteig's 
 JEsthetische Springwurzeln. " Worship ? " says he : " Before 
 that inane tumult of Hearsay rilled men's heads, while the 
 world lay yet silent, and the heart true and open, many things 
 were Worship ! To the primeval man whatsoever good came, 
 descended on him (as, in mere fact, it ever does) direct from 
 God; whatsoever duty lay visible for him, this a Supreme God 
 had prescribed. To the present hour I ask thee, Who else ? 
 For the primeval man, in whom dwelt Thought, this Universe 
 was all t a Temple ; Life everywhere a Worship. 
 
 " What Worship, for example, is there not in mere Washing ! 
 
 Perhaps one of the most moral tilings a man, in common cases, 
 
 has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or 
 
 were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there 
 
 VOL. xn. 16
 
 226 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK in 
 
 wash and be clean ; thou wilt step out again a purer and a 
 better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that 
 to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, 
 how it radiates in on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, 
 to thy very soul ! Thou hast an increase of tendency towards 
 all good things whatsoever. The oldest Eastern Sages, with 
 joy and holy gratitude, had felt it so, and that it was the 
 Maker's gift and will. Whose else is it ? It remains a reli- 
 gious duty, from oldest times, in the East. Nor could Herr 
 Professor Strauss, when I put the question, deny that for us 
 at present it is still such here in the West ! To that dingy 
 fuliginous Operative, emerging from his soot-mill, what is the 
 first duty I will prescribe, and offer help towards ? That 
 he clean the skin of him. Can he pray, by any ascertained 
 method ? One knows not entirely : but with soap and a 
 sufficiency of water, he can wash. Even the dull English feel 
 something of this ; they have a saying, ' Cleanliness is near of 
 kin to Godliness : ' yet never, in any country, saw I operative 
 men worse washed, and, in a climate drenched with the softest 
 cloud-water, such a scarcity of baths ! " Alas, Sauerteig, our 
 " operative men " are at present short even of potatoes : what 
 " duty " can you prescribe to them ? 
 
 Or let us give a glance at China. Our new friend, the Em- 
 peror there, is Pontiff of three hundred million men ; who do 
 all live and work, these many centuries now ; authentically 
 patronized by Heaven so far ; and therefore must have some 
 " religion " of a kind. This Emperor-Pontiff has, in fact, a 
 religious belief of certain Laws of Heaven ; observes, Avith a 
 religious rigor, his "three thousand punctualities," given out 
 by men of insight, some sixty generations since, as a legible 
 transcript of the same, the Heavens do seem to say, not 
 totally an incorrect one. He has not much of a ritual, this 
 Pontiff-Emperor ; believes, it is likest, with the old Monks, 
 that " Labor is Worship." His most public Act of Worship, it 
 appears, is the drawing solemnly at a certain day, on the green 
 bosom of our Mother Earth, when the Heavens, after dead 
 black winter, have again with their vernal radiances awakened 
 her, a distinct red Furrow with the Plough, signal that all
 
 CHAP. xv. MORRISON AGAIN. 227 
 
 the Ploughs of China are to begin ploughing and worshipping ! 
 It is notable enough. He, in sight of the Seen and Unseen 
 Powers, draws his distinct red Furrow there ; saying, and pray- 
 ing, in mute symbolism, so many most eloquent things ! 
 
 If you ask this Pontiff, " Who made him ? What is to 
 become of him and us ? " he maintains a dignified reserve ; 
 waves his hand and pontiff-eyes over the unfathomable deep of 
 Heaven, the " Tsien," the azure kingdoms of Infinitude ; as if 
 asking, " Is it doubtful that we are right well made ? Can 
 aught that is wrong become of us ? " He and his three hun- 
 dred millions (it is their chief " punctuality ") visit yearly the 
 Tombs of their Fathers ; each man the Tomb of his Father and 
 his Mother : alone there, in silence, with what of " worship " 
 or of other thought there may be, pauses solemnly each man ; 
 the divine Skies all silent over him ; the divine Graves, and 
 this diviuest Grave, all silent under him ; the pulsings of his 
 own soul, if he have any soul, alone audible. Truly it may be 
 a kind of worship ! Truly, if a man cannot get some glimpse 
 into the Eternities, looking through this portal. through 
 what other need he try it ? 
 
 Our friend the Pontiff -Emperor permits cheerfully, though 
 with contempt, all manner of Buddhists, Bonzes, Talapoins and 
 such like, to build brick Temples, on the voluntary principle ; 
 to worship with what of chantings, paper-lanterns and tumul- 
 tuous brayings, pleases them ; and make night hideous, since 
 they find some comfort in so doing. Cheerfully, though with 
 contempt. He is a wiser Pontiff than many persons think ! 
 He is as yet the one Chief Potentate or Priest in this Earth 
 who has made a distinct systematic attempt at what we call 
 the ultimate result of all religion, "Practical Hero-worship:" 
 he does incessantly, with true anxiety, in such way as he can, 
 search and sift (it would appear) his whole enormous popula- 
 tion for the Wisest born among them ; by which Wisest, as by 
 born Kings, these three hundred million men are governed. 
 The Heavens, to a certain extent, do appear to countenance 
 him. These three hundred millions actually make porcelain, 
 souchong tea, with innumerable other things ; and fight, under 
 Heaven's flag, against Necessity ; and have fewer Seven-
 
 228 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK III. 
 
 Years Wars, Thirty- Years Wars, French-Revolution Wars, and 
 infernal lightings with each other, than certain millions else- 
 where have ! 
 
 Nay in our poor distracted Europe itself, in these newest 
 times, have there not religious voices risen, with a religion 
 new and yet the oldest ; entirely indisputable to all hearts of 
 men ? Some I do know, who did not call or think themselves 
 " Prophets," far enough from that ; but who were, in very 
 truth, melodious Voices from the eternal Heart of Nature 
 once again; souls forever venerable to all that have a soul. A 
 French Revolution is one phenomenon; as complement and 
 spiritual exponent thereof, a Poet Goethe and German Litera- 
 ture is to me another. The old Secular or Practical World, so 
 to speak, having gone up in fire, is not here the prophecy and 
 dawn of a new Spiritual World, parent of far nobler, Avider, 
 new Practical Worlds ? A Life of Antique devoutness, An- 
 tique veracity and heroism, has again become possible, is again 
 seen actual there, for the most modern man. A phenomenon, 
 as quiet as it is, comparable for greatness to no other ! " The 
 great event for the world is, now as always, the arrival in it 
 of a new Wise Man." Touches there are, be the Heavens ever 
 thanked, of new Sphere-melody ; audible once more, in the 
 infinite jargoning discords and poor scrannel-pipings of the 
 thing called Literature ; priceless there, as the voice of new 
 Heavenly Psalms ! Literature, like the old Prayer-Collections 
 of the first centuries, were it "well selected from and burnt," 
 contains precious things. For Literature, with all its printing- 
 presses, puffing-engines and shoreless deaf ening triviality, As yet 
 "the Thought of Thinking Souls." A sacred " religion," if you 
 like the name, does live in the heart of that strange froth-ocean, 
 not wholly froth, which we call Literature ; and will more and 
 more disclose itself therefrom ; not now as scorching Fire: 
 the red smoky scorching Fire has purified itself into white 
 sunny Light. Is not Light grander than Fire ? It is the same 
 element in a state of purity. 
 
 My ingenuous readers, we will march out of this Third Book 
 with a rhythmic word of Goethe's on our lips ; a word which
 
 CHAP. xv. MORRISON AGAIN. 229 
 
 jKrhaps has already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, 
 through many a heart. To me, finding it devout yet wholly 
 credible and veritable, full of piety yet free of cant ; to me, 
 joyfully finding much in it, and joyfully missing so much in 
 it, this little snatch of music, by the greatest German Man, 
 sounds like a stanza in the grand Road-Sony and March in g- 
 Song of our great Teutonic Kindred, wending, wending, valiant 
 and victorious, through the undiscovered Deeps of Time ! He 
 calls it Mason-Lodye, not Psalm or Hymn : 
 
 The Mason's ways are 
 A type of Existence, 
 And his persistence 
 Is as the days are 
 Of men in this world. 
 
 The Future hides in it 
 Gladness and sorrow ; 
 We press still thorow, 
 Nought that abides in it 
 Daunting us, onward. 
 
 And solemn before us, 
 Veiled, the dark Portal, 
 Goal of all mortal : 
 Stars silent rest o'er us, 
 Graves under us silent ! 
 
 While earnest thou gazest, 
 Comes boding of terror, 
 Comes phantasm and error, 
 Perplexes the bravest 
 With doubt and misgiving. 
 
 But heard are the Voices, 
 Heard are the Sages, 
 The Worlds and the Ages : 
 " Choose well ; your choice is 
 Brief and yet endless : 
 
 " Here eyes do regard you. 
 In Eternity's stillness; 
 Here is all fulness, 
 Ye brave, to reward you ; 
 Work, and despair not."
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 HOROSCOPE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ARISTOCRACIES. 
 
 To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be 
 so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mis- 
 handled; effaced, and what is worse, defaced! The Past can- 
 not be seen ; the Past, looked at through the medium of 
 "Philosophical History" in these times, cannot even be not 
 seen: it is misseen; affirmed to have existed, and to have 
 been a godless Impossibility. Your Norman Conquerors, true 
 royal souls, crowned kings as such, were vulturous irrational 
 tyrants : your Becket was a noisy egoist and hypocrite ; get- 
 ting his brains spilt on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral, to 
 secure the main chance, somewhat uncertain how! "Policy, 
 Fanaticism;" or say "Enthusiasm," even "honest Enthusi- 
 asm," ah yes, of course : 
 
 " The Dog, to gain his private ends, 
 Went mad, and bit the Man ! "- 
 
 For in truth, the eye sees in all things " what it brought 
 with it the means of seeing." A godless century, looking back 
 on centuries that were godly, produces portraitures more 
 miraculous than any other. All was inane discord in the 
 Past ; brute Force bore rule everywhere ; Stupidity, savage 
 Unreason, fitter for Bedlam than for a human World ! Where- 
 by indeed it becomes sufficiently natural that the like quali- 
 ties, in new sleeker habiliments, should continue in our time
 
 CHAP. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 231 
 
 to rule. Millions enchanted in Bastille Workhouses ; Irish 
 Widows proving their relationship by typhus-fever : what 
 would you have ? It was ever so, or worse. Man's History, 
 was it not always even this : The cookery and eating-up of 
 imbecile Dupedom by successful Quackhood ; the battle, with 
 various weapons, of vulturous Quack and Tyrant against vul- 
 turous Tyrant and Quack ? No God was in the Past Time ; 
 nothing but Mechanisms and Chaotic Brute-Gods: how shall 
 the poor "Philosophic Historian," to whom his own century 
 is all godless, see any God in other centuries ? 
 
 Men believe in Bibles, and disbelieve in them ; but of all 
 Bibles the f rightfulest to disbelieve in is this " Bible of Uni- 
 versal History." This is the Eternal Bible and God's-Book, 
 " which every born man," till once the soul and eyesight are 
 extinguished in him, "can and must, with his own eyes, see 
 the God's-Finger writing ! " To discredit this, is an infidelity 
 like no other. Such infidelity you would punish, if not by fire 
 and fagot, which are difficult to manage in our times, yet by 
 the most peremptory order, To hold its peace till it got some- 
 thing wiser to say. Why should the blessed Silence be broken 
 into noises, to communicate only the like of this ? If the 
 Past have no God's-Reason in it, nothing but Devil's-Unreason, 
 let the Past be eternally forgotten : mention it no more ; 
 we whose ancestors were all hanged, why should we talk of 
 ropes ! 
 
 It is, in brief, not true that men ever lived by Delirium, 
 Hypocrisy, Injustice, or any form of Unreason, since they 
 came to inhabit this Planet. It is not true that they ever did, 
 or ever will, live except by the reverse of these. Men will 
 again be taught this. Their acted History will then again be 
 a Heroism ; their written History, what it once was, an Epic. 
 Nay, forever it is either such, or else it virtually is Nothing. 
 Were it written in a thousand volumes, the Unheroic of such 
 volumes hastens incessantly to be forgotten ; the net content 
 of an Alexandrian Library of Unheroics is, .and will ultimately 
 show itself to be, zero. What man is interested to remember 
 it; have not all men, at .all times, the liveliest interest to for- 
 get it? "Revelations," if not celestial, then infernal, will
 
 232 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 teach us that God is ; we shall then, if needful, discern -with- 
 out difficulty that He has always been ! The Dryasdust Phi- 
 losophisms and enlightened Scepticisms of the Eighteenth 
 Century, historical and other, will have to. survive for a while 
 with the Physiologists, as a memorable Nightmare-Dream. All 
 this haggard epoch, with its ghastly Doctrines, and death's- 
 head Philosophies "teaching by example" or otherwise, will 
 one day have become, what to our Moslem friends their god- 
 less ages are, " the Period of Ignorance." 
 
 If the convulsive struggles of the last Half-Century have 
 taught poor struggling convulsed Europe any truth, it may 
 perhaps be this as the essence of innumerable others : That 
 Europe requires a real Aristocracy, a real Priesthood, or it 
 cannot continue to exist. Huge French Revolutions, Napoleon- 
 isms, then Bourbonisms with their corollary of Three Days, 
 finishing in very unfinal Louis-Philippisms : all this ought to 
 be didactic ! All this may have taught us, That False Aris- 
 tocracies are insupportable ; that No-Aristocracies, Liberty- 
 and-Equalities are impossible ; that true Aristocracies are at 
 once indispensable and not easily attained. 
 
 Aristocracy and Priesthood, a Governing Class and a Teach- 
 ing Class : these two, sometimes separate, and endeavoring to 
 harmonize themselves, sometimes conjoined as one, and the 
 King a Pontiff-King: there did no Society exist without 
 these two vital elements, there will none exist. It lies in the 
 very nature of man : you will visit no remotest village in 
 the most republican country of the world, where virtually or 
 actually you do not find these two powers at work. Man, 
 little as he may suppose it, is necessitated to obey superiors. 
 He is a social being in virtue of this necessity ; nay he could 
 not be gregarious otherwise. He obeys those whom he es- 
 teems better than himself, wiser, braver; and will forever 
 obey such ; and even be ready and delighted to do it. 
 
 The Wiser, Braver : these, a Virtual Aristocracy everywhere 
 and everywhen, do in all Societies that reach any articulate 
 shape, develop themselves into a ruling class, an Actual Aris- 
 tocracy, with settled modes of operating, what are called laws
 
 CHAP. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 233 
 
 and even privates-laws or privileges, and so forth ; very notable 
 to look upon in this world. Aristocracy and Priesthood, we 
 say, are sometimes united. For indeed the Wiser and the 
 Braver are properly but one class ; no wise man but needed 
 first of all to be a brave man, or he never had been wise. The 
 noble Priest was always a noble Aristos to begin with, and 
 something more to end with. Your Luther, your Knox, your 
 Anselm, Becket, Abbot Samson, Samuel Johnson, if they had 
 not been brave enough, by what possibility could they ever 
 have been wise? If, from accident or forethought, this your 
 Actual Aristocracy have got discriminated into Two Classes, 
 there can be no doubt but the Priest Class is the more dig- 
 nified; supreme over the other, as governing head is over 
 active hand. And yet in practice again, it is likeliest the 
 reverse will be found arranged ; a sign that the arrangement 
 is already vitiated; that a split is introduced into it, which 
 will widen and widen till the whole be rent asunder. 
 
 In England, in Europe generally, we may say that these two 
 Virtualities have unfolded themselves into Actualities, in by 
 far the noblest and richest manner any region of the world 
 ever saw. A spiritual Guideship, a practical Governorship, 
 fruit of the grand conscious endeavors, say rather of the im- 
 measurable unconscious instincts and necessities of men, have 
 established themselves ; very strange to behold. Everywhere, 
 while so much has been forgotten, you find the King's Palace, 
 and the Vice-king's Castle, Mansion, Manor-house ; till there is 
 not an inch of ground from sea to sea but has both its King 
 and Vice-king, long due series of Vice-kings, its Squire, Earl, 
 Duke or whatever the title of him, to whom you have given 
 the land, that he may govern you in it. 
 
 More touching still, there is not a hamlet where poor peasants 
 congregate, but, by one means and another, a Church-Apparatus 
 has been got together, roofed edifice, with revenues and bel- 
 fries ; pulpit, reading-desk, with Books and Methods : possibil- 
 ity, in short, and strict prescription. That a man stand there 
 and speak of spiritual things to men. It is beautiful; even 
 in its great obscuration ami decadence, it is among the beauti- 
 fulest, most touching objects one sees on the Earth. This
 
 234 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 Speaking Man has indeed, in these times, wandered terribly 
 from the point ; has, alas, as it were, totally lost sight of the 
 point : yet, at bottom, whom have we to compare with him ? 
 Of all public functionaries boarded and lodged on the Industry 
 of Modern Europe, is there one worthier of the board he has? 
 A man even professing, and never so languidly making still 
 some endeavor, to save the souls of men : contrast him with a 
 man professing to do little but shoot the partridges of men ! 
 I wish he coidd find the point again, this Speaking One ; and 
 stick to it with tenacity, with deadly energy ; for there is need 
 of him yet ! The Speaking Function, this of Truth corning 
 to us with a living voice, nay in a living shape, and as a con- 
 crete practical exemplar : this, with all our Writing and Print- 
 ing Functions, has a perennial place. Could he but find the 
 point again, take the old spectacles off his nose, and looking 
 up discover, almost in contact with him, what the real Satanas, 
 and soul-devouring, world-devouring Devil, now is ! Original 
 Sin and such like are bad enough, I doubt not : but distilled 
 Gin, dark Ignorance, Stupidity, dark Corn-Law, Bastille and 
 Company, what are they ! Will he discover our new real 
 Satan, whom he has to fight ; or go on droning through his old 
 nose-spectacles about old extinct Satans; and never see the 
 real one, till he feel him at his own throat and ours ? That 
 is a question, for the world ! Let us not intermeddle with it 
 here. 
 
 Sorrowful, phantasmal as this same Double Aristocracy of 
 Teachers and Governors now looks, it is worth all men's while 
 to know that the purport of it is and remains noble and most 
 real. Dryasdust, looking merely at the surface, is greatly in 
 error as to those ancient Kings. William Conqueror, William 
 Rufus or Redbeard. Stephen Curthose himself, much more 
 Henry Beauclerc and our brave Plantagenet Henry : the life 
 of these men was not a vulturous Fighting ; it was a valorous 
 Governing, to which occasionally Fighting did, and alas 
 must yet, though far seldomer now, snperadd itself as an acci- 
 dent, a distressing impedimental adjunct. The fighting too 
 was indispensable, for ascertaining who had the might over 
 whom, the right over whom. By much hard lighting, as we
 
 CHAP. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 2;]5 
 
 once said, "the unrealities, beaten into dust, flew gradually 
 off ; " and left the plain reality and fact, " Thou stronger than 
 I ; thou wiser than I ; thou king, and subject I," in a some- 
 what clearer condition. 
 
 Truly we cannot enough admire, in those Abbot-Samson and 
 William-Conqueror times, the arrangement they had made of 
 their Governing Classes. Highly interesting to observe how 
 the sincere insight, on their part, into what did, of primary 
 necessity, behoove to be accomplished, had led them to the 
 way of accomplishing it, and in the course of time to get it 
 accomplished ! No imaginary Aristocracy would serve their 
 turn ; and accordingly they attained a real one. The Bravest 
 men, who, it is ever to be repeated and remembered, are also 
 on the whole the Wisest, Strongest, every -way Best, had here, 
 with a respectable degree of accuracy, been got selected ; 
 seated each on his piece of territory, which was lent him, then 
 gradually given him, that he might govern it. These Vice- 
 kings, each on his portion of the common soil of England, with 
 a Head King over all, were a "Virtuality perfected into an 
 Actuality " really to an astonishing extent. 
 
 For those were rugged stalwart ages ; full of earnestness, 
 of a rude God's-truth : nay, at any rate, their quilting was 
 so unspeakably thinner than ours ; Fact came swiftly on them, 
 if at any time they had yielded to Phantasm ! " The Knaves 
 and Dastards" had to be "arrested " in some measure ; or the 
 world, almost within year and day, found that it could not 
 live. The Knaves and Dastards accordingly were got arrested. 
 Dastards upon the very throne had to be got arrested, and 
 taken off the throne, by such methods as there were ; by 
 the roughest method, if there chanced to be no smoother one ! 
 Doubtless there was much harshness of operation, much se- 
 verity ; as indeed government and surgery are often some- 
 what severe. Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, it is like, got cuffs 
 as often as pork-parings, if he misdemeaned himself; but Gurth 
 did belong to Cedric : no human creature then went about con- 
 nected with nobody ; left to go his way into Bastilles or worse, 
 under Laissez-faire : reduced to prove his relationship by 
 dying of typhus-fever ! Days come when there is no King in
 
 236 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 Israel, but every man is his own king, doing that which is right 
 in his own eyes ; and tar-barrels are burnt to " Liberty," 
 " Tenpound Franchise " and the like, with considerable effect 
 in various ways ! 
 
 That Feudal Aristocracy, I say, was no imaginary one. To 
 a respectable degree, its Jarls, what we now call Earls, were 
 Strong-Ones in fact as well as etymology ; its Dukes Leaders ; 
 its Lords Law-wards. They did all the Soldiering and Police 
 of the country, all the Judging, Law-making, even the Church- 
 Extension ; whatsoever in the way of Governing, of Guiding 
 and Protecting could be done. It was a Land Aristocracy ; it 
 managed the Governing of this English People, and had the 
 reaping of the Soil of England in return. It is, in many 
 senses, the Law of Nature, this same Law of Feudalism : no 
 right Aristocracy but a Land one ! The curious are invited to 
 meditate upon it in these days. Soldiering, Police and Judg- 
 ing, Church-Extension, nay real Government and Guidance, all 
 this was actually done by the Holders of the Land in return 
 for their Land. How much of it is now done by them ; done 
 by anybody ? Good Heavens, " Laissez-faire, Do ye nothing, 
 eat your wages and sleep," is everywhere the passionate half- 
 wise cry of this time ; and they will not so much as do nothing, 
 but must do mere Corn-Laws ! We raise Fifty-two millions, 
 from the general mass of us, to get our Governing done or, 
 alas, to get ourselves persuaded that it is done : and the " pe- 
 culiar burden of the Land " is to pay, not all this, but to pay, as 
 I learn, one twenty-fourth part of all this. Our first Chartist 
 Parliament, or Oliver Redivivus, you would say, will know 
 where to lay the new taxes of England ! Or, alas, taxes ? 
 If we made the Holders of the Land pay every shilling still 
 of the expense of Governing the Land, what were all that ? 
 The Land, by mere hired Governors, cannot be got governed. 
 You cannot hire men to govern the Land : it is by a mission 
 not contracted for in the Stock-Exchange, but felt in their own 
 hearts as coming out of Heaven, that men can govern a Land. 
 The mission of a Land Aristocracy is a sacred one, in both the 
 senses of that old word. The footing it stands on, at present, 
 might give rise to thoughts other than of Corn-Laws !
 
 CHAT. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 237 
 
 But truly a " Splendor of God," as in William Conqueror's 
 rough oath, did dwell in those old rude veracious ages ; did in- 
 form, more and more, with a heavenly nobleness, all depart- 
 ments of their work and life. Phantasms could not yet walk 
 abroad in mere Cloth Tailorage ; they were at least Phantasms 
 "on the rim of the horizon," pencilled there by an eternal 
 Light-beam from within. A most " practical " Hero-worship 
 went on, unconsciously or half-coiisciously, everywhere. A 
 Monk Samson, with a maximum of two shillings in his pocket, 
 could, without ballot-box, be made a Vice-king of, being seen 
 to be worthy. The difference between a good man and a bad 
 man was as yet felt to be, what it forever is, an immeasurable 
 one. Who durst have elected a Pandarus Dogdraught, in those 
 days, to any office, Carlton Club, Senatorship, or place what- 
 soever ? It was felt that the arch Satanas and no other had a 
 clear right of property in Paudarus ; that it were better for 
 you to have no hand in Pandarus, to keep out of Pandarus his 
 neighborhood ! Which is, to this hour, the mere fact ; though 
 for the present, alas, the forgotten fact. I think they were 
 comparatively blessed times those, in their way ! " Violence," 
 " war," " disorder : " well, what is war, and death itself, to such 
 a perpetual life-in-death, and " peace, peace, where there is 
 no peace " ! Unless some Hero-worship, in its new appro- 
 priate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very 
 habitable long. 
 
 Old Anselm, exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the 
 purest-minded " men of genius," was travelling to make his 
 appeal to Rome against King Rufus, a man of rough ways, 
 in whom the " inner Light-beam " shone very fitfully. It is 
 beautiful to road, in Monk Eadmer, how the Continental popu- 
 lations welcomed and venerated this Anselm, as no French 
 population now venerates Jean-Jacques or giant-killing Vol- 
 taire ; as not even an American population now venerates a 
 Schnuspel the distinguished Novelist ! They had, by phantasy 
 and true insight, the intensest conviction that a God's-Blessing 
 dwelt in this Anselm, as is my conviction too. They 
 crowded round, with bent knees and enkindled hearts, to re- 
 ceive his blessing, to hear his voice, to see the light of his
 
 238 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 face. My blessings on them and on him ! But the notablest 
 was a certain necessitous or covetous Duke of Burgundy, in 
 straitened circumstances we shall hope, who reflected that 
 in all likelihood this English Archbishop, going towards Home 
 to appeal, must have taken store of cash with him to bribe the 
 Cardinals. Wherefore he of Burgundy, for his part, decided, 
 to lie in wait and rob him. " In an open space of a wood," 
 some " wood " then green and growing, eight centuries ago, in 
 Burgundian Land, this fierce Duke, with fierce steel follow- 
 ers, shaggy, savage, as the Russian bear, dashes out on the 
 weak old Anselm ; who is riding along there, on his small 
 quiet-going pony ; escorted only by Eadmer and another poor 
 Monk on ponies ; and, except small modicum of road-money, 
 not a gold coin in his possession. The steel-clad Russian bear 
 emerges, glaring : the old white-bearded man starts not, 
 paces on unmoved, looking into him with those clear old ear- 
 nest eyes, with that venerable sorrowful time-worn face ; of 
 whom no man or thing need be afraid, and who also is afraid 
 of no created man or thing. The fire-eyes of his Burgundian 
 Grace meet these clear eye-glances, convey them swift to his 
 heart : he bethinks him that probably this feeble, fearless, 
 hoary Figure lias in it something of the Most High God ; that 
 probably he shall be damned if he meddle with it, that, on 
 the whole, he had better not. He plunges, the rough savage, 
 from his war-horse, down to his knees; embraces the feet of 
 old Anselm: he too begs his blessing; orders men to escort 
 him, guard him from being robbed, and under dread penalties 
 see him safe on his way. Per os Dei, as his Majesty was wont 
 to ejaculate ! 
 
 Neither is this quarrel of Rufus and Anselm, of Henry and 
 Becket, uninstructive to us. It was, at bottom, a great quarrel. 
 For, admitting that Anselm was full of divine blessing, he by 
 no means included in him all forms of divine blessing : there 
 were far other forms withal, which he little dreamed of; and 
 William Redbeard was unconsciously the representative and 
 spokesman of these. In truth, could your divine Anselm, your 
 divine Pope Gregory have had their way, the results had been 
 very notable. Our Western World had all become a European
 
 CHAP. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 230 
 
 Thibet, with one Grand Lama sitting at Rome ; our one hon- 
 orable business that of singing mass, all day and all night. 
 Which would not in the least have suited us ! The Supreme 
 Powers willed it not so. 
 
 It was as if King Redbeard unconsciously, addressing An- 
 selin, Becket and the others, had said : " Right Reverend, 
 your Theory of the Universe is indisputable by man or devil. 
 To the core of our heart we feel that this divine thing, which 
 } r ou call Mother Church, does till the whole world hitherto 
 known, and is and shall be all our salvation and all our desire. 
 And yet and yet Behold, though it is an unspoken secret, 
 the world is wider than any of us think, Right Reverend ! 
 Behold, there are yet other immeasurable Sacrednesses in this 
 that you call Heathenism, Secularity ! On the whole, I, in an 
 obscure but most rooted manner, feel that I cannot comply 
 with you. Western Thibet and perpetual mass-chanting, 
 No. I am, so to speak, in the family-way ; with child, of I 
 know not what, certainly of something far different from 
 this ! I have Per os Dei, I have Manchester Cotton-trades, 
 Bromwicham Iron-trades, American Commonwealths, Indian 
 Empires, Steam Mechanisms and Shakspeare Dramas, in my 
 belly ; and cannot do it, Right Reverend ! " So accordingly 
 it was decided : and Saxon Becket spilt his life in Canter- 
 bury Cathedral, as Scottish Wallace did on Tower-Hill, and as 
 generally a noble man and martyr has to do, not for noth- 
 ing ; no, but for a divine something other than he had alto- 
 gether calculated. We will now quit this of the hard, organic, 
 but limited Feudal Ages ; and glance timidly into the immense 
 Industrial Ages, as yet all inorganic, and in a quite pulpy con- 
 dition, requiring desperately to harden themselves into some 
 organism ! 
 
 Our Epic having now become Tools and the Man, it is more 
 than usually impossible to prophesy the Future. The bound- 
 less Future does lie there, predestined, nay already extant 
 though unseen ; hiding, in its Continents of Darkness, " glad- 
 ness and sorrow : " but the supremest intelligence of man can- 
 not prefigure much of it : the united intelligence and effort 
 of All Men in all coming generations, this alone will gradually
 
 240 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IT. 
 
 prefigure it, and figure and form it into a seen fact ! Straining 
 our eyes hitherto, the utmost effort of intelligence sheds but 
 some most glimmering dawn, a little way into its dark enor- 
 mous Deeps : only huge outlines loom uncertain on the sight ; 
 and the ray of prophecy, at a short distance, expires. But 
 may we not say, here as always, Sufficient for the day is the 
 evil thereof ! To shape the whole Future is not our problem ; 
 but only to shape faithfully a small part of it, according to 
 rules already known. It is perhaps possible for each of us 
 who will with due earnestness inquire, to ascertain clearly 
 what he, for his own part, ought to do : this let him, with 
 true heart, do, and continue doing. The general issue will, 
 as it has always done, rest well with a Higher Intelligence 
 than ours. 
 
 One grand "outline," or even two, many earnest readers 
 may perhaps, at this stage of the business, be able to prefigure 
 for themselves, and draw some guidance from. One predic- 
 tion, or even two, are already possible. For the Life-tree 
 Igdrasil, in all its new developments, is the self-same world- 
 old Life-tree : having found an element or elements there, 
 running from the very roots of it in Hela's Realms, in the 
 Well of Mimer and of the Three Nornas or TIMES, up to this 
 present hour of it in our own hearts, we conclude that such 
 will have to continue. A man has, in his own soul, an Eter- 
 nal ; can read something of the Eternal there, if he will look ! 
 He already knows what will continue ; what cannot, by any 
 means or appliance whatsoever, be made to continue ! 
 
 One wide and widest " outline " ought really, in all ways, to 
 be becoming clear to us ; this namely : That a " Splendor of 
 God," in one form or other, will have to unfold itself from the. 
 heart of these our Industrial Ages too ; or they will never get 
 themselves "organized;" but continue chaotic, distressed, dis- 
 tracted evermore, and have to perish in frantic suicidal disso- 
 lution. A second " outline " or prophecy, narrower, but also 
 wide enough, seems not less certain : That there will again 
 be a King in Israel ; a system of Order and Government ; and 
 every man shall, in some measxire, see himself constrained to 
 do that which is right in the King's eyes. This too we may
 
 CHAP. I. ARISTOCRACIES. 241 
 
 call a sure element of the Future ; for this too is of the Eter- 
 nal ; this too is of the Present, though hidden from most ; 
 and without it no fibre of the Past ever was. An actual new 
 Sovereignty, Industrial Aristocracy, real not imaginary Aris- 
 tocracy, is indispensable and indubitable for us. 
 
 But what an Aristocracy ; on what new, far more complex 
 and cunningly devised conditions than that old Feudal fighting 
 one ! For we are to bethink us that the Epic verily is not 
 Arms and the Man, but Took and the Man, an infinitely 
 wider kind of Epic. And again we are to bethink us that men 
 cannot now be bound to men by brass-collars, not at all : 
 that this brass-collar method, in all figures of it, has vanished 
 out of Europe forevermore ! Huge Democracy, walking the 
 streets everywhere in its Sack Coat, has asserted so much ; 
 irrevocably, brooking no reply ! True enough, man is forever 
 the " born thrall " of certain men, born master of certain other 
 men, born equal of certain others, let him acknowledge the 
 fact or not. It is unblessed for him when he cannot acknowl- 
 edge this fact ; he is in the chaotic state, ready to perish, till 
 he do get the fact acknowledged. But no man is, or can 
 henceforth be, the brass-collar thrall of any man ; you will 
 have to bind him by other, far nobler and cunninger methods. 
 Once for all, he is to be loose of the brass-collar, to have a 
 scope as wide as his faculties now are : will he not be all 
 the usefuler to you in that new state ? Let him go abroad as 
 a trusted one, as a free one ; and return home to you with rich 
 earnings at night ! Gurth could only tend pigs ; this one will 
 build cities, conquer waste worlds. How, in conjunction with 
 inevitable Democracy, indispensable Sovereignty is to exist : 
 certainly it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded 
 to Mankind ! The solution of which is work for long years 
 and centuries. Years and centuries, of one knows not what 
 complexion ; blessed or unblessed, according as they shall, 
 with earnest valiant effort, make progress therein, or, in 
 slothful unveracity and dilettantism, only talk of making 
 progress. For either progress therein, or swift and ever 
 swifter progress towards dissolution, is henceforth a neces- 
 sity. 
 
 VOL. XII. 16
 
 242 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 It is of importance that ttiis grand reformation were begun ; 
 that Corn-Law Debatings and other jargon, little less than 
 delirious in such a time, had fled far away, and left us room 
 to begin ! For the evil has grown practical, extremely con- 
 spicuous ; if it be not seen and provided for, the blindest fool 
 will have to feel it ere long. There is much that can wait ; 
 but there is something also that cannot wait. With millions 
 of eager Working Men imprisoned in " Impossibility " and 
 Poor-Law Bastilles, it is time that some means of dealing with 
 them were trying to become " possible " ! Of the Government 
 of England, of all articulate-speaking functionaries, real and 
 imaginary Aristocracies, of me and of thee, it is imperatively 
 demanded, " How do you mean to manage these men ? Where 
 are they to find a supportable existence ? What is to become 
 of them, and of you ! " 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 BRIBERY COMMITTEE. 
 
 IN the case of the late Bribery Committee, it seemed to be 
 the conclusion of the soundest practical minds that Bribery 
 could not be put down ; that Pure Election was a thing we 
 had seen the last of, and must now go on without, as we best 
 could. A conclusion not a little startling ; to which it re- 
 quires a practical mind of some seasoning to reconcile yourself 
 at once ! It seems, then, we are henceforth to get ourselves 
 constituted Legislators not according to what merit we may 
 have, or even what merit we may seem to have, but according 
 to the length of our purse, and our frankness, impudence and 
 dexterity in laying out the contents of the same. Our the- 
 ory, written down in all books and law-books, spouted forth 
 from all barrel-heads, is perfect purity of Tenpound Franchise, 
 absolute sincerity of question put and answer given ; and our 
 practice is irremediable bribery ; irremediable, unpunishable, 
 which you will do more harm than good by attempting to pun-
 
 CHAP. II. BRIBERY COMMITTEE. 243 
 
 ish ! Once more, a very startling conclusion indeed ; which, what- 
 ever the soundest practical minds in Parliament may think of 
 it invites all British men to meditations of various kinds. 
 
 A Parliament, one would say, which proclaims itself elected 
 and eligible by bribery, tells the Nation that is governed by 
 it a piece of singular news. Bribery : have we reflected what 
 bribery is ? Bribery means not only length of purse, which is 
 neither qualification nor the contrary for legislating well ; but 
 it means dishonesty, and even impudent dishonesty ; brazen 
 insensibility to lying and to making others lie ; total oblivion, 
 and flinging overboard, for the nonce, of any real thing you 
 can call veracity, morality; with dexterous putting-on the 
 cast-clothes of that real thing, and strutting about in them! 
 What Legislating can you get out of a man in that fatal situa- 
 tion ? None that will profit much, one would think ! A 
 Legislator who has left his veracity lying on the door-thresh- 
 old, he, why verily he ought to be sent out to seek it 
 again ! 
 
 Heavens, what an improvement, were there once fairly in 
 Downing Street an Election-Office opened, with a tariff of 
 Boroughs ! Such and such a population, amount of property- 
 tax, ground-rental, extent of trade ; returns two Members, re- 
 turns one Member, for so much money down : Ipswich so many 
 thousands, Nottingham so many, as they happened, one by 
 one, to fall into this new Downing-Street Schedule A ! An 
 incalculable improvement, in comparison : for now at least you 
 have it fairly by length of purse, and leave the dishonesty, the 
 impudence, the unveracity all handsomely aside. Length of 
 purse and desire to be a Legislator ought to get a man into 
 Parliament, not ivith, but if possible without the unveracity, 
 the impudence and the dishonesty ! Length of purse and de- 
 sire, these are, as intrinsic qualifications, correctly equal to 
 zero ; but they are not yet less than zero, as the smallest 
 addition of that latter sort will make them ! 
 
 And is it come to this ? And does our venerable Parliament 
 announce itself elected and eligible in this manner ? Surely 
 such a Parliament promulgates strange horoscopes of itself. 
 What is to become of a Parliament elected or eligible in ttui
 
 244 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 manner ? Unless Belial and Beelzebub have got possession of 
 the throne of this Universe, such Parliament is preparing it- 
 self for new Keforni-bills. We shall have to try it by Chart- 
 isin, or any conceivable ism, rather than put up with this ! 
 There is already in England "religion" enough to get six 
 hundred and fifty-eight Consulting Men brought together who 
 do not begin work with a lie in their mouth. Our poor old 
 Parliament, thousands of years old, is still good for some- 
 thing, for several things ; though many are beginning to 
 ask, with ominous anxiety, in these days : For what thing ? 
 But for whatever thing and things Parliament be good, indis- 
 putably it must start with other than a lie in its mouth ! On 
 the whole, a Parliament working with a lie in its mouth, will 
 have to take itself away. To no Parliament or thing, that one 
 has heard of, did this Universe ever long yield harbor on that 
 footing. At all hours of the day and night, some Chartism is 
 advancing, some armed Cromwell is advancing, to apprise 
 such Parliament : " Ye are no Parliament. In the name of 
 God, go ! " 
 
 In sad truth, once more, how is our whole existence, in these 
 present days, built on Cant, Speciosity, Falsehood, Dilettant- 
 ism ; with this one serious Veracity in it : Mainmonism ! 
 Dig down where you will, through the Parliament-floor or else- 
 where, how infallibly do you, at spade's depth below the sur- 
 face, come upon this universal Liars-rock substratum ! Much 
 else is ornamental ; true on barrel-heads, in pulpits, hustings, 
 Parliamentary benches ; but this is forever true and truest : 
 " Money does bring money's worth ; Put money in your purse." 
 Here, if nowhere else, is the human soul still in thorough ear. 
 nest ; sincere with a prophet's sincerity : and " the Hell of the 
 English," as Sauerteig said, " is the infinite terror of Not get- 
 ting on, especially of Not making money." With results ! 
 
 To many persons the horoscope of Parliament is more 
 interesting than to me : but surely all men with souls must 
 admit that sending members to Parliament by bribery is an 
 infamous solecism ; an act entirely immoral, which no man 
 can have to do with more or less, but he will soil his fingers 
 more or less. No Carlton Clubs, Reform Clubs, nor any sort
 
 CHAP. II. BRIBERY COMMITTEE. 245 
 
 of clubs or creatures, or of accredited opinions or practices, 
 can make a Lie Truth, can make Bribery a Propriety. The 
 Parliament should really either punish and put away Bribery, 
 or legalize it by some Office in Downing Street. As I read 
 the Apocalypses, a Parliament that can do neither of these 
 things is not in a good way. And yet, alas, what of Par- 
 liaments and their Elections ? Parliamentary Elections are 
 but the topmost ultimate outcome of an electioneering which 
 goes on at all hours, in all places, in every meeting of two or 
 more men. It is we that vote wrong, and teach the poor 
 ragged Freemen of Boroughs to vote wrong. We pay respect 
 to those worthy of no respect. 
 
 Is not Pandarus Dogdraught a member of select clubs, and 
 admitted into the drawing-rooms of men ? Visibly to all 
 persons he is of the offal of Creation ; but he carries money in 
 his purse, due lacquer on his dog-visage, and it is believed 
 will not steal spoons. The human species does not with one 
 voice, like the Hebrew Psalmist, " shun to sit " with Dog- 
 draught, refuse totally to dine with Dogdraught ; men called 
 of honor are willing enough to dine with him, his talk being 
 lively, and his champagne excellent. We say to ourselves, 
 " The man is in good society," others have already voted 
 for him ; why should not I ? We foryet the indefeasible right 
 of property that Satan has in Dogdraught, we are not afraid 
 to be near Dogdraught ! It is we that vote wrong ; blindly, 
 nay with falsity prepense ! It is we that no longer know the 
 difference between Human Worth and Human Unworth ; or 
 feel that the one is admirable and alone admirable, the other 
 detestable, damnable ! How shall we, find out a Hero and 
 Vice-king Samson with a maximum of two shillings in his 
 pocket ? We have no chance to do such a thing. We have 
 got out of the Ages of Heroism, deep into the Ages of 
 Flunkyism, and must return or die. What a noble set of 
 mortals are we, who, because there is no Saint Edmund 
 threatening us at the rim of the horizon, are not afraid to be 
 whatever, for the day and hour, is smoothest for us ! 
 
 And now, in good sooth, why should an indigent discerning 
 Freeman give his vote without bribes ? Let us rather honor
 
 246 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 the poor man that he does discern clearly wherein lies, for 
 him, the true kernel of the matter. "What is it to the ragged 
 grimy Freeman of a Tenpound-Franchise Borough, whether 
 Aristides Rigmarole Esq. of the Destructive, or the Hon. 
 Alcides Dolittle of the Conservative Party be sent to Parlia- 
 ment ; much more, whether the two-thousandth part of 
 them be sent, for that is the amount of his faculty in it ? 
 Destructive or Conservative, what will either of them destroy 
 or conserve of vital moment to this Freeman ? Has he found 
 either of them care, at bottom, a sixpence for him or his 
 interests, or those of his class or of his cause, or of any class 
 or cause that is of much value to God or to man ? Rigmarole 
 and Dolittle have alike cared for themselves hitherto ; and for 
 their own clique, and self-conceited crotchets, their greasy 
 dishonest interests of pudding, or windy dishonest interests 
 of praise ; and not very perceptibly for any other interest 
 whatever. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle will accomplish 
 any good or any evil for this grimy Freeman, like giving him 
 a five pound note, or refusing to give it him. It will be 
 smoothest to vote according to value received. That is the 
 veritable fact ; and he indigent, like others that are not in- 
 digent, acts conformably thereto. 
 
 Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me, Which way 
 we meant to vote ? were it not our likeliest answer : Neither 
 way ! I, as a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe ; but 
 also I will not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigma- 
 role nor Dolittle shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make 
 laws for this country. I will have no hand in such a mission. 
 How dare I ! If other men cannot be got in England, a 
 totally other sort of men, different as light is from dark, as 
 star-fire is from street-mud, what is the use of votings, or of 
 Parliaments in England ? England ought to resign herself ; 
 there is no hope or possibility for England. If England can- 
 not get her Knaves and Dastards " arrested," in some degree, 
 but only get them " elected," what is to become of England ? 
 
 I conclude, with all confidence, that England will verily 
 have to put an end to briberies on her Election Hustings
 
 CHAP. HI. THE ONE INSTITUTION. 247 
 
 and elsewhere, at what cost soever ; and likewise that we, 
 Electors and Eligibles, one and all of us, for our own behoof 
 and hers, cannot too soon begin, at what cost soever, to put an 
 end to bribeabilities in ourselves. The death-leprosy, attacked 
 in this manner, by purifying lotions from without and by 
 rallying of the vital energies and purities from within, will 
 probably abate somewhat ! It has otherwise no chance to 
 abate. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ONE INSTITUTION. 
 
 WHAT our Government can do in this grand Problem of 
 the Working Classes of England ? Yes, supposing the insane 
 Corn-Laws totally abolished, all speech of them ended, and 
 " from ten to twenty years of new possibility to live and find 
 wages " conceded us in consequence : What the English Govern- 
 ment might be expected to accomplish or attempt towards ren- 
 dering the existence of our Laboring Millions somewhat less 
 anomalous, somewhat less impossible, in the years that are 
 to follow those " ten or twenty," if either " ten " or " twenty " 
 there be ? 
 
 It is the most momentous question. For all this of the 
 Corn-Law Abrogation, and what can follow therefrom, is but 
 as the shadow on King Hezekiah's Dial : the shadow has gone 
 back twenty years ; but will again, in spite of Free-Trades and 
 Abrogations, travel forward its old fated way. With our 
 present system of individual Mammonism, and Government 
 by Laissez-faire, this Nation cannot live. And if, in the 
 priceless interim, some new life and healing be not found, 
 there is no second respite to be counted on. The shadow on 
 the Dial advances thenceforth without pausing. What Govern- 
 ment can do ? This that they call " Organizing of Labor " is, 
 if well understood, the Problem of the whole Future, for all 
 who will in future pretend to govern men. But our first pre-
 
 248 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 liminary stage of it, How to deal with the Actual Laboring 
 Millions of England ? this is the imperatively pressing Prob- 
 lem of the Present, pressing with a truly fearful intensity 
 and imminence in these" very years and days. No Govern- 
 ment can longer neglect it : once more, what can our Govern- 
 ment do in it ? 
 
 Governments are of very various degrees of activity : some, 
 altogether Lazy Governments, in " free countries " as they are 
 called, seem in these times almost to profess to do, if not noth- 
 ing, one knows not at first what. To debate in Parliament, 
 and gain majorities ; and ascertain who shall be, with a toil 
 hardly second to Ixion's, the Prime Speaker and Spoke-holder, 
 and keep the Txion's- Wheel going, if not forward, yet round ? 
 Not altogether so : much, to the experienced eye, is not 
 what it seems ! Chancery and certain other Law-Courts seem 
 nothing ; yet in fact they are, the worst of them, something : 
 chimneys for the devilry and contention of men to escape by ; 
 a very considerable something ! Parliament too lias its 
 tasks, if thou wilt look ; fit to wear out the lives of toughest 
 men. The celebrated Kilkenny Cats, through their tumul- 
 tuous congress, cleaving the ear of Night, could they be said 
 to do nothing ? Hadst thou been of them, thou hadst seen ! 
 The feline heart labored, as with steam up to the bursting 
 point ; and death-doing energy nerved every muscle : they had 
 a work there ; and did it ! On the morrow, two tails were 
 found left, and peaceable annihilation ; a neighborhood de- 
 livered from despair. 
 
 Again, are not Spinning-Dervishes an eloquent emblem, 
 significant of much ? Hast thou noticed him, that solemn- 
 visaged Turk, the eyes shut; dingy wool mantle circularly 
 hiding his figure ; bell-shaped ; like a dingy boll set spin- 
 ning on the tongue of it ? By centrifugal force the dingy 
 wool mantle heaves itself ; spreads more and more, like up- 
 turned cup widening into upturned saucer : thus spins he, to 
 the praise of Allah and advantage of mankind, fast and faster, 
 till collapse ensue, and sometimes death ! 
 
 A Government such as ours, consisting of from seven to
 
 CHAP. HI. THE ONE INSTITUTION. ->49 
 
 eight hundred Parliamentary Talkers, with their CoCort of 
 Able Editors and Public Opinion ; and for head, certain Lords 
 and Servants of the Treasury, and Chief Secretaries and others, 
 who find themselves at once Chiefs and No-Chiefs, and often 
 commanded rather than commanding, is doubtless a most 
 complicate entity, and none of the alertest for getting on with 
 business ! Clearly enough, if the Chiefs be not self-motive 
 and what we call men, but mere patient lay-figures without 
 self-motive principle, the Government will not move any- 
 whither; it will tumble disastrously, and jumble, round its 
 own axis, as for many years past we have seen it do. And 
 yet a self-motive man who is not a lay-figure, place him in the 
 heart of what entity you may, will make it move more or less ! 
 The absurdest in Nature he will make a little less absurd, he. 
 The unwieldiest he will make to move ; that is the use of 
 his existing there. He will at least have the manfulness to 
 depart out of it, if not ; to say : " I cannot move in thee, and be 
 a man ; like a wretched drift-log dressed in man's clothes and 
 minister's clothes, doomed to a lot baser than belongs to man, 
 
 I will not continue with thee, tumbling aimless on the Mother 
 of Dead Dogs here : Adieu ! " 
 
 For, on the whole, it is the lot of Chiefs everywhere, this 
 same. No Chief in the most despotic country but was a Ser- 
 vant withal ; at once an absolute commanding General, and a 
 poor Orderly -Sergeant, ordered by the very men in the ranks, 
 obliged to collect the vote of the ranks too, in some articu- 
 late or inarticulate shape, and weigh well the same. The 
 proper name of all Kings is Minister, Servant. In no con- 
 ceivable Government can a lay -figure get forward ! This 
 Worker, surely he above all others has to " spread out his 
 Gideon's Fleece," and collect the monitions of Immensity ; 
 the poor Localities, as we said, and Parishes of Palace-yard or 
 elsewhere, having no due monition in them. A Prime Minis- 
 ter, even here in England, who shall dare believe the heavenly 
 omens, and address himself like a man and hero to the great 
 
 I 1 limb-struggling heart of England; and sj>eak out for it, and 
 act out for it, the God's-Justice it is writhing to get uttered 
 and perishing for want of, yes, he too will see awaken round
 
 250 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 him, in passionate burning all-defiant loyalty, the heart of 
 England, and such a " support " as no Division-List or Parlia- 
 mentary Majority was ever yet known to yield a man ! Here 
 as there, now as then, he who can and dare trust the heavenly 
 Immensities, all earthly Localities are subject to him. We 
 will pray for such a Man and First-Lord; yes, and far 
 better, we will strive and incessantly make ready, each of us, 
 to be worthy to serve and second such a First-Lord ! We 
 shall then be as good as sure of his arriving; sure of many 
 things, let him arrive or not. 
 
 Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldier's 
 Guard-house, or meets a red-coated man on the streets ! That 
 a body of men could be got together to kill other men when 
 you bade them : this, a 2^'iori, does it not seem one of the 
 impossiblest things ? Yet look, behold it : in the stolidest of 
 Donothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. 
 See it there, with buff belts," red coats on its back ; walking 
 sentry at guard-houses, brushing white breeches in barracks ; 
 an indisputable palpable fact. Out of gray Antiquity, amid 
 all finance-difficulties, scaccarium-falliea, ship-moneys, coat-and- 
 conduct moneys, and vicissitudes of Chance and Time, there, 
 down to the present blessed hour, it is. 
 
 Often, in these painfully decadent and painfully nascent 
 Times, with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings and " im- 
 possibilities ; " meeting a tall Lifeguardsman in his snow-white 
 trousers, or seeing those two statuesque Lifeguardsmen in 
 their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coal- 
 black sleek-fiery quadrupeds, riding sentry at the Horse-Guards, 
 it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how, in 
 such universal down-rushing and wrecked impotence of almost 
 all old institutions, this oldest Fighting Institution is still 
 so young ! Fresh-complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the 
 standard, this fighting-man has verily been got up, and can 
 fight. While so much has not yet got into being; while so 
 much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty 
 Semblance or Clothes-suit ; and highest king's-cloaks, mere 
 chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly
 
 CHAP. m. THE ONE INSTITUTION. 251 
 
 to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier 
 kind of scarecrow's-blanket, here still is a reality ! 
 
 The man in horse-hair wig advances, promising that he will 
 get me " justice : " he takes me into Chancery Law-Courts, 
 into decades, half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; 
 and does get me disappointment, almost desperation; and 
 one refuge: that of dismissing him and his "justice" alto- 
 gether out of my head. For I have work to do; I cannot 
 spend my decades in mere arguing with other men about the 
 exact wages of my work : I will work cheerfully with no wages, 
 sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery Lawsuit 
 in my heart ! He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure ; 
 no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the 
 shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will 
 save my soul ye Eternities, of him in this place be abso- 
 lute silence ! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and 
 no failure ! He will veritably, if he get orders, draw out a 
 long sword and kill me. Xo mistake there. He is a fact and 
 not a shadow. Alive in this Year Forty-three, able and will- 
 ing to do his work. In dim old centuries, with William Kufus, 
 William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began ; and has come down 
 safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given 
 place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre 
 ropematch to percussion-cap ; equipments, circumstances have 
 all changed, and again changed : but the human battle-engine 
 in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, 
 stands there, six feet in standard size. There are Pay-Offices, 
 Woolwich Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War-Office, Cap- 
 tain-General ; persuasive Sergeants, with tap of drum, recruit 
 in market-towns and villages ; and, on the whole, I say, 
 here is your actual drilled fighting-man ; here are your actual 
 Ninety thousand of such, ready to go into any quarter of the 
 world and fight ! 
 
 Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. 
 Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, 
 the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection ; 
 this of successfully killing one another ? Truly you have 
 learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection.
 
 252 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regi- 
 menting, you can make of men. These thousand straight- 
 standing firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, 
 wheel, advance, retreat ; and are, for your behoof, 'a magazine 
 charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of 
 potential activity : few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant 
 came, what were they ? Multiform ragged losels, runaway ap- 
 prentices, starved weavers, thievish valets ; an entirely broken 
 population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the per- 
 suasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed 
 lists of them, took heartily to drilling them ; and he and you 
 have made them this ! Most potent, effectual for all work 
 whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining and commanding 
 among men. Let no man despair of Governments who looks 
 on these two sentries at the Horse-Guards and our United- 
 Service Clubs ! I could conceive an Emigration Service, a 
 Teaching Service, considerable varieties of United and Sepa- 
 rate Services, of the due thousands strong, all effective as this 
 Fighting Service is ; all doing their work, like it ; which 
 work, much more than fighting, is henceforth the necessity of 
 these New Ages we are got into ! Much lies among us, con- 
 vulsively, nigh desperately struggling to be born. 
 
 But mean Governments, as mean-limited individuals do, have 
 stood by the physically indispensable ; have realized that and 
 nothing more. The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult 
 things to realize ; but Governments, had they not realized him, 
 could not have existed : accordingly he is here. O Heavens, 
 if we saw an army ninety thousand strong, maintained and 
 fully equipt, in continual real action and battle against Human 
 Starvation, against Chaos, Necessity, Stupidity, and our real 
 " natural enemies," what a business were it ! Fighting and 
 molesting not " the French," who, poor men, have a hard 
 enough battle of their own in the like kind, and need no addi- 
 tional molesting from us ; but fighting and incessantly spearing 
 down and destroying Falsehood, Nescience, Delusion, Disorder, 
 and the Devil and his Angels ! Thou thyself, cultivated reader, 
 hast done something in that alone true warfare ; but, alas, 
 under what circumstances was it ? Thee no beneficent drill-
 
 CHAP. III. THE ONE INSTITUTION. 253 
 
 sergeant, with any effectiveness, would rank in line beside thy 
 fellows ; train, like a true didactic artist, by the wit of all 
 past experience, to do thy soldiering; encourage thee when 
 right, punish thee when wrong, and everywhere with wise 
 word-of-command say, Forward on this hand, Forward on that ! 
 Ah, no : thou hadst to learn thy small-sword and platoon exer- 
 cise where and how thou couldst ; to all mortals but thyself it 
 was indifferent whether thou shouldst ever learn >t. And the 
 rations, and shilling a day, were they provided thee, reduced 
 as I have known brave Jean-Pauls, learning their exercise, to 
 live on " water without the bread " ? The rations ; or any 
 furtherance of promotion to corporalship, lance-corporalship, or 
 due cat-o'-nine tails, with the slightest reference to thy deserts, 
 were not provided. Forethought, even as of a pipe-clayed drill- 
 sergeant, did not preside over thee. To corporalship, lance- 
 corporalship, thou didst attain ; alas, also to the halberds and 
 cat : but thy rewarder and punisher seemed blind as the Deluge : 
 neither lance-corporalship, nor even drummer's cat, because 
 both appeared delirious, brought thee due profit. 
 
 It was well, all this, we know ; and yet it was not well ! 
 Forty soldiers, I am told, will disperse the largest Spitalfields 
 mob : forty to ten thousand, that is the proportion between 
 drilled and undrilled. Much there is which cannot yet be 
 organized in this world ; but somewhat also which can, some- 
 what also which must. When one thinks, for example, what 
 Books are become and becoming for us, what Operative Lan- 
 cashires are become ; what a Fourth Estate, and innumerable 
 Virtualities not yet got to be Actualities are become and be- 
 coming, one sees Organisms enough in the dim huge Future ; 
 and " United Services " quite other than the red-coat one ; and 
 much, even in these years, struggling to be born ! 
 
 Of Time-Bill, Factory-Bill and other such Bills the present 
 Editor has no authority to speak. He knows not, it is for 
 others than he to know, in what specific ways it may be feasible 
 to interfere, with Legislation, between the Workers and the 
 Master-Workers ; knows only and sees, what all men are 
 beginning to see, that Legislative interference, and interfer- 
 ences not a few are indispensable ; that as a lawless anarchy
 
 254 PAST AND PRESENT. Boon IV. 
 
 of supply -and-demand, on market-wages alone, this province of 
 things cannot longer be left. Nay interference has begun : 
 there are already Factory Inspectors, who seem to have no 
 lack of work. Perhaps there might be Mine-Inspectors too : 
 might there not be Furrowfield Inspectors withal, and ascertain 
 for us how on seven and sixpence a week a human family does 
 live ! Interference has begun ; it must continue, must exten- 
 sively enlarge itself, deepen and sharpen itself. Such things 
 cannot i.^ager be idly lapped in darkness, and suffered to go on 
 unseen : che Heavens do see them ; the curse, not the blessing 
 of the Heavens is on an Earth that refuses to see them. 
 
 Again lie not Sanitary Regulations possible for a Legisla- 
 ture ? The old Romans had their ^Ediles ; who would, I think, 
 in direct co;. ^avention to supply-and-demand, have rigorously 
 seen rammec. up into total abolition many a foul cellar in 
 our Southwarks, St.-Gileses, and dark poison-lanes ; saying 
 sternly, " Shall a Roman man dwell there ? " The Legislature, 
 at whatever cost of consequences, would have had to answer, 
 "God forbid!'-' The Legislature, even as it now is, could 
 order all dingy Manufacturing Towns to cease from their soot 
 and darkness; to lee in the blessed sunlight, the blue of 
 Heaven, and become clear and clean ; to burn their coal-smoke, 
 namely, and make flame of it. Baths, free air, a wholesome 
 temperature, ceilings twenty feet high, might be ordained, by 
 Act of Parliament, in all establishments licensed as Mills. 
 There are such Mills already extant ; honor to the builders 
 of them ! The Legislature can say to others : Go ye and do 
 likewise ; better if you can. 
 
 Every toiling Manchester, its smoke and soot all burnt, 
 ought it not, among so many world-wide conquests, to have 
 a hundred acres or so of free green-field, with trees on it, 
 conquered, for its little children to disport in ; for its all- 
 conquering workers to take a breath of twilight air in ? You 
 would say so ! A willing Legislature could say so with effect. 
 A willing Legislature could say very many things ! And to 
 whatsoever " vested interest," or such like, stood up, gainsay- 
 ing merely, " I shall lose profits," the willing Legislature 
 would answer, "Yes, but my sons and daughters will gair
 
 CHAP. m. THE ONE INSTITUTION. 255 
 
 health, and life, and a soul." "What is to become of our 
 Cotton-trade ? " cried certain Spinners, when the Factory Bill 
 was proposed ; " What is to become of our invaluable Cotton- 
 trade ? " The Humanity of England answered steadfastly : 
 " Deliver me these rickety perishing souls of infants, and let 
 your Cotton-trade take its chance. God Himself commands 
 the one thing ; not God especially the other thing. We can- 
 not have prosperous Cotton-trades at the expense of keeping 
 the Devil a partner in them ! " 
 
 Bills enough, were the Corn-Law Abrogation Bill once passed, 
 and a Legislature willing. Nay this one Bill, which lies yet 
 unenacted, a right Education Bill, is not this of itself the sure 
 parent of innumerable wise Bills, wise regulations, practi- 
 cal methods and proposals, gradually ripening towards the 
 state of Bills ? To irradiate with intelligence, that is to say, 
 with order, arrangement and all blessedness, the Chaotic, 
 Unintelligent : how, except by educating, can you accomplish 
 this ? That thought, reflection, articulate utterance and un- 
 derstanding be awakened in these individual million heads, 
 which are the atoms of your Chaos : there is no other way 
 of illuminating any Chaos ! The sum-total of intelligence that 
 is found in it, determines the extent of order that is possible 
 for your Chaos, the feasibility and rationality of what your 
 Chaos will dimly demand from you, and will gladly obey 
 when proposed by you ! It is an exact equation ; the one 
 accurately measures the other. If the whole English People, 
 during these "twenty years of respite," be not educated, 
 with at least schoolmaster's educating, a tremendous responsi- 
 bility, before God and men, will rest somewhere ! How dare 
 any man, especially a man calling himself minister of God, 
 stand up in any Parliament or place, under any pretext or 
 delusion, and for a day or an hour forbid God's Light to come 
 into the world, and bid the Devil's Darkness continue in it 
 one hour more ! For all light and science, under all shapes, 
 in all degrees of perfection, is of God ; all darkness, nescience, 
 is of the Enemy of God. " The schoolmaster's creed is some- 
 what awry ? " Yes, I have found few creeds entirely correct ; 
 few light-beams shining ichitf, p\ire of admixture : but of all
 
 256 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 creeds and religions now or ever before known, was not that 
 of thoughtless thriftless Animalism, of Distilled Gin, and 
 Stupor and Despair, unspeakably the least orthodox ? We 
 will exchange it even with Paganism, with. Fetishism ; and, on 
 the whole, must exchange it with something. 
 
 An effective " Teaching Service " I do consider that there 
 must be ; some Education Secretary, Captain-General of Teach- 
 ers, who will actually contrive to get us taught. Then again, 
 why should there not be an " Emigration Service," and Secre- 
 tary, with adjuncts, with funds, forces, idle Navy-ships, and 
 ever-increasing apparatus ; in fine an effective system of Emi- 
 gration; so that, at length, befoie our twenty years of respite 
 ended, every honest willing Workman who found England too 
 strait, and the " Organization of Labor " not yet sufficiently 
 advanced, might find likewise a bridge built to carry him into 
 new Western Lands, there to " organize " with more elbow- 
 room, some labor for himself ? There to be a real blessing, 
 raising new corn for us, purchasing new webs and hatchets 
 from us ; leaving us at least in peace ; instead of staying 
 here to be a Physical-Force Chartist, unblessed and no bless- 
 ing ! Is it not scandalous to consider that a Prime Minister 
 could raise within the year, as I have seen it done, a Hundred 
 and Twenty Millions Sterling to shoot the French ; and we 
 are stopt short for want of the hundredth part of that to keep 
 the English living ? The bodies of the English living, and the 
 souls of the English living : these two " Services," an Edu- 
 cation Service and an Emigration Service, these with others 
 will actually have to be organized ! 
 
 A free bridge for Emigrants: why, we should then be on 
 a par with America itself, the most favored of all lands that 
 have no government ; and we should have, besides, so many 
 traditions and mementos of priceless things which America 
 has cast away. We could proceed deliberately to " organize 
 Labor," not doomed to perish unless we effected it within 
 year and day ; every willing Worker that proved superflu- 
 ous, finding a bridge ready for him. This verily will have to 
 be done ; the Time is big with this. Our little Isle is grown 
 too narrow for us ; but the world is wide enough yet for
 
 CHAP. III. THE ONE INSTITUTION. 267 
 
 another Six Thousand Years. England's sure markets will be 
 among new Colonies of Englishmen in all quarters of the 
 Globe. All men trade with all men, when mutually conven- 
 ient ; and are even bound to do it by the Maker of men. 
 Our friends of China, who guiltily refused to trade, in these 
 circumstances, had we not to argue with them, in cannon- 
 shot at last, and convince them that they ought to trade ! 
 ' Hostile Tariffs " will arise, to shut us out ; and then again 
 will fall, to let us in : but the Sons of England, speakers of 
 the English language were it nothing more, will in all times 
 have the ineradicable predisposition to trade with England. 
 Mycale was the Pan-Ionian, rendezvous of all the Tribes of 
 Ion, for old Greece : why should not London long continue 
 the All-Saxon-homc, rendezvous of all the "Children of the 
 Ilarz-Rock/' arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes 
 and elsewhere, by steam and otherwise, to the " season " 
 here ! What a future ; wide as the world, if we have the 
 heart and heroism for it, which, by Heaven's blessing, we 
 shall : 
 
 " Keep not standing fixed and rooted, 
 
 Briskly venture, liriskly roam ; 
 
 Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, 
 
 And stout heart are still at home. 
 
 " In what land the sun does visit, 
 Brisk are we, whatc'er betide : 
 To give space for wandering is it 
 Tht the world was made so wide." ' 
 
 Fourteen hundred years ago, it was by a considerable "Emi- 
 gration Service," never doubt it, by much enlistment, discus- 
 sion and apparatus, that we ourselves arrived in this remark- 
 able Island, and got into our present difficulties among 
 others ! 
 
 It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, 
 is of slow temper ; essentially' conservative. In our wildest 
 periods of reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice 
 always the invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to 
 admit the minimum of New; to expand, if it be possible, some 
 
 J Goethe, W;'1,rl,n M, .'strr. 
 VOL. XII. 17
 
 258 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 old habit or method, already found fruitful, into new growth 
 for the new need. It is an instinct worthy of all honor ; akin 
 to all strength and all wisdom. The Future hereby is not 
 dissevered from the Past, but based continuously on it ; grows 
 with all the vitalities of the Fast, and is rooted down deep into 
 the beginnings of us. The English Legislature is entirely re- 
 pugnant to believe in "new epochs." The English Legisla- 
 ture does not occupy itself with epochs ; has, indeed, other 
 business to do than looking at the Time-Horologe and hearing 
 it tick ! Nevertheless new epochs do actually come ; and with 
 them new imperious peremptory necessities ; so that even an 
 English Legislature has to look up, and admit, though with 
 reluctance, that the hour has struck. The hour having struck, 
 let us not say " impossible : " it will have to be possible ! 
 " Contrary to the habits of Parliament, the habits of Govern- 
 ment ? " Yes : but did any Parliament or Government ever 
 sit in a Year Forty-three before ? One of the most original, 
 unexampled years and epochs ; in several important respects 
 totally unlike any other ! For Time, all-edacious and all- 
 feracious, does run on : and the Seven Sleepers, awakening 
 hungry after a hundred years, find that it is not their old 
 nurses who can now give them suck ! 
 
 For the rest, let not any Parliament, Aristocracy, Milloc- 
 racy, or Member of the Governing Class, condemn with much 
 triumph this small specimen of " remedial measures ; " or ask 
 again, with the least anger, of this Editor, What is to be 
 done, How that alarming problem of the Working Classes is 
 to be managed ? Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say 
 How. A certain Editor thanks the gods that nobody pays 
 him three hundred thousand pounds a year, two hundred 
 thousand, twenty thousand, or any similar sum of cash for 
 saying How ; that his wages are very different, his work 
 somewhat fitter for him. An Editor's stipulated work is to 
 apprise thee that it must be done. The " way to do it," is 
 to try it, knowing that thou shalt die if it be not done. There 
 is the bare back, there is the web of cloth ; thou shalt cut me 
 a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade it is. " Im- 
 possible ? " Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate there,
 
 CHAT. IV. CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 269 
 
 half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with her 
 gibbet-cords, her steel-whips, and very authentic Tailor's Hell ; 
 waiting to see whether it is " possible " ? Out with thy scis- 
 sors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 IF I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to 
 continue henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, 
 I should reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any 
 Government, the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Gov- 
 ernment can do much, but it can in no wise do all. Govern- 
 ment, as the most conspicuous object in Society, is called 
 upon to give signal of what shall be done ; and, in many ways, 
 to preside over, further, and command the doing of it. But 
 the Government cannot do, by all its signaling and command- 
 ing, what the Society is radically indisposed to do. In the 
 long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, 
 with their wisdom and unwisdom ; we have to say, Like Peo- 
 ple like Government. The main substance of this immense 
 Problem of Organizing Labor, and first of all of Managing the 
 Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have, to be solved by 
 those who stand practically in the middle of it ; by those who 
 themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be 
 enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must 
 already lie potentially extant in those two Classes, who are 
 to obey such enactment. A Human Chaos in which there is 
 no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it : 
 order never can arise there. 
 
 Kut it is my firm conviction that the "Hell of England" 
 will cease to be that of " not making money ; " that we shall 
 get a nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven ! I anticipate light 
 in the Human Chaos, glimmering, shining more and more ; 
 under manifold true signals from without That light shall
 
 260 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 shine. Our deity no longer being Mammon, Heavens, 
 each man will then say to himself : " Why such deadly haste 
 to make money ? 1 shall not go to Hell, even if I do not 
 make money ! There is another Hell, I am told ! " Compe- 
 tition, at railway-speed, in all branches of commerce and work 
 will then abate: good felt-hats for the head, in every sense, 
 instead of seven-feet lath-and-plaster hats on wheels, will then 
 be discoverable ! Bubble-periods, with their panics and com- 
 mercial crises, will again become infrequent ; steady modest 
 industry will take the place of gambling speculation. To be 
 a noble Master, among noble Workers, will again be the first 
 ambition with some few; to be a rich Master only the second. 
 How the Inventive Genius of England, with the whirr of its 
 bobbins and billy-rollers shoved somewhat into the back- 
 grounds of the brain, will contrive and devise, not cheaper 
 produce exclusively, but fairer distribution of the produce 
 at its present cheapness ! By degrees, we shall again have 
 a Society with something of Heroism in it, something of 
 Heaven's Blessing on it; we shall again have, as my Ger- 
 man friend asserts, " instead of Mammon-Feudalism with un- 
 sold cotton-shirts and Preservation of the Game, noble just 
 Industrialism and Government by the Wisest ! " 
 
 It is with the hope of awakening here and there a British 
 man to know himself for a man and divine soul, that a few 
 words of parting admonition, to all persons to whom the 
 Heavenly Powers have lent power of any kind in this land, 
 'may now be addressed. And first to those same Master- 
 Workers, Leaders of Industry ; who stand nearest and in fact 
 powerfulest, though not most prominent, being as yet in too 
 many senses a Virtuality rather than an Actuality. 
 
 The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, 
 are virtually the Captains of the World ; if there be no noble- 
 ness in them, there will never be an Aristocracy more. But 
 let the Captains of Industry consider : once again, are they 
 born of other clay than the old Captains of Slaughter ; doomed 
 forerer to be no Chivalry, but a mere gold-plated Doggery, 
 what the French well name Canaille, " Doggery " with more
 
 CHAP. IV. CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 261 
 
 or less gold carriou at its disposal ? Captains of Industry 
 are the true Fighters, henceforth recognizable as the only true 
 ones : Fighters against Chaos, Necessity and the Devils and 
 Jotuns; and lead on Mankind in that great, and alone true, 
 and universal warfare ; the stars in their courses lighting for 
 them, and all Heaven and all Earth saying audibly, Well done ! 
 Let the Captains of Industry retire into their own hearts, and 
 ask solemnly, If there is nothing but vulturous hunger, for 
 tine wines, valet reputation and gilt carriages, discoverable 
 there ? Of hearts made by the Almighty God I will not 
 believe such a thing. Deep-hidden under wretchedest god- 
 forgetting Cants, Epicurisms, Dead-Sea Apisms ; forgotten as 
 under foulest fat Lethe inud and weeds, there is yet, in all 
 hearts born into this God's-World, a spark of the Godlike 
 slumbering. Awake, O nightmare sleepers ; awake, arise, or 
 l>e forever fallen ! This is not play-house poetry ; it is sober 
 fact. Our England, our world cannot live as it is. It will 
 connect itself with a God again, or go down with nameless 
 throes and fire-consummation to the Devils. Thou who feelest 
 aught of such a Godlike stirring in thee, any faintest intimation 
 of it as through heavy-laden dreams, follow it, I conjure thee. 
 Arise, save thyself, be one of those that save thy country. 
 
 Bucaniers, Choctaw Indians, whose supreme aim in fighting 
 is that they may get the scalps, the money, that they may 
 amass scalps and money : out of such came no Chivalry, and 
 never will ! Out of such jcame only gore and wreck, infernal 
 rage and misery ; desperation quenched in annihilation. Be- 
 hold it, I bid thee, behold there, and consider ! What is it 
 that thou have a hundred thousand-pound bills laid up in thy 
 strong-room, a hundred scalps hung up in thy wigwam ? I 
 value not them or thee. Thy scalps and thy thousand-pound 
 bills are as yet nothing, if no nobleness from within irradiate 
 them ; if no Chivalry, in action, or in embryo ever struggling 
 towards birth and action, be there. 
 
 Love of men cannot be bought by cash-payment ; and with- 
 out love men cannot endure to be together. You cannot lead 
 a Fighting World without having it regimented, chivalried : 
 the thing, in a day, becomes impossible ; all men in it, the
 
 262 PAST AND PRESENT. Boor IV. 
 
 highest at first, the very lowest at last, discern consciously, or 
 by a noble instinct, this necessity. And can you any more 
 continue to lead a Working World unregiinented, anarchic ? 
 I answer, and the Heavens and Earth are now answering, No ! 
 The thing becomes not " in a day " impossible ; but in some 
 two generations it does. Yes, when fathers and mothers, in 
 Stockport hunger-cellars, begin to eat their children, and Irish 
 widows have to prove their relationship by dying of typhus- 
 fever; and amid Governing "Corporations of the Best and 
 Bravest," busy to preserve their game by "bushing," dark 
 millions of God's human creatures start up in mad Chartisms, 
 impracticable Sacred-Months, and Manchester Insurrections ; 
 and there is a virtual Industrial Aristocracy as yet only half- 
 alive, spell-bound amid money-bags and ledgers ; and an actual 
 Idle Aristocracy seemingly near dead in somnolent delusions, 
 in trespasses and double-barrels' ; " sliding," as on inclined- 
 planes, which every new year they soap with new Hansard' s- 
 jargon under God's sky, and so are " sliding," ever faster, 
 towards a " scale " and balance-scale whereon is written Thou 
 art found Wanting : in such days, after a generation or two, 
 I say, it does become, even to the low and simple, very palpa- 
 bly impossible ! No Working World, any more than a Fight- 
 ing World, can be led on without a noble Chivalry of Work, 
 and laws and fixed rules whicli follow out of that, far 
 nobler than any Chivalry of Fighting was. As an anarchic 
 multitude on mere Supply-and-demand, it is becoming inevi- 
 table that we dwindle in horrid suicidal convulsion and self- 
 abrasion, frightful to the imagination, into Choctaw Workers. 
 With wigwams and scalps, with palaces and thousand-pound 
 bills ; with savagery, depopulation, chaotic desolation ! Good 
 Heavens, will not one French Revolution and Reign of Terror 
 suffice us, but must there be two ? There will be two if 
 needed ; there will be twenty if needed ; there will be pre- 
 cisely as many as are needed. The Laws of Nature will have 
 themselves fulfilled. That is a thing certain to me. 
 
 Your gallant battle-hosts and work-hosts, as the others did, 
 will need to be made loyally yours ; they must and will be 
 regulated, methodically secured in their just share of conquest
 
 CHAP. IV. CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. 263 
 
 under you ; joined with you in veritable brotherhood, son- 
 hood, by quite other and deeper ties than those of temporary 
 day's wages ! How would mere red-coated regiments, to say 
 nothing of chivalries, tight for you, if you could discharge 
 them on the evening of the battle, on payment of the stipu- 
 lated shillings, and they discharge you on the morning of 
 it ! Chelsea Hospitals, pensions, promotions, rigorous lasting 
 covenant on the one side and on the other, are indispensable 
 even for a hired fighter. The Feudal Baron, much more, - 
 how could he subsist with mere temporary mercenaries round 
 him, at sixpence a day; ready to go over to the other side, if 
 sevenpence were offered? He could not have subsisted; 
 and his noble instinct saved him from the necessity of even 
 trying ! The Feudal Baron had a Man's Soul in him ; to which 
 anarchy, mutiny, and the other fruits of temporary mercena- 
 ries, were intolerable : he had never been a Baron otherwise, 
 but had continued a Choctaw and Bucauier. He felt it pre- 
 cious, and at last it became habitual, and his fruitful enlarged 
 existence included it as a necessity, to have men round him 
 who in heart loved him; whose life he watched over with 
 rigor yet with love ; who were prepared to give their life for 
 him, if need came. It was beautiful ; it was human ! Man 
 lives not otherwise, nor can live contented, anywhere or any- 
 when. Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedness to man. To 
 be cut off, to be loft solitary : to have a world alien, not your 
 world ; all a hostile camp for you ; not a home at all, of hearts 
 and faces who are yours, whose you are ! It is the friglit- 
 f ulest enchantment ; too truly a work of the Evil One. To 
 have neither superior, nor inferior, nor equal, united manlike 
 to you. Without father, without child, without brother. Man 
 knows no sadder destiny. "How is each of us," exclaims 
 Jean Paul, " so lonely in the wide bosom of the All ! " En- 
 cased each as in his transparent " ice-palace ; " our brother 
 visible in his, making signals and gesticulations to us; visi- 
 ble, but forever unattainable : on his l>osom we shall never rest, 
 nor he on ours. It was not a God that did this ; no ! 
 
 Awake, ye noble Workers, warriors in the one true war : 
 all this must be remedied. It is you who are already half-
 
 264 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 alive, whom 1 will welcome into life ; whom I will conjure, 
 in God's name, to shake off your enchanted sleep, and live 
 wholly ! Cease to count scalps, gold-purses; not in these lies 
 your or our salvation. Even these, if you count only these, 
 will not long be left. Let bucaniering be put far from you ; 
 alter, speedily abrogate all laws of the bucaniers, if you would 
 gain any victory that shall endure. Let God's justice, let 
 pity, nobleness and manly valor, with more gold-purses or 
 with fewer, testify themselves in this your brief Life-transit 
 to all the Eternities, the Gods and Silences. It is to you 1 
 call ; for ye are not dead, ye are already half-alive : there is 
 in you a sleepless dauntless energy, the prime-matter of all 
 nobleness in man. Honor to you in your kind. It is to you 
 I call : ye know at least this, That the mandate of God to His 
 creature man is : Work ! The future Epic of the World rests 
 hot with those that are near dead, but with those that are 
 alive, and those that are coming into life. 
 
 Look around yon. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in 
 confusion, destitution ; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness ! 
 They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day 
 and supply -and-demand principle : they will not ; nor ought 
 they, nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, begin 
 reducing them. To order, to just subordination ; noble loy- 
 alty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven 
 nigh mad ; let yours be sane and ever saner. Not as a bewil- 
 dered bewildering mob ; but as a firm regimented mass, with 
 real captains over them, will these men march any more. 
 All human interests, combined human endeavors, and social 
 growths in this world, have, at a certain stage of their devel- 
 opment, required organizing: and Work, the grandest of hu- 
 man interests, does now require it. 
 
 God knows, the task will be hard ; but no noble task was 
 ever easy. This task will wear away your lives, and the lives 
 of your sons and grandsons: but for what purpose, if not for 
 tasks like this, were lives given to men ? Ye shall cease to 
 count your thousand-pound scalps, the noble of you shall cease ! 
 Nay the very scalps, as I say, will not long be left if you count 
 only these. Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous
 
 CHAT. V. PERMANENCE. 266 
 
 Choctaws, and become noble European Nineteenth-Century 
 Men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never such gigs and 
 flunky " respectabilities," is not the alone God ; that of him- 
 self he is but a Devil, and even a Brute-god. 
 
 Difficult ? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton ; 
 that too was difficult. The waste cotton-shrub, long useless, 
 disobedjent, as the thistle by the wayside, have ye not con- 
 quered it ; made it into beautiful bandana webs ; white woven 
 shirts for men ; bright-tinted air-garments 'wherein flit god- 
 desses ? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard 
 iron pliant to you as soft putty : the Forest-giants, Marsh- 
 jotuns bear sheaves of golden grain; ^Egir the Sea-demon 
 himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on 
 Fire-horses and Wind-horses ye career. Ye are most strong. 
 Thor red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery 
 heart and strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. 
 Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, 
 far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hither- 
 ward from the gray Dawn of Time ! Ye are Sons of the Jotun- 
 land ; the land of Difficulties Conquered. Difficult ? You 
 must try this thing. Once try it with the understanding that 
 it will and shall have to be done. Try it as ye try the pal- 
 trier thing, making of money ! I will bet on you once more, 
 against all Jo'tuns, Tailor-gods, Double-barrelled Law-wards, 
 and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PERMANENCE. 
 
 STANDING on the threshold, nay as yet outside the threshold, 
 of a "Chivalry of Labor," and an immeasurable Future which 
 it is to fill with fruitfulness and verdant shade ; where so much 
 has not yet come even to the rudimental state, and all speech 
 of positive enactments were hazardous in those who know this 
 business only by the eye, let us here hint at simply one
 
 266 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 widest universal principle, as the basis from which all organi- 
 zation hitherto has grown up among men, and all henceforth 
 will have to grow : The principle of Permanent Contract 
 instead of Temporary. 
 
 Permanent not Temporary : you do not hire the mere red- 
 boated fighter by the day, but by the score of years ! Perma- 
 nence, persistence is the first condition of all fruitfulness in 
 the ways of men. The < tendency to persevere/' to persist in 
 spite of hindrances, discouragements and i( impossibilities : " 
 it is this that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from 
 the weak ; the civilized burgher from the nomadic savage, 
 the Species Man from the Genus Ape ! The Nomad has his 
 very house set on wheels ; the Nomad, and in a still higher 
 degree the Ape, are all for " liberty ; " the privilege to flit con- 
 tinually is indispensable for them. Alas, in how many ways, 
 does our humor, in this swift-rolling, self-abrading Time, show 
 itself nomadic, apelike ; mournful enough to him that looks on 
 it with eyes ! This humor will have to abate ; it is the first 
 element of all fertility in human things, that such " liberty " 
 of apes and nomads do by free-will or constraint abridge itself, 
 give place" to a better. The civilized man lives not in wheeled 
 houses. He builds stone castles, plants lands, makes lifelong 
 marriage-contracts ; has long-dated hundred-fold possessions, 
 not to be valued in the money-market ; has pedigrees, libraries, 
 law-codes ; has memories and hopes, even for this Earth, that 
 reach over thousands of years. Lifelong marriage-contracts : 
 how much preferable were year-long or month-long to the 
 nomad or ape ! 
 
 Month-long contracts please me little, in any province where 
 there can by possibility be found virtue enough for more. 
 Month-long contracts do not answer well even with your 
 house-servants ; the liberty on both sides to change every 
 month is growing very apelike, nomadic; and I hear philoso- 
 phers predict that it will alter, or that strange results will 
 follow : that wise men, pestered with nomads, with unattached 
 ever-shifting spies and enemies rather than friends and ser- 
 vants, will gradually, weighing substance against semblance,
 
 CHAP. V. PERMANENCE. 267 
 
 with indignation, dismiss such, down almost to the very shoe- 
 black, and say, u Begone ; I will serve myself rather, and have 
 peace ! " Gurth was hired for life to Cedric, and Cedric to 
 Gurth. Anti-Slavery Convention, loud-sounding long-eared 
 Exeter-Hall_ But in thee too is a kind of instinct towards 
 justice, and I will complain of nothing. Only black Quashee 
 over the seas being once sufficiently attended to, wilt thou not 
 perhaps open thy dull sodden eyes to the " sixty thousand 
 valets in London itself who are yearly dismissed to the streets, 
 to be what they can, when the season ends ; " or to the 
 hunger-stricken, pallid, yellow-colored " Free Laborers " in 
 Lancashire, Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, and all other shires ! 
 These Yellow-colored, for the present, absorb all my sympa- 
 thies : if I had a Twenty Millions, with Model-Farms and Niger 
 Expeditions, it is to these that I would give it ! Quashee has 
 already victuals, clothing ; Quashee is not dying of such despair 
 as the yellow-colored pale man's. Quashee, it must be owned, 
 is hitherto a kind of blockhead. The Haiti Duke of Marma- 
 lade, educated now for almost half a century, seems to have 
 next to no sense in him. Why, in one of those Lancashire' 
 Weavers, dying of hunger, there is more thought and heart,! 
 a greater arithmetical amount of misery and desperation, than] 
 in whole gangs of Quashees. It must be owned, thy eyes are of 
 the sodden sort ; and with thy emancipations, and thy twenty- 
 inillionings and long-eared clamorings, thou, like Robespierre 
 with his pasteboard iStre Supreme, threatenest to become a bore 
 to us: At'ec ton J^tre Supreme tit commences niembeterf 
 
 In a Printed Sheet of the assiduous, rnuch-abused, and truly 
 useful Mr. Chadwick's, containing queries and responses from 
 far and near as to this great question, " What is the effect of 
 education on working-men, in respect of their value as more 
 workers?" the present Editor, reading with satisfaction a deci- 
 sive unanimous verdict as to Education, reads with inexpressi- 
 ble interest this special remark, put in by way of marginal 
 incidental note, from a practical manufacturing Quaker, whom, 
 as he is anonymous, we will call Friend Prudence. Prudence 
 keeps a thousand workmen ; has striven in all ways to attach
 
 26 S PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 them to him ; has provided conversational soirees ; play-grounds, 
 bands of music for the young ones ; went even " the length of 
 buying them a drum : " all which has turned out to be an ex- 
 cellent investment. For a certain person, marked here by a 
 black stroke, whom we shall name Blank, living over the way, 
 he also keeps somewhere about a thousand men ; but has ' 
 done none of these things for them, nor any other thing, except 
 due payment of the wages by supply-and-demand. Blank's 
 workers are perpetually getting into mutiny, into broils and 
 coils : every six months, we suppose, Blank has a strike ; every 
 one month, every day and every hour, they are fretting and ob- 
 structing the short-sighted Blank ; pilfering from him, wasting 
 and idling for him, omitting and committing for him. "I 
 would not," says Friend Prudence, " exchange my workers for 
 his with seven thousand pounds to loot." 1 
 
 Right, honorable Prudence ; thou art wholly in the right : 
 Seven thousand pounds even as a matter of profit for this 
 world, nay for the mere cash-market of this world! And as 
 a matter of profit not for this world only, but for the other 
 world and all worlds, it outweighs the Bank of England ! 
 Can the sagacious reader descry here, as it were the outmost 
 inconsiderable rock-ledge of a universal rock-foundation, deep 
 once more as the Centre of the World, emerging so, in the 
 experience of this good Quaker, through the Stygian mud- 
 vortexes and general Mother of Dead Dogs, whereon, for the 
 present, all swags and insecurely hovers, as if ready to be 
 swallowed ? 
 
 Some Permanence of Contract is already almost possible ; 
 the principle of Permanence, year by year, better seen into 
 and elaborated, may enlarge itself, expand gradually on every 
 side into a system. This once secured, the basis of all good 
 results were laid. Once permanent, you do not quarrel with 
 the first difficulty on your path, and quit it in weak disgust ; 
 you reflect that it cannot be quitted, that it must be conquered, 
 a wise arrangement fallen on with regard to it. Ye foolish 
 Wedded Two, who have quarrelled, between whom the Evil 
 
 1 Report on t/te Training of Pauper Children (1841), p. 18.
 
 . V. PERMANENCE. 269 
 
 Spirit lias stirred up transient strife and bitterness, so that 
 " incompatibility " seems almost nigh, ye are nevertheless the 
 Two who, by long habit, were it by nothing more, do best of all 
 others suit each other : it is expedient for your own two foolish 
 selves, to say nothing of the infants, pedigrees and public in 
 general, that ye agree again ; that ye put away the Evil Spirit, 
 and wisely on both hands struggle for the guidance of a Good 
 Spirit ! 
 
 The very horse that is permanent, how much kindlier do 
 his rider and he work, than the temporary one, hired on any 
 hack principle yet known ! I am for permanence in all things, 
 at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest possible. 
 lUessed is he that continueth where he is. Here let us rest, 
 and lay out seedfields ; here let us learn to dwell. Here, 
 even here, the orchards that we plant will yield us fruit ; the 
 acorns will be wood and pleasant umbrage, if we wait. How 
 much grows everywhere, if we do but wait ! Through the 
 swamps we will shape causeways, force purifying drains ; we 
 will learn to thread the rocky inaccessibilities ; and beaten 
 tracks, worn smooth by mere travelling of human feet, will 
 form themselves. Not a difficulty but can transfigure itself 
 into a triumph; not even a deformity but, if our own soul 
 have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us. The sunny 
 plains and deep indigo transparent skies of Italy are all indif- 
 ferent to the great sick heart of a Sir Walter Scott : on the 
 back of the Apennines, in wild spring weather, the sight of 
 bleak Scotch firs, and snow-spotted heath and desolation, 
 brings tears into his eyes. 1 
 
 unwise mortals tliat forever change and shift, and say, 
 Yonder, not Here ! Wealth richer than both the Indies lies 
 everywhere for man, if he will endure. Not his oaks only and 
 his fruit-trees, his very heart roots itself wherever he will 
 abide ; roots itself, draws nourishment from the deep foun- 
 tains of Universal Being! Vagrant Sam-Slicks, who rove 
 over the Earth doing "strokes of trade," what wealth have 
 they ? Horse-loads, ship-loads of white or yellow metal : in 
 very sooth, what are these ? Slick rests nowhere, he is home- 
 1 Lockbart's Life of Scott.
 
 2TO PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 less. He can build stone or marble houses ; but to continue 
 in them is denied him. The wealth of a man is the number 
 of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and 
 blessed by ! The herdsman in his poor clay shealing, where 
 his very cow and dog are friends to him, and not a cataract 
 but carries memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods 
 old recognition : his life, all encircled as in blessed mother's- 
 arms, is it poorer than Slick's with the ass-loads of yellov 
 metal on his back ? Unhappy Slick ! Alas, there has so much 
 grown nomadic, apelike, with us : so much will have, with 
 whatever pain, repugnance and " impossibility," to alter itself, 
 to fix itself again, in some wise way, in any not delirious 
 way ! 
 
 A question arises here : Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps 
 some not far-distant stage of this " Chivalry of Labor," your 
 Master- Worker may not find it possible, and needful, to grant 
 his Workers permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs ? 
 So that it become, in practical result, what in essential fact 
 and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise ; all men, from the 
 Chief Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative, 
 economically as well as loyally concerned for it ? Which 
 question I do not answer. The answer, near or else far, is 
 perhaps, Yes ; and yet one knows the difficulties. Despot 
 ism is essential in most enterprises ; I am told, they do not 
 tolerate " freedom of debate " on board a Seventy-four ! Re- 
 publican senate and plebiscita would not answer well in Cotton- 
 Mills. And yet observe there too: Freedom, not nomad's or 
 ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom ; this is indispensable. 
 We must have it, and will have it ! To reconcile Despotism 
 with Freedom: well, is that such a mystery? Do you not 
 already know the way ? It is to make your Despotism just. 
 Rigorous as Destiny ; but just too, as Destiny and its Laws. 
 The Laws of God : all men obey these, and have no " Free- 
 dom " at all but in obeying them. The way is already known, 
 part of the way ; and courage and some qualities are needed 
 for walking on it !
 
 CHAP. VL THE LANDED. 271 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE LANDED. 
 
 A MAX with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds 
 a day, given him freely, without condition at all, on condi- 
 tion, as it now runs, that he will sit with his hands in his 
 pockets and do no mischief, pass no Corn-Laws or the like, 
 he too, you would say, is or might be a rather strong Worker ! 
 He is a Worker with such tools as no man in this world ever 
 before had. But in practice, very astonishing, very ominous 
 to look at, he proves not a strong Worker; you are too 
 happy if he will prove but a No-worker, do nothing, and not 
 be a Wrong-worker. 
 
 You ask him, at the year's end: "Where is your three 
 hundred thousand pound ; what have you realized to us with 
 that ? " He answers, in indignant surprise : " Done with it ? 
 Who are you that ask ? I have eaten it ; I and my flunkies, 
 and parasites, and slaves two-footed and four-footed, in an 
 ornamental manner; and I am here alive by it; 7am realized 
 by it to you ! " It is, as we have often said, such an answer 
 as was never before given under this Sun. An answer that 
 fills me with boding apprehension, with foreshadows of de- 
 spair. O stolid Use-and-wont of an atheistic Half-century, 
 < ) Ignavia, Tailor-godhood, soul-killing Cant, to what passes 
 art thou bringing us ! Out of the loud-piping whirlwind, 
 audibly to him that has ears, the Highest God is again 
 announcing in these days : " Idleness shall not be." God 
 has said it, man cannot gainsay. 
 
 Ah, how happy were it, if he this Aristocrat Worker would, 
 in like manner, see his work and do it ! It is frightful seek- 
 ing another to do it for him. Guillotines, Meudon Tanneries, 
 and half a million men shot dead, have already been expended 
 in that business ; and it is yet far from done. This man too
 
 272 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 is something^ nay he is a great thing. Look on him there : a 
 man of manful aspect; something of the "cheerfulness of 
 pride " still lingering in him. A free air of graceful stoicism, 
 of easy silent dignity sits well on him ; in his heart, could we 
 reach it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice, true 
 human valor. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an 
 incumbrauce in the Present ; perish disastrously out of the 
 Future ! From no section of the Future would we lose these 
 noble courtesies, impalpable yet all-controlling ; these dignified 
 reticences, these kingly simplicities ; lose aught of what the 
 fruitful Past still gives us token of, memento of, in this man. 
 Can we not save him : can he not help us to save him ! A 
 brave man, he too ; had not undivine Ignavia, Hearsay, Speech 
 without meaning, had not Cant, thousand-fold Cant within 
 him and around him, enveloping him like choke-damp, like 
 thick Egyptian darkness, thrown his soul into asphyxia, as it 
 were extinguished his soul ; so that he sees not, hears not, and 
 Moses and all the Prophets address him in vain. 
 
 Will he awaken, be alive again, and have a soul; or is 
 this death-fit very death ? It is a question of questions, for 
 himself and for us all ! ' Alas, is there no noble work for 
 this man too ? Has not he thick-headed ignorant boors ; 
 lazy, enslaved farmers, weedy lands ? Lands ! Has not he 
 weary heavy-laden ploughers of land ; immortal souls of men, 
 ploughing, ditching, day -drudging ; bare of back, empty of 
 stomach, nigh desperate of heart ; and none peaceably to help 
 them but he, under Heaven ? Does he find, with his three 
 hundred thousand pounds, no noble thing trodden down in the 
 thoroughfares, which it were godlike to help up ? Can he do 
 nothing for his Burns but make a Ganger of him ; lionize him, 
 bedinner him, for a foolish while : then whistle him down the 
 wind, to desperation and bitter death ? His work too is dif- 
 ficult, in these modern, far-dislocated ages. But it may be 
 done ; it may be tried ; it must be done. 
 
 A modern Duke of Weimar, not a god he either, but a human 
 duke, levied, as I reckon, in rents and taxes and all incomings 
 whatsoever, less than several of our English Dukes do in rent 
 alono. The Duke of Weimar, with these incomings, had to
 
 CHAP. VI. THE LANDED. 273 
 
 govern, judge, defend, every way administer his Dukedom. He 
 does all this as few others did : and he improves lands besides 
 ;dl this, makes river-embankments, maintains not soldiers only 
 but Universities and Institutions ; and in his Court were 
 these four men: Wielaud, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. Not as 
 parasites, which was impossible ; not as table-wits and poetic 
 Katerfeltoes ; but as noble Spiritual Men working under a 
 noble Practical Man. Shielded by him from many miseries ; 
 perhaps from many shortcomings, destructive aberrations. 
 Heaven had sent, once more, heavenly Light into the world ; 
 and this man's honor was that he gave it welcome. A new 
 noble kind of Clergy, under an old but still noble kind of 
 King ! I reckon that this one Duke of Weimar did more for 
 the Culture of his Nation than all the English Dukes and Duces 
 now extant, or that were extant since Henry the Eighth gave 
 them the Church Lands to eat, have done for theirs ! I am 
 ashamed, I am alarmed for uiy English Dukes : what word 
 have I to say ? 
 
 If our Actual Aristocracy, appointed " Best-and-Bravest," 
 will be wise, how inexpressibly happy for us ! If not, the 
 voice of God from the whirlwind is very audible to me. Nay, 
 I will thank the Great God, that He has said, in whatever 
 fearful ways, and just wrath against us, " Idleness shall be no 
 more ! " Idleness ? The awakened soul of man, all but the 
 asphyxied soul of man, turns from it as from worse than death. 
 It is the life-in-death of Poet Coleridge. That fable of the 
 Dead-Sea Apes ceases to be a fable. The poor Worker starved 
 to death is not the saddest of sights. He lies there, dead on 
 his shield ; fallen down into the bosom of his old Mother ; 
 with haggard pale face, sorrow-worn, but stilled now into divine 
 peace, silently appeals to the Eternal God and all the Uni- 
 verse, the most silent, the most eloquent of men. 
 
 Exceptions, ah yes, thank Heaven, we know there are 
 exceptions. Our case were too hard, were there not excep- 
 tions, and partial exceptions not a few, whom we know, and 
 whom we do not know. Honor to the name of Ashley, 
 honor to this and the other valiant Abdiel, found faithful still ; 
 who would fain, by work and by word, admonish their Order 
 
 vol.. XII. 18
 
 274 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 not to rush upon destruction ! These are they who will, if not 
 save their Order, postpone the wreck of it ; by whom, under 
 blessing of the Upper Powers, "a quiet euthanasia spread 
 over generations, instead of a swift torture-death concentred 
 into years," may be brought about for many things. All honor 
 and success to these. The noble man can still strive nobly to 
 save and serve his Order; at lowest, he can remember the 
 precept of the Prophet : " Come out of her, my people ; come 
 out of her ! " 
 
 To sit idle aloft, like living statues, like absurd Epicurus'- 
 gods, in pampered isolation, in exclusion from the glorious 
 fateful battle-field of this God's-World : it is a poor life for a 
 man, when all Upholsterers and French-Cooks have done their 
 utmost for it ! Nay what a shallow delusion is this we have 
 all got into, That any man should or can keep himself apart 
 from men, have " no business " with them, except a cash- 
 account " business " ! It is the silliest tale a distressed gen- 
 eration of men ever took to telling one another. Men cannot 
 live isolated : we are all bound together, for mutual good 
 or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. 
 No highest man can disunite himself from any lowest. Con- 
 sider it. Your poor " Werter blowing out his distracted exist- 
 ence because Charlotte will not have the keeping thereof : " 
 this is no peculiar phasis ; it is simply the highest expression 
 of a phasis traceable wherever one human creature meets 
 another ! Let the meanest crook-backed Thersites teach the 
 supremest Agamemnon that he actually does not reverence 
 him, the supremest Agamemnon's eyes flash fire responsive ; 
 a real pain and partial insanity has seized Agamemnon. 
 Strange enough : a many-counselled Ulysses is set in motion 
 by a scoundrel-blockhead ; plays tunes, like barrel-organ at 
 the scoundrel blockhead's touch, has to snatch, namely, his 
 sceptre-cudgel, and weal the crooked back witli bumps and 
 thumps ! Let a chief of men reflect well on it. Not in hav- 
 ing " no business " with men, but in having no unjust business 
 with them, and in haviny all manner of true and just business, 
 can either his or their blessedness be found possible, and this
 
 CIIAP. VI. THE LANDED. 275 
 
 waste world become, for both parties, a home and peopled 
 garden. 
 
 Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that " one tem- 
 ple of the world," as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man ! 
 Hero-worship, true and blessed, or else mistaken, false and 
 accursed, goes on everywhere and every when. In this world 
 there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever 
 will be of godlike in this world : the veneration done to Human 
 Worth by the hearts of men. Hero-worship, in the souls of 
 the heroic, of the clear and wise, it is the perpetual pres- 
 ence of Heaven in our poor Earth : when it is not there, 
 Heaven is veiled from us ; and all is under Heaven's ban and 
 interdict, and there is no worship, or worth-ship, or worth or 
 blessedness in the Earth any more ! 
 
 Independence, " lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye," alas, 
 yes, he is one we have got acquainted with in these late times : 
 a very indispensable one, for spurning off with due energy in- 
 numerable sham-superiors, Tailor-made : honor to him, entire 
 success to him ! Entire success is sure to him. But he must 
 not stop there, at that small success, with his eagle-eye. He 
 has now a second far greater success to gain : to seek out hrs 
 real superiors, whom not the Tailor but the Almighty God has 
 made superior to him, and see a little what he will do with' 
 these ! Rebel against these also ? Pass by with minatory 
 eagle-glance, with calm-sniffing mockery, or even without any 
 mockery or sniff, when these present themselves ? The lion- 
 hearted will never dream of such a thing. Forever far be it 
 from him ! His minatory eagle-glance will veil itself in soft- 
 ness of the dove: his lion-heart will become a lamb's ; all its 
 just indignation changed into just reverence, dissolved in 
 blessed floods of noble humble love, how much heavenlier than 
 any pride, nay, if you will, how much prouder! I know him, 
 this lion-hearted, eagle-eyed one ; have met him, rushing on, 
 " with bosom bare," in a very distracted dishevelled manner, 
 the times being hard ; and can say, and guarantee on my 
 life, That in him is no rebellion ; that in him is the reverse of 
 rebellion, the needful preparation for obedience. For if you
 
 276 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 do mean to obey God-made superiors, your first step is to 
 sweep out the Tailor-made ones ; order them, under penalties, 
 to vanish, to make ready for vanishing ! 
 
 Nay, what is best of all, he cannot rebel, if he would. 
 Superiors whom God has made for us we cannot order to 
 withdraw ! Not in the teast. No Grand-Turk himself, thick- 
 est-quilted tailor-made Brother of the Sun and Moon can do 
 it : but an Arab Man, in cloak of his own clouting ; with black 
 beaming eyes, with naming sovereign-heart direct from the 
 centre of the Universe; and also, I am told, with terrible 
 "horse-shoe vein" of swelling wrath in his brow, and light- 
 ning (if you will not have it as light) tingling through every 
 vein of him, he rises ; says authoritatively : " Thickest- 
 quilted Grand-Turk, tailor-made Brother of the Sun and Moon, 
 No: /withdraw not; thou shalt obey me or withdraw!" 
 And so accordingly it is : thickest-quilted Grand-Turks and all 
 their progeny, to this hour, obey that man in the remarkablest 
 manner ; preferring not to withdraw. 
 
 brother, it is an endless consolation to me, in this disor- 
 ganic, as yet so quack-ridden, what you may well call hag- 
 ridden and hell-ridden world, to find that disobedience to the 
 Heavens, when they send any messenger whatever, is and 
 remains impossible. It cannot be done ; no Turk grand or 
 small can do it. " Show the dullest clodpoll," says my inval- 
 uable German friend, "show the haughtiest feather-head, that 
 a soul higher than himself is here ; were his knees stiffened 
 into brass, he must down and worship." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE GIFTED. 
 
 YES, in what tumultuous huge anarchy soever a Noble hu- 
 man Principle may dwell and strive, such tumult is in the way 
 of being calmed into a fruitful sovereignty. It is inevitable. 
 No Chaos can continue chaotic with a soul in it. Besouled
 
 CHAI-. VII. 
 
 THE GIFTED. 277 
 
 with earnest human Nobleness, did not slaughter, violence and 
 fire-eyed fury, grow into a Chivalry ; into a blessed Loyalty 
 of Governor and Governed ? And in Work, which is of itself 
 noble, and the only true fighting, there shall be no such possi- 
 bility ? Believe it not ; it is incredible ; the whole Universe 
 contradicts it. Here too the Choctaw Principle will be subor- 
 dinated ; the Man Principle will, by degrees, become superior, 
 become supreme. 
 
 I know Mammon too; Banks-of-England, Credit-Systems, 
 world-wide possibilities of work and traffic ; and applaud and 
 admire them. Mammon is like Fire ; the usefulest of all ser- 
 vants, if the f rightfulest of all masters ! The Cliffords, Fitz- 
 adelms and Chivalry Fighters " wished to gain victory," never 
 doubt it : but victory, unless gained in a certain spirit, was no 
 victory ; defeat, sustained in a certain spirit, was itself victory. 
 I say again and again, had they counted the scalps alone, they 
 had continued Choctaws, and no Chivalry or lasting victory 
 had been. And in Industrial Fighters and Captains is there 
 no nobleness discoverable ? To them, alone of men, there 
 shall forever be no blessedness but in swollen coffers ? To 
 see beauty, order, gratitude, loyal human hearts around them, 
 shall be of no moment ; to see fuliginous deformity, mutiny, 
 hatred and despair, with the addition of half a million guineas, 
 shall be better ? Heaven's blessedness not there ; Hell's 
 cursedness, and your half-million bits of metal, a substitute 
 for that ! Is there no profit in diffusing Heaven's blessedness, 
 but only in gaining gold ? If so, I apprise the Mill-owner 
 and Millionnaire, that he too must prepare for vanishing ; that 
 neither is he born to be of the sovereigns of this world ; that 
 he will have to be trampled and chained down in whatever 
 terrible ways, and brass-collarod safe, among the born thralls 
 of this world! We cannot have CnnaiJles and Doggeries that 
 will not make some Chivalry of themselves : our noble Planet 
 is impatient of such ; in the end, totally intolerant of such ! 
 
 For the Heavens, unwearying in their bounty, do send other 
 souls into this world, to whom yet, as to their forerunners, in 
 Old Roman, in Old Hebrew and all noble times, the omnipo- 
 tent guinea is, on the whole, an impotent guinea. Has your
 
 278 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 half -dead avaricious Corn-Law Lord, your half-alive avaricious 
 Cotton-Law Lord, never seen one such? Such are, not one, 
 but several ; are, and will be, unless the Gods have doomed 
 this world to swift dire ruin. These are they, the elect of the 
 world ; the born champions, strong men, and liberatory Sam- 
 sons of this poor world : whom the poor Delilah-world will 
 not always shear of their strength and eyesight, and set to 
 grind in darkness at its poor gin-wheel ! Such souls are, in 
 these days, getting somewhat out of humor with the world. 
 Your very Byron, in these days, is at least driven mad ; flatly 
 refuses fealty to the world. The world with its injustices, its 
 golden brutalities, and dull yellow guineas, is a disgust to such 
 souls : the ray of Heaven that is in them does at least pre- 
 doom them to be very miserable here. Yes: and yet all 
 misery is faculty misdirected, strength that has not yet found 
 its way. The black whirlwind is mother of the lightning. 
 No smoke, in any sense, but can become flame and radiance ! 
 Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern University, steps 
 out superior to your guinea. 
 
 Dost thou know, sumptuous Corn-Lord, Cotton-Lord, 
 mutinous Trades-Unionist, gin-vanquished, undeliverable ; 
 much-enslaved World, this man is not a slave with thee ! 
 None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is 
 with the stars of Heaven : to thee it may be momentous, to 
 thee it may be life or death, to him it is indifferent, whether 
 thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the 
 top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The 
 joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and 
 thy promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, 
 souls who love him, whom he loves : these are already his. He 
 wants none of thy rewards ; behold also, he fears none of thy 
 penalties. Thou canst not answer even by killing him : the 
 case of Anaxarchus thou canst kill ; but the self of Anaxar- 
 chus, the word or act of Anaxarchus, in no wise whatever. To 
 this man death is not a bugbear ; to this man life is already as 
 earnest and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death. 
 
 Not a May-game is this man's life ; but a battle and a march, 
 a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle prome-
 
 CHAP. Vrt. THE GIFTED. 279 
 
 uade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, 
 waited on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours : it is a 
 stern pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through 
 regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men ; loves men, 
 with inexpressible soft pity, as they cannot love him : but 
 his soul dwells iu solitude, in the uttermost parts of Creation. 
 In green oases by the palm-tree wells, he rests a space ; but 
 anon he lias to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and 
 the Splendors, the Airhdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, 
 all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from 
 the Immensities, send tidings to him ; the graves, silent with 
 their dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep. 
 Thou, World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this 
 man ? Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas ; nor by thy 
 gibbets and law-penalties restrain him. He eludes thee like a 
 Spirit. Thou canst not forward him, thou canst not hinder 
 him. Thy penalties, thy poverties, neglects, contumelies : be- 
 hold, all these are good for him. Come to him as an enemy ; 
 turn from him as an unfriend ; only do not this one thing, 
 infect him not with thy own delusion: the benign Genius, 
 were it by very death, shall guard him against this ! What 
 wilt thou do with him ? He is above thee, like a god. Thou, 
 in thy stupendous three-inch pattens, art under him. He is 
 thy born king, thy conqueror and supreme lawgiver : not all 
 the guineas and cannons, and leather and prunella, under the 
 sky can save thee from him. Hardest thick-skinned Mammon- 
 world, ruggedest Caliban shall obey him, or become not Caliban 
 but a cramp. Oh, if in this man, whose eyes can flash Heav- 
 en's lightning, and make all Calibans into a cramp, there 
 dwelt not, as the essence of his very being, a God's justice, 
 human Xobleness, Veracity and Mercy, I should tremble for 
 the world. But his strength, let us rejoice to understand, is 
 even this : The quantity of Justice, of Valor and Pity that is 
 in him. To hypocrites and tailored quacks in high places his 
 eyes are lightning ; but they melt in dewy pity softer than a 
 mother's to the down-pressed, maltreated ; in his heart, in his 
 great thought, is a sanctuary for all the wretched. This world's 
 improvement is forever sure.
 
 280 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 " Man of Genius ? " Thou hast small notion, meseems, 
 Maecenas Twiddledee, of what a Man of Genius is. Read in 
 thy New Testament and elsewhere, if, with floods of mealy- 
 mouthed inanity ; with miserable froth-vortices of Cant now 
 several centuries old, thy New Testament is not all bedimmed 
 for thee. Canst thou read in thy New Testament at all? 
 The Highest Man of Genius, knowest thou him ; Godlike and 
 a God to this hour ? His crown a Crown of Thorns ? Thou 
 fool, with thy empty Godhoods, Apotheoses edge-gilt; the 
 Crown of Thorns made into a poor jewel-room crown, fit for 
 the head of blockheads ; the bearing of the Cross changed to 
 a riding in the Long-Acre Gig ! Pause in thy mass-chantings, 
 in thy litanyings, and Calmuck prayings by machinery; and 
 pray, if noisily, at least in a more human manner. How with 
 thy rubrics and dalmatics, and clothwebs and cobwebs, and 
 with thy stupidities and grovelling base-heartedness, hast thou 
 hidden the Holiest into all but invisibility ! 
 
 " Man of Genius : " Maecenas Twiddledee, hast thou any 
 notion what a Man of Genius is ? Genius is " the inspired 
 gift of God." It is the clearer presence of God Most High in 
 a man. Dim, potential in all men ; in this man it has become 
 clear, actual. So says John Milton, who ought to be a judge ; 
 so answer him the Voices of all Ages and all Worlds. Wouldst 
 thou commune with such a one ? Be his real peer, then : does 
 that lie in thee ? Know thyself and thy real and thy appar- 
 ent place, and know him and his real and his apparent place, 
 and act in some noble conformity with all that. What ! 
 The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illumi- 
 nate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children ? He, the god- 
 inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel- 
 pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider 
 Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne ? 
 Brother, this is not he ; this is a counterfeit, this twangling, 
 jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou dost well to 
 say with sick Saul, "It is nought, such harping!" and in 
 sudden rage, to grasp thy spear, and try if thou canst pin such 
 a one to the wall. King Saul was mistaken in his man, but 
 thou art right in thine. It is the due of such a one : nail him
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 THE DIDACTIC. 281 
 
 to the wall, and leave him there. So ought copper shillings to 
 be nailed on counters ; copper geniuses on walls, and left there 
 for a sign ! 
 
 I conclude that the Men of Letters too may become a 
 " Chivalry," an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood, with 
 result immeasurable, so soon as there is nobleness in them- 
 selves for that. And, to a certainty, not sooner ! Of intrinsic 
 Valetisnis you cannot, with whole Parliaments to help you, 
 make a Heroism. Doggeries never so gold-plated, Doggeries 
 never so escutcheoned, Doggeries never so diplomaed, bepuffed, 
 gas-lighted, continue Doggeries, and must take the fate of 
 such. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DIDACTIC. 
 
 CERTAINLY it were a fond imagination to expect that any 
 preaching of mine could abate Maimnonism ; that Bobus of 
 Houndsditch will love his guineas less, or his poor soul more, 
 for any preaching of mine ! But there is one Preacher who 
 does preach witli effect, and gradually persuade all persons : 
 his name is Destiny, is Divine Providence, and his Sermon the 
 inflexible Course of Things. Experience does take dreadfully 
 high school-wages ; but he teaches like no other! 
 
 1 revert to Friend I'rudenee the good Quaker's refusal of 
 'seven thousand pounds to boot." Friend Prudence's prac- 
 tical conclusion will, by decrees, become that of all rational 
 practical men whatsoever. On the present scheme and princi- 
 ple, Work cannot continue. Trades' Strikes. Trades' Unions, 
 Chartisms; mutiny, squalor, rage and desperate revolt, growing 
 ever more desperate, will go on their way. As dark misery 
 settles down on us, and our refuges of lies fall in pieces one 
 after one, the hearts of men, now at last serious, will turn to 
 refuges of truth. The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as 
 it is dark enough. 
 
 Begirt with desperate Trades' Unionism and Anarchic
 
 282 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 Mutiny, many an Industrial Law-ward, by and by, who lias 
 neglected to make laws and keep them, will be heard saying 
 to himself : " Why have I realized five hundred thousand 
 pounds ? I rose early and sat late, I toiled and moiled, and 
 in the sweat of my brow and of my soul I strove to gain this 
 money, that I might become conspicuous, and have some honor 
 among my fellow-creatures. I wanted them to honor me, to 
 love me. The money is here, earned with my best life-blood : 
 but the honor ? I am encircled with squalor, with hunger, 
 rage, and sooty desperation. Not honored, hardly even en- 
 vied ; only fools and the flunky-species so much as envy me. 
 I am conspicuous, us a mark for curses and brickbats. What 
 good is it ? My five hundred scalps hang here in my wigwam : 
 would to Heaven I had sought something else than the scalps ; 
 would to Heaven I had been a Christian Fighter, not a Choc- 
 taw one ! To have ruled and fought not in a Mammonish but 
 in a Godlike spirit ; to have had the hearts of the people bless 
 me, as a true ruler and captain of my people ; to have felt my 
 own heart bless me, and that God above instead of Mammon 
 below was blessing me, this had been something. Out of 
 my sight, ye beggarly five hundred scalps of banker's-thou- 
 sands : I will try for something other, or account my life a 
 tragical futility ! " 
 
 Friend Prudence's " rock-ledge," as we called it, will grad- 
 ually disclose itself to many a man ; to all men. Gradually, 
 assaulted from beneath and from above, the Stygian mud- 
 deluge of Laissez-faire, Supply-and-deinand, Cash-payment the 
 one Duty, will abate on all hands ; and the everlasting moun- 
 tain-tops, and secure rock-foundations that reach to the centre 
 of the world, and rest on Nature's self, will again emerge, to 
 found on, and to build on. When Mammon-worshippers here 
 and there begin to be God-worshippers, and bipeds-of-prey be- 
 come men, and there is a Soul felt once more in the huge- 
 pulsing elephantine mechanic Animalism of this Earth, it will 
 be again a blessed Earth. 
 
 " Men cease to regard money ? " cries Bobus of Hounds- 
 ditch : " What else do all men strive for ? The very Bishop 
 informs me that Christianity cannot get on without a minimum
 
 CHAP. VIII. THE DIDACTIC. 283 
 
 of Four thousand five hundred in its pocket. Cease to regard 
 money ? That will be at Doomsday in the afternoon ! " O 
 Bobus, my opinion is somewhat different. My opinion is, that 
 the Upper Towers have not yet determined on destroying this 
 Lower World. A respectable, ever-increasing minority, who 
 do strive for something higher than money, I with confidence 
 anticipate ; ever-increasing, till there be a sprinkling of them 
 found in all quarters, as salt of the Eurth once more. The 
 Christianity that cannot get on without a minimum of Four 
 thousand five hundred, will give place to something better that 
 can. Thou wilt not join our small minority, thou ? Not till 
 Doomsday in the afternoon ? Well ; then, at least, thou wilt 
 join it, thou and the majority in mass ! 
 
 But truly it is beautiful to see the brutish empire of Mam- 
 mon cracking everywhere ; giving sure promise of dying, or of 
 being changed. A strange, chill, almost ghastly dayspring 
 strikes up in Yankeeland itself : my Transcendental friends 
 announce there, in a distinct, though somewhat lank-haired, 
 ungainly manner, that the Demiurgus Dollar is dethroned; 
 that new unheard-of Demiurgusships, Priesthoods, Aristocra- 
 cies, Growths and Destructions, are already visible in the gray 
 of coming Time. Chronos is dethroned by Jove ; Odin by St. 
 Olaf : the Dollar cannot rule in Heaven forever. No ; I reckon, 
 not. Socinian Preachers quit their pulpits in Yankeeland, 
 saying, "Friends, this is all gone to colored cobweb, we regret 
 to say ! " and retire into the fields to cultivate onion-beds, 
 and live frugally on vegetables. It is very notable. Old 
 godlike Calvinism declares that its old body is now fallen to 
 tatters, and done ; and its mournful ghost, disembodied, seek- 
 ing new embodiment, pipes again in the winds ; a ghost 
 and spirit as yet, but heralding new Spirit-worlds, and better 
 Dynasties than the Dollar one. 
 
 Yes, here as there, light is coming into the world ; men love 
 not darkness, they do love light. A deep feeling of the 
 eternal nature of Justice looks out among us everywhere, 
 even through the dull eyes of Exeter Hall ; an unspeakable 
 religiousness struggles, in the most helpless manner, to speak 
 itself, in Puseyisms and the like. Of our Cant, all condemua-
 
 284 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 ble, how much is not condemnable without pity ; we had al- 
 most said, without respect ! The inarticulate worth and truth 
 that is in England goes down yet to the Foundations. 
 
 Some " Chivalry of Labor," some noble Humanity and prac- 
 tical Divineness of Labor, will yet be realized on this Earth. 
 Or why will ; why do we pray to Heaven, without setting our 
 own shoulder to the wheel ? The Present, if it will have the 
 Future accomplish, shall itself commence. Thou who prophe- 
 siest, who believest, begin thou to fulfil. Here or nowhere, 
 now equally as at any time ! That outcast help-needing tiling 
 or person, trampled down under vulgar feet or hoofs, no help 
 " possible " for it, no prize offered for the saving of it, canst 
 not thou save it, then, without prize ? Put forth thy hand, in 
 God's name ; know that " impossible," where Truth and Mercy 
 and the everlasting Voice of Nature order, has no place in the 
 brave man's dictionary. That when all men have said " Im- 
 possible," and tumbled noisily else-whither, and thou alone art 
 left, then first thy time and possibility have come. It is for 
 thee now ; do thou that, and ask no man's counsel, but thy 
 own only, and God's. Brother, thou hast possibility in thee 
 for much : the possibility of writing on the eternal skies the 
 record of a heroic life. That noble downfallen or yet unborn 
 " Impossibility," thou canst lift it up, thou canst, by thy soul's 
 travail, bring it into clear being. That loud inane Actuality, 
 with millions in its pocket, too "possible" that, which rolls 
 along there, with quilted trumpeters blaring round it, and all 
 the world escorting it as mute or vocal flunky, escort it not 
 thou ; say to it, either nothing, or else deeply in thy heart : 
 " Loud-blaring Nonentity, no force of trumpets, cash, Long- 
 acre art, or universal flunkyhood of men, makes thee an 
 Entity ; thou art a Nonentity, and deceptive Simulacrum, more 
 accursed than thou seemest. Pass on in the Devil's name, 
 unworshipped by at least one man, and leave the thoroughfare 
 clear ! " 
 
 Not on Ilion's or Latium's plains ; on far other plains and 
 places henceforth can noble deeds be now done. Not on 
 Ilion's plains ; how much less in May fair's drawing-rooms ! 
 Not in victory over poor brother French or Phrygians; but
 
 CHAP. VIIL 
 
 THE DIDACTIC. 285 
 
 in victory over Frost-jotuns, Marsh-giants, over demons of 
 Discord, Idleness, Injustice, Unreason, and Chaos come again. 
 None of the old Epics is longer possible. The Epic of French 
 and Phrygians was comparatively a small Epic : but that of 
 Flirts and Fribbles, what is that ? A thing that vanishes 
 at cock-crowing, that already begins to scent the morning 
 air ! Game-preserving Aristocracies, let them " bush " never 
 so effectually, cannot escape the Subtle Fowler. Game sea- 
 sons will be excellent, and again will be indifferent, and 
 by and by they will not be at all. The Last Partridge of 
 England, of an England where millions of men can get no corn 
 to eat, will be shot and ended. Aristocracies with beards on 
 their chins will find other work to do than amuse themselves 
 'vith trundling-hoops. 
 
 But it is to you, ye Workers, who do already work, and 
 are as grown men, noble and honorable in a sort, that the 
 whole world calls for new work and nobleness. Subdue 
 mutiny, discord, wide-spread despair, by manfulness, justice, 
 mercy and wisdom. Chaos is dark, deep as Hell ; let light 
 be, and there is instead a green flowery world. Oh, it is 
 great, and there is no other greatness. To make some nook 
 of God's Creation a little fruitfuler, better, more worthy of 
 God ; to make some human hearts a little wiser, manfuler, 
 happier, more blessed, less accursed ! It is work for a God. 
 Sooty Hell of mutiny and savagery and despair can, by man's 
 energy, be made a kind of Heaven ; cleared of its soot, of its 
 mutiny, of its need to mutiny ; the everlasting arch of Heaven's 
 azure overspanning it too, and its cunning mechanisms and 
 tall chimney-steeples, as a birth of Heaven ; God and all men 
 looking on it well pleased. 
 
 Unstained by wasteful deformities, by wasted tears or 
 heart's-blood of men, or any defacement of the Pit, noble 
 fruitful Labor, growing ever nobler, will come forth, the 
 grand sole miracle of Man ; whereby Man has risen from the 
 low places of this Earth, very literally, into divine Heavens. 
 Ploughers, Spinners, Builders ; Prophets, Poets, Kings ; Brind- 
 leys and Goethes, Odins and Arkwrights ; all martyrs, and
 
 286 PAST AND PRESENT. BOOK IV. 
 
 noble men, and gods are of one grand Host ; immeasurable ; 
 marching ever forward since the beginnings of the World. 
 The enormous, all-conquering, flame-crowned Host, noble every 
 soldier in it ; sacred, and alone noble. Let him who is not of 
 it hide himself ; let him tremble for himself. Stars at every 
 button cannot make him noble ; sheaves of Bath-garters, 
 nor bushels of Georges ; nor any other contrivance but man- 
 fully enlisting in it, valiantly taking place and step in it. 
 O Heavens, will he not bethink himself ; he too is so needed 
 in the Host ! It were so blessed, thrice-blessed, for himself 
 and for us all ! In hope of the Last Partridge, and some 
 Duke of Weimar among our English Dukes, we will be patient 
 yet a while. 
 
 " The future hides in it 
 Gladness aud sorrow ; 
 We press still thorow, 
 Nought that abides iu it 
 Daunting us, onward."
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
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