SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 W 
 
 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND .HALL, LD. 
 1895 
 
S5 
 
SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 THE 
 
 fife anb damans of fen: 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. 
 
 1895 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. PRELIMINARY I 
 
 II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES . . , . . 5 
 
 III. REMINISCENCES 9 
 
 IV. CHARACTERISTICS 18 
 
 V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 23 
 
 VI. APRONS . 28 
 
 VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 30 
 
 VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES . , .34 
 
 IX. ADAMITISM .... 39 
 
 X. PURE REASON 43 
 
 XL PPOSPECTIVE 47 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 I. GENESIS . 55 
 
 II. IDYLLIC 61 
 
 III. PEDAGOGY ....';... 69 
 
 IV. GETTING UNDER WAY . 82 
 
 V. ROMANCE 92 
 
 VI. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH . . . .102 
 
 VII. THE EVERLASTING No no 
 
 VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 117 
 
 IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA 126 
 
 X. PAUSE .136 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY . . . .143 
 
 II. CHURCH-CLOTHES 147 
 
 III. SYMBOLS 150 
 
 IV. HELOTAGE 156 
 
 V. THE PHCENIX 160 
 
 VI. OLD CLOTHES . , 165 
 
 VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS 168 
 
 VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM . . . .176 
 
 IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE 185 
 
 X. THE DANDIACAL BODY 188 
 
 XI. TAILORS 199 
 
 XII. FAREWELL 202 
 
 APPENDIX : TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS . . . .211 
 
 SUMMARY 217 
 
 INDEX . 225 
 
SARTOR RESARTUS, 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 CONSIDERING our present advanced state of culture, and how 
 the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, 
 with more or less effect, for five-thousand years and upwards ; 
 how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, 
 and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush- 
 lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing 
 in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole 
 in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, it might strike 
 the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or no- 
 thing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philo- 
 sophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. 
 
 Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect : Lagrange, 
 it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this 
 scheme, will endure forever ; Laplace, still more cunningly, even / 
 guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. 
 Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept ; 
 and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. 
 Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough : what with the la- 
 
 B 
 
3 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 //z/- //^x 'tW*>vi<r ' t i r **" 
 
 hours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius 
 of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal 
 Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than 
 the cooking of a dumpling ; concerning which last, indeed, there 
 have been minds to whom the question, How the apples were 
 got in, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on 
 the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations 
 of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory 
 of Value ; Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of 
 Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and en- 
 vironment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a frag- 
 ment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been 
 probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decom- 
 posed : our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not 
 a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards : every cel- 
 lular, vascular, musculaTTissue glories in its Lawrences, Majen- 
 dies, Bichats. 
 
 How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that 
 the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have 
 been quite overlooked by Science, the vestural Tissue, namely, 
 of woollen or other cloth ; which Man's Soul wears as its out- 
 most wrappage and overall ; wherein his whole other Tissues are 
 included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self 
 lives, moves, and has its being ? For if, now and then, some 
 straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into 
 this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether 
 heedless ; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as 
 quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the 
 plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured 
 man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked 
 Animal j and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and de- 
 vice, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are crea- 
 tures that look before and after : the more surprising that we do 
 not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very 
 eyes. 
 
 But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, in- 
 defatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after 
 all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be 
 one country where abstract Thought can still take shelter ; that 
 while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten 
 
PRELIMINARY. 3 
 
 Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every 
 English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific 
 watch-tower ; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and 
 elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast 
 of cowhorn, emit his Horet ihr Herren und lassefs Euch sagenj 
 in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that 
 fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans 
 have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence ; as if they struck 
 into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil 
 of a rough journey ; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance 
 and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself 
 grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of 
 bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote 
 peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist ex- 
 presses it, 
 
 ' By geometric scale 
 Doth take the size of pots of ale ;' 
 
 still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen 
 vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be 
 said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with suph, let 
 them take the consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that 
 even a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments ; also 
 many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, 
 will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any 
 case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, 
 but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man ? 
 It is written, ' Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall 
 be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate 
 person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this 
 man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their 
 united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen 
 some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer 
 light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous pro- 
 vince ; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and 
 kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed 
 thither, and the conquest was completed ; thereby, in these his 
 seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding 
 new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm 
 of Nothingness and Night ! Wise man was he who counselled 
 that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly to- 
 
4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 wards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and 
 howsoever it listed. 
 
 Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure 
 Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among us 
 English ; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Con- 
 stitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical 
 tendency on all English culture and endeavour, cramps the free 
 flight of Thought, that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but re- 
 cognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for 
 the first time published in our language. What English intel- 
 lect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on 
 it ? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered con- 
 dition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them 
 to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems 
 probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the re- 
 sults it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. 
 The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself 
 a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive 
 enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did 
 the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a Phi- 
 losophy of Clothes, occur to him ; and then, by quite foreign 
 suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from Pro- 
 fessor Teufelsdrockh ofWeissnichtwo; treating expressly of this 
 subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could 
 not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's 
 way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, 
 whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not re- 
 mained without effect. 
 
 ' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, their Origin 
 ' and Influence) : von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J. U. D. etc. Still- 
 ' schweigen und Co* 1 "'. Weissnichtwo, 1831. 
 
 4 Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' sche Anzelger, 'comes a Vo- 
 ' lume of uat extensive, close-printed, close -meditated sort, 
 ' which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, per- 
 ' haps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from the hitherto irre- 
 ' proachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with every 
 ' external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set 
 ' Neglect at defiance.' * * * * ' A work,' concludes the well- 
 nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, ' interesting alike to the antiquary, 
 
EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 5 
 
 ' the historian, and the philosophic thinker ; a masterpiece 
 ' of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent 
 ' Germanism and Philanthropy (derber Kerndeutschheit und 
 1 Menschenliebe] ; which will not, assuredly, pass current without 
 opposition in high places ; but must and will exalt the almost 
 ' new name of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, 
 ' in our German Temple of Honour." 
 
 Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in 
 this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle 
 him, sends hither a Presentation-copy of his Book ; with com- 
 pliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present 
 Editor to rehearse ; yet without indicated wish or hope of any 
 kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase : 
 Mochte es (this remarkable Treatise) auch im Brittischen Boden 
 gedeihe;i ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 IF for a speculative man, ' whose seedfield,' in the sublime 
 words of the Poet, 'is Time," no conquest is important but that 
 of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's 
 Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed 
 an 'extensive Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, 
 a very Sea of Thought ; neither calm nor clear, if you will ; yet 
 wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, 
 and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. 
 
 Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate 
 inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of 
 Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was 
 disclosed ; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite 
 new human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal cha- 
 racter, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. 
 Of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we re- 
 solved to master the significance. But as man is emphatically 
 a proselytising creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly 
 attempted, than the new question arose : How might this ac- 
 quired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need there- 
 of : how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the Author of 
 
6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the busi- 
 ness and bosoms of our own English Nation ? For if new-got 
 gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circu- 
 lation, much more may new truth. 
 
 Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought na- 
 turally was to publish Article after Article on this remarkable 
 Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical Journals as the Editor 
 might stand connected with, or by money or love procure ac- 
 cess to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear that such 
 matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, might endanger 
 the circulation of any Journal extant ? If, indeed, all party- 
 divisions in the State could have been abolished, Whig, Tory, 
 and Radical, embracing in discrepant union ; and all the Jour- 
 nals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, 
 and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant tor- 
 rents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, 
 what vehicle of that sort have we, except Eraser's Magazine f 
 A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest 
 Waterloo - Crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, 
 wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits ; nay, in any 
 case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflow- 
 ing, and inexorably shut ! Besides, to state the Philosophy of 
 Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh 
 without something of his personality, was it not to insure both 
 of entire misapprehension ? Now for Biography, had it been 
 otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no 
 hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a 
 special despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, 
 shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary Doc- 
 trines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, 
 in the dark depths of his own mind. 
 
 So had it lasted for some months ; and now the Volume on 
 Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming 
 lucid and lucent ; the personality of its Author more and more 
 surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could 
 do, more and more enigmatic ; whereby the old disquietude 
 seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, when altogether un- 
 expectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our 
 Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with 
 whom we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after 
 
EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 7 
 
 much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the 
 ' agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was 
 exciting in its own German Republic of Letters ; on the deep 
 significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume ; and then, at 
 length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of 
 conveying ' some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and 
 ' through England to the distant West :' a work on Professor 
 Teufelsdrockh ' were undoubtedly welcome to the Family, the 
 ' National, or any other of those patriotic Libraries, at present 
 ' the glory of British Literature ;' might work revolutions in 
 Thought ; and so forth ; in conclusion, intimating not ob- 
 scurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to under- 
 take a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, 
 had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. 
 
 As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporat- 
 ing, but would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other 
 fixed substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and 
 rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the 
 Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out 
 of void solution and discontinuity ; like united itself with like 
 in definite arrangement : and soon either in actual vision and 
 possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole 
 Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. 
 Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny post, appli- 
 cation to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE was now 
 made : an interview, interviews with that singular man have 
 taken place ; with more of assurance on our side, with less of 
 satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated ; 
 for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to those 
 same ' patriotic Libraries,' the Hofrath's counsel could only be 
 viewed with silent amazement ; but with his offer of Documents 
 we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in 
 the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun ; 
 and this our Sartor Resartus, which is properly a ' Life and 
 Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh,' hourly advancing. 
 
 Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such 
 title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. 
 Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, 
 what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical 
 
8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let him 
 strive to keep a free, open sense ; cleared from the mists of 
 prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant ; and directed 
 rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who 
 or what such Editor may be, must- remain conjectural, and even 
 insignificant : ! it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy 
 of Clothes ; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits : whoso hath 
 ears, let him hear. 
 
 On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give 
 warning : namely, that he is animated with a true though per- 
 haps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors ; 
 and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards ; 
 nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged 
 in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossible, profit- 
 ably to divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as 
 Teufelsdrockh' s, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable 
 pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. 
 
 For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal 
 connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke, or this 
 Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to 
 extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are 
 those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well 
 be ; as generous illusions of friendship ; as fair mementos of 
 bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when, 
 Japped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Elo- 
 quence, though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor 
 revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in 
 so full measure ! But what then ? Amicus Plato, magis arnica 
 veritasj Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In 
 our historical and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers 
 to all the world ; have feud or favour with no one, save in- 
 deed the Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and 
 Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine war. This as- 
 surance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached 
 a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even Eng- 
 lish Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door- 
 lintels No cheating here, we thought it good to premise. 
 
 1 With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler ; 
 and, we have reason to think, undei a teigned name ! O. Y. 
 
REMINISCENCES. 9 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 REMINISCENCES. 
 
 To the Author's private circle the appearance of this sin- 
 gular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less sur- 
 prise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, at 
 least, few things have been more unexpected. Professor Teu- 
 felsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed 
 to lead a quite still and self-contained life : a man devoted to 
 the higher Philosophies, indeed ; yet more likely, if he published 
 at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of 
 whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban ; 
 than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy 
 Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasperate and di- 
 vide. Not, that we can remember, was the Philosophy of Clothes 
 once touched upon between us. If through the high, silent, 
 meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend we detected any 
 practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, and to- 
 wards a certain prospective, and for the present quite specula- 
 tive, Radicalism ; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, 
 with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected ; though 
 his special contributions to the Isis could never be more than 
 surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less any- 
 thing Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. 
 
 Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hear- 
 ing ; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to 
 be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of Gukguk, 1 
 and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full 
 coffeehouse (it was Zur Griinen Cans, the largest in Weiss- 
 nichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect 
 of the place assembled of an evening) ; and there, with low, 
 soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whe- 
 ther of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed 
 this toast : Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und Teufels Namen 
 
 (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and 's) ! One 
 
 full shout, breaking the leaden silence ; then a gurgle of innu- 
 merable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheer- 
 1 Gukguk is unhappily only an academical beer. 
 
io SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ing, returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night . 
 resuming their pipes ; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes 
 of tobacco-smoke ; triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, 
 the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. Bleibt 
 dock ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel, said several ; meaning 
 thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his 
 democratic sentiments. Wo stecktdoch der Schalk? added they, 
 looking round : but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, 
 and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. 
 
 In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philo- 
 sopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And 
 yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in 
 thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlap- 
 ping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there 
 dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep under their 
 shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not 
 noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half- 
 fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, 
 the sleep of a spinning-top ? Thy little figure, there as, in loose 
 ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and 
 lumber, whole days, to 'think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a 
 mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee ; 
 thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than an- 
 other ; thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. 
 Nay, was there not in that clear logically-founded Transcendent- 
 alism of thine ; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sans- 
 culottism, combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward 
 nature, the visible rudiments of such speculation ? But great 
 men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Al- 
 ready, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable 
 Volume lay on the loom ; and silently, mysterious shuttles were 
 putting-in the woof! 
 
 How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, 
 in this case, may be a curious question ; the answer of which, 
 however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, 
 after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or 
 memories of the best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufels- 
 drockh was to be gathered ; not so much as a false one. He was 
 a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of cir- 
 
REMINISCENCES. II 
 
 cumstances ; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, 
 or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied 
 herself with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he was a 
 man so still and. altogether unparticipating, that to question him 
 even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual 
 delicacy : besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, 
 not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, 
 and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if 
 he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or mother of any 
 kind ; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and sta- 
 tistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself 
 like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called 
 him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering 
 Jew. 
 
 To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as 
 a Thing ; which Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, 
 and with satisfaction ; but no more thought of accounting for 
 than for the fabrication of their daily Allgemeine Zeitung, or the 
 domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there and welcome ; the 
 world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of 
 the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in 
 his little circle, as one of those originals and nondescripts, more 
 frequent in German Universities than elsewhere ; ofwhom, though 
 you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have 
 a History, no History seems to be discoverable ; or only such 
 as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins : That 
 they have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of 
 gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pres- 
 sure ; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm 
 world, where so much other mystery is. 
 
 It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, 
 Professor der Allerley- Wissenschaft, or as we should say in Eng- 
 lish, ' Professor of Things in General,' he had never delivered 
 any Course ; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public 
 furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, the enlightened 
 Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, 
 imagined they had done enough, if ' in times like ours,' as the 
 half-official Program expressed it, ' when all things are, rapidly 
 ' or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a Professorship of 
 ' this kind had been established ; whereby, as occasion called, 
 
12 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos 
 might be, even slightly, facilitated.' That actual Lectures should 
 be held, and Public Classes for the ' Science of Things in Gene- 
 ral,' they doubtless considered premature ; on which ground too 
 they had only established the Professorship, nowise endowed it ; 
 so that Teufelsdrockh, ' recommended by the highest Names,' 
 had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. 
 
 Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admira- 
 tion of this new Professorship : how an enlightened Government 
 had seen into the Want of the Age (Zeitbedurfniss) ; how at 
 length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we were to have a 
 science of Affirmation and Reconstruction ; and Germany and 
 Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of 
 the world. Considerable also was the wonder at the new Pro- 
 fessor, dropt opportunely enough into "the nascent University ; 
 so able to lecture, should occasion call ; so ready to hold his 
 peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government 
 consider that occasion did not call. But such admiration and 
 such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could 
 last only nine days ; and, long before our visit to that scene, had 
 quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all 
 an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom 
 domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy 
 soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. 
 
 As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at 
 the Grune Cans, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of 
 him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Jour- 
 nals ; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his 
 tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment : always, from 
 his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there ; more espe- 
 cially when he opened his lips for speech ; on which occa- 
 sions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as 
 if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a 
 whole series and river of the most memorable utterances ; such 
 as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit 
 audience : and the more memorable, as issuing from a head ap- 
 parently not more interested in them, not more conscious of 
 them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, 
 which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy 
 and the unworthy ; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or 
 
REMINISCENCES 13 
 
 quenching conflagrations ; indeed, maintains the same earnest 
 assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. 
 
 To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic 
 Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrdckh opened himself 
 perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not 
 then half guess his importance, and scrutinise him with due 
 power of vision ! We enjoyed, what not three men in Weiss- 
 nichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Pro- 
 fessor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest 
 house in the Wahngasse ; and might truly be called the pinnacle 
 of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, 
 themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its win- 
 dows it looked towards all the four Orte, or as the Scotch say, 
 and we ought to say, Airts : the sitting-room itself commanded 
 three ; another came to view in the Schlafgemach (bed-room) at 
 the opposite end ; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered 
 two, as it were, duplicates, and showing nothing new. So that 
 it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh ; 
 wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circula- 
 tion of that considerable City ; the streets and lanes of which, 
 with all their doing and driving (Thun und Treiberi), were for 
 the most part visible there. 
 
 " I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we 
 heard him say, " and witness their wax-laying and honey-mak- 
 " ing, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the 
 " Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness 
 " is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in 
 " her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits 
 " to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all ; for, except the Schloss- 
 " kirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive 
 " bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up 
 " in pouches of leather : there, topladen, and with four swift 
 " horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household ; here, 
 " on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, beg- 
 " ging alms : a thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come 
 " tumbling-in with Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw 
 " Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again 
 " with Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through 
 " these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence 
 " it is coming, whither it is going ? Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der 
 
14 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 " Ewigkeit kin, : From Eternity, onwards to Eternity ! These 
 " are Apparitions : what else ? Are they not Souls rendered 
 " visible : in Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting 
 " into air ? Their solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense ; 
 " they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind 
 " them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow 
 " Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in 
 " its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a Tomor- 
 " row; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and 
 " Horsa overran thy Island ? Friend, thou seest here a living 
 " link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being : 
 " watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." 
 
 " Ach, mem Lieber /" said he once, at midnight, when we 
 had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it 
 " is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, 
 " struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, 
 " some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks 
 " B_ootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith 
 " in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled hum of Midnight, 
 " when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels of 
 " Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are 
 " bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch 
 "for her ; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like 
 / " nightbirds, are abroad : that hum, I say, like the stertorous, 
 " unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, under 
 " that hideous coverlet of vapours, and putrefaetions, and un- 
 " imaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and 
 " hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are dying 
 " there, men are being born ; men are praying, on the. other 
 " side of a brick partition, men are cursing ; and around them 
 " all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers 
 " in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains ; 
 " Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger- 
 " stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure cellars, Rouge-et- 
 " Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry 
 " Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing 
 " their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The 
 " Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, 
 " full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the 
 " borders ; the Thief, still more silently, sets -to his picklocks 
 
REMINISCENCES. 15 
 
 " and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore 
 " in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing- 
 " rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts ; 
 " but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous 
 " and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, 
 " which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morn- 
 " ing. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow : comes no 
 " hammering from the Rabenstein ? their gallows must even 
 " now be o' building. Upwards of rive-hundred-thousand two- 
 " legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal 
 " positions ; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the fool- 
 " ishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers 
 " in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with streaming 
 " hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips 
 " only her tears now moisten. All these heaped and huddled 
 " together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry be- 
 " tween them ; crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel ; 
 " or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed 
 " vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others : such 
 " work goes on under that smoke-counterpane ! But I, mein 
 " Werther, sit above it all ; I am alone with the Stars." 
 
 We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of 
 such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced 
 there ; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a sin- 
 gle tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save 
 that old calmness and fixedness was visible. 
 
 These were the Professor's talking seasons : most com- 
 monly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent 
 and smoked ; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he 
 listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt ; or to look round 
 for a space, and then take himself away. It was a strange apart- 
 ment ; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds 
 of all conceivable substances, ' united in a common element of 
 dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a 
 sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily 
 thrown aside ; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee- 
 pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Bliicher Boots. 
 Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove- 
 lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general 
 lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no 
 
16 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh ; only 
 some once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, 
 with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his 
 manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such 
 lumber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbeben (earth- 
 quakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence; 
 nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. 
 Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising forever, or 
 till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors : but Lie- 
 schen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and 
 would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the an- 
 cient woman ; so silent that some thought her dumb ; deaf also 
 you would often have supposed her ; for Teufelsdrockh, and 
 Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to ; and with 
 him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs ; if it were not 
 rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, 
 and supplied them. Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and 
 sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible vio- 
 lence to the ear ; yet all was tight and right there : hot and black 
 came the coffee ever at the due moment ; and the speechless 
 Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white 
 coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrin- 
 kles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. 
 Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither : the 
 only one we ever saw there, ourselves except ed, was the Hofrath 
 Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the 
 readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke 
 seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, 
 pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society 
 by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, ' they never appear 
 without their umbrella.' Had we not known with what 'little 
 wisdom' the world is governed ; and how, in Germany as else- 
 where, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but 
 mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses 
 and willing or unwilling dupes, it might have seemed wonder- 
 ful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named &Rath, or Councillor, 
 and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any 
 man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give ; in 
 whose loose, zigzag figure ; in whose thin visage, as it went jerk- 
 ing to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, you traced rather 
 
REMINISCENCES. 17 
 
 confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical 
 Cold ? Some indeed said withal, he was ' the very Spirit of 
 Love embodied :' blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kind- 
 ness ; purse ever open, and so forth ; the whole of which, we 
 shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. 
 Nevertheless friend Teufelsdrockh' s outline, who indeed handled 
 the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best : Er 
 hat Gemiith und Geisl, hat -wenigstens gehabt, dock ohne Organ, 
 ohne Schicksals-Gunst ; ist gegenwcirtig aber halb-zerriittet, halb- 
 er starr t, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet 
 without fit mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune ; and so is 
 now half -cracked, half -congealed." What the Hofrath shall 
 think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder : we, safe in 
 the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. 
 
 The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufels- 
 drockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature 
 of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung 
 on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. 
 And perhaps with the like return ; for Teufelsdrockh treated his 
 gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational 
 or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of 
 gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to 
 observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly pro- 
 tection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly 
 imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and 
 tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living 
 oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's 
 . also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all 
 eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost : and then, at every 
 pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a 
 cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to 
 get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twang- 
 ing nasal, Bravo ! Das glauV ich; in either case, by way of 
 heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, 
 of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like in- 
 difference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass 
 for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead 
 and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. 
 
 In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufels- 
 drockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he 
 
 c 
 
1 8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 still, live and meditate. Here, perched-up in his high Wahn- 
 gasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, 
 it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with 
 Dulness and Darkness ; here, in all probability, that he wrote 
 this surprising Volume on Clothes. Additional particulars : of 
 his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only 
 guess at ; of his wide surtout ; the colour of his trousers, fashion 
 of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, 
 but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest ; 
 so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and suchlike to 
 rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the 
 Philosophic Class : nevertheless, what reader expects that, with 
 all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought 
 home to him, till once the Documents arrive ? His Life, For- 
 tunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or mat- 
 ter only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not 
 his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly 
 than P^gdrp Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons ? To 
 the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on 
 the ' Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the present gladly 
 return. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 IT were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work 
 on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, like all works of 
 genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published 
 creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and 
 troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence, a mixture of insight, 
 inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, and even utter blindness. 
 
 Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises 
 and prophesyings of the Weissnichtivd'scheAnzeiger^vG. admitted 
 that the Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, 
 which is the best effect of any book ; that it had even operated 
 changes in our way of thought ; nay, that it promised to prove, 
 as it were, the opening ^of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole 
 world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. 
 More especially it may now be declared that Professor Teufels- 
 
CHARACTERISTICS. 19 
 
 drockh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and 
 even poetic vigour, are here made indisputably manifest ; and 
 unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold inep- 
 titude ; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not 
 unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though like- 
 wise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popu- 
 larity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice 
 of such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it 
 betokens in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, un- 
 blamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success 
 with our public. 
 
 Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, 
 or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks-out with a 
 strange plainness ; calls many things by their mere dictionary 
 names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any 
 Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: 
 ' a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and 
 ' or-molu,' as he himself expresses it, ' cannot hide from me that 
 1 such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where 
 ' so many God-created Souls do for the time meet together.' To 
 Teufelsdrockh the highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable ; 
 but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces : hi his eyes, 
 the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad 
 button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock ; ' each is an 
 ' implement,' he says, ' in its kind ; a tag for hooking-together j 
 ' and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a 
 ' stithy before smith's fingers.' Thus does the Professor look 
 in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific 
 freedom ; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man 
 dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in 
 this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, 
 that all these short-comings, over-shootings, and multiform per- 
 versities, take rise : if indeed they have not a second source, also 
 natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humour 
 of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit ; whereby 
 truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 
 
 To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it 
 is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely 
 recommend the Work : nay, who knows but among the fashion- 
 able ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that 
 
20 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and 
 ' weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered waistcoat 
 ' beats a heart,' the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, 
 and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through ? In 
 our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts 
 and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it 
 were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks 
 of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often 
 with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, 
 and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is 
 with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the 
 confusion ; shears down, were it furlongs deep, into the true 
 centre of the matter ; and there not only hits the nail on the 
 head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it, 
 On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most un- 
 equal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play 
 truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mum- 
 bling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were 
 asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. 
 
 Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and litera- 
 ture in most known tongues, from Sanchoiiiathon to Dr. Lin- 
 gard, from your Oriental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Korans, 
 with Cassini's Siamese Tables, and Laplace's Mtcanique Ctleste, 
 down ~%o~Rdbinson~Crusoe and the Belfast Town and Country 
 Almanack, are familiar to him, we shall say nothing : for un- 
 exampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of 
 study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, 
 but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that 
 devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned ? 
 
 In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial 
 capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, 
 and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. Oc- 
 casionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigour, a true 
 inspiration ; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, 
 like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splen- 
 dour from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque 
 allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns ; all the 
 graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clear- 
 est Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that 
 sheer sleeping and soporific passages ; circumlocutions, repeti- 
 
CHARACTERISTICS. 21 
 
 tions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene ! 
 On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. 
 Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine -tenths stand 
 straight on their legs ; the remainder are in quite angular atti- 
 tudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and 
 ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them ; a few 
 even sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and 
 dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, 
 there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades 
 the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator ; 
 now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the 
 shrill mockery of Fiends ; now sinking in cadences, not with- 
 out melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into 
 the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum ; 
 of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. 
 Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether 
 it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon among 
 the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere In- 
 sanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. 
 Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal inter- 
 course, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feel- 
 ing. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft 
 wailings of infinite pity ; he could clasp the whole Universe into 
 his bosom, and keep it warm ; it seems as if under that rude 
 exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly 
 and still, so imperturbably saturnine ; shows such indifference, 
 malign coolness towards all that men strive after ; and ever with 
 some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed 
 it be not mere stolid callousness, that you look on him almost 
 with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mepfrstopheles, to whom 
 this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but 
 some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and an- 
 gels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotic- 
 ally whirled, in which only children could take interest. His 
 look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen : yet 
 it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our 
 own Chancery suitors ; but rather the gravity as of some silent, 
 high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct 
 volcano ; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze : those eyes, 
 those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the 
 
22 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of 
 Nether Fire 1 
 
 Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigma- 
 tic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh ! Here, however, we gladly re- 
 call to mind that once we saw him laugh; once only, perhaps 
 it was the first and last time in his life ; but then such a peal 
 of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers ! It 
 was of Jean Paul's doing : some single billow in that vast World- 
 Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, 
 which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death ! The 
 large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat 
 talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privi- 
 leged to listen ; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving 
 one of those inimitable ' Extra-harangues ;' and, as it chanced, 
 On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King : gradually a light kin- 
 dled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, love- 
 liest light ; through those murky features, a radiant, ever-young 
 Apollo looked ; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tat- 
 tersall's, tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot 
 clutched into the air, loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable ; a 
 laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole 
 man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed in- 
 deed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right : how- 
 ever, Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank into his old 
 stillness ; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, 
 a slight look of shame ; and Richter himself could not rouse 
 him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know 
 how much is to be inferred from this ; and that no man who 
 has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irre- 
 claimably bad. How much lies in Laughter : the cipher-key, 
 wherewith we decipher the whole man ! Some men wear an 
 everlasting barren simper ; in the smile of others lies a cold 
 glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called 
 laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat 
 outwards ; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinna- 
 tion, as if they were laughing through wool : of none such comes 
 good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, 
 stratagems, and spoils ; but his whole life is already a treason 
 and a stratagem. 
 
 Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 23 
 
 scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst : an almost total 
 want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, 
 his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through 
 the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method ; but 
 of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart 
 from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work na- 
 turally falls into two Parts ; a Historical-Descriptive, and a 
 Philosophical-Speculative : but falls, unhappily, by no firm line 
 of demarcation ; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part over- 
 laps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. 
 Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quitt nonde- 
 script and unnameable ; whereby the Book not only loses in 
 accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, 
 wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, 
 soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French 
 mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the 
 hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we 
 can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 
 
 As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws? observes our Pro- 
 fessor, ' so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an Esprit 
 ' des Lois, properly an Esprit de Coutumes, we should have an 
 ' Esprit de Costumes. For neither in tailoring nor in legislat- 
 ' ing does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever 
 ' guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his 
 ' Modes, and habilatory endeavours, an Architectural Idea will 
 ' be found lurking ; his Body and the Cloth are the site and 
 ' materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Per- 
 ' son, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded 
 ' mantles, based on light sandals ; tower-up in high headgear, 
 ' from amid peaks, spangles and bell -girdles ; swell -out in 
 ' starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities ; 
 ' or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an 
 ' Agglomeration of four limbs, will depend on the nature of 
 such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, 
 
24 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, 
 ' what meaning lies in Colour ! From the soberest drab to the 
 ' high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves 
 ' in choice of Colour : if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, 
 " so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, 
 ' among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, 
 ' indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and 
 ' Effect : every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and pre- 
 ' scribed by ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelli- 
 ' gences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. 
 
 ' For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philo- 
 ' sophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable 
 ' winter-evening entertainment : nevertheless, for inferior Intel- 
 ' ligences, like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to 
 ' me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu 
 ' himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphi- 
 ' cal prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in 
 ' Heaven ? Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not 
 ' why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a 
 ' Law ; but even why /am here, to wear and obey anything ! 
 Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes 
 ' I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even imper- 
 ' tinent : naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite 
 ' another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper 
 ' province.' 
 
 Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh has 
 nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent 
 of field ; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our 
 horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance- 
 over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First 
 Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and 
 utmost patience and fairness : at the same time, in its results 
 and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Com- 
 pilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even 
 Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these 
 pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in 
 view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of 
 publication, ' at present the glory of British Literature' ? If so, 
 the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own 
 behoof. 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 25 
 
 To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig- 
 leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mytho- 
 logical, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian 
 cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned 
 approval. Still less have we to do with ' Lilis, Adam's first 
 1 wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, 
 ' and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of 
 ' aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,' very needlessly, we 
 think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound glances 
 into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely 
 brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel (Darkness and 
 Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its 
 correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbini- 
 cal lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain 
 with something like astonishment. 
 
 But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh hastens from 
 the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the 
 whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of 
 Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient 
 and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to 
 give us in compressed shape (as the Niirnbergers give an Qrbjji 
 Pictus] an Orbis_yestitus ; or view of the costumes of all man- 
 kTH37~m all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Anti- 
 quarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say : Fall to 1 
 Here is learning : an irregular Treasury, if you will ; but inex- 
 haustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons 
 in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not 
 carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts ; phylacteries, 
 stoles, albs ; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, 
 trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, 
 as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), 
 Hussar cloaks, Vandyketippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought 
 vividly before us, even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not for- 
 gotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning, 
 heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true 
 concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted 
 out and thrown aside. 
 
 Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching 
 pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised 
 us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, 
 
26 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 was not warmth or decency, but ornament. ' Miserable indeed," 
 says he, ' was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring 
 4 fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard 
 ' reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted 
 ' cloak ; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. 
 1 He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild- 
 ' fruits ; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in mo- 
 ' rasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey ; without imple- 
 ' ments, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, 
 ' that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had 
 ' attached a long cord of plaited thongs ; thereby recovering as 
 1 well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, 
 ' the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care 
 ' was not Comfort but Decoration (Putz), Warmth he found 
 ' in the toils of the chase ; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow 
 ' tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto : but for Decoration 
 ' he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tat- 
 ' tooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual 
 4 want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see 
 ' among the barbarous classes in civilised countries. 
 
 ' Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer ; loftiest Se- 
 * rene Highness ; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose- 
 ' bloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom 
 ' thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, 
 symbolically taken, she is, has descended, like thyself, from 
 ' that same hair - mantled, flint -hurling Aboriginal Anthropo- 
 ' phagus ! Out of the eater cometh forth meat ; out of the 
 ' strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, 
 1 not by Time, yet in Time ! For not Mankind only, but all 
 ' that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re- 
 1 genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy 
 ' Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Universe : it is a seed- 
 ' grain that cannot die ; unnoticed today (says one), it will be 
 ' found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hem- 
 ' lock-forest !) after a thousand years. 
 
 ' He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of 
 ' Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering 
 ' most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Demo- 
 ' cratic world : he had invented the Art of Printing. The first 
 1 ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 27 
 
 4 Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling : what will the last do ? 
 ' Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under 
 ' Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple in- 
 ' vention it was in the old-world Grazier, sick of lugging his 
 ' slow Ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or 
 1 oil, to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp 
 ' the mere Figure of an Ox (or Pecus) ; put it in his pocket, and 
 ' call it Pecunia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the 
 ' Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles 
 1 have been out-miracled : for there are Rothschilds and English 
 ' National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the 
 ' length of sixpence) over all men ; commands cooks to feed 
 ' him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over 
 1 him, to the length of sixpence. Clothes too, which began 
 ' in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become ! 
 1 Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed : but 
 ' what of these ? Shame, divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as 
 yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mys- 
 ' teriously under Clothes ; a mystic grove- encircled shrine for 
 ' the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, 
 ' social polity ; Clothes have made Men of us ; they are threat- 
 ' ening to make Clothes-screens of us. 
 
 ' But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, ' Man 
 ' is a Tool-using Animal (Handthierendes Thier"). Weak in him- 
 1 self, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for 
 1 the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough ; 
 1 has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. 
 ' Feeblest of bipeds ! Three quintals are a crushing load for 
 1 him ; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste 
 ' rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools : with 
 ' these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him ; 
 ' he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste ; seas are his 
 ' smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. No- 
 ' where do you find him without Tools ; without Tools he is 
 ' nothing, with Tools he is all.' 
 
 Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of 
 Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool -using 
 Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the 
 precisest and best ? Man is called a Laughing Animal : but do 
 not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it ; and is the manli- 
 
28 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 est man the greatest and oftenest laugher ? Teufelsdrockh him- 
 self, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of 
 that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal ; which, 
 indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. 
 Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak 
 by riding on it ? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander 
 use, beyond stowing-up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the 
 like case, might do ? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper 
 among those Orinocco Indians who, according to Humboldt, 
 lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees ; and, for half the 
 year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being 
 under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human 
 being, of any period or climate, without his Tools : those very 
 Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, 
 such as no brute has or can have. 
 
 ' Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdrockh in 
 his abrupt way ; ' of which truth Clothes are but one example : 
 ' and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden 
 ' Dibjjla fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, 
 ' or the British House of Commons, we shall note what pro- 
 1 gress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the 
 1 bosom of the earth, and says to them, Transport me and this 
 ' l u gg a g e a t the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they 
 do it : he collects, apparently by lot, six -hundred and fifty- 
 ' eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, Make this 
 ' nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for 
 ' uSj and they do it.' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 APRONS. 
 
 ONE of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Vol- 
 ume is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Persian 
 Blacksmith, ' whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, 
 ' because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the 
 ' royal standard of that country ;' what though John Knox's 
 Daughter, ' who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would 
 ' catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should 
 ' lie and be a bishop ;' what though the Landgravine Elizabeth. 
 
APRONS. 29 
 
 rith many other Apron worthies, figure here ? An idle wire- 
 iwing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to 
 snventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for ex- 
 iple, are we to make of such sentences as the following ? 
 
 ' Aprons are Defences ; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, 
 ' to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of 
 notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an 
 Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Niirn- 
 ' berg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on ; 
 to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein 
 the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel ; or to 
 ' those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half- 
 ' naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace, is 
 ' there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vest- 
 1 ment ? How much has been concealed, how much has been 
 defended in Aprons ! Nay, rightly considered, what is your 
 whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at uncalcu- 
 lated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, 
 ' wherein Society works (uneasily enough) ; guarding itself from 
 some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Teufels- 
 schmiede) of a world ? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to 
 me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein con- 
 sists the usefulness of this Apron ? The Overseer (Episcopus) 
 of Souls, I notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's 
 work were done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c. 
 Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read 
 such stuff as we shall now quote ? 
 
 ' I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Pa- 
 ' risian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for Typo- 
 graphy ; therefore as an encouragement to modern Literature, 
 and deserving of approval : nor is it without satisfaction that 
 ' I hear of a celebrated London Firm having in view to in- 
 ' troduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in Eng- 
 land.' We who are on the spot hear of no such thing ; and 
 indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other 
 yents for our Literature, exuberant as it is. Teufelsdrockh 
 continues : ' If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far 
 ' as to choke-up the highways and public thoroughfares, new 
 ' means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world ex- 
 ' isting by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying 
 
30 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' element, and not as a Creating one. However, Heaven is om- 
 ' nipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it 
 ' not beautiful to see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually 
 ' from the Laystall ; and annually, after being macerated, hot- 
 1 pressed, printed-on, and sold, returned thither ; filling so many 
 1 hungry mouths by the way ? Thus is the Laystall, especially 
 1 with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, 
 ' and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the Social 
 1 Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) circulate, in 
 ' larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm- 
 ' tost Chaos of Life, which they keep alive !' Such passages 
 fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very 
 mixed feeling. 
 
 Farther down we meet with this : ' The Journalists are now 
 1 the true Kings and Clergy : henceforth Historians, unless they 
 ' are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors 
 ' and Hapsburgs ; but of Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and 
 1 quite new successive Names, according as this or the other 
 ' Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the world's 
 ' ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most im- 
 ' portant of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution 
 1 and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, 
 ' in that language, under the title of Satan's In-visible World 
 ' Displayed; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo 
 ' Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (vermochte 
 1 nicht aufzutreiben)' 
 
 Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus 
 does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little 
 business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder 
 with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Jour- 
 nalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder 
 in Modern Literature ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 
 
 HAPPIER is our Professor, and more purely scientific and 
 historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down 
 to the end of the Seventeenth Century ; the true era of extra- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 31 
 
 vagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student 
 of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beg- 
 garing all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, 
 like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in 
 brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath 
 of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, 
 precise, graphical, and everyway interesting have we found these 
 Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for 
 parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation 
 thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. 
 Merrick's valuable Work On Ancient Armour f Take, by way of 
 example, the following sketch ; as authority for which Paulinus's 
 Zeitkiirzendc Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, re- 
 ferred to : 
 
 ' Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fif- 
 ' teenth Century, we might smile ; as perhaps those bygone 
 ' Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, 
 ' would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But happily 
 ' no bygone German, or man, rises again ; thus the Present is 
 ' not needlessly trammelled with the Past ; and only grows out 
 ' of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its 
 1 branches, but lie peaceably underground. Nay it is very mourn- 
 ' ful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and 
 ' Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled-up 
 ' here, and no room for him ; the very Napoleon, the very Byron, 
 ' in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a 
 1 foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured ; 
 ' and in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, no 
 ' fashion will continue. 
 
 'Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, 
 1 complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other 
 ' riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Ro- 
 ' mance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign-post 
 ' character, I shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific 
 ' classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 
 
 ' Rich men, I find, have Teusinke' (a perhaps untranslate- 
 able article) ; ' also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells ; so 
 ' that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some 
 ' few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (Glockenspiel} 
 1 fastened there ; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the 
 
33 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too 
 1 how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. 
 1 The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang 
 ' bobbing over the side (schtef) : their shoes are peaked in front, 
 ' also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags ; 
 ' even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses : some also 
 ' clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority, 
 1 the men have breeches without seat (phne Gesdss) : these they 
 ' fasten peakwise to their shirts ; and the long round doublet 
 ' must overlap them. 
 
 ' Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out 
 ' behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. 
 ' Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four 01 
 ' five ells in length ; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave 
 ' Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid foi ' 
 ' steersman ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which 
 ' waver round them by way of hem ; the long flood of silver but- 
 ' tons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith 
 ' these same welt -gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound 
 1 silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent 
 ' flames (Flammeri), that is, sparkling hair-drops : but of their 
 ' mother's headgear who shall speak ? Neither in love of grace 
 ' is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole 
 ' fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts 
 ' wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient hand- 
 ' broad welts; all ending atop in a thick well -starched Ruff, 
 ' some twenty inches broad : these are their Ruff-mantles (Kra- 
 1 genmdntet). 
 
 ' As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not ; but 
 1 the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs 
 ' of cloth, pasted together with batter (mit Teig zusammen- 
 ' gekleisterf), which create protuberance enough. Thus do the 
 ' two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration ; and 
 ' as usual the stronger carries it.' 
 
 Our Professor, whether he have humour himself or not, 
 manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance 
 of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predi- 
 cated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those 
 bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes, or other the like 
 phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 33 
 
 escape him : more especially the mischances, or striking adven- 
 tures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due 
 fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in 
 the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little 
 enthusiasm in him ; he merely asks, Whether at that period the 
 Maiden Queen 'was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on 
 ' the cheeks, as her tirewomen, when from spleen and wrinkles 
 ' she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her ?' 
 We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, 
 and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in 
 verdigris, would have done the same. 
 
 Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were 
 not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the 
 broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran, our Pro- 
 fessor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who hav- 
 ing seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, 
 and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Ma- 
 jesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust : 
 and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes 
 dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Pro- 
 fessor publishes this reflection : 
 
 ' By what strange chances do we live in History ? Erostratus 
 ' by a torch ; Milo by a bullock ; Henry Darnley, an unfledged 
 ' booby and bustard, by his limbs ; most Kings and Queens by 
 ' being born under such and such a bed-tester ; Boileau Des- 
 ' pr^aux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and 
 ' this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches, for no 
 ' Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the 
 ' prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting : my Friends, 
 ' yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.' Has 
 Teufelsdrockh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the im- 
 possible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which 
 even travelling Englishmen manifest ? 
 
 'The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which I 
 ' anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, 
 ' by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square 
 ' Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some were wont 
 ' to cut-off the corners, and make it circular) : in the centre a 
 ' slit is effected eighteen inches long ; through this the mother- 
 naked Trooper introduces his head and neck ; and so rides 
 
 D 
 
34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes 
 ' (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and not only dressed, bu 
 
 harnessed and draperied.' 
 
 With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its 
 singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we 
 shall quit this part of our subject. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 
 
 IF in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, Teu- 
 felsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin and successive 
 Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much 
 more will he in the Speculative -Philosophical portion, which 
 treats of their Wirken, or Influences. It is here that the pre- 
 sent Editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly 
 the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes commences : an un- 
 tried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos ; in venturing upon 
 which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know 
 what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one ; where the 
 footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, 01 
 mere cloud, and may engulf us ! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no 
 less than to expound the moral, political, even religious Influ- 
 ences of Clothes ; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thou- 
 sandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly 
 interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, 
 ' by Clothes.' He says in so many words, ' Society is founded 
 ' upon Cloth ;' and again, ' Society sails through the Infinitude 
 ' on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of 
 ' clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream ; and with- 
 ' out such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or 
 ' mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no more.' 
 
 By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of 
 meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumer- 
 able practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps 
 a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method 
 is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, where the 
 truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; 
 
THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 35 
 
 but at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large In- 
 tuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms ; whereby, 
 we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, 
 reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature : a mighty 
 maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we com- 
 plained above, that a. certain ignoble complexity, what we must 
 call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have 
 to exclaim : Would to Heaven those same Biographical Docu- 
 ments were come ! For it seems as if the demonstration lay 
 much in the Author's individuality ; as if it were not Argument 
 that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only in 
 local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide- 
 enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully collated, 
 that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this 
 Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to 
 favour us with their most concentrated attention : let these, after 
 intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on 
 the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as 
 of Land ; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole 
 undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither? 
 As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation : 
 
 'With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdrockh, 
 ' there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when 
 ' in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable ques- 
 1 tion : Who am Ij the thing that can say " I" (das Wesen das 
 ' sich ICH nennf) ? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires 
 ' into the distance ; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone- 
 ' walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all 
 ' the living and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), 
 ' wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, the sight reaches 
 ' forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, 
 ' and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with 
 ' another. 
 
 ' Who am I ; what is this ME ? A Voice, a Motion, an Ap- 
 ' pearance ; some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal 
 ' Mind ? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us 
 ' but a little way. Sure enough, I am ; and lately was not : but 
 1 Whence ? How ? Whereto ? The answer lies around, written 
 1 in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and 
 1 wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature : 
 
3 6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-writ- 
 ' ten Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning ? We sit as in a 
 
 boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto ; boundless, for 
 ' the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the 
 ' verge thereof: sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our 
 ' sense ; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream 
 ' and Dreamer are, we see not ; except in rare half-waking mo- 
 ' ments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like a 
 ' glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hid- 
 1 den from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at 
 4 shadows as if they were substances ; and sleep deepest while 
 ' fancying ourselves most awake ! Which of your Philosophical 
 1 Systems is other than a dream-theorem ; a net quotient, con- 
 1 fidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both un- 
 ' known ? What are all your national Wars, with their Moscow 
 ' Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Som- 
 ' nambulism of uneasy Sleepers ? This Dreaming, this Somnam- 
 ' bulism is what we on Earth call Life ; wherein the most indeed 
 ' undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left ; 
 
 yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing. 
 
 ' Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpres- 
 ' sibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being is still like the 
 ' Sphinx's secret : a riddle that he cannot rede ; and for ignor- 
 ' ance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. 
 ' What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and 
 
 Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly 
 ' built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic- 
 1 mortar ; wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. 
 ' The whole is greater than the part : how exceedingly true ! 
 ' Nature abhors a -vacuum : how exceedingly false and calum- 
 ' nious ! Again, Nothing can act but where it is : with all my 
 ' heart ; only, WHERE is it ? Be not the slave of Words : is not 
 ' the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long for it, and 
 ' mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor 
 ' I stand on ? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, 
 ' are from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto ; say 
 ' rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all 
 ' our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. Nevertheless, has 
 ' not a deeper meditation taught certain of every climate and 
 
 age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so mysteriously inseparable 
 
THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 37 
 
 ' from all our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions 
 ' to thought ; that the Seer may discern them where they mount 
 ' up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER : have not 
 ' all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal ; 
 ' as existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting Now? Think 
 
 well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human 
 ' Sense, so likewise Time ; there is no Space and no Time : WE 
 ' are we know not what ; light-sparkles floating in the aether 
 ' 01 Deity ! 
 
 ' So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an 
 ' air-image, our ME the only reality : and Nature, with its thou- 
 ' sandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own 
 ' inward Force, the "phantasy of our Dream ;" or what the Earth- 
 ' Spirit in Faust names it, the living visible Garment of God: 
 
 ' " In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
 I walk and work, above, beneath, 
 Work and weave in endless motion I 
 
 Birth and Death, 
 
 An infinite ocean ; 
 
 A seizing and giving 
 
 The fire of Living : 
 
 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
 And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 
 
 Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder- 
 ' speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty units of us that 
 ' have learned the meaning thereof ? 
 
 ' It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with 
 ' these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of 
 ' Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of 
 4 there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his 
 1 own whole fell : strip him of the girths and flaps and extrane- 
 ' ous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is 
 1 his own sempster and weaver and spinner ; nay his own boot- 
 ' maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the 
 ' valleys, with a perennial rainproof court-suit on his body ; 
 ' wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection ; 
 ' nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, 
 ' with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the 
 ' right place, are not wanting. While I good Heaven ! have 
 ' thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark 
 
38 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals 
 
 the felt of furred beasts ; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, 
 ' overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel- 
 ' house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me 
 ' more slowly ! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew ; day 
 ' after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its 
 ' thickness ; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must 
 
 be brushed-off into the Ashpit, into the Laystall ; till by de- 
 ' grees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust- 
 ' making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind down. 
 ' O subter-brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have not I too a com- 
 1 pact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier ? Am I a botched 
 ' mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; or a tightly-art ku- 
 ' lated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive ? 
 
 ' Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their 
 
 eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and 
 1 Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. 
 ' But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard ; 
 ' much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. 
 1 Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver; 
 ' mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose ; thus let 
 ' but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen 
 ' twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or not- 
 4 iceable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your 
 ' ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-man- 
 
 tied Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and 
 
 his Self are not one and indivisible ; that he is naked, without 
 1 vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and 
 1 button them. 
 
 For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, 
 ' and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, ittailor- 
 ' ises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself 
 1 and mankind ; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, 
 4 during the wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets 
 1 and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. 
 ' Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a 
 1 man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages ; and sees 
 ' indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, "a forked strad- 
 1 dling animal with bandy legs ;" yet also a Spirit, and unutter- 
 ' able Mystery of Mysteries.' 
 
ADAMITISM. 39 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ADAMITISM. 
 
 LET no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached 
 in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first 
 glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim : 
 What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to 
 Clothes in the abstract? Anew Adamite, in this century, which 
 flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both to 
 Superstition and Enthusiasm ? 
 
 Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeak- 
 able all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when 
 thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer 
 in this Planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms ; 
 sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blank- 
 est manner, what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and 
 bibs, and other nameless hulls ? A terror to thyself and man- 
 kind ! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receiyedst 
 breeches, and thy long clothes became short ? The village where 
 thou livedst was all apprised of the fact ; and neighbour after 
 neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, 
 silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy exist- 
 ence. Again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or 
 Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever 
 name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distin- 
 guished ? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. 
 Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy 
 clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always 
 worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall ; never 
 rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round 
 thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying 
 all variations of Climate ? Girt with thick double-milled ker- 
 seys ; half-buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls 
 and mud-boots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, 
 thou hast bestrode that ' Horse I ride ;' and, though it were in 
 wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou 
 wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples ; it 
 lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. 
 
40 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 In vain did the winds howl, forests sounding and creaking, 
 deep calling unto deep, and the storms heap themselves toge- 
 ther into one huge Arctic whirlpool : thou flewest through the 
 middle thereof, striking fire from the highway ; wild music 
 hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a ' sailor of the air ;' the 
 wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and 
 propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without bit or sad- 
 dle, what hadst thou been ; what had thy fleet quadruped been ? 
 Nature is good, but she is not the best : here truly was the 
 victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might have 
 pierced thee ; all short of this thou couldst defy. 
 
 Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh for- 
 gotten what he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 
 'condition miserable indeed' ? Would he have all this unsaid ; 
 and us betake ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go 
 sheeted in a ' thick natural fell' ? 
 
 Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows full well 
 what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him 
 wrong. If Clothes, in these .times, ' so tailorise and demoralise 
 us,' have they no redeeming value ; can they not be altered to 
 serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The 
 truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite ; 
 and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this 
 degenerate age ' as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do it, as 
 those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of 
 Clothes is altogether apparent to him : nay perhaps he has an 
 insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, 
 what we might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as 
 was never before vouchsafed to any man. For example : 
 
 ' You see two individuals,' he writes, ' one dressed in fine 
 ' Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue : Red says to Blue, 
 ' " Be hanged and anatomised ;" Blue hears with a shudder, 
 
 and (O wonder of wonders !) marches sorrowfully to the gal- 
 
 lows ; is there noosed-up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons 
 ' dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical pur- 
 ' poses. How is this ; or what make ye of your Nothing can 
 ' act but where it is f Red has no physical hold of Blue, no 
 1 clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him: neither are those 
 c ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and 
 ' Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, that he can tug them 
 
ADAMITISM. 41 
 
 ' hither and thither ; but each stands distinct within his own 
 ' skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done: the articu- 
 ' lated Word sets all hands in Action ; and Rope and Improved- 
 ' drop perform their work. 
 
 ' Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold : First, 
 ' that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All 
 ' Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible 
 ' emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual 
 ' a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown ; whereby all 
 ' mortals know that he is a JUDGE ? Society, which the more I 
 ' think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. 
 
 ' Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous 
 ' ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, 
 ' Levees, Couchees ; and how the ushers and macers and pur- 
 ' suivants are all in waiting ; how Duke this is presented by 
 ' Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumerable 
 ' Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are ad- 
 ' vancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence ; and I strive, in 
 ' my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, 
 1 on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the shall I 
 1 speak it ? the Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps ; and 
 ' Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, 
 ' every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt 
 ' on them ; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This 
 1 physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not sin- 
 ' gular, I have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the 
 ' solace of those afflicted with the like.' 
 
 Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep 
 it secret ! Who is there now that can read the five columns of 
 Presentations in his Morning Newspaper without a shudder ? 
 Hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain extent hypo- 
 chondriac, should be more gently treated. With what readiness 
 our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the 
 consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes 
 on to draw : 
 
 ' What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in 
 ' reality ; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the 
 ' solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream ? Ach 
 ' Gott ! How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place ; their 
 ' high State Tragedy (Haupt- und Stoats -Action] becomes a 
 
42 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Pickleherring- Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of 
 1 Farce ; the tables (according to Horace), and with them, the 
 ' whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and 
 ' Civilised Society, are dissolved, in wails and howls.' 
 
 Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw 
 addressing a naked House of Lords ? Imagination, choked a? 
 in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the 
 picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches 
 infandum ! infandum / And yet why is the thing impossible ? 
 Was not every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians of 
 our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night ; ' a forked Radish 
 with a head fantastically carved' ? And why might he not, did 
 our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into 
 bed, in that no-fashion ; and there, with other similar Radishes, 
 hold a Bed of Justice ? ' Solace of those afflicted with the like!' 
 Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a ' physical or 
 psychical infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, may 
 thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the sounder 
 British world, and goaded-on by Critical and Biographical duty, 
 grudge to reimpart) incurably infect therewith ! Art thou the 
 malignest of Sansculottists, or only the maddest ? 
 
 ' It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable Teu- 
 felsdrockh, ' in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, 
 ' is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English trial by 
 ' jury: nay perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he 
 ' too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign armed with the 
 ' terrors of the Law ?), to a certain royal Immunity and Invio- 
 ' lability ; which, however, misers and the meaner class of per- 
 ' sons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * 
 * * ' O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) 
 ' but as " turkeys driven, with a stick and led clout, to the 
 ' market :" or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take a 
 ' dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the 
 4 boldest !' 
 
PURE REASON. 43 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PURE REASON. 
 
 IT must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above 
 hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge ; 
 acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and parapher- 
 nalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of, nothing but 
 so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and ' bladders with dried 
 peas.' To linger among such speculations, longer than mere 
 Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For 
 our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World vs. possible, 
 nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. 
 Much, therefore, we omit about ' Kings wrestling naked on the 
 ' green with Carmen,' and the Kings being thrown : ' dissect them 
 ' with scalpels,' says Teufelsdrockh ; 'the same viscera, tissues, 
 ' livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are there : examine their 
 1 spiritual mechanism ; the same great Need, great Greed, and 
 1 little Faculty ; nay ten to one but the Carman, who under- 
 ' stands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the 
 ' laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of 
 ' wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated 
 ' on Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whenc^ 
 ' then, their so unspeakable difference? From Clothes.' Much 
 also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My 
 Lady, and how it would be everywhere ' Hail fellow well met,' 
 and Chaos were come again : all which to any one that has 
 once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, Society in a state 
 of Nakedness, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some 
 sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world 
 without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, 
 could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there 
 the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour 
 and pestilential : over which we have lightly flown ; where not 
 only whole armies but whole nations might sink I If indeed the 
 following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of it- 
 self incontrovertible and final : 
 
 1 Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like the Kan- 
 ' garoo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess the master- 
 
44 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the Body Social . 
 ' I mean, a PURSE ?' 
 
 Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufels- 
 drockh ; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love 
 him. For though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, 
 with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the ob- 
 verse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse ; and indeed turns 
 out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that un- 
 sightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indif- 
 ference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most 
 readers, there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes 
 him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand 
 unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this 
 Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less 
 superlative ; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below 
 most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the 
 other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an 
 equality with the Gods. 
 
 'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is xnan? An 
 ' omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure 
 ' Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. 
 ' Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, 
 ' a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom 
 ' of Heaven ; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells 
 - with them in UNION and DIVISION ; and sees and fashions for 
 ' himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thou- 
 ' sands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Gar- 
 ' ment ; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, 
 ' swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is sky- 
 ' woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the 
 1 centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; 
 1 power has been given him to know, to believe ; nay does 
 ' not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval bright- 
 ' ness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well 
 ' said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true SHE- 
 1 KINAH is Man :" where else is the GOD'S-PRESENCE mani- 
 ' fested not to our eyes only, but to cur hearts, as in our 
 ' fellow-man ?' 
 
 In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic 
 Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental 
 
PURE REASON. 45 
 
 element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood : and, 
 through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, 
 so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into 
 a whole inward Sea of Light and Love ; though, alas, the 
 grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from 
 view. 
 
 Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this 
 man ; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long 
 ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a com- 
 mon meaning, but has two meanings : thus, if in the highest 
 Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne- Mantle, as well as in the 
 poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, 
 Contemptibility ; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a re- 
 verend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is 
 Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit : were it never so honourable, 
 can it be more ? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, 
 the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a 
 Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, 'un- 
 imaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright ' ? Under which 
 point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so 
 strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough : 
 
 The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, 
 1 or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent. 
 ' " The Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station 
 ' himself in the middle :" how true ! The Philosopher is he to 
 1 whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest has mounted 
 ' up ; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. 
 
 ' Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether 
 ' woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that 
 ' weave unrestingly in our imagination ? Or, on the other 
 ' hand, what is there that we cannot love ; since all was created 
 by God ? 
 
 ' Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the 
 ' woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper 
 ' Clothes) into the Man himself ; and discern, it may be, in this 
 ' or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Di- 
 ' gestive-apparatus ; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, 
 ' in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes !' 
 
 For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals 
 much in the feeling of Wonder ; insists on the necessity and 
 
46 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 high worth of universal Wonder ; which he holds to be the only 
 reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet as 
 ours. 'Wonder,' says he, 'is the basis of Worship : the reign 
 ' of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man ; only at certain 
 ' stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign in 
 ' partibus infidelium.' That progress of Science, which is to 
 destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and 
 Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdrockh, much as he 
 otherwise venerates these two latter processes. 
 
 'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small 
 ' chink -lighted, or even oil -lighted, underground workshop of 
 Logic alone ; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, 
 whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and 
 Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call Poli- 
 tical Economy, are the Meal ? And what is that Science, which 
 ' the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the 
 ' Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, 
 ' could prosecute without shadow of a heart, but one other of 
 ' the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scien- 
 ' tific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ ? I 
 ' mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poi- 
 1 sonous ; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it 
 ' forth ; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and 
 ' wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase 
 ' to all Time.' 
 
 In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, 
 according to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain persuade our- 
 selves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of ' Logic- 
 ' choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to 
 ' Wonder ; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night- 
 ' constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and 
 ' cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their 
 ' Capitol, on any alarm, or on none ; nay who often, as illumi- 
 ' nated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day- 
 ' light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and 
 ' guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the 
 1 street populous with mere justice-loving men :' that whole class 
 is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon 
 animation he perorates : 
 
 ' The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually 
 
PROSPECTIVE 47 
 
 ' wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal 
 1 Societies, and carried the whole Mtcanique Celeste and ffe- 
 ' gels Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Ob- 
 ' servatories with their results, in his single head, is but a Pair 
 of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who 
 ' have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. 
 
 4 Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk 
 ' through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, 
 ' or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic ; and 
 ' " explain" all, " account" for all, or believe nothing of it ? Nay, 
 ' thou wilt attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathom- 
 ' able, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere 
 ' under our feet and among our hands ; to whom the Universe 
 1 is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle- 
 ' stall, he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him thou, with sniff- 
 ' ing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, 
 ' as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it ? Armer 
 1 Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? 
 ' Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die ? " Ex- 
 1 plain" me all this, or do one of two things : Retire into private 
 ' places with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, give it 
 ' up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's 
 ' world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto 
 ' art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.' 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 
 
 THE Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we pre- 
 dicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expan- 
 sions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without 
 azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian 
 brightness ; the highly questionable purport and promise of 
 which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascer- 
 tain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid way- 
 farer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth lead- 
 ing us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning 
 marl of a Hell-on-Earth ? 
 
48 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or in- 
 spired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier 
 are the heights he leads us to ; more piercing, all-comprehend- 
 ing, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, 
 this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole : 
 
 'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist : " If I take the wings of 
 ' the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, 
 ' God is there." Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too 
 ' probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing GOD only 
 4 by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at 
 ' least FORCE is not ? The drop which thou shakest from thy 
 1 wet hand, rests not where it falls, but tomorrow thou findest 
 ' it swept away ; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is 
 ' nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and 
 4 not lie motionless ? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless ; 
 
 without Force, and utterly dead ? 
 
 ' As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That 
 ' little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing (tiach- 
 ' tende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and 
 ' thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, is it a detached, 
 ' separated speck, cut-off from the whole Universe ; or indis- 
 ' solubly joined to the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was 
 ' (primarily) kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that circulates 
 ' from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, 
 ' with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force 
 ' of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force 
 ' brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the 
 4 great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an un- 
 4 conscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All ; whose iron 
 ' sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through 
 ' the All ; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and 
 ' sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth 
 4 (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Free- 
 ' dom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to 
 ' be all-commanding. 
 
 4 Detached, separated 1 I say there is no such separation : 
 ' nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; but all, were it 
 4 only a withered leaf, works together with all ; is borne forward 
 4 on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through 
 
 perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and 
 
PROSPECTIVE. 49 
 
 ' lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in 
 ' inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from 
 ' which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the earth 
 ' makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant ; 
 ' all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye 
 ' looks into Infinitude itself.' 
 
 Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy -Altar, 
 what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will 
 they sail with us ? 
 
 ' All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest is not there 
 ' on its own account ; strictly taken, is not there at all : Matter 
 ' exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body 
 ' it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are 
 ' so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle 
 ' downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold 
 ' cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblem- 
 ' atic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven : 
 ' must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, 
 ' wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our 
 ' Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful ; 
 1 the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by 
 1 wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye ? 
 
 ' Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed 
 ' with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, 
 1 what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Em- 
 ' blem ; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, 
 ' cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is 
 ' he said also to be clothed with a Body. 
 
 ' Language is called the Garment of Thought : however, it 
 ' should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, 
 ' of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment ; 
 ' and does not she ? Metaphors are her stuff : examine Lan- 
 ' guage ; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of 
 ' natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as 
 ' such, or no longer recognised ; still fluid and florid, or now 
 ' solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements 
 ' are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, then 
 ' are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. 
 ' An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for : is not your 
 5 very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here : some 
 
 E 
 
50 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; 
 ' some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking ; 
 ' while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous 
 ' self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an 
 ' apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, 
 ' which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), 
 ' and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called 
 1 its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (Putz-Mantet), and 
 ' tawdry woollen rags : whereof he that runs and reads may ga- 
 1 ther whole hampers, and burn them.' 
 
 Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever 
 chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that 
 is not our chief grievance ; the Professor continues : 
 
 ' Why multiply instances ? It is written, the Heavens and 
 1 the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which indeed they 
 ' are : the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly 
 ' exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a 
 ' Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid 
 ' off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly un- 
 ' derstood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, 
 1 and been : the whole External Universe and what it holds is 
 ' but Clothing ; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHI- 
 ' LOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.' 
 
 Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-border- 
 ing on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and 
 perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and 
 struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before 
 him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke ; which day- 
 star, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into 
 a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk 
 of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographi- 
 cal Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish 
 Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercan- 
 tile world, he must not mention ; but whose honourable courtesy, 
 now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere 
 literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, the bulky Weissnicht- 
 wo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, 
 and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect 
 safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what 
 hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation 
 
PROSPECTIVE. 51 
 
 glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, 
 since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. 
 
 Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of 
 compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, 
 and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what 
 we knew well already : that however it may be with Metaphysics, 
 and other abstract Science originating in the Head ( Verstand} 
 a'.one, no Life-Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as this of 
 Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Charac- 
 ter (GemiitK), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its signifi- 
 cance till the Character itself is known and seen ; ' till the Au- 
 1 thor's View of the World ( Weltansichf), and how he actively 
 ' and passively came by such view, are clear : in short till a Bi- 
 ' ography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and 
 ' philosophico-poetically read.' 'Nay,' adds he, 'were the spe- 
 ' culative scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring 
 ' age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How? and 
 ' rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped-out an 
 ' answer ; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the 
 ' forged ones of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical His- 
 ' tory of the Man and his spiritual Endeavour lies before you. 
 ' But why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, 'do I dilate on 
 ' the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr 
 ' Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that " Man 
 ' is properly the only object that interests man :" thus I too have 
 ' noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or 
 ' nothing else but Biography or Auto-Biography ; ever humano- 
 ' anecdotical (menschlick-anekdotiscK). Biography is by nature 
 ' the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things : 
 ' especially Biography of distinguished individuals. 
 
 ' By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed),' con- 
 tinues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be pur- 
 loined from Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, 
 is well-nigh unaccountable, ' by this time you are fairly plunged 
 ' (vertieff) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; and look- 
 ' ing round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such 
 ' portions and passages as you have already mastered, and 
 ' Drought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity 
 ' touching the mind they issued from ; the perhaps unparalleled 
 ' psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and 
 
52 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father 
 ' and mother ; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on 
 ' spoon-meat ? Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's 
 ' bosom to his ; looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle 
 1 of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give 
 ' inarticulate answer ? Has he fought duels ; good Heaven ! 
 ' how did he comport himself when in Love ? By what singular 
 ' stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs 
 ' of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this won- 
 ' derful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he 
 ' now dwells ? 
 
 To all these natural questions the voice of public History 
 ' is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pil- 
 ' grim, and Traveller from a far Country; more or less footsore 
 ' and travel-soiled ; has parted with road- companions ; fallen 
 ' among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with 
 ' bugbites ; nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him 
 ' pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particu- 
 ' lars of his Route, his Weather -observations, the picturesque 
 ' Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible 
 ' sympathetic -ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these 
 ' nowhere forthcoming ? Perhaps quite lost : one other leaf of 
 ' that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, un- 
 ' printed, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper ; and to rot, 
 ' the sport of rainy winds ? 
 
 ' No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise ! I here, 
 ' by the unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send 
 ' not a Biography only, but an Autobiography : at least the ma- 
 ' terials for such ; wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspi- 
 ' cacity will draw fullest insight : and so the whole Philosophy 
 ' and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the wondering 
 ' eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hin- 
 ' dostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (ein- 
 ' nehmeri) great part of this terrestrial Planet !' 
 
 And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling 
 when, in place of this same Autobiography with ' fullest insight, ' 
 ,we find Six considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and 
 marked successively, in gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the 
 Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra ; in the inside 
 of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and 
 
PROSPECTIVE. 53 
 
 oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's 
 scarce legible cursiv-schriftj and treating of all imaginable things 
 under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history 
 only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner. 
 
 Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he 
 here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, ' the Wanderer," 
 is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a 
 Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, ' Detached Thoughts on 
 the Steam-engine,' or, ' The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' 
 we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Bio- 
 graphical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or 
 not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anec- 
 dotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on sepa- 
 rate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely 
 Autobiographical delineations ; yet without connexion, without 
 recognisable coherence ; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, 
 they almost remind us of ' P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does 
 famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, 
 appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same 
 imbroglio ; only perhaps in the Bag Capricorn, and those near 
 it, the confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather 
 eloquent Oration, 'On receiving the Doctor's -Hat,' lie wash- 
 bills, marked bezahlt (settled). His Travels are indicated by 
 the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has visited ; 
 of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is 
 perhaps the completest collection extant. 
 
 So that if the Clothes- Volume itself was too like a Chaos, 
 we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, 
 the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilise and 
 discompose it ! As we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately 
 to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther 
 description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Bio- 
 graphy or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly 
 enough, none to be gleaned here : at most some sketchy, sha- 
 dowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly 
 of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of 
 Reader, rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Ap- 
 pendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the 
 Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated 
 with our delineation ot it. 
 
54 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) 
 deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed 
 cursiv-schrift ; collating them with the almost equally unimagin- 
 able Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a uni- 
 versal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is 
 he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is Method) 
 to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps 
 since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stu- 
 pendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or 
 Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. For in 
 this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards 
 than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up 
 from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here 
 one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the ele- 
 ments boil beneath : nor is there any supernatural force to do 
 it with ; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty 
 of an English Editor, endeavouring to evolve printed Creation 
 out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots 
 to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the 
 far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be 
 swallowed up. 
 
 Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does 
 the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health 
 declining ; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly 
 leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous -system to be 
 looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do 
 some work therewith ? And what work nobler than transplant- 
 ing foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil ; except indeed 
 planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged 
 to do ? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever 
 reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the 
 first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, 
 in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving ? 
 Forward with us, courageous reader ; be it towards failure, or 
 towards success ! The latter thou sharest with us ; the former 
 ilso is not all our own. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 IN a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable 
 whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, 
 much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every pheno- 
 menon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment ; 
 so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our sci- 
 entific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appear- 
 ance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, 
 are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis 
 of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter conse- 
 crated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure ex- 
 traction ; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any : so 
 that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus 
 (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility) ; whereof the pre- 
 liminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. 
 
 ' In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag 
 Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, ' dwelt 
 ' Andreas Futteral and his wife ; childless, in still seclusion, and 
 ' cheerful though now verging towards old age. Andreas had 
 ' been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster 
 under Frederick the Great ; but now, quitting the halbert and 
 ' ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orch- 
 ' ard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not 
 ' without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with 
 1 other varieties came in their season ; all which Andreas knew 
 1 how to sell : on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as be- 
 ( seemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours 
 
$6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach ; and how 
 Fritz the Only (der Einzige) had once with his own royal lips 
 spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp- 
 sentinel demanded the pass-word, " Schweig Hund (Peace, 
 hound) !" before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. " Das 
 ' nenn' ich mir einen Kbnig, There is what I call a King," would 
 ' Andreas exclaim : " but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still 
 ' smarting his eyes." 
 
 ' Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds 
 ' rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in 
 ' altogether military subordination ; for, as Andreas said, " th( 
 ' womankind will not drill (wer kann die Weiberchen dressireri) : 
 1 nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valour and wis- 
 ' dom ; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's 
 ' Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid : what 
 ' you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was 
 ' not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downright- 
 ' ness (Geradheif) \ that understood Biisching's Geography, had 
 1 been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the 
 ' camisade of Hochkirch ? The good Gretchen, for all her fret- 
 ' ting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true 
 ' housemother can : assiduously she cooked and sewed and 
 ' scoured for him ; so that not only his old regimental sword 
 ' and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, 
 ' where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and gay : 
 1 a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest- 
 trees, evergreens and honeysuckles ; rising many-coloured from 
 ' amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling-in through the very 
 ' windows ; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden- 
 ' tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats 
 ' where, especially on summer nights, a King might have wished 
 1 to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut (Copy- 
 1 hold) had Gretchen given her veteran ; whose sinewy arms, 
 ' and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. 
 ' Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening 
 ' or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Ente- 
 ' pfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the 
 ' celestial Balance (Libra), it was that a Stranger of reverend 
 ' aspect entered ; and, with grave salutation, stood before the 
 ' two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a 
 
GENESIS. 57 
 
 ' wide mantle ; which without farther parley unfolding, he de- 
 ' posited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with 
 ' green Persian silk ; saying only : Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe 
 ' ein unschdlzbares Verleihen; nehmtes in aller Acht, sorgfdltigst 
 ' beniitzt es : mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, 
 ' ivird's einst zuriickgef order t. " Good Christian people, here 
 ' lies for you an invaluable Loan ; take all heed thereof, in all 
 ' carefulness employ it : with high recompense, or else with heavy 
 ' penalty, will it one day be required back." Uttering which 
 ' singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, 
 ' the Stranger gracefully withdrew ; and before Andreas or his 
 ' wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either 
 ' question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors 
 ' could aught of him be seen or heard ; he had vanished in the 
 ' thickets, in the dusk ; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed : 
 ' the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the 
 ' whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, 
 ' so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all 
 ' a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. 
 ' Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination 
 ' nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and 
 ' tangible on their little parlour-table. Towards this the aston- 
 ' ished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. 
 1 Lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they de- 
 ' scried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Dia- 
 ' mond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little 
 ' red-coloured Infant ! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, 
 ' the exact amount of which was never publicly known ; also a 
 1 Taufschein (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately no- 
 4 thing but the Name was decipherable ; other document or in- 
 ' dication none whatever. 
 
 ' To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always 
 ' thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next 
 ' day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the Stranger ; 
 ' nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbour- 
 ' ing Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this Apparition, 
 ' except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for An- 
 dreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was : What to 
 ' do with this little sleeping red-coloured Infant ? Amid amaze- 
 ' ments and curiosities, which hid to die away without external 
 
58 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable 
 ' prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon- 
 ' meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The 
 ' Heavens smiled on their endeavour: thus has that same mys- 
 ' terious Individual ever since had a status for himself in thif 
 ' visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and 
 ' parade-ground ; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and know- 
 ' ledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELS- 
 ' DROCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not alto- 
 ' gether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, 
 ' the new Science of Things in General.' 
 
 Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think 
 he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good 
 Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, ' produced on the boyish 
 heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. Who this re- 
 ' verend Personage,' he says, 'that glided into the Orchard Cot- 
 ' tage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's 
 ' wings, glided out again, might be ? An inexpressible desire, 
 ' full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within 
 ' me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my lone- 
 ' liness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (sehnsuchtsvolt), to 
 ' that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, 
 ' either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal 
 ' bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved 
 ' Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin pene- 
 ' trable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the 
 ' crowd of the living ? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker 
 ' curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting 
 ' Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms 
 ' need not strive to reach ? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex 
 ' myself to know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken 
 ' for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger ; and ap- 
 ' proached him wistfully, with infinite regard ; but he too had 
 ' to repel me, he too was not thou. 
 
 'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, 
 with one of his sudden whirls, ' wherein is my case peculiar ? 
 ' Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father whom thou knowest ? 
 ' The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led 
 ' thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, 
 ' whom thou namest Father and Mother ; these were, like mine. 
 
GENESIS. 59 
 
 ' but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother : thy true Begin- 
 ' ning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou 
 ' shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual." 
 
 The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moral- 
 ising, and embroiled discoursing, ' I yet keep ; still more in- 
 ' separably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil 
 ' can nothing be inferred : a piece of now quite faded Persian 
 1 silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have many 
 1 times meditated and conjectured ; but neither in this lay there 
 ' any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must 
 ' hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through 
 all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, 
 ' and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (Pritnumeranteri), 
 ' Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues ; extraordinary names 
 ' as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as 
 ' appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what 
 ' may the unchristian rather than Christian " Diogenes" mean ? 
 ' Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, 
 ' to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign 
 ' humour ? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred 
 ' Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred off- 
 4 spring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influ- 
 ' ences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one ? 
 ' Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been ; or indeed by 
 ' the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I 
 ' fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and 
 ' slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and 
 ' bedevilled by the Time-Spirit (Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, 
 ' till the good soul first given thee was seared into grim rage ; 
 ' and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant 
 ' appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the 
 ' Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time 
 ' itself, is well named ! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now 
 ' modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 
 
 ' For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, 
 ' nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment 
 ' you wrap round the earth-visiting ME ; to which it thenceforth 
 ' cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted 
 ' nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now from with- 
 ' out. what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to 
 
60 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' the centre ; especially in those plastic first -times, when the 
 ' whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain 
 ' will grow to be an all overshadowing tree ! Names ? Could 
 ' I unfold the influence ot Names, which are the most important 
 ' of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not 
 ' only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, 
 ' if thou consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task 
 ' was giving names to natural Appearances : what is ours still 
 ' but a continuation of the same ; be the Appearances exotic- 
 ' vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as 
 ' in Science) ; or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, 
 ' God-attributes, Gods? In a very plain sense the Proverb 
 
 says, Call one a thief, and he will steal; in an almost similar 
 ' sense may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes Teufels- 
 1 drb'ckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes T 
 
 1 Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant 
 ' of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to 
 ' the kind Light ; sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes ; listen- 
 ' ing, tasting, feeling ; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still 
 ' more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of 
 ' inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to 
 ' acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe 
 1 where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. In- 
 ' finite was his progress ; thus in some fifteen months, he could 
 ' perform the miracle of Speech ! To breed a fresh Soul, is 
 it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg ; wherein as yet all 
 ' is formless, powerless ; yet by degrees organic elements and 
 ' fibres shoot through the watery albumen ; and out of vague 
 ' Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we 
 1 have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions ! 
 
 Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such 
 diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled 
 ' forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. 
 ' The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll 
 ' of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out that he was a grand-nephew ; 
 ' the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in 
 
 Andreas's distant Prussian birthland ; of whom, as of her in- 
 digent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Ente- 
 1 pfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his spoon- 
 
IDYLLIC. 61 
 
 1 meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, 
 ' that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom 
 ' or never cried. He already felt that time was precious ; that 
 ' he had other work cut-out for him than whimpering.' 
 
 Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these 
 miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of 
 Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enig- 
 matic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in 
 whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, 
 and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands 
 pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him : but seems it not 
 conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other 
 perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived ? Should 
 these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circu- 
 lating Library, some cultivated native of that district might feel 
 called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible 
 scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo it- 
 self is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find 
 out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state 
 of extreme senility perhaps still exists ; and gently force even 
 him to disclose himself ; to claim openly a son, in whom any 
 father may feel pride ? 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IDYLLIC. 
 
 ' HAPPY season of Childhood !' exclaims Teufelsdrockh : 
 ' Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother ; that visitest 
 ' the poor man's hut with auroral radiance ; and for thy Nurse- 
 ' ling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, 
 ' wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round (umgaukelf) 
 ' by sweetest Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, 
 ' its roof still screens us ; with a Father we have as yet a pro- 
 ' phet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. 
 1 The young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows 
 ' not what we mean by Time ; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying 
 ' stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean ; years to the child are as 
 1 ages : ah 1 the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker 
 
62 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' decay and ceaseless down - rushing of the universal World- 
 ' fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is 
 ' yet unknown ; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what 
 ' afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is forever denied 
 ' us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long 
 ' rough journey is at hand ! A little while, and thou too shalt 
 * sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles ; 
 ' thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 
 ' "Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?" 
 ' Celestial Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and 
 ' an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not ; and thou hast 
 1 once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the 
 ' heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking 
 ' are one : the fair Life - garden rustles infinite around, and 
 ' everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope ; 
 ' which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, 
 ' will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded 
 ' stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.' 
 
 In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are 
 wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which 
 (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he ac- 
 cordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We 
 hear of Entepfuhl standing ' in trustful derangement' among the 
 woody slopes ; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out- 
 post from below ; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among 
 beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the 
 Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe ; and how ' the 
 brave old Linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in 
 radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered-up from 
 the central Agora and Campus Martius of the Village, like its 
 Sacred Tree ; and how the old men sat talking under its sha- 
 dow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied labour- 
 ers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young 
 men and maidens often danced to flute-music. ' Glorious sum- 
 ' mer twilights,' cries Teufelsdrockh, 'when the Sun, like a proud 
 ' Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his 
 ' gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard (of 
 ' Prismatic Colours) ; and the tired brickmakers of this clay 
 ' Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars 
 1 would not tell of them !' 
 
IDYLLIC. 63 
 
 Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), the 
 Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth ; with a whole cycle of 
 the Entepfuhl Children's -games, differing apparently by mere 
 superficial shades from those of other countries. Concerning all 
 which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What 
 cares the world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achieve- 
 ments under that ' brave old Linden' ? Or even where is the 
 use of such practical reflections as the following ? ' In all the 
 ' sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages and 
 ' defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct (schaffenden 
 ' Tried) : the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that his voca- 
 ' tion is to work. The choicest present you can make him is a 
 ' Tool ; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for destruc- 
 ' tion ; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious 
 ' sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Coopera- 
 ' tion, for war or peace, as governor or governed : the little Maid 
 ' again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference 
 ' to Dolls.' 
 
 Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering 
 who it is that relates it : ' My first short-clothes were of yellow 
 ' serge ; or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for the ves- 
 1 ture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a 
 ' mere body with four limbs : of which fashion how little could 
 1 I then divine the architectural, how much less the moral sig- 
 ' nificance !' 
 
 More graceful is the following little picture : ' On fine even- 
 ' ings I was wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled 
 ' in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard- 
 ' wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more easily if 
 ' Father Andreas would set-up the pruning-ladder, my porringer 
 ' was placed : there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the dis- 
 ' tant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my even- 
 ' ing meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's 
 ' expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me ; 
 ' nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and 
 1 had an eye for their gilding." 
 
 With ' the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry' we 
 shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired 
 a ' certain deeper sympathy with animated Nature :' but when, 
 we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of Biographical 
 
64 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 Documents, such a piece as this : ' Impressive enough (bedeut- 
 ' ungsvolf) was it to hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's 
 ' horn ; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, 
 ' on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on 
 ' the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching-in again, 
 ' with short squeak, almost in military order ; and each, topo- 
 r graphically correct, trotting-off in succession to the right or left, 
 ' through its own lane, to its own dwelling ; till old Kunz, at the 
 ' Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired 
 for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the 
 form of Ham ; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings 
 here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of character ; at 
 1 any rate, a touching, trustful submissiveness to Man, who, 
 ' were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather 
 ' breeches more resembling slate or discoloured-tin breeches, is 
 ' still the Hierarch of this lower world ?' 
 
 It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of 
 genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain 
 surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life, 
 especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie 
 closefolded and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the 
 whole difference between an inspired Prophet and a double-bar- 
 relled Game-preserver : the inner man of the one has been fos- 
 tered into generous development; that of the other, crushed-down 
 perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded 
 and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at 
 the bottom of his stomach. With which opinion,' cries Teufels- 
 drockh, ' I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn 
 ' might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and 
 ' climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into 
 1 an oak. 
 
 ' Nevertheless,' continues he, 'I too acknowledge the ail-but 
 ' omnipotence of early culture and nurture : hereby we have eithei 
 ' a doddered dwarf bush, or a high -towering, wide-shadowing 
 ' tree ; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green 
 ' one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all 
 ' philosophers, to note -down with accuracy the characteristic 
 ' circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what hin- 
 ' dered, what in any way modified it : to which duty, nowadays 
 ' so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also zeal- 
 
IDYLLIC. 65 
 
 ' ously address myself.' Thou rogue ! Is it by short-clothes 
 of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is 
 educated ? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether 
 he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of 
 ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. 
 For he continues : ' If among the ever -streaming currents of 
 ' Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as 
 ' in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I 
 ' might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following 
 ' were also of the number : 
 
 ' Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, 
 1 so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a His- 
 ' torical tendency given him by the narrative habits of Father 
 ' Andreas ; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gray austere 
 k yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another 
 ' Ulysses and " much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung upon his 
 ' tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth ; from 
 ' these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades 
 ' itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me. 
 ' Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing 
 ' by the Old Men under the Linden-tree : the whole of Immensity 
 ' was yet new to me ; and had not these reverend seniors, talk- 
 ' ative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for 
 ' nigh fourscore years ? With amazement I began to discover 
 ' that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World ; 
 ' that there was such a thing as History, as Biography ; to 
 1 which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. 
 
 1 In a like sense worked the Postwagen (Stage-coach), which, 
 ' slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended 
 ' through our Village : northwards, truly, in the dead of night ; 
 ' yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year 
 ' did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other than some 
 ' terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, 
 ' like the heavenly one ; that it came on made highways, from 
 ' far cities towards far cities ; weaving them like a monstrous 
 4 shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, inde- 
 ' pendently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, I made this not quite 
 ' insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things) : Any 
 ' road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end oj 
 1 the World! 
 
 F 
 
66 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as 
 ' I learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, cor- 
 1 porate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, 
 ' with the month of May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby ? 
 ' The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little 
 ' bracket plumb under their nest : there they built, and caught 
 ' flies, and twittered, and bred ; and all, I chiefly, from the heart 
 ' loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the 
 ' mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorpora- 
 ' tion, almost social police ? For if, by ill chance, and when 
 ' time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighbourly 
 ' Helpers appear next day ; and swashing to and fro, with ani- 
 1 mated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super- 
 ' hirundine, complete it again before nightfall ? 
 
 ' But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's- 
 1 culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were con- 
 1 centrated and simultaneously poured -down on us, was the 
 ' annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all the four winds, 
 ' came the elements of an unspeakable hurlyburly. Nutbrown 
 ' maids and nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, be- 
 1 dizened and beribanded ; who came for dancing, for treating, 
 ' and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the 
 1 North ; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from 
 ' the South ; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, lea- 
 ' ther skull-caps, and long oxgoads ; shouting in half-articulate 
 ' speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart 
 ' stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows ; 
 ' Niimberg Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than 
 ' Ormuz bazaars ; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore ; detach- 
 ' ments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) vocifer- 
 ' ously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, 
 ' Auctioneers grew hoarse ; cheap New Wine (heuriger) flowed 
 ' like water, still worse confounding the confusion ; and high 
 ' over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particoloured 
 ' Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. 
 
 'Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the 
 1 deep heavenly Firmament ; waited-on by the four golden Sea- 
 ' sons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim 
 4 Winter brought its skating-matches and shooting-matches, its 
 4 snow-storms and Christmas -carols, did the Child sit and 
 
IDYLLIC. 67 
 
 ' learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in after-time 
 1 he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of the 
 ' World : what matters it whether such Alphabet be in large 
 ' gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read 
 ' it ? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking 
 1 thereon was a blessedness that gilded all : his existence was 
 ' a bright, soft element of Joy ; out of which, as in Prospero's 
 ' Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by 
 ' charming. 
 
 ' Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even 
 ' then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down 
 ' from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that 
 ' glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of 
 1 Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite over- 
 ' shone ; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and 
 ' broader ; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole 
 ' canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night! It was 
 ' the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt ; happy he for 
 ' whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, 
 ' and plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions ; yet 
 ' ever, as basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there. 
 
 ' For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we 
 ' have not much work to do ; but, boarded and lodged, gratis, 
 ' are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and 
 ' see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and 
 ' can handle this and that. If good Passivity alone, and not 
 ' good Passivity and good Activity together, were the thing 
 ' wanted, then was my early position favourable beyond the 
 ' most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate 
 ' Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what 
 ' more could I have wished? On the other side, however, things 
 ' went not so well. My Active Power ( Thatkraff) was unfavour- 
 ' ably hemmed-in ; of which misfortune how many traces yet 
 ' abide with me! In an orderly house, where the litter of chil- 
 ' dren's sports is hateful enough, your training is too stoical; 
 ' rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid 
 much : wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce ; every- 
 1 where a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. 
 1 Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with Ne- 
 
68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' cessicy ; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself 
 ' might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruit- 
 ' age of our life is mingled and tempered. 
 
 ' In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond 
 ' measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is 
 ' our universal duty and destiny ; wherein whoso will not bend 
 ' must break : too early and too thoroughly we cannot be trained 
 ' to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere zero to 
 ' Should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions even tc 
 ' Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion 
 1 nay of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my upbringing. 
 ' It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, everyway 
 ' unscientific : yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude 
 ' might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem 
 ' from which all noble fruit must grow ? Above all, how un- 
 
 skilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest ; whereby 
 ' every deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I 
 ' must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one altogether in- 
 ' valuable service : she taught me, less indeed by word than by 
 ' act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple ver- 
 ' sion of the Christian Faith. Andreas too attended Church ; 
 ' yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other world 
 ' expected pay with arrears, as, I trust, he has received ; but 
 ' my "Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though un- 
 ' cultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation Religious. 
 
 How indestructibly the Good grows, and propagates itself, 
 ' even among the weedy entanglements of Evil ! The highest 
 ' whom I knew on Earth I here saw bowed down, with awe un- 
 speakable, before a Higher in Heaven : such things, especially 
 
 ' in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being ; mys- 
 ' teriously does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility in the 
 ' mysterious deeps ; and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs 
 
 forth undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst 
 ' thou rather be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so 
 ' rudely, there was a God in Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's 
 ' son that only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the 
 ' family-coach ?' 
 
 To which last question we must answer : Beware, O Teufels- 
 drockh, of spiritual pride ! 
 
PEDAGOGY. 69 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PEDAGOGY. 
 
 HITHERTO we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of 
 yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature 
 alone ; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial 
 workshop, but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not 
 already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little 
 voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is 
 rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the 
 abstract ; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to 
 say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed 
 or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may 
 indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are 
 there) ; yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or 
 young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. 
 The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in 
 this latter capacity ; how, when, to use his own words, ' he un- 
 derstands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will 
 proceed to handle it. 
 
 Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of 
 our Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hin- 
 doo character : nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every- 
 way excellent ' Passivity' of his, which, with no free development 
 of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may 
 detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and still in these 
 present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teu- 
 felsdrockh is oftenest a man without Activity of any kind, a No- 
 man ; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost 
 superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no 
 mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, 
 so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult 
 temper for the modern European ; above all, disadvantageous 
 in the hero of a Biography ! Now as heretofore it will behove 
 the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do 
 his endeavour. 
 
 Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, 
 especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. 
 
/o SARTOR RESARTUb. 
 
 On this portion of his History, Teufelsdrockh looks down pro- 
 fessedly as indifferent. Reading he cannot remember ever to 
 have learned;' so perhaps had it by nature. He says generally: 
 ' Of the insignificant portion of my Education, which depended 
 ' on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned 
 ' what others learn ; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my 
 ' head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, 
 ' a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that 
 ' guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do 
 ' little : he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the 
 ' learned professions ; and that I must be sent to the Gymna- 
 ' sium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed 
 ' thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper pocket- 
 ' money I laid-out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated. 
 ' I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was 
 ' the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of 
 ' things and shadows of things : History in authentic fragments 
 ' lay mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality ; 
 ' and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, toler- 
 ' ably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic.' 
 
 That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. 
 Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward 
 stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that 
 promised much ; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thought- 
 ful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on 
 the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, 
 have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth 
 year, on such reflections as the following? 'It struck me much, 
 ' as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it 
 ' flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed 
 1 and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, 
 ' from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on 
 ' the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the mid- 
 ' day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet 
 ' kept his Commentaries dry, this little Kuhbach, assiduous as 
 ' Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilder- 
 ' ness, as yet unnamed, unseen : here, too, as in the Euphrates 
 1 and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand World-cir- 
 ' dilation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has 
 ' lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool I Nature 
 
PEDAGOGY. 71 
 
 ' alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom ; that idle 
 ' crag thou sittest on is six-thousand years of age.' In which 
 little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the begin- 
 ning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur 
 and mystery of TIME, and its relation to ETERNITY, which play 
 such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes ? 
 
 Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no 
 means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green 
 sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets 01 
 tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 
 1 With my first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, 
 1 my evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny 
 ' Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hope by the side 
 ' of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and 
 ' saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and Schuldthurm 
 ' (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in to 
 1 breakfast : a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past ; for 
 1 some human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail ; thus did the 
 ' agonised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length 
 ' of the Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem oi 
 
 many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to 
 ' Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a 
 ' tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on ; which the faster he 
 
 runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! 
 4 Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischiev- 
 1 ous Den ; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epi- 
 ' tome ! 
 
 ' Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the 
 ' distance : I was among strangers, harshly, at best indiffer- 
 ' ently, disposed towards me ; the young heart felt, for the first 
 ' time, quite orphaned and alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, 
 persecuted him : ' They were Boys,' he says, ' mostly rude Boys, 
 4 and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deer- 
 4 herd fall upon r ny stricken hart, the duck-flock put to death 
 4 any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the 
 4 strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits, that though ' per- 
 4 haps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded 
 ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it ; a result, as would 
 appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passion- 
 ate seasons he was ' incredibly nimble'), than to his ' virtuous 
 
72 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' principles :' if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, ' it 
 ' was only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought ; 
 1 thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important 
 ' element of school-history, the war-element, had little but sor- 
 ' row.' On the whole, that same excellent ' Passivity," so not- 
 able in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again 
 getting nourishment. He wept often ; indeed to such a degree 
 ' that he was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), which 
 ' epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite 
 ' unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst- 
 ' forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness ( Ungestuni) 
 ' under which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights 
 ' of Man, or at least of Mankin.' In all which, who does not 
 discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh 
 choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs ; and 
 forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not out- 
 wards ; into a height quite sickly, and disproportioned to its 
 breadth f 
 
 We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 'me- 
 chanically' taught ; Hebrew scarce even mechanically ; much 
 else which they called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and 
 so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except inasmuch 
 as Nature was still busy ; and he himself ' went about, as was 
 ' of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learn- 
 ' ing many things ;' and farther lighted on some small store of 
 curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where 
 he lodged, his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. 
 Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon 
 with any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this 
 Bag Scorpio, where we now are, and often in the following Bag, 
 he shows himself unusually animated on the matter of Educa- 
 tion, and not without some touch of what we might presume to 
 be anger. 
 
 ' My Teachers,' says he, c were hide-bound Pedants, without 
 ' knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's ; or of aught save their 
 ' lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vo- 
 ' cables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Lan- 
 ' guage^) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the 
 ' growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund 
 ' grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be 
 
PEDAGOGY. 73 
 
 ' manufactured at Niirnberg out of wood and leather, foster the 
 ' growth of anything ; much more of Mind, which grows, not 
 ' like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological 
 
 * compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit ; 
 ' Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought ? How 
 ' shall he give kindling, in whose own inward man there is no 
 ' live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead grammatical cinder ? 
 ' The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough ; and of the 
 ' human soul thus much : that it had a faculty called Memory, 
 ' and could be acted -on through the muscular integument by 
 
 appliance of birch-rods. 
 
 ' Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be ; till the Hod- 
 ' man is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing ; and an Archi- 
 ' tect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged : till commu- 
 ' nities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that 
 ' fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank 
 ' on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; 
 1 that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, there should 
 4 be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God- 
 ' ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier 
 ' wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, 
 ' far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of 
 1 his instructing-tool : nay, were he to walk abroad with birch 
 ' girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would there 
 ' not, among the idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited ?' 
 
 In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas 
 seems to have died : the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, 
 saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and in- 
 wardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. ' The dark bottom- 
 ' less Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open ; the 
 ' pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent na- 
 ' tions and generations, stood before him ; the inexorable word, 
 1 NEVER ! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, 
 ' and her sorrow got vent ; but in my heart there lay a whole 
 ' lake of tears, pent-up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the 
 1 unworn Spirit is strong ; Life is so healthful that it even finds 
 ' nourishment in Death : these stern experiences, planted down 
 ' by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress- 
 ' forest, sad but beautiful ; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, 
 ' in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years 
 
74 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' of youth : as in manhood also it does, and will do ; for I 
 ' have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree ; the Tomb is 
 ' now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which 
 ' I look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of 
 ' tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threat- 
 ' enings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep 
 ' in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep 
 ' for and never help ; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely 
 ' in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with 
 ' your blood, yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, 
 ' and our Mother's bosom will screen us all ; and Oppression's 
 ' harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs 
 that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth 
 ' harm us any more 1' 
 
 Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured 
 Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; of his natural 
 ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant) ; with long 
 historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, 
 here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler : the whole of 
 which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only concerns 
 us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen re- 
 vealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred ; 
 or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence 
 in the way already known to us. 'Thus was I doubly orphaned,' 
 says he ; ' bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remem- 
 ' brance. Sorrow and Wonder, here suddenly united, could not 
 ' but produce abundant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a sea- 
 ' son, struck its roots through my whole nature : ever till the 
 ' years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, 
 ' was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams 
 ' grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding 
 ' civic depression, it naturally imparted : / was like no other; 
 ' in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener 
 ' to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of 
 ' tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable enough ? 
 ' As in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my 
 1 fellows are perhaps jiot numerous.' 
 
 In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length discover, Teufels- 
 drockh has become a University man ; though how, when, or 
 
PEDAGOGY. 75 
 
 of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest 
 certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious 
 indistinctness, can now surprise our readers ; not even the total 
 want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. 
 So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must al- 
 ways look to find, these scattered Leaves. In Sagittarius, how- 
 ever, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even more than 
 usually Sibylline : fragments of all sorts ; scraps of regular Me- 
 moir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, 
 Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory 
 cast ; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth be- 
 wilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these 
 University, and the subsequent, years ; much more, to decipher 
 therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Phi- 
 losophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. 
 
 So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage of some 
 wavering thicket : a youth of no common endowment, who has 
 passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigor- 
 ously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in ' dead vocables,' 
 and set down, as he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to 
 superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, 
 diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole heart, 
 for the water nowise suits his palate ; discouragements, entangle- 
 ments, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps 
 are even pecuniary distresses wanting ; for ' the good Gretchen, 
 ' who in spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has 
 ' sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but 
 ' too feeble hand.' Neveitheless in an atmosphere of Poverty 
 and manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what 
 character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like 
 strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, 
 some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and 
 of what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh 
 waxed into manly stature ; and into so questionable an aspect, 
 that we ask with new eagerness, How he specially came by it, 
 and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain 
 of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which are 
 few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a Paper- 
 bag, and presented with the usual preparation. 
 
 As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not already 
 
7 6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, from the name 
 Sagittarius, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, 
 we here again fall-in with such matter as this : The University 
 ' where I was educated still stands vivid enough in my remem- 
 1 brance, and I know its name well ; which name, however, I, 
 ' from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in no- 
 ' wise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of Eng- 
 
 land and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered 
 
 Universities. This is indeed a time when right Education is, 
 
 as nearly as may be, impossible : however, in degrees of 
 ' wrongness there is no limit : nay, I can conceive a worse sys- 
 
 tern than that of the Nameless itself ; as poisoned victual may 
 ' be worse than absolute hunger. 
 
 ' It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall 
 
 into the ditch : wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not 
 ' sometimes be safer, if both leader and lead simply sit still ? 
 ' Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled-in a square eu- 
 1 closure ; furnished it with a small, ill -chosen Library ; and 
 ' then turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian striplings, 
 ' to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years : cer- 
 ' tain persons, under the title of Professors, being stationed at 
 1 the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and exact 
 
 considerable admission-fees, you had, not indeed in mechani- 
 ' cal structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resem- 
 1 blance of our High Seminary. I say, imperfect ; for if our 
 ' mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our re- 
 4 suit altogether the same : unhappily, we were not in Crim 
 4 Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and 
 ' sin ; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far 
 4 costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and De- 
 ' claration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. 
 
 ' Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ; and 
 4 gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like 
 ' a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done : 
 4 with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under 
 4 Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether over- 
 4 looked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch ; as if our 
 1 whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and 
 
 the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had 
 
 not ranked in Productive Industry at all ! Can any one, for 
 
PEDAGOGY. 77 
 
 4 example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and 
 1 Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet 
 1 Polish ; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such ; 
 
 specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, dis- 
 ' bursements, incomings of said moneys, with the smallest ap- 
 ' proach to accuracy ? But to ask, How far, in all the several 
 ' infinitely-complected departments of social business, in govern- 
 
 ment, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrica- 
 ' tion of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true Ware ; how 
 ' far by the mere Appearance of true Ware : in other words, 
 
 To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various 
 ' times and countries, Deception takes the place of wages of 
 ' Performance : here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the 
 
 future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can 
 ' be given. If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate the 
 ' ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One 
 ' to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Rus- 
 ' sian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far 
 1 from the mark), what almost prodigious saving may there 
 ' not be anticipated, as the Statistics of Imposture advances, 
 ' and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising 
 4 into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually de- 
 ' clines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary ! 
 
 ' This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, 
 ' for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in 
 ' Education, Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and in- 
 ' dispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably 
 ' Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gulli- 
 
 bility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war 
 ' quite broken ; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all 
 4 but exhausted ; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, 
 4 disband, and cut your and each other's throat, then were it 
 ' not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of 
 ' fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagina- 
 ' tion of meat ; whereby, till the real supply came up, they might 
 4 be kept together and quiet ? Such perhaps was the aim of 
 4 Nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her fa- 
 4 vourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient 
 1 Talent of being Gulled. 
 
 ' How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; nay, 
 
78 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 almost makes mechanism for itself ! These Professors in the 
 1 Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, 
 ' constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, 
 ' by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, like a 
 ' strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general cur- 
 ' rent, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting on their 
 ' part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously 
 4 grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers ! They 
 ' themselves needed not to work ; their attempts at working, at 
 what they called Educating, now when I look back on it, fill 
 ' me with a certain mute admiration. 
 
 ' Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University ; 
 1 in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism ; thus was the young 
 
 vacant mind furnished with much talk about Progress of the 
 ' Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like ; so that all were 
 ' quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentative- 
 ' ness ; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impo- 
 ' tent Scepticism ; the worser sort explode (crepireri) in finished 
 ' Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead. But 
 ' this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of 
 ' Unbelief, why murmur under it ; is there not a better coming, 
 1 nay come ? As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, 
 ' must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial ; 
 ' must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, 
 ' Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed by, and 
 ' again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For 
 ' man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour and 
 ' destiny shaped for him by Time : only in the transitory Time- 
 ' Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made mani- 
 
 fest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the 
 ' nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, 
 
 and to be awake and work ; and for the duller a felicity, if, like 
 ' hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University, 
 1 or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of 
 ' Indolence, they can slumber-through, in stupid dreams, and 
 ' only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done 
 ' their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring 
 1 has been vouchsafed.' 
 
 That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed 
 forth Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubt 
 
PEDAGOGY. 79 
 
 fill. ' The hungry young,' he says, ' looked up to their spiritual 
 ' Nurses ; and, for food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What 
 ' vain jargon of controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and me- 
 ' chanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was current there, 
 ' I indeed learned, better perhaps than the mout. Among eleven- 
 ' hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting some eleven 
 1 eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth, a 
 ' certain polish was communicated ; by instinct and happy acci- 
 ' dent, I took less to rioting (renommiren), than to thinking and 
 1 reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the 
 4 chaos of that Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books 
 ' perhaps than had been known to the very keepers thereof. 
 ' The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid : I learned, 
 1 on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated 
 ' languages, on almost all subjects and sciences ; farther, as man 
 ' is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favourite 
 1 employment to read character in speculation, and from the 
 ' Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Hu- 
 ' man Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me ; wondrous 
 ' enough, now when I look back on it ; for my whole Universe, 
 1 physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine ! However, such 
 ' a conscious, recognised groundplan, the truest I had, was be 
 ' ginning to be there, and by additional experiments might be 
 ' corrected and indefinitely extended.' 
 
 Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth ; 
 thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ish- 
 mael acquire for himself the highest of aU possessions, that of 
 Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling 
 with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of 
 his ' fever-paroxysms of Doubt ;' his Inquiries concerning Mi- 
 racles, and the Evidences of religious Faith ; and how ' in the 
 ' silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky 
 ' and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with 
 audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance 
 1 from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and un- 
 ' speakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender ; sink into 
 1 spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief ; and, in this 
 ' hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, 
 1 vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through sucli 
 ' Purgatory pain,' continues he, ' it is appointed us to pass ; first 
 
8o SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop 
 ' piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from 
 ' this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, 
 ' and with new healing under its wings.' 
 
 To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we 
 add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical 
 guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope ; and 
 all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagin- 
 ing, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means, do we 
 not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from 
 without and from within ; the fire of genius struggling-up among 
 fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapour 
 than of clear flame ? 
 
 From various fragments of Letters and other documentary 
 scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, re- 
 tiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice : certain 
 established men are aware of his existence ; and, if stretching- 
 out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. He ap- 
 pears, though in dreary enough humour, to be addressing himself 
 to the Profession of Law ; whereof, indeed, the world has since 
 seen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, un- 
 satisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present rather 
 the following small thread of Moral relation ; and therewith, the 
 reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our 
 dim arras-picture of these University years. 
 
 ' Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr 
 ' Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, HerrToughgut; a 
 ' young person of quality (-von Adel), from the interior parts of 
 ' England. He stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with 
 ' the Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany ; to which 
 ' noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all friendli- 
 ' ness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably 
 ' ill -cultivated ; with considerable humour of character : and, 
 
 bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing 
 ' and a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impas- 
 ' sivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers 
 
 of his nation. To him I owe my first practical knowledge of 
 ' the English and their ways ; perhaps also something of the 
 1 partiality with which I have ever since regarded that singular 
 ' people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have 
 
PEDAGOGY. 81 
 
 ' come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the 
 1 Zahdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic 
 ' hope of perfecting his studies ; he, whose studies had as yet 
 ' been those of infancy, hither to a University where so much 
 ' as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no 
 ' longer existed ! Often we would condole over the hard destiny 
 ' of the Young in this era : how, after all our toil, we were to be 
 ' turned-out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but 
 ' with few other attributes of manhood ; no existing thing that 
 ' we were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as 
 ' Believe. "How has our head on the outside a polished Hat," 
 ' would Towgood exclaim, " and in the inside Vacancy, or a 
 ' froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic ! At a small cost men 
 ' are educated to make leather into shoes ; but at a great cost, 
 ' what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I 
 ' have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow 
 a considerable Hospital of Incurables." "Man, indeed," I 
 ' would answer, " has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept 
 ' working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis- 
 ' education, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, 
 1 in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. 
 ' Frisch zu t Bruder! Here are Books, and we have brains to 
 ' read them ; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and 
 ' we have eyes to look on them : Frisch zu /" 
 
 1 Often also our talk was gay ; not without brilliancy, and 
 1 even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, 
 ' where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded 
 ' and quartered : motley, not unterrific was the aspect ; but we 
 4 looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were per- 
 ' haps my most genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, 
 ' strongheaded and wrongheaded H err Towgood I was even near 
 experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, 
 1 foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, 
 ' I could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and 
 ' been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I un- 
 ' derstood the new time, and its wants. If man's Sotil is indeed, 
 ' as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind 
 ' of Stomach, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union 
 4 but an Eating together ? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Din- 
 4 ner-guests ; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras.' 
 
 G 
 
82 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little 
 incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr 
 Towgood, or Toughgut ? He has dived-under, in the Autobio- 
 graphical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does any reader 
 ' in the interior parts of England 1 know of such a man ? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GETTING UNDER WAY. 
 
 'THUS nevertheless,' writes our Autobiographer, apparently 
 as quitting College, ' was there realised Somewhat ; namely, I, 
 ' Diogenes Teufelsdrockh : a visible Temporary Figure (Zeit- 
 ' bild), occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing 
 ' within it Forces both physical and spiritual ; hopes, passions, 
 ' thoughts ; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less per- 
 ' fection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there 
 1 were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the 
 ' great Empire of Darkness : does not the very Ditcher and 
 ' Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle ; 
 ' and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay 
 ' your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind ; and ever 
 ' organises something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which 
 ' was before Inorganic ; and of mute dead air makes living mu- 
 ' sic, though only of the faintest, by humming. 
 
 ' How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual ; who 
 ' has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of 
 ' Thought ! Thaumaturgic I name it ; for hitherto all Miracles 
 ' have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will 
 ' be wrought ; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. 
 1 Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it 
 ' makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention : 
 ' but cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around 
 ' him ? Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and 
 ' this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the 
 ' Cape, and across two Oceans ; and stronger than any other 
 ' Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and 
 ' carrying : at home, not only weaving Cloth ; but rapidly 
 ' enough overturning the whole old system of Society ; and, for 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY. 83 
 
 Feudalism and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by in- 
 ' direct but sure methods, Industrialism and the Government of 
 ' the Wisest ? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the 
 ' Prince of Darkness can have ; every time such a one announces 
 ' himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether 
 ' Empire ; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, 
 ' if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. 
 
 ' With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Uni- 
 
 verse, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born 
 ' to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sove- 
 1 reign right of Peace and War against the Time-Prince (Zeit- 
 'fursf) t or Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronation-cere- 
 1 mony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, 
 ' or even to get eye on !' 
 
 By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh mean 
 no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 
 ' getting under way' ? ' Not what I Have," continues he, ' but 
 ' what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward 
 
 Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune ; to each, 
 ' by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of Ca- 
 ' pability. But the hardest problem were ever this first : To find 
 1 by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your 
 ' combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For, 
 ' alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we 
 ' see not yet which is the main and true one. Always too the 
 ' new man is in a new time, under new conditions ; his course 
 ' can be the fac-simile of no prior one, but is by its nature 
 ' original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability 
 ' fit the inward : though talented wonderfully enough, we are 
 ' poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful ; nay what is worse than 
 ' all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabili- 
 ties, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and 
 ' often clutch the wrong one : in this mad work must several 
 ' years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by 
 
 practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing 
 ' Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever- 
 ' new expectation, ever- new disappointment, shift from enter- 
 ' prise to enterprise, and from side to side : till at length, as 
 ' exasperated striplings of threescore -and -ten, they shift into 
 1 their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 
 
84 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be 
 ' the general fate ; were it not that one thing saves us : our 
 ' Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger 
 ' is well known, must a prompt choice be made : hence have 
 ' we, with wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for 
 * our irrational young ; whereby, in due season, the vague uni- 
 ' versality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a 
 ' specific Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, with much or 
 ' with little waste of Capability as it may be ; yet not with the 
 ' worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since 
 ' the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain 
 ' other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, some- 
 ' times never, is it not well that there should be what we call 
 1 Professions, or Bread-studies (Brodzwecke), preappointed us ? 
 ' Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total 
 ' blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly 
 ' round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward ; 
 ' and realise much : for himself victual ; for the world an addi- 
 ' tional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of 
 ' Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been 
 ' provided ; only that it proved a neck -halter, and had nigh 
 ' throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient 
 ' Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, 
 ' by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. 
 ' Almost had I deceased (fast war ich umgekommeri), so ob- 
 ' stinately did it continue shut.' 
 
 We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much 
 that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the historical embodi- 
 ment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scat- 
 tered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag Pisces, and 
 those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though 
 still temper, like a young mettled colt, 'breaks -off his neck- 
 halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the 
 wide world ; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced-in. Rich- 
 est clover-fields tempt his eye ; but to him they are forbidden 
 pasture : either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand ; 
 or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against 
 sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate 
 and lame him ; till at last, after thousand attempts and endur- 
 ances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way ; not indeed into 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY. 85 
 
 luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilder- 
 ness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though 
 waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, 
 Teufelsdrockh having thrown-up his legal Profession, finds him- 
 self without landmark of outward guidance ; whereby his pre- 
 vious want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully 
 aggravated. Necessity urges him on ; Time will not stop, neither 
 can he, a Son of Time ; wild passions without solacement, wild 
 faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too 
 must enact that stern Monodrama, No Object and no Rests 
 must front its successive destinies, work through to its cata- 
 strophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can. 
 
 Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his ' neck-halter* 
 sat nowise easy on him ; that he was in some degree forced to 
 break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in 
 this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless Uni- 
 versity, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His 
 first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly ; and 
 can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not have 
 frightened him : but though he is hereby ' an Auscultator of re- 
 spectability,' what avails it? There is next to no employment 
 to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the pro- 
 cess of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his 
 disposition much cheered from without. ' My fellow Ausculta- 
 1 tors,' he says, 'were Auscultators : they dressed, and digested, 
 ' and talked articulate words ; other vitality showed they almost 
 1 none. Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare 
 1 withal ! Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for 
 4 aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of 
 ' coming Preferment.' In which words, indicating a total es- 
 trangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh, may there not also 
 lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity ? Doubtless 
 these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his 
 strange ways ; and tried to hate, and what was much more im- 
 possible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there 
 could not be : already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other 
 young geese ; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether 
 he himself is cygnet or gosling. 
 
 Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed 
 ill, at best unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and expert- 
 ness' he may brag of ; but is there not also great practical pride, 
 
86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated ? So shy a man can 
 never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those 
 days he may have played strange freaks with his independence, 
 and so forth : do not his own words betoken as much ? ' Like 
 ' a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and 
 ' not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had 
 ' been appointed to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress 
 from the passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessor- 
 ship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those same esta- 
 blished men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to 
 withdraw their countenance, and give him up as 'a man of ge- 
 nius :' against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly pro- 
 tests 'As if," says he, 'the higher did not presuppose the 
 ' lower ; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk 
 ' post if he resolved on it ! But the world is an old woman, and 
 ' mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin ; whereby being 
 1 often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the com- 
 ' mon copper.' 
 
 How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial 
 runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from fly- 
 ing skyward without return, is not too clear from these Docu- 
 ments. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the 
 scene, perhaps from the Earth ; other Horn of Plenty, or even 
 of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him ; so that ' the prompt na- 
 ture of Hunger being well known," we are not without our anxiety. 
 From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, 
 the aid derivable is small ; neither, to use his own words, ' does 
 1 the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary 
 ' gift ; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide 
 'faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, 'that I 
 ' subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' Which 
 fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind 
 old Proverb, that 'there is always life for a living one,' we must 
 profess ourselves unable to explain. 
 
 Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, 
 bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not with- 
 out money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not House- 
 holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two 
 little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condi- 
 tion. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge 
 Blot ; and runs to this effect : The (Inkblof), tied-down by 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY. 87 
 
 ' previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the 
 4 Herr Teufelsdrockh' s views on the Assessorship in question ; 
 ' and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for 
 ' the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in 
 * opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher 
 ' triumphs are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper ; and 
 interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet 
 which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the 
 original : ' Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf 
 ' Donnerstag, zum ^ESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens eingeladen? 
 Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is 
 the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the in- 
 vitation to a wash of quite fluid ^Esthetic Tea ! How Teufels- 
 drockh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, may have 
 comported himself among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti 
 of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chicken- 
 weed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, 
 and abstinence : otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast 
 at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. 
 For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from the Zahdarm 
 House, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of 
 the same ; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to Teu- 
 felsdrockh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his 
 own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, 
 indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, 
 though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we have 
 elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patron- 
 age, it was in vain ; enough for him if he here obtained occa- 
 sional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one time 
 fancied him to have been always excluded. ' The Zahdarms,' 
 says he, ' lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy ; 
 ' whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from with- 
 ' out, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the 
 ' Gnddigen Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement 
 ' was due : assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, 
 ' what fringing was to be had ; lace or cobweb, as the place 
 ' yielded.' Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb ; 
 or promising to be such ? ' With his Excellenz (the Count),' con- 
 tinues he, ' I have more than once had the honour to converse ; 
 ' chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which 
 ' he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavourable 
 
88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' light ; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (die 
 1 auszurottende JournaustiK), little to desiderate therein. On 
 1 some points, as his Excellenz was not uncholeric, I found it 
 ' more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being 
 1 that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, 
 ' as superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.' 
 
 That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise 
 so faultless, and many things besides ' the Outrooting of Jour- 
 nalism' might have seemed improvements, we can readily con- 
 jecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from without, 
 and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his 
 position was no easy one. ' The Universe,' he says, ' was as a 
 ' mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, 
 ' or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet 
 ' also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfur- 
 4 nished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay 
 ' in me ; and I as yet knew not the solution of it ; knew not 
 1 that spiritual music can spring only from discords set in har- 
 mony ; that but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only 
 ' possible by battle.' 
 
 ' I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he else- 
 where, ' by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real in- 
 ' crease of human happiness, could all young men from the age 
 ' of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise 
 ' invisible ; and there left to follow their lawful studies and call- 
 ' ings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty- 
 ' five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light 
 ' of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coin- 
 ' cide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies 
 1 (Mddchetf) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in 
 ' those years ; so young gentlemen (JBubchen) do then attain 
 1 their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (Geckeri) are they, 
 1 and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for 
 ' self-indulgence ; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious ; in 
 ' ah 1 senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour 
 ' or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unen- 
 ' deavouring, unattaining young gentleman ; but he could make 
 ' it ah 1 infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere 
 1 is the most manageable matter, simple as a question in the 
 ' Rule-of-Three : multiply your second and third term together, 
 1 divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY. 89 
 
 ' answer, which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. 
 
 The booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one 
 ' will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, 
 ' and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.' 
 
 In which passage does not there lie an implied confession 
 that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had 
 an inward, still greater, to contend with ; namely, a certain tem- 
 porary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head ? Alas, 
 on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. ' It con- 
 ' tinues ever true,' says he, ' that Saturn, or Chronos, or what 
 ' we call TIME, devours all his Children : only by incessant Run- 
 ' ning, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore- 
 ' and-ten years) escape him ; and you too he devours at last. 
 ' Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time 
 ' stand. still ; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? 
 ' Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of 
 ' Time ; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse ; Time is the 
 ' author of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, 
 ' which is to move, to work, in the right direction. Are not 
 ' our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement, whether we 
 ' will or not ; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual Re- 
 ' pair ? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward 
 ' Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time ; thus, whatso 
 ' we have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must 
 " we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed 
 ' and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim 
 ' Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much as 
 1 glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us ! Me, 
 ' however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was 
 ' Time threatening to eat quite prematurely ; for, strive as I 
 ' might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, 
 ' so gyved were the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speak- 
 ing in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's whole 
 duty and necessity was, like other men's, ' to work, in the right 
 direction,' and that no work was to be had; whereby he became 
 wretched enough. As was natural : with haggard Scarcity threat- 
 ening him in the distance ; and so vehement a soul languishing 
 in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword 
 by rust, To eat into itse i f> for lack 
 
 Oi something else to hew and hack ! 
 
06 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 But on the whole, that same ' excellent Passivity,' as it has 
 all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing ; in which 
 circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that 
 now characterises our Professor ; and perhaps, in faint rudi- 
 ments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the 
 attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive ; 
 not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. 
 ' So far hitherto,' he says, 'as I had mingled with mankind, I 
 ' was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, 
 ' which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill ex- 
 1 press the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded 
 ' men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of 
 ' a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for 
 ' the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by 
 ' half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (Hdrte), my 
 ' Indifferentism towards men ; and the seemingly ironic tone I 
 ' had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, 
 ' the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein 
 ' I had striven to envelope myself ; that so my own poor Person 
 ' might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer 
 1 exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, 
 1 the language of the Devil ; for which reason I have long since 
 ' as good as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in 
 ' those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby ! An 
 1 ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more 
 ' especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, 
 ' may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen per- 
 ' sons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest in- 
 ' difference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy 
 ' and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch], and thence fall shat- 
 ' tered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without 
 ' indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo !' 
 
 Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make 
 way for himself in Life ; where the first problem, as Teufels- 
 drockh too admits, is 'to unite yourself with some one and with 
 somewhat (sich anzuschliessen^ ? Division, not union, is written 
 on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, in no great 
 length of time, the only important connexion he had ever suc- 
 ceeded in forming, his connexion with the Zahdarm Family, 
 seems to "have been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY. i 
 
 death of the ' not uncholeric' old Count. This fact stands re- 
 corded, quite incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs, 
 huddled into the present Bag, among so much else ; of which 
 Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be ap- 
 proved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary 
 inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than 
 Lyrical. ' By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says 
 he, ' I undertook to compose his Epitaph ; and not unmindful 
 ' of my own rules, produced the following ; which however, for 
 1 an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible 
 ' to myself, still remains unengraven ;' wherein, we may pre- 
 dict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an Eng- 
 lish reader : 
 
 HIC JACET 
 
 PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 
 
 ZAEHDARMI COMES, 
 EX IMPERII CONCILIO, 
 
 VELLERIS AUREI, PERJSCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI 
 EQUES. 
 
 QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 
 
 QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 
 
 PLUMBO CONFECIT : 
 VARII CIBI 
 
 CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 
 
 PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, 
 
 HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 
 
 IN STERCUS 
 
 PALAM CONVERTIT. 
 
 NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 
 OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 
 
 SI MONUMENTUM QU^ERIS, 
 FIMETUM ADSPICE. 
 
 PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dato\ \ POSTREMUM [sub dato\ 
 
92 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 TOR long years,' writes Teufelsdrockh, 'had the poor He- 
 * brew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, 
 ' baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once 
 'struck him with entire force: For what? Beym Himmel ! 
 ' For Food and Warmth ! And are Food and Warmth nowhere 
 ' else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable ? Come of it 
 ' what might, I resolved to try.' 
 
 Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, 
 though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is 
 now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of 
 herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard 
 condition was painful enough, he desperately steers off, on a 
 course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Un- 
 happy Teufelsdrockh ! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor 
 Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in 
 prescribed track, for fixed objects ; above all, in combination, 
 wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and bor- 
 rowings, each could manifoldly aid the other ? How wilt thou 
 sail in unknown seas ; and for thyself find that shorter North- 
 west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere ? A soli- 
 tary rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will 
 meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain 
 Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset ; and as it were 
 falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 
 
 If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is majestically 
 ' unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, 
 ' nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so im- 
 ' mediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. Strangely 
 ' enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. 
 ' On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (Personlichkeit) 
 4 is ever holy to us ; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism con- 
 ' nects my Me with all Thees in bonds of Love : but it is in this 
 ' approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly at- 
 ' traction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns-out into 
 ' a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indiffer- 
 
ROMANCE. 93 
 
 1 ent to us ? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one 
 ' with him ; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, 
 ' even by fear ; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him ? But 
 ' how much more, in this case of the Like-Unlike ! Here is 
 
 * conceded us the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the 
 ' highest in our Earth ; thus, in the conducting medium of Fan- 
 ' tasy, flames-forth that fi redevelopment of the universal Spiri- 
 
 * tual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, 
 ' we first emphatically denominate LOVE. 
 
 ' In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there 
 ' already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by 
 ' some fairest Eve ; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and 
 ' foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and 
 ' awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too the whole 
 1 is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide 
 ' it from all footsteps of men ; and grant him, the imaginative 
 ' stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season of 
 ' virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial 
 ' barrier ; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into 
 ' the mean clay-hamlets of Reality ; and man, by his nature, is 
 ' yet infinite and free ! 
 
 ' As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh, evid- 
 ently meaning himself, ' in his secluded way of life, and with 
 ' his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, 
 ' as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the Queens 
 ' of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A 
 ' visible Divinity dwelt in them ; to our young Friend all wo- 
 ' men were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flit- 
 ' ting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage ; or hovering 
 1 mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of ^Esthetic Tea : all 
 ' of air they were, all Soul and Form ; so lovely, like mysteri- 
 ' ous priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, 
 1 whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That he, our 
 ' poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Grace- 
 ' fuls (H olden) Ach Gott ! how could he hope it ; should he 
 1 not have died under it ? There was a certain delirious vertigo 
 ' in the thought. 
 
 ' Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and 
 ' Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless 
 ' not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly 
 
94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' hovered round him wheresoever he went ; and they had that 
 ' religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by their 
 ' mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But now, 
 ' if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incor- 
 ' porated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric 
 4 glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "Thou too mayest love 
 ' and be loved ;" and so kindle him, good Heaven, what a 
 ' volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably 
 ' kindled !' 
 
 Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, 
 with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Hen- 
 Diogenes ; as indeed how could it fail ? A nature, which, in 
 his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little car- 
 bonised tinder, of Irritability ; with so much nitre of latent Pas- 
 sion, and sulphurous Humour enough ; the whole lying in such 
 hot neighbourhood, close by ' a reverberating furnace of Fan- 
 tasy :' have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, 
 ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze-up ? Neither. 
 in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without 
 doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one 
 day, leaving 'the outskirts of ^Esthetic Tea, 1 flit nigher ; and, 
 by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. 
 Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocket- 
 wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendour, each growing 
 naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy 
 Youthful Love ; till the whole were safely burnt-out ; and the 
 young soul relieved with little damage ! Happy, if it did not 
 rather prove a Conflagration and mad Explosion ; painfully la- 
 cerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in 
 pieces (which were Death) ; or at best, bursting the thin walls 
 of your 'reverberating furnace,' so that it rage thenceforth all 
 unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were 
 Madness) : till of the so fair and manifold internal world of 
 our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the ' crater of 
 an extinct volcano !' 
 
 From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capricornm, and 
 in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest 
 that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, 
 was heartily and even frantically in Love : here therefore may 
 our old doubts whether his heart were of stone cr of flesh give 
 
ROMANCE. 95 
 
 way. He loved once ; not wisely but too well. And once only : 
 for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every 
 new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one 
 Love, if even one ; the ' First Love which is infinite' can be 
 followed by no second like unto it. In more recent years, ac 
 cordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teu- 
 felsdrockh as a man not only who would never wed, but who 
 would never even flirt ; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and 
 St. Martin's Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown with no 
 new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are henceforth 
 Pieces of Art ; of Celestial Art, indeed ; which celestial pieces 
 he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of pur- 
 chasing. 
 
 Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how 
 Teufelsdrdckh, in this for him unexampled predicament, de- 
 means himself; with what specialties of successive configura- 
 tion, splendour and colour, his Firework blazes-off. Small, as 
 usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From 
 amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their 
 mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered 
 among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the 
 fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the 
 title Blumine, whereby she is here designated, and which means 
 simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real 
 name Flora, then ? But what was her surname, or had she 
 none ? Of what station in Life was she ; of what parentage, 
 fortune, aspect ? Specially, by what Preestablished Harmony 
 of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one another 
 in so wide a world ; how did they behave in such meeting ? 
 To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, 
 mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. ' It was 
 ' appointed,' says our Philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit 
 4 of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our For- 
 1 lorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy 
 ' the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether 
 ' sphere of Shadows ; and finding himself mistaken, make noise 
 ' enough.' 
 
 We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beauti- 
 ful, and some one's Cousin ; highborn, and of high spirit ; but 
 unhappily dependent and insolvent ; living, perhaps, on the not 
 
96 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 too gracious bounty of moneyed relatives. But how came ' the 
 Wanderer' into her circle? Was it by the humid vehicle of 
 ^Esthetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Business ? Was it on 
 the hand of Herr Towgood ; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as 
 an ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirta- 
 tion, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all ap- 
 pearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature. 
 
 4 Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, 'what 
 ' stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, 
 ' officially bearing in his pocket the last Relatio ex Actis he 
 ' would ever write, but must have paused to wonder ! Noble 
 ' Mansion ! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphi- 
 ' theatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude ; stately, 
 ' massive, all of granite ; glittering in the western sunbeams, like 
 ' a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beauti- 
 ' ful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; 
 ' of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown 
 ' frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and 
 ' its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as 
 ' an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste ; where, for joy and 
 ' woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause 
 ' and gaze ; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless 
 ' forebodings." 
 
 But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator 
 has handed-in his Relatio ex Actis j been invited to a glass of 
 Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst 
 to his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where 
 sit the choicest party of dames and cavaliers : if not engaged 
 in ^Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and per- 
 haps Musical Coffee, for we hear of 'harps and pure voices 
 making the stillness live.' Scarcely, it would seem, is the Gar- 
 denhouse inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself. 
 ' Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and 
 1 odours of thousand flowers, here sat that brave company ; in 
 1 front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom 
 ' and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating 
 c onwards to the remote Mountain peaks : so bright, so mild, 
 ' and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures : it 
 ' was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the 
 ' bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wan- 
 
ROMANCE. 97 
 
 ' derer advanced thither with such forecasting heart (ahndungs- 
 1 voll) t by the side of his gay host ? Did he feel that to these 
 ' soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut ; that here, once 
 ' more, Fate had it in view to try him ; to mock him, and see 
 ' whether there were Humour in him ? 
 
 ' Next moment he finds himself presented to the party ; and 
 ' especially by name to Blumine ! Peculiar among all dames 
 ' and damosels glanced Blumine, there in her modesty, like a 
 1 star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden ! whom he bent to, 
 ' in body and in soul ; yet scarcely dared look at, for the pre- 
 ' sence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 
 
 ' Blumine's was a name well known to him ; far and wide 
 ' was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices : 
 ' from all which vague colourings of Rumour, from the censures 
 ' no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for him- 
 ' self a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and blooming warm 
 ' Earth -angel, much more enchanting than your mere white 
 ' Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too 
 ' little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; 
 4 that light yet so stately form ; those dark tresses, shading a 
 ' face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps : but 
 ' all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inacces- 
 ' sible, almost without reality. Her sphere was too far from 
 ' his ; how should she ever think of him ; O Heaven ! how should 
 ' they so much as once meet together ? And now that Rose- 
 ' goddess sits in the same circle with him ; the light of her eyes 
 ' has smiled on him ; if he speak, she will hear it ! Nay, who 
 ' knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but 
 ' Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable ; 
 ' perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, ga- 
 ' thered wonder, gathered favour for him ? Was the attraction, 
 1 the agitation mutual, then ; pole and pole trembling towards 
 ' contact, when once brought into neighbourhood ? Say rather, 
 ' heart swelling in presence of the Queen of Hearts ; like the 
 ' Sea swelling when once near its Moon ! With the Wanderer 
 ' it was even so : as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at 
 ' the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from 
 ' its deepest recesses ; and all that was painful and that was 
 ' blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and 
 ' a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 
 
 H 
 
98 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend 
 < shrunk forcibly together ; and shrouded-up his tremors and 
 ' flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and 
 ' perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, 
 ' when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into 
 ' swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? 
 ' It was his guiding Genius (Damon) that inspired him ; he must 
 ' go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered 
 ' it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your 
 ' anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself 
 ' able to transcend it ; that she rises above it, in fiery victory ; 
 ' and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even 
 ' because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer 
 ' remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this 
 ' case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the stream of 
 ' conversation ; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not 
 ' a real vanity, he may say that he continued to lead. Surely, 
 1 in those hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such 
 ' inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The self-secluded 
 ' unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words ; his 
 ' soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and 
 ' Intellect ; wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form after form, 
 ' radiant with all prismatic hues.' 
 
 It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked 
 one ' Philistine ;' who even now, to the general weariness, was 
 dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism (Philistriositdten) ; little 
 witting what hero was here entering to demolish him ! We omit 
 the series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy 
 in their way, whereby the monster, 'persuaded into silence,' seems 
 soon after to have withdrawn for the night. ' Of which dialectic 
 ' marauder,' writes our hero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a 
 ' benefit by most : but what were all applauses to the glad smile, 
 ' threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blu- 
 ' mine herself repaid the victor ? He ventured to address her, 
 ' she answered with attention : nay what if there were a slight 
 1 tremor in that silver voice ; what if the red glow of evening 
 ' were hiding a transient blush I 
 
 ' The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought 
 ' called forth another : it was one of those rare seasons, when 
 ' the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself 
 
ROMANCE. 99 
 
 brought near to man. Gaily in light, graceful abandonment, 
 ' the friendly talk played round that circle ; for the burden was 
 ' rolled from every heart ; the barriers of Ceremony, which are 
 ' indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapour ; 
 ' and the poor claims of Me and Thee, no longer parted by rigid 
 ' fences, now flowed softly into one another ; and Life lay all 
 ' harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the 
 ' sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such music 
 ' springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and 
 ' time. And yet as the light grew more aerial on the rnountain- 
 ' tops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint 
 ' tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart ; and, in 
 ' whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this 
 ' bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the 
 ' Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness ; and 
 ' with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink 
 ' in the still Eternity. 
 
 ' To our Friend the hours seemed moments ; holy was he 
 ' and happy : the words from those sweetest lips came over him 
 ' like dew on thirsty grass ; all better feelings in his soul seemed 
 ' to whisper, It is good for us to be here. At parting, the Blu- 
 ' mine's hand was in his : in the balmy twilight, with the kind 
 ' stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which 
 ' was not contradicted ; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, 
 ' and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily with- 
 ' drawn.' 
 
 Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration thou art 
 smit : the Queen of Hearts would see a ' man of genius' also 
 sigh for her ; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, 
 has she bound and spell-bound thee. ' Love is not altogether a 
 ' Delirium,' says he elsewhere; 'yet has it many points in com- 
 ' mon therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in 
 ' the Finite, of the Idea made Real ; which discerning again 
 4 may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, In- 
 ' spiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in com- 
 ' mon Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight ; on 
 1 the so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, 
 ' whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might 
 ' call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man : his sensuous 
 ' life is but the small temporary stage (Zeiibilhne), whereon 
 
ioo SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near regions 
 ' meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can sup- 
 
 port herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteen- 
 1 pence a day ; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will not 
 ' suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drink- 
 ' ing no better red wine than he had before.' Alas ! witness also 
 your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verg- 
 ing towards Insanity, for prize of a ' high-souled Brunette,' as 
 if the earth held but one and not several of these ! 
 
 He says that, in Town, they met again : ' day after day, like 
 ' his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah ! a 
 ' little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness : him what 
 ' Graceful (Holds] would ever love ? Disbelieving all things, the 
 ' poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. With- 
 ' drawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses ; solitary 
 ' from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw him- 
 ' self, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest 
 ' hopes of existence. And now, O now ! " She looks on thee," 
 1 cried he : " she the fairest, noblest ; do not her dark eyes tell 
 ' thee, thou art not despised ? The Heaven's-Messenger ! All 
 ' Heaven's blessings be hers !" Thus did soft melodies flow 
 ' through his heart ; tones of an infinite gratitude ; sweetest in- 
 1 timations that he also was a man, that for him also unutter- 
 ' able joys had been provided. 
 
 ' In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laugh- 
 ' ter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of 
 1 Music : such was the element they now lived in ; in such a 
 ' many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light- 
 ' bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new Apoca- 
 ' lypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine ! And, even 
 
 as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incar- 
 1 nate ! Was there so much as a fault, a "caprice," he could 
 ' have dispensed with ? Was she not to him in very deed a 
 
 Morning-Star ; did not her presence bring with it airs from 
 ' Heaven ? As from ^Eoh'an Harps in the breath of dawn, as 
 ' from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, 
 ' unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into untried 
 ' balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the distance ; Life 
 
 bloomed-up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was all 
 ' & haggard dream ; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, 
 
ROMANCE. 101 
 
 ' and could not discern it ! But lo now ! the black walls of his 
 ' prison melt away ; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his 
 1 Disenchantress ? Ach Gott ! His whole heart and soul and 
 ' life were hers, but never had he named it Love : existence was 
 ' all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought.' 
 
 Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must 
 be shaped ; for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere 
 ' Children of Time,' can abide by Feeling alone. The Professor 
 knows not, to this day, 'how in her soft, fervid bosom th' 
 ' Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to cut- 
 ' asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised 
 at the ' Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, ' in whose 
 ' meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts 
 ' was, from the first, faintlv approved of.' We, even at such 
 distance, can explain it wichout necromancy. Let the Philoso- 
 pher answer this one question : What figure, at that period, war 
 a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished society ? Could 
 she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple 
 iron-spring one? Thou foolish 'absolved Auscultator,' before 
 whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet known ' religion 
 of young hearts' keep the human kitchen warm ? Pshaw ! thy 
 divine Blumine, when she 'resigned herself to wed some richer,' 
 shows more philosophy, though but 'a woman of genius,' than 
 thou, a pretended man. 
 
 Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, 
 and with what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. Let no one 
 ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state ; much less the 
 horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. How from such 
 inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these 
 Bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be organised ? 
 Besides, of what profit were it ? We view, with a lively plea- 
 sure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot 
 upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous 
 star : but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural 
 elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded ? A hapless air- 
 navigaior, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and con- 
 fused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil ! Suffice it 
 to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the 
 Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence 
 in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling 
 
102 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it 
 out for himself: considering only that "if he, for his perhaps 
 comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies 
 and frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire- 
 heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine ! We glance merely at the 
 final scene : 
 
 ' One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and 
 ' dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to 
 ' have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a 
 ' troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday had 
 ' dawned ! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet 
 ' no more.' The thunderstruck Air-sailor is not wanting to him- 
 self in this dread hour : but what avails it ? We omit the pas- 
 sionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was 
 vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him ; and 
 hasten to the catastrophe. ' " Farewell, then, Madam !" said 
 ' he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. She 
 ' put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to 
 1 her eyes ; in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom ; their 
 ' lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed 
 ' into one, for the first time, and for the last !' Thus was Teu- 
 felsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And then ? Why, then 
 ' thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the im- 
 ' measurable Crash of Doom ; and through the ruins as of a 
 ' shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss.' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 
 
 WE have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, mat- 
 ters must often be expected to take a course of their own ; that 
 in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both 
 for admitting and emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom 
 noted ; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, 
 neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict 
 his demeanour. 
 
 To our less philosophical readers, lor example, it is now 
 clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, precipitated through 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 103 
 
 1 a shivered Universe* in this extraordinary way, has only one of 
 three things which he can next do : Establish himself in Bed- 
 lam ; begin writing Satanic Poetry ; or blow-out his brains. In 
 the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such 
 readers anticipate extravagance enough ; breast-beating, brow- 
 beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the 
 like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson 
 itself? 
 
 Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly lifts 
 his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), ' old business being soon wound- 
 up ;' and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the 
 terraqueous Globe ! Curious it is, indeed, how with such viva- 
 city of conception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with these 
 unconscionable habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines 
 that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external proce- 
 dure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the 
 Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and Dissolu- 
 tion of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to 
 himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby ; but rather 
 is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine 
 by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and 
 its hidden things rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii 
 enfranchised from their glass phial : but no sooner are your 
 magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart 
 springs-to again ; and perhaps there is now no key extant that 
 will open it ; for a Teufelsdrockh, as we remarked, will not love 
 a second time. Singular Diogenes ! No sooner has that heart- 
 rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard 
 it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. 
 ' One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, 
 1 had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life : 
 but a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his Angel ; he 
 1 was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of De- 
 ' mons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, ' whereby the Youth saw 
 ' green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters : a lying vision, 
 ' yet not wholly a lie, for he saw it.' But what things soever 
 passed in him, when he ceased to see it ; what ragings and de- 
 spairings soever Teufelsdrockh' s soul was the scene of, he has 
 the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. 
 We know it well ; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gn<*- 
 
104 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 schen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned him- 
 self together ; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and 
 the Journals : only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, 
 by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether 
 with tear-dew or with fierce fire, might you have guessed what 
 a Gehenna was within ; that a whole Satanic School were spout- 
 ing, though inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as 
 some chimneys consume their own smoke ; to keep a whole 
 Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a nega- 
 tive yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these 
 times. 
 
 Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the 
 strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent In- 
 sanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents 
 in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so un- 
 limited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or 
 perhaps assignable aim ; internal Unrest seems his sole guid- 
 ance ; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had 
 fallen on him, and he were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubt- 
 less, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our 
 obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for example, we 
 come upon the following slip : ' A peculiar feeling it is that will 
 ' rise in the Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert 
 ' road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves 
 ' and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, 
 ' the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet 
 ' unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple 
 ' is then truly a starward-pointing finger ; the canopy of blue 
 ' smoke seems like a sort of Life-breath : for always, of its own 
 ' unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love ; 
 ' thus does the little Dwellingplace of men, in itself a congeries 
 * of houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a per- 
 ' son. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the 
 ' place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful 
 ' experiences ; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still 
 ' stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if our Buried 
 ' ones there slumber !' Does Teufelsdrockh, as the wounded 
 eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military 
 deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct 
 in the direction of their birthland, fly first, in this extremity, 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 105 
 
 towards his native Entepfuhl ; but reflecting that there no help 
 awaits him, take only one wistful look from the distance, and 
 then wend elsewhither ? 
 
 Little happier seems to be his next flight : into the wilds of 
 Nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So 
 at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, separated 
 from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, 
 is nothing noteworthy : 
 
 ' Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are Mountains 
 ' seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks 
 ' are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which 
 ' always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic 
 ' character ; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by 
 ' a singular airiness of form, and softness of environment : in a 
 ' climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered 
 ' with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or ver- 
 ' dure ; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round 
 ' the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates 
 ' with Grandeur : you ride through stony hollows, along strait 
 ' passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock ; 
 1 now winding amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge frag- 
 ' ments ; now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, 
 ' where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has 
 ' again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had 
 ' established herself in the bosom of Strength. 
 
 1 To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the 
 ' Son of Time not pretend : still less if some Spectre haunt him 
 ' from the Past ; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, 
 ' spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to 
 ' himself : Are not the gates of this world's Happiness inexor- 
 ' ably shut against thee ; hast thou a hope that is not mad ? 
 ' Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original 
 ' Greek if that suit thee better : " Whoso can look on Death 
 ' will start at no shadows." 
 
 ' From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called 
 ' outwards ; for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, intersected by 
 ' a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which 
 4 is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he 
 ' finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light ; and 
 ' cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. 
 
io6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in com- 
 
 plex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent 
 
 towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are 
 ' beneath your feet, and folded together : only the loftier sum- 
 ' mits look down here and there as on a second plain ; lakes 
 ' also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No trace of man 
 ' now visible ; unless indeed it were he who fashioned that 
 ' little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling 
 ' the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But sun- 
 ' wards, lo you ! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, 
 ' the diadem and centre of the mountain region ! A hundred 
 4 and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day ; all 
 ' glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilder- 
 ' ness ; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the 
 4 night when Noah's Deluge first dried ! Beautiful, nay solemn, 
 
 was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those 
 4 stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire ; 
 ' never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, 
 ' that she was his Mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow 
 ' was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now 
 ' departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and 
 ' of Life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as if Death and 
 4 Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit 
 4 of the Earth had its throne in that splendour, and his own 
 4 spirit were therewith holding communion. 
 
 'The spell was broken by a sound of carriage - wheels. 
 4 Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the 
 4 hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four : it was 
 4 open ; servants and postillions wore wedding-favours : that 
 4 happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage 
 4 evening! Few moments brought them near: Du Himmel ! 
 
 ' It was Herr Towgood and Blumine ! With slight un- 
 
 4 recognising salutation they passed me ; plunged down amid 
 4 the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to Eng- 
 4 land ; and I, in my friend Richter's words, / remained alone, 
 ' behind them, with the Night' 
 
 Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the 
 place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great 
 Clothes- Volume, where it stands with quite other intent : ' Some 
 1 time before Small-pox was extirpated/ says the Professor, 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 10? 
 
 ' there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe : I 
 
 mean the epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets 
 ' of old date, being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed 
 ' external Nature ; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which 
 ' holds good or bad liquor for us ; that is to say, in silence, or 
 
 with slight incidental commentary : never, as I compute, till 
 ' after the Sorrows of Werter, was there man found who would 
 4 say : Come let us make a Description ! Having drunk the 
 
 liquor, come let us eat the glass ! Of which endemic the Jen- 
 1 ner is unhappily still to seek.' Too true ! 
 
 We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's 
 Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment ad- 
 mits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent cha- 
 racter, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche- 
 and-four seems to have withered-up what little remnant of a 
 purpose may have still lurked in him : Life has become wholly 
 a dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long years, our Friend, fly- 
 ing from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and natur- 
 ally with more haste than progress. 
 
 Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from 
 afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his ; the simplest 
 record of which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. 
 Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides 
 from country to country, from condition to condition ; vanish- 
 ing and re -appearing, no man can calculate how or where. 
 Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently 
 through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps difficult 
 to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connexions, 
 be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out 
 of sight as Private Scholar (Privatisirender), living by the 
 grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him 
 as Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable 
 Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing ; as if our Travel- 
 ler, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself by 
 some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, im- 
 parted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that col- 
 lection of Street - Advertisements) ; with only some touch of 
 direct historical notice sparingly interspersed : little light-islets 
 in the world of haze ! So that, from this point, the Professor is 
 more of an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might 
 
108 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised. 
 Fact unparalleled in Biography : The river of his History, 
 which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to 
 see flow onward, with increasing current, into the ocean, here 
 dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap ; and, as a mad- 
 foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray ! 
 Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes ; yet 
 only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a ge- 
 neral stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and 
 plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, 
 form the limit of cur endeavour. 
 
 For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, 
 where they can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this 
 sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, it 
 were questionable to emit. Teufelsdrockh, vibrating everywhere 
 between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact 
 with public History itself. For example, those conversations 
 and relations with illustrious Persons, as Sultan Mahmoud, the 
 Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of a 
 diplomatic character than of a biographic ? The Editor, appre- 
 ciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspect- 
 ing the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew 
 this province for the present ; a new time may bring new in- 
 sight and a different duty. 
 
 If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for 
 there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks ; at all events, 
 in what mood of mind, the Professor undertook and prosecuted 
 this world-pilgrimage, the answer is more distinct than favour- 
 able. 'A nameless Unrest,' says he, .'urged me forward; to 
 ' which the outward motion was some momentary lying solace. 
 ' Whither should I go ? My Loadstars were blotted out ; in 
 ' that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I ; 
 ' the ground burnt under me ; there was no rest for the sole 
 ' of my foot. I was alone, alone ! Ever too the strong inward 
 ' longing shaped Fantasms for itself: towards these, one after 
 ' the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feeling I had, that for 
 1 my fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a healing 
 ' Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' 
 ' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim ; to great Men, to great 
 ' Cities, to great Events : but found there no healing. In strange 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 109 
 
 ' countries, as in the well-known ; in savage deserts, as in the 
 4 press of corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same : how could 
 ' your Wanderer escape from his own Shadow ? Neverthe- 
 ' less still Forward ! I felt as if in great haste ; to do I saw 
 ' not what. From the depths of my own heart, it called to me, 
 ' Forwards ! The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded 
 ' to me, Forwards ! Ach Gott, I was even, once for all, a Son 
 ' of Time.' 
 
 From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School 
 was still active enough ? He says elsewhere : ' The Enchiridion 
 ' of Epictetus I had ever with me, often as my sole rational 
 ' companion ; and regret to mention that the nourishment it 
 ' yielded was trifling.' Thou foolish Teufelsdrockh ! How could 
 it else ? Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus 
 much : The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though 
 it were the noblest ? 
 
 ' How I lived ?' writes he once : ' Friend, hast thou con- 
 ' sidered the "rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well 
 ' names her ; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much 
 ' more her darling, man ? While thou stirrest and livest, thou 
 ' hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been 
 ' cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who 
 ' wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild- 
 ' eggs in the sand of Sahara ; I have awakened in Paris Estra- 
 ' pades and Vienna Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast 
 1 beyond elemental liquid. That I had my Living to seek saved 
 ' me from Dying, by suicide. In our busy Europe, is there 
 ' not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, me- 
 ' chanical, political, religious, educational, commercial depart- 
 ' ments ? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes ? Liv- 
 ' ing ! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive 
 1 Soul ; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision 
 ' enough for the body (of a Philosopher) ; and then, as with both 
 1 hands, create quite other than provision ; namely, spectres to 
 ' torment itself withal.' 
 
 Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always parallel 
 to him ; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear ; so that the 
 countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's ! Thus must 
 he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering 
 Jew, save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffer- 
 
Iio SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ing the pains of guilt, wend to and fro with aimless speed. 
 Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by foot- 
 prints), write his Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh ; even as the great 
 Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his Sorrows of Werter, 
 before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. 
 Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape ' from 
 his own Shadow' ! Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the 
 Born of Heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) 
 in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in 
 Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete, what can 
 the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso 
 will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair ? 
 Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing 
 of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes 
 almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation 
 with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him ? Your 
 Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse and in 
 prose, and copiously otherwise : your Bonaparte represents his 
 Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an all -too stupendous style; 
 with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world ; 
 his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration ; his rhyme and 
 recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of 
 falling Cities. Happier is he who, like our Clothes -Philoso- 
 pher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the 
 insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only ; and also survive the 
 writing thereof ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EVERLASTING NO. 
 
 UNDER the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Pro- 
 fessor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual 
 nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing : for how can 
 the ' Son of Time,' in any case, stand still ? We behold him, 
 through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition : his 
 mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless Discon- 
 tinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation ; wherefrom, 
 the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? 
 
 Such transitions are ever full of pain : thus the Eagle when 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO. ill 
 
 he moults is sickly ; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly 
 dash-off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our 
 Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is 
 clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging 
 within ; coruscations of which flash out : as, indeed, how could 
 there be other ? Have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked 
 of Destiny, through long years ? All that the young heart might 
 desire and pray for has been denied ; nay, as in the last worst 
 instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an ' excellent 
 Passivity ;' but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the 
 former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted : till at length, in 
 this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Ac- 
 tivity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, 
 which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first ' ruddy 
 morning' in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip ; 
 and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine 
 business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam. 
 
 He himself says once, with more justice than originality : 
 ' Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other 
 ' possession but Hope ; this world of his is emphatically the 
 ' Place of Hope.' What, then, was our Professor's possession ? 
 We see him, for the present, quite shut-out from Hope ; look- 
 ing not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim 
 copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. 
 
 Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet 
 dream of! For, as he wanders wearisomely through this woild, 
 he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. Full of re- 
 ligion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited 
 himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irre- 
 ligious : ' Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he ; ' shade 
 ' after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, 
 ' starless, Tartarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, 
 what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily dis- 
 covered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, 
 speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Sto- 
 mach ; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, ' that, 
 ' for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful ; 
 ' how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure 
 1 the shame and the cross ; and without it, Worldlings puke-up 
 ' their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury :' to such 
 
ti2 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his re- 
 ligious Belief was the loss of everything. Unhappy young man ! 
 All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of 
 false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial 
 heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been 
 withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way : ' Is there 
 ' no God, then ; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever 
 ' since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and see- 
 ' ing it go ? Has the word Duty no meaning ; is what we call 
 ' Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly 
 ' Fantasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from 
 ' the Gallows and from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed ? Hap- 
 ' piness of an approving Conscience ! Did not Paul of Tarsus, 
 ' whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he was 
 ' " the chief of sinners ;" and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit 
 ' (wohlgemuth}, spend much of his time in fiddling ? Foolish 
 ' Wordmonger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast 
 ' an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain 
 ' grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure, I tell thee, 
 ' Nay ! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it 
 ' is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he 
 ' is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of 
 ' suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic in- 
 ' spiration we name Virtue but some Passion ; some bubble of 
 ' the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by ? I know 
 ' not : only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our 
 ' true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound 
 ' Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull un- 
 ' imaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases 
 of the Liver ! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build 
 ' our stronghold : there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, 
 ' let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the 
 ' fat things he has provided for his Elect !' 
 
 Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many 
 have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave 
 of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a 
 grim Desert, this once-fair world of his ; wherein is heard only 
 the howling of wild-beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate- 
 filled men ; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire 
 by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO. "3 
 
 the c pirit of Inquiry carried him. ' But what boots it (was 
 ' thufs] ?' cries he : 'it is but the common lot in this era. Not 
 ' having come to spiritual majority prior to the Sihle de Louis 
 ' Quinze, and not being born purely a Loghead (Dummkopf), 
 ' thou hadst no other outlook. The whole world is, like thee, 
 ' sold to Unbelief; their old Temples of the Godhead, which for 
 ' long have not been rainproof, crunible down ; and men ask 
 1 now : Where is the Godhead ; our eyes never saw him ?' 
 
 Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call 
 our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, per- 
 haps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of 
 Goodness, the Servant- of God, than even now when doubting 
 God's existence. 'One circumstance I note,' says he: 'after all 
 ' the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not 
 ' always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, I never- 
 ' theless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my alle- 
 1 giance to her. " Truth !" I cried, " though the Heavens crush 
 ' me for following her : no Falsehood ! though a whole celestial 
 ' Lubberland were the price of Apostasy." In conduct it was 
 ' the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or mira- 
 1 culous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to 
 ' me This thou shalt do, with what passionate readiness, as I 
 ' often thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into 
 ' the infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and 
 ' Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick oph- 
 ' thalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the In- 
 ' finite nature of Duty still dimly present to me : living without 
 ' God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft ; if my 
 ' as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could no- 
 ' where see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and 
 ' His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there.' 
 
 Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and 
 spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, 
 have endured ! 'The painfullest feeling,' writes he, 'is that of 
 ' your own Feebleness ( Unkraff) ; ever, as the English Milton 
 ' says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your Strength 
 ' there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what you have 
 ' prospered in, by what you have done. Between vague waver- 
 ' ing Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a dif- 
 ' ference ! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly 
 
 I 
 
114 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' in us ; which only our Works can render articulate and de- 
 ' cisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the 
 ' spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly 
 ' of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; till it be translated 
 4 into this partially possible one, Know what thou canst work 
 ' at. 
 
 4 But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net- 
 
 result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to Nothing. 
 1 How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as 
 ' yet no mirror to see it in ? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I 
 ' now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble : 
 4 Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as 
 4 the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these 
 ' modern times ? Alas, the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in your- 
 ' self; and how could I believe? Had not my first, last Faith 
 4 in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open, 
 ' and I dared to love, been ail-too cruelly belied ? The specu- 
 1 lative Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me : nei- 
 ' ther in the practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, 
 ' but been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast 
 4 out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, 
 
 I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to dis- 
 ' cern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable walls, 
 ' as of Enchantment, divided me from all living : was there, in 
 4 the wide world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine ? 
 4 O Heaven, No, there was none ! I kept a lock upon my lips : 
 4 why should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called 
 4 Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friend- 
 4 ship was but an incredible tradition ? In such cases, your 
 4 resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the News- 
 4 papers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I 
 4 then lived in. The men and women around me, even speak- 
 4 ing with me, were but Figures ; I had, practically, forgotten 
 4 that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In 
 ' the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked 
 ' solitary ; and (except as it was my own heart, not another's, 
 ' that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. 
 4 Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have 
 ' fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, 
 1 as T imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO. 115 
 
 ' more frightful : but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, 
 ' the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as 
 ' believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, 
 ' of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility : it was one huge, 
 4 dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead in- 
 ' difference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, 
 
 solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death ! Why was the Living 
 ' banished thither companionless, conscious ? Why, if there is 
 ' no Devil ; nay, unless the Devil is your God ?' 
 
 A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, 
 as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of 
 a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? We conjecture that he has 
 known sickness ; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps 
 sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for example : ' How 
 ' beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper ! Quite another 
 ' thing in practice ; every window of your Feeling, even of your 
 ' Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that 
 ' no pure ray can enter ; a whole Drugshop in your inwards ; 
 ' the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust !' 
 
 Putting all which external and internal miseries together, 
 may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Pro- 
 fessor's still vein, significance enough ? ' From Suicide a certain 
 ' aftershine (Nachschein) of Christianity withheld me : perhaps 
 1 also a certain indolence of character ; for, was not that a remedy 
 1 I had at any time within reach ? Often, however, was there a 
 1 question present to me : Should some one now, at the turning 
 ' of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the other 
 ' World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot, how were it? On 
 1 which ground, too, I have often, in sea -storms and sieged 
 ' cities and other death -scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, 
 1 which passed, falsely enough, for courage.' 
 
 ' So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, ' so had it lasted, 
 ' as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The 
 ' heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smoul- 
 ' dering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest 
 ' memory I had shed no tear ; or once only when I, murmuring 
 
 * half-audibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, that wild Selig der den 
 ' or im Siegesglanze findet (Happy whom he finds in Battle's 
 ' splendour), and thought that of this last Friend even I was 
 ' not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. 
 
116 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of 
 ' Man or of Devil : nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, 
 ' could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but 
 ' rise to me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, 
 1 strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear ; 
 ' tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what : 
 ' it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth 
 ' beneath would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were 
 ' but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpi- 
 ' tating, waited to be devoured. 
 
 ' Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in 
 ' the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog- 
 ' day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little 
 ' Rue Saint-Thomas de tEnfer, among civic rubbish enough, in 
 ' a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnez- 
 ' zar's Furnace ; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered ; 
 ' when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked 
 ' myself: "What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, 
 ' dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trem- 
 ' bling ? Despicable biped ! what is the sum-total of the worst 
 ' that lies before thee ? Death ? Well, Death ; and say the pangs 
 ' of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or 
 ' can do against thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; canst thou not 
 ' suffer whatsoever it be ; and, as a Child of Freedom, though 
 ' outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes 
 ' thee ? Let it come, then ; I will meet it and defy it !" And 
 ' as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my 
 ' whole soul ; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I 
 ' was strong, of unknown strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever 
 1 from that time, the temper of my misery was changed : not 
 ' Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire- 
 ' eyed Defiance. 
 
 ' Thus had the EVERLASTING No (das ewige Neiri) pealed 
 1 authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my 
 ' ME ; and then was it that my whole ME stood up, in native 
 1 God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. 
 ' Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may 
 1 that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
 ' of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said : " Be- 
 ' hold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 117 
 
 ' (the Devil's) ;" to which my whole Me now made answer : " 7 
 ' am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee !" 
 
 ' It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New- 
 1 birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism ; perhaps I directly there- 
 ' upon began to be a Man.' 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 
 
 THOUGH, after this ' Baphometic Fire-baptism* of his, our 
 Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased ; as, in- 
 deed, ' Indignation and Defiance,' especially against things in 
 general, are not the most peaceable inmates ; yet can the Psy- 
 chologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest ; 
 that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. 
 For the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, 
 here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic 
 Baptism : the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained 
 by assault, and will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which 
 the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will 
 doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under an- 
 other figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the Rue 
 Saint-Thomas de tEnfer, the old inward Satanic School was not 
 yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice 
 to quit ; whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus- 
 cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean 
 while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep 
 secret. 
 
 Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there is 
 perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in 
 their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh 
 now storm through the world ; at worst as a spectre -fighting 
 Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming 
 restlessly to so many ' Saints' Wells,' and ever without quench- 
 ing of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby 
 from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he 
 is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to ' eat his own heart ;' 
 and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for whole- 
 
u 8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 somer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a 
 much more natural state ? 
 
 ' Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not 
 to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, 
 ' as through a long vista, into the remote Time ; to have, as it 
 4 were, an actual section of almost the earliest Past brought safe 
 1 into the Present, and set before your eyes ! There, in that old 
 ' City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two- 
 ' thousand years ago ; and there, burning more or less trium- 
 phantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and 
 ' still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah ! 
 ' and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then 
 ' also put down there ; and still miraculously burns and spreads ; 
 ' and the smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and 
 1 Churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou 
 ' still seest ; and its flame, looking out from every kind coun- 
 ' tenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches 
 ' thee. 
 
 ' Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are 
 ' aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only : such ai e 
 ' his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on ; 
 ' his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and of Soul- 
 ' habits ; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the 
 ' whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature : all 
 1 these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, can- 
 ' not in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, 
 ' spirit - like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son ; if 
 ' you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. 
 ' Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever 
 ' from Cain and Tubalcain downwards : but where does your 
 ' accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufactur- 
 ' ing SKILL lie warehoused ? It transmits itself on the atmo- 
 ' spheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is 
 ' a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like 
 ' manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS ; where is the Go- 
 ' VERNMENT ? In vain wilf thou go to Schonbrunn, to Down- 
 1 ing Street, to the Palais Bourbon : thou findest nothing there 
 ' but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied 
 ' with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised al- 
 1 mighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on ? Every- 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 119 
 
 ' where, yet nowhere : seen only in its works, this too is a thing 
 4 aeriform, invisible ; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So 
 ' spiritual (geistig) is our whole daily Life : all that we do springs 
 ' out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only like a little Cloud- 
 ' image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body it- 
 4 self forth from the great mystic Deep. 
 
 Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon-up 
 ' to the extent of three : Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals ; 
 4 then tilled Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads 
 
 4 with their Bridges may belong ; and thirdly Books. In 
 
 4 which third truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpass- 
 ' ing that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue of 
 ' a true Book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, 
 ' yearly needing repair ; more like a tilled field, but then a 
 ' spiritual field : like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it 
 ' stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have 
 ' Books that already number some hundred -and -fifty human 
 ' ages) ; and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commen- 
 4 taries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political Systems ; or were it 
 ' only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one of 
 ' which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. 
 4 O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two 
 ' centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him 
 ' whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom 
 ' they name Conqueror or City-burner ! Thou too art a Con- 
 ' queror and Victor ; but of the true sort, namely over the De- 
 4 vil : thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, 
 4 and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and 
 1 Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the 
 1 Earth will pilgrim. Fool ! why journeyest thou wearisomely, 
 ' in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the stone pyramids of 
 4 Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara ? These stand there, as I 
 4 can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly 
 4 enough, for the last three -thousand years : but canst thou 
 4 not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version 
 4 thereof?' 
 
 No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, 
 yet on some Battle-field ; which, we soon gather, must be that of 
 Wagram ; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to 
 distinctness of date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows * 
 
120 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell- 
 ' splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and 
 ' horses ; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. And 
 ' those red mould heaps : ay, there lie the Shells of Men, out of 
 ' which all the Life and Virtue has been blown ; and now are 
 ' they swept together, and crammed-down out of sight, like blown 
 ' Egg-shells ! Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring 
 ' down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian 
 ' Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest 
 ' level, intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, 
 1 whereon her children might be nursed ; or for a Cockpit, 
 ' wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and 
 ' tattered? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting here from 
 ' the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition-wagons, then ? 
 ' Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built 
 ' Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with 
 ' artillery, and with artillery be battered ? Konig Ottokar, amid 
 ' yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf 's truncheon ; here Kaiser 
 ' Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's : within which five cen- 
 ' turies, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been 
 ' defaced and defiled ! The greensward is torn-up and trampled- 
 ' down ; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and 
 ' pleasant dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder ; and the kind 
 ' seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Sculls. Neverthe- 
 ' less, Nature is at work ; neither shall these Powder-Devilkins 
 1 with their utmost devilry gainsay her : but all that gore and 
 ' carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure ; and next 
 ' year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty un- 
 ' wearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little 
 ' profit of thy own, how dost thou, from the very carcass of the 
 ' Killer, bring Life for the Living ! 
 
 ' What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-pur- 
 ' port and upshot of war ? To my own knowledge, for example, 
 ' there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usu- 
 ' ally some five-hundred souls. From these, by certain " Na- 
 ' tural Enemies" of the French, there are successively selected, 
 ' during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men : Dum- 
 ' drudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them : 
 ' she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to 
 ' manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 121 
 
 ' weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can 
 1 stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much 
 ' weeping and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in red ; 
 ' and shipped away, at the public charges, some two-thousand 
 ' miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed there till 
 ' wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, 
 ' are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, 
 4 in like manner wending : till at length, after infinite effort, the 
 ' two parties come into actual juxtaposition ; and Thirty stands 
 ' fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the 
 4 word " Fire !" is given : and they blow the souls out of one 
 ' another ; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the 
 ' world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew 
 ' shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the 
 ' Devil is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough apart ; were 
 ' the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was 
 ' even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness 
 ' between them. How then ? Simpleton ! their Governors had 
 ' fallen-out ; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cun- 
 ' ning to make these poor blockheads shoot. Alas, so is it in 
 ' Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands ; still as of old, 
 ' " what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper !" 
 ' In that fiction of the English Smollet, it is true, the final 
 ' Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth ; 
 ' where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a To- 
 ' bacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone ; light the same, and smoke 
 1 in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in : but from such 
 ' predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contenti- 
 ' ous centuries, may still divide us !' 
 
 Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away 
 from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and per- 
 tinently enough note what is passing there. We may remark, 
 indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing 
 else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than this. In- 
 ternally, there is the most momentous instructive Course of Prac- 
 tical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on ; towards the right 
 comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, favourable to Me- 
 ditation, might help him rather than hinder. Externally, again, 
 as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little 
 substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough : in these so bound- 
 
122 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 less Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even 
 partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, 
 and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all know- 
 able things, might not Teufelsdrockh acquire 1 
 
 I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, ' including 
 1 those of Constantinople and Samarcand : in most Colleges, ex- 
 ' cept the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that 
 4 there was no studying. Unknown Languages have I oftenest 
 ' gathered from their natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of 
 ' Hearing; Statistics, Geographies, Topographies came, through 
 ' the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how 
 ' he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most 
 ' regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I 
 ' meted-out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Com- 
 ' passes that belonged to myself only. 
 
 ' Of great Scenes why speak ? Three summer days, I lin- 
 4 gered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete), by the Pine- 
 ' chasms of Vaucluse ; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my 
 4 bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor ; smoked 
 4 a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China 
 4 1 have seen ; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and 
 ' covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry. 
 4 Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated-down 
 4 (ausgemergelf) into Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the 
 4 World well won, and the World well lost ; oftener than once a 
 4 hundred-thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. 
 4 All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and 
 4 shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, 
 4 and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith 
 convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, 
 ' could not escape me. 
 
 4 For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection ; 
 4 and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly 
 4 escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and act- 
 4 ing) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, whereof a 
 4 Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named 
 4 HISTORY ; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented 
 4 men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or 
 ' worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, 
 4 heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study, the 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 123 
 
 ' inspired Texts themselves ! Thus did not I, in very early 
 ' days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the 
 ' field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena 
 ' Highway ; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater Goethe ; 
 ' and hearing what I have not forgotten. For ' 
 
 But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of 
 
 caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. 
 Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned 
 Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find 
 circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, then 
 may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious be con- 
 ceded ; which for the present were little better than treacherous, 
 perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, 
 of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the ' White Water-roses' 
 (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here ! Of 
 Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark 
 that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have been of very 
 varied character. At first we find our poor Professor on the 
 point of being shot as a spy ; then taken into private conversa- 
 tion, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money ; at 
 last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an 
 ' Ideologist.' ' He himself,' says the Professor, 'was among the 
 ' completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists : in the Idea (in 
 ' der Idee) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a Di- 
 ' vine Missionary, though unconscious of it ; and preached, 
 ' through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, La carritre 
 ' ouverte 'aux talens (The Tools to him that can handle them), 
 ' which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can 
 ' liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthu- 
 ' siasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, 
 ' amid much frothy rant ; yet as articulately perhaps as the 
 ' case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Back- 
 ' woodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle 
 ' with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong 
 ' liquor, rioting, and even theft ; whom, notwithstanding, the 
 ' peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless 
 ' harvest, bless.' 
 
 More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's 
 appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the 
 solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 
 
I2 4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 a ' light-blue Spanish cloak' hanging round him, as his ' most 
 
 commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment ;' and stands 
 there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, 
 like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, 
 yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 
 
 ' Silence as of death,' writes he ; 'for Midnight, even in the 
 ' Arctic latitudes, has its character : nothing but the granite 
 
 cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving 
 
 Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun 
 1 hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his 
 4 cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; yet does 
 4 his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous 
 ' fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself 
 ' under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable ; 
 
 for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies 
 ' all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen ; and 
 ' before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, 
 ' whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp ? 
 
 4 Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or mon- 
 4 ster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows ; and, shaggy, 
 4 huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech : 
 ' mbst probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With cour- 
 4 teous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband trade, 
 4 my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain : 
 4 the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and 
 4 minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it 
 4 with murder, continues to advance ; ever assailing me with 
 4 his importunate train-oil breath ; and now has advanced, till 
 4 we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling 
 4 greedily down below. What argument will avail ? On the 
 4 thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence 
 4 were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, 
 4 whisk aside one step ; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, 
 4 a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, " Be so oblig- 
 1 ing as retire, Friend (Er ziehe sick zuriick, Freund], and with 
 4 promptitude !" This logic even the Hyperborean understands : 
 4 fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off ; 
 ' and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need 
 1 not return. 
 
 4 Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder : that it 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 125 
 
 ' makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer 
 ' than I, if thou have more Mind, though all but no Body what- 
 ' ever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, 
 ' at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless ; sa- 
 ' vage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. 
 
 ' With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few 
 ' things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more sur- 
 ' prise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with inse- 
 ' cure enough cohesion in the midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and 
 ' to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the 
 ' distance of twelve paces asunder ; whirl round ; and, simul- 
 ' taneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another 
 ' into Dissolution ; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant ! 
 ' Deuce on it (verdammf), the little spitfires ! Nay, I think 
 ' with old Hugo von Trimberg : " God must needs laugh out- 
 ' right, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins 
 ' here below." ' 
 
 But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great gener- 
 ality, which is our chief quest here : How prospered the inner 
 man of Teufelsdrockh under so much outward shifting ? Does 
 Legion still lurk in him, though repressed ; or has he exorcised 
 that Devil's Brood ? We can answer that the symptoms con- 
 tinue promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor ; 
 and with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a patient, swal- 
 lowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to 
 the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some 
 cure will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Le- 
 gion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and 
 cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room ; whereby 
 the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable 
 state. 
 
 At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our Auto- 
 biographer, ' I was what you might name calcined. Pray only 
 ' that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to 
 ' a caput-mortuum ! But in any case, by mere dint of prac- 
 ' tice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness 
 ' was still wretched ; but I could now partly see through it, 
 ' and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Exist- 
 ' ence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted ; 
 
126 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' and, when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable 
 ' enough ? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I : 
 but what, had they even been all granted 1 Did not the Boy 
 ' Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer ; 
 ' or a whole Solar System ; or after that, a whole Universe ? 
 ' Ach Gott, when I gazed into these Stars, have they not looked- 
 ' down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces ; like 
 ' Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man ! 
 ' Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, 
 ' have been swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck 
 ' of them any more ; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and 
 4 the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, 
 ' as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. 
 ' Pshaw ! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth ; what 
 4 art thou that sittest whining there ? Thou art still Nothing, 
 ' Nobody : true ; but who, then, is Something, Somebody ? For 
 ' thee the Family of Man has no use ; it rejects thee ; thou 
 4 art wholly as a dissevered limb : so be it ; perhaps it is better 
 ' so!' 
 
 Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his bands are 
 loosening ; one day he will hurl the burden far from hhn, and 
 bound forth free and with a second youth. 
 
 ' This,' says our Professor, 'was the CENTRE OF INDIFFER- 
 ' ENCE I had now reached ; through which whoso travels from 
 ' the Negative Pole to the Positive must necessarily pass.' 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EVERLASTING YEA. 
 
 ' TEMPTATIONS in the Wilderness !' exclaims Teufelsdrockh : 
 4 Have we not all to be tried with such ? Not so easily can the 
 ' old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is 
 ' compassed round with Necessity ; yet is the meaning of Life 
 ' itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force : thus have 
 4 we a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard -fought 
 4 battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Welldoing, 
 ' lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA. 127 
 
 ' in our hearts ; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be 
 1 deciphered and obeyed ; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a 
 ' visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given man- 
 1 date, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively 
 ' proclaims itself through every nerve, must not there be a con- 
 ' fusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the 
 ' upper ? 
 
 4 To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of 
 ' Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs 
 ' within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or van- 
 ' quish, should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and 
 ' there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him ; de- 
 1 fiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as 
 1 we choose : with or without visible Devil, whether in the na- 
 ' tural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral 
 ' Desert of selfishness and baseness, to such Temptation are 
 4 we all called. Unhappy if we are not ! Unhappy if we are 
 ' but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never 
 1 blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-Splendour ; but quivers 
 ' dubiously amid meaner lights : or smoulders, in dull pain, in 
 1 darkness, under earthly vapours ! Our Wilderness is the wide 
 World in an Atheistic Century ; our Forty Days are long years 
 of suffering and fasting : nevertheless, to these also comes an 
 ' end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the con- 
 ' sciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while 
 ' life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted 
 ' forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was 
 ' given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the 
 ' higher sunlit slopes of that Mountain which has no summit, 
 ' or whose summit is in Heaven only !' 
 
 He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; as figures 
 are, once for all, natural to him : ' Has not thy Life been that 
 ' of most sufficient men (tiichtigen Manner) thou hast known 
 ' in this generation ? An outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm, 
 ' like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valu- 
 1 able herbs : this all parched away, under the Droughts of 
 ' practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought 
 1 and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradu- 
 1 ally settled into Denial ! If I have had a second-crop, and now 
 x see the perennial greensward, and sit under umbrageous ce- 
 
128 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' dais, which defy all Drought (and Doubt) ; herein too, be the 
 ' Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even ex- 
 ' emplars.' 
 
 So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has been a ' glorious 
 revolution :' these mad shadow-h mting and shadow-hunted Pil- 
 grimings of his were but some purifying ' Temptation in the 
 Wilderness,' before his apostolic work (such as it was) could 
 begin ; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil 
 once more worsted ! Was ' that high moment in the Rue de 
 tEnfer? then, properly the turning-point of the battle ; when 
 the Fiend said, Worship me, or be torn in shreds; and was ans- 
 wered valiantly with an Apage Satana ? Singular Teufels- 
 drockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words ! 
 But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. 
 Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets : a typical Shadow, 
 fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric ; no clear logical Picture. 
 ' How paint to the sensual eye,' asks he once, ' what passes in 
 ' the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul ; in what words, known to 
 ' these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable ?' 
 We ask in turn : Why perplex these times, profane as they are, 
 with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission ? Not 
 mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical ; and involves him- 
 self, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering chiaroscuro. Suc- 
 cessive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers 
 must endeavour to combine for their own behoof. 
 
 He says : ' The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out ; 
 its howl went silent within me ; and the long-deafened soul 
 could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings ; and sat 
 me down to wait, and consider ; for it was as if the hour of 
 change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, 
 and say : Fly, then, false shadows of Hope ; I will chase you no 
 more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spec- 
 tres of Fear, I care not for you ; ye too are all shadows and 
 a lie. Let me rest here : for I am way-weary and life-weary ; 
 I will rest here, were it but to die : to die or to live is alike 
 to me; alike insignificant.' And again : ' Here, then, as I lay 
 in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benign- 
 ant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams 
 rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a 
 new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA. 
 
 129 
 
 1 Self (Selbst-todtung), had been happily accomplished ; and my 
 ' mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.' 
 
 Might we not also conjecture that the following passage 
 refers to his Locality, during this same ' healing sleep ;' that his 
 Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on ' the high table-land ;' and 
 indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on 
 him ? If it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of 
 riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected ! However, 
 in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism : light 
 dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, 
 while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe 
 and wail. We transcribe the piece entire. 
 
 ' Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, .musing 
 ' and meditating ; on the high table-land, in front of the Moun- 
 ' tains ; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for 
 ' walls, four azure-flowing curtains, namely, of the Four azure 
 1 Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And 
 ' then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these 
 4 Mountain hollows ; with their green flower-lawns, and white 
 ' dames and damosels, lovely enough : or better still, the straw- 
 ' roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, 
 ' with her children round her : all hidden and protectingly 
 1 folded-up in the valley-folds ; yet there and alive, as sure as 
 ' if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns 
 1 and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still 
 1 weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with 
 ' metal tongue ; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their 
 ' vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon, as on a culinary 
 ' horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the 
 ' smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, 
 ' eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles ; and ever a blue 
 ' pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from 
 ' each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say : Such 
 4 and such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting ! 
 1 For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and 
 ' scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in minia- 
 ' ture, and could cover it all with your hat. If, in my wide Way- 
 ' farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World 
 4 in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into 
 4 general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 
 
130 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in 
 ' anger through the Distance : round some Schreckhorn, as yet 
 ' grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumult- 
 
 uously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair ; till, after 
 ' a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreck- 
 4 horn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. 
 ' How thou fermentest and elaborates!, in thy great fermenting- 
 ' vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature ! 
 ' Or what is Nature ? Ha ! why do I not name thee GOD ? 
 ' Art not thou the " Living Garment of God" ? O Heavens, is 
 ' it, in very deed, HE, then, that ever speaks through thee; that 
 ' lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me ? 
 
 ' Fore -shadows, call them rather fore -splendours, of that 
 ; Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. 
 
 Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla ; 
 ' ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays be- 
 ' wildered, weeping, in unknown tumults ; like soft streamings of 
 ' celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that Evangel. 
 ' The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house 
 1 with spectres ; but godlike, and my Father's ! 
 
 ' With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow 
 ' man : with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, 
 
 wayward man ! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, 
 1 even as I am ? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle or 
 ' the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden ; 
 ' and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Bro- 
 ' ther, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away 
 ' all tears from thy eyes ! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, 
 
 which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, 
 ' was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one ; like 
 4 inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in 
 ' the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor 
 ' joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame ; 
 ' Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had 
 
 become the dearer to me ; and even for his sufferings and his 
 1 sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in 
 ' the porch of that "Sanctuary of Sorrow /' by strange, steep 
 ' ways had I too been guided thither ; and ere long its sacred 
 ' gates would open, and the "Divine Depth of Sorrow" lie dis- 
 ' closed to me.' 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA. 131 
 
 The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that 
 had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and 
 was free. 'A vain interminable controversy," writes he, 'touch- 
 ' ing what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such 
 ' thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world ; 
 ' and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into ac- 
 ' tual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in 
 ' our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough 
 ' Suppression of this controversy ; to a few some Solution of it 
 ' is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes- 
 
 out in different terms ; and ever the Solution of the last era 
 ' has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is 
 ' man's nature to change his Dialect from century to century ; 
 ' he cannot help it though he would. The authentic Church- 
 1 Catechism of our present century has not yet fallen into my 
 ' hands : meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to 
 ' elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, 
 
 * comes of his Greatness ; it is because there is an Infinite in 
 ' him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under 
 1 the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholster- 
 1 ers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint- 
 : stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY ? They cannot 
 ' accomplish it, above an hour or two : for the Shoeblack also 
 ' has a Soul quite other than his Stomach ; and would require, 
 ' if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and satura- 
 ' tion, simply this allotment, no more, and no less : God's in- 
 ' finite Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, 
 ' and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, 
 ' a Throat like that of Ophiuchus : speak not of them ; to the 
 ' infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your 
 ' ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better 
 ' vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, 
 1 he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and 
 4 declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there 
 ' is a black spot in our sunshine : it is even, as I said, the 
 1 Shadow of Ourselves. 
 
 ' But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. 
 ' By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we 
 1 come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot ; this we fancy 
 1 belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple 
 
132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' payment of our wages, of our deserts ; requires neither thanks 
 4 nor complaint ; only such overplus as there may be do we 
 4 account Happiness ; any deficit again is Misery. Now con- 
 1 sider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, 
 4 and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us, do you 
 4 wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, 
 4 and many a Blockhead cry : See there, what a payment ; was 
 4 ever worthy gentleman so used ! I tell thee, Blockhead, it all 
 ' comes of thy Vanity; of what thou fanciest those same deserts 
 4 of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is 
 4 most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot : fancy 
 ' that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a 
 4 luxury to die in hemp. 
 
 4 So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can 
 ' be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator 
 ' as by lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra 
 4 deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity. 
 ' Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou hast the world 
 4 under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write : 4< It is 
 4 only with Renunciation (Entsageri) that Life, properly speak- 
 ' ing, can be said to begin." 
 
 4 1 asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, 
 4 thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self- 
 4 tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word : is it not because 
 4 thou art not HAPPY ? Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is 
 4 not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly 
 ' cared-for ? Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was there 
 4 that thou shouldst be Happy ? A little while ago thou hadst 
 4 no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined 
 4 not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy ! Art thou nothing other 
 ' than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking 
 4 after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion 
 4 enough is not given thee ? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.' 
 
 ' Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it !' cries he else- 
 where : ' there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness : 
 4 he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessed- 
 4 ness ! Was it not to preach-forth this same HIGHER that sages 
 4 and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken 
 ' and suffered ; bearing testimony, through life and through 
 ' death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA. 133 
 
 1 only has he Strength and Freedom ? Which God-inspired 
 ' Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught ; O Heavens 1 
 ' and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou 
 ' become contrite, and learn it ! O, thank thy Destiny for these ; 
 1 thankfully bear what yet remain : thou hadst need of them ; 
 ' the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever- 
 ' paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, 
 ' and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, 
 ' thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eter- 
 ' nity. Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is the EVERLASTING 
 ' YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved : wherein whoso walks 
 ' and works, it is well with him.' 
 
 And again : ' Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth 
 ' with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained 
 ' thee : thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even 
 ' because it injures thee ; for this a Greater than Zeno was 
 ' needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that " Worship 
 ' of Sorrow" f The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen cen- 
 ' turies ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habi- 
 ' tation of doleful creatures : nevertheless, venture forward ; in 
 1 a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the 
 ' Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.' 
 
 Without pretending to comment on which strange utter- 
 ances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them 
 much of a still more questionable character ; unsuited to the 
 general apprehension ; nay wherein he himself does not see 
 his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without 
 bursts of splendour ; on the ' perennial continuance of Inspira- 
 tion ;' on Prophecy ; that there are ' true Priests, as well as 
 Baal-Priests, in our own day :' with more of the like sort. We 
 select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. 
 
 ' Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus apos- 
 trophises the Professor : ' shut thy sweet voice ; for the task 
 ' appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demon- 
 ' strated this proposition, considerable or otherwise : That the 
 ' Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth 
 ' century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty 
 1 quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and 
 ' folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on 
 ' the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little t But 
 
I 3 4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' what next ? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of 
 ' that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, 
 ' that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live ? What ! 
 ' thou hast no faculty in that kind ? Only a torch for burning, 
 
 ' no hammer for building ? Take our thanks, then, and 
 
 ' thyself away. 
 
 4 Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me ? Or is 
 
 the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von 
 
 ' Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or dispute into me ? To the 
 
 " Worship of Sorrow" ascribe what origin and genesis thou 
 ' pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated ; 
 ' is it not here ? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is 
 ' of God ! This is Belief ; all else is Opinion, for which latter 
 1 whoso will, let him worry and be worried.' 
 
 ' Neither,' observes he elsewhere, ' shall ye tear-out one an- 
 1 other's eyes, struggling over " Plenary Inspiration," and such- 
 1 like : try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each 
 1 of you for himself. One BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary In- 
 ' spiration doubt is not so much as possible ; nay with my own 
 ' eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it : thereof all other Bibles 
 ' are but Leaves, say, in Picture- Writing to assist the weaker 
 ' faculty. 1 
 
 Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, 
 let him take the following, perhaps more intelligible passage : 
 
 ' To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, ' which is an 
 ' internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems 
 
 * questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy 
 ' brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. 
 4 If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this : " Fellow, 
 ' see ! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the 
 1 world, something from my share : which, by the Heavens, 
 ' thou shalt not ; nay I will fight thee rather." Alas, and the 
 ' whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a "feast 
 ' of shells," for the substance has been spilled out : not enough 
 ' to quench one Appetite ; and the collective human species 
 4 clutching at them ! Can we not, in all such cases, rather say : 
 4 " Take it, thou too-ravenous individual ; take that pitiful ad- 
 ' ditional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which 
 ' thou so wantest ; take it with a blessing : would to Heaven I 
 ' had enough for thee!" If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, "to 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA. 135 
 
 ' a certain extent, Applied Christianity," surely to a still greater 
 ' extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, 
 ' yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, 
 ' as we can demonstrate it I 
 
 ' But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worth- 
 
 less till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Convic- 
 1 tion is not possible till then ; inasmuch as all Speculation is 
 ' by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices : only by a 
 ' felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre 
 ' to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most 
 ' true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that " Doubt of any sort 
 ' cannot be removed except by Action." On which ground, too, 
 ' let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, 
 1 and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay 
 ' this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable 
 ' service : "Do the Duty which lies nearest thee" which thou 
 ' knowest to be a Duty I Thy second Duty will already have 
 ' become clearer. 
 
 ' May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfran- 
 1 chisement is even this : When your Ideal World, wherein the 
 4 whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly lan- 
 ' guishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open ; and 
 you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in 
 1 Wilhelm Meister, that your "America is here or nowhere"? 
 
 The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet 
 
 occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, 
 ' despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or 
 
 nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, 
 ' believe, live, be free. Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, the im- 
 ' pediment too is in thyself : thy Condition is but the stuff thou 
 ' art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether 
 ' such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be 
 ' heroic, be poetic ? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment 
 of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom 
 ' wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth : the thing thou 
 1 seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou 
 ' only see I 
 
 ' But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature : the be- 
 ' ginning of Creation is Light. Till the eye have vision, the 
 ' whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over 
 
136 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' the tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, 
 ' it is spoken : Let there be Light ! Ever to the greatest that 
 ' has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announc- 
 ' ing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. 
 ' The mad primeval Discord is hushed ; the rudely-jumbled con- 
 ' flicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments : 
 ' deep silent rock-foundations are built beneath ; and the skyey 
 ' vault with its everlasting Luminaries above : instead of a dark 
 ' wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encom- 
 ' passed World. 
 
 ' I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but 
 ' a World, or even Worldkin. Produce 1 Produce I Were it 
 ' but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce 
 1 it, in God's name t 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee : out 
 ' with it, then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
 ' do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today : 
 ' for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.' 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PAUjSE. 
 
 THUS have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in 
 such circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdrockh through 
 the various successive states and stages of Growth, Entangle- 
 ment, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer 
 state of what he himself seems to consider as Conversion. ' Blame 
 f not the word,' says he ; ' rejoice rather that such a word, signi- 
 ' fying such a thing, has come to light in our modern Era, though 
 ' hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew no- 
 ' thing of Conversion ; instead of an Ecce Homo, they had only 
 1 some Choice of Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in 
 ' the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come 
 ' home to the bosoms of the most Limited ; what to Plato was 
 1 but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear 
 ' and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest 
 ' of their Pietists and Methodists.' 
 
 It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh 
 commences : we are henceforth to see him ' work in well-doing,' 
 
PAUSE. 137 
 
 with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that 
 the Ideal Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual 
 ill-furnished Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He 
 can say to himself: 'Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there 
 ' is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The basest 
 ' of created animalcules, the Spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, 
 ' and warping-mill, and power-loom within its head : the stupid- 
 ' est of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house 
 ' to hold it in : every being that can live can do something : this 
 1 let him do, Tools ? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, fur- 
 1 nishable with some glimmerings of Light ; and three fingers to 
 1 hold a Pen withal ? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of 
 ' practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working 
 Tool : greater than all recorded miracles have been performed 
 ' by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which 
 ' nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that 
 1 Sound, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most con- 
 ' tinuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be omnipotent 
 ' in this world ; man, thereby divine, can create as by a Fiat. 
 ' Awake, arise ! Speak forth what is in thee ; what God has 
 1 given thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task 
 ' than that of Priesthood was allotted to no man : wert thou but 
 c the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough 
 4 therein to spend and be spent ? 
 
 ' By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade 
 ' into a handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, ' have I thenceforth 
 1 abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for 
 ' what am //), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into 
 ' the mighty seed-field of Opinion ; fruits of my unseen sowing 
 ' gratify ingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens 
 ' that I have now found my Calling ; wherein, with or without 
 ' perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 
 
 ' Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, ' but this and the other 
 ' pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-work- 
 4 ing Institution ; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast 
 4 into the right soil, and now stretching-out strong boughs to the 
 4 four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in, may have been 
 1 properly my doing? Some one's doing, it without doubt was; 
 ' from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all take 
 ' beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?' DoesTcufels- 
 
138 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 drockh here glance at that ' SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION 
 OF PROPERTY (Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft},' of which 
 so many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these in- 
 expressible Paper-bags? ' An Institution, 1 hints he, 'not unsuit- 
 able to the wants of the time ; as indeed such sudden extension 
 proves : for already can the Society number, among its office- 
 bearers or corresponding members, the highest Names, if not 
 ' the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France ; and cor. 
 4 tributions, both of money and of meditation, pour in from all 
 ' quarters ; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the 
 1 world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round 
 ' this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give him- 
 self out as the originator of that so notable Eigenthums-conser- 
 virende ('Owndom-conserving') Gesellschaft ; and if so, what, 
 in the Devil's name, is it ? He again hints : ' At a time when 
 ' the divine Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, wherein truly, 
 ' if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, 
 ' with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, 
 ' the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, 
 ' Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and en- 
 1 forced with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guid- 
 4 ance : at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has 
 4 ail-but faded away from the general remembrance ; and, with 
 ' little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, Thou shalt steal, 
 1 is everywhere promulgated, it perhaps behoved, in this uni- 
 ' versa! dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to 
 ' bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest 
 4 violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right 
 4 now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended 
 ' by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted 
 4 that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an acci- 
 4 dental Possession and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked 
 ' for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and 
 4 baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin ; but 
 ' what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can 
 ' protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring 
 4 hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, therefore, the more sequestered 
 ' Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that 
 4 perhaps not ill-written Program in the Public Journals, with 
 ' its high Prize-Questions and so libera? Prizes, could have pro- 
 
PAUSE. 139 
 
 ' ceeded, let him now cease such wonder ; and, with undivided 
 ' faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Competition).' 
 
 We ask : Has this same ' perhaps not ill-written Program,' 
 or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving 
 Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal 
 foreign or domestic ? If so, what are those Prize-Questions; 
 what are the terms of Competition, and when and where ? No 
 printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met 
 with in these Paper-bags ! Or is the whole business one other 
 of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby 
 Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so 
 often to play fast-and-loose with us ? 
 
 Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to 
 a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun 
 to haunt him ; paralysing any little enthusiasm that might still 
 have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labour of love. 
 It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed 
 almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humor- 
 istico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground 
 humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, 
 defy all reckoning : a suspicion, in one word, that these Auto- 
 biographical Documents are partly a mystification ! What if 
 many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction ; if here 
 we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's 
 History ; but only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, 
 symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing-forth the 
 same ! Our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally 
 authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, 
 whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of- 
 Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. 
 Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impene- 
 trable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, would all at once frankly un- 
 lock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German 
 Hofrath ; and not rather deceptively *lock both Editor and 
 Hofratli in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said 
 citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish 
 way, how the fools would look ? 
 
 Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find 
 himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank. 
 
140 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 the ink being ail-but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort 
 decipher, the following : ' What are your historical Facts ; still 
 ' more your biographical ? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a 
 ' Mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest 
 ' Facts ? The Man is the spirit he worked in ; not what he 
 ' did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, 
 ' for which the fewest have the key. And then how your Block- 
 ' head (Dumnikopf} studies not their Meaning ; but simply 
 ' whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Im- 
 1 moral I Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfuscher} : such 
 ' I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of inter- 
 ' pretation ; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a 
 ' common poisonous reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive 
 lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might 
 mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner ? 
 For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand 
 satire, into a plainer Symbol ? Or is this merely one of his 
 half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back 
 of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop ? We say not with 
 certainty ; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never 
 say. If our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own ques- 
 tionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the 
 blame. 
 
 But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed 
 exhausted Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags for 
 the present. Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdrockh, so 
 far, if ' not what he did, yet what he became :' the rather, as his 
 character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolu- 
 tion, of importance, is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chry- 
 salis is now a winged Psyche : and such, wheresoever be its 
 flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations 
 (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external Life- 
 element, Teufelsdrockh reaches his University Professorship, 
 and the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering 
 her now fixed nature, would be comparatively an unproductive 
 task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a 
 false and impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, 
 which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly 
 into spray-vapour, may hover in that condition, for aught that 
 concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain ' pools 
 
PAUSE. 141 
 
 and plashes," we have ascertained its general direction ; do we 
 not already know that, by one way and other, it has long since 
 rained-down again into a stream ; and even now, at Weissnicht- 
 wo, flows deep and still, fraught with the Philosophy of Clothes, 
 and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon ? Over much in- 
 valuable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry- 
 rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to 
 glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right 
 place : meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. 
 
 If now, before reopening the great Clothes- Volume, we ask 
 what our degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has 
 been, towards right understanding of the Clothes-Philosophy, let 
 not our discouragement become total. To speak in that old 
 figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying pontoons 
 have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift straggling on 
 the Flood ; how far they will reach, when once the chains are 
 straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of 
 conjecture. 
 
 So much we already calculate : Through many a little loop- 
 hole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of Teufels- 
 drockh ; his strange mystic, almost magic Diagram of the 
 Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not henceforth 
 altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas on TIME, which 
 merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, 
 may by and by prove significant. Still more may his some- 
 what peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes 
 to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one Garment, a 
 ' Living Garment,' woven and ever aweaving in the ' Loom of 
 Time ;' is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole Clothes-Phi- 
 losophy; at least the arena it is to work in ? Remark, too, that 
 the Character of the Man, nowise without meaning in such 
 a matter, becomes less enigmatic : amid so much tumultuous 
 obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain in- 
 domitable Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to 
 loom forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata 
 all the rest were based and built ? 
 
 Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's Biography, 
 allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, ex- 
 hibits a man, as it were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy ? 
 To look through the Shows of things into Things themselves 
 
142 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 he is led and compelled. The ' Passivity" given him by birth 
 is fostered by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, 
 like oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in any 
 public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, and a life 
 of Meditation. The whole energy of his existence is directed, 
 through long years, on one task : that of enduring pain, if he 
 cannot cure it. Thus everywhere do the Shows of things op- 
 press him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruc- 
 tion : only by victoriously penetrating into Things themselves 
 can he find peace and a stronghold. But is not this same look- 
 ing-through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the 
 first preliminary to a Philosophy of Clothes ? Do we not, in 
 all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher pur- 
 port of such a Philosophy ; and what shape it must assume 
 with such a man, in such an era ? 
 
 Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader 
 is not utterly without guess whither he is bound : nor, let us 
 hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottoes through which, as is 
 our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must wander, will there be want- 
 ing between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. 
 
BOOK THIRD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, 
 from an early part of this Clothes- Volume, has more and more 
 exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudi- 
 ness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the 
 mystery of the World ; recognising in the highest sensible phe- 
 nomena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment ; 
 yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible : 
 and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, 
 with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere 
 exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and 
 worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true 
 Platonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by 
 thus casting his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the 
 Universe ; what such, more or less complete, rending and burn- 
 ing of Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilised 
 Life and Speculation, should lead to ; the rather as he was no 
 Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recom- 
 mend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the 
 savage state : all this our readers are now bent to discover ; 
 this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor Teu- 
 felsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes. 
 
 Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not 
 so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We 
 are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold-country, 
 and show them the mines ; nowise to dig-out and exhaust its 
 wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. Once 
 there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 
 
144 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of 
 the Professor's, can our course now more than formerly be 
 straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. Sig- 
 nificant Indications stand-out here and there ; which for the 
 critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape them- 
 selves into some ground-scheme of a Whole : to select these 
 with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, 
 and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable 
 Bridge be effected : this, as heretofore, continues our only me- 
 thod. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much 
 wild matter about Perfectibility, has seemed worth clutching at : 
 
 4 Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,' 
 says Teufelsdrockh, ' is not the Diet of Worms, still less the 
 ' Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle ; 
 ' but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, 
 ' and treated with some degree of ridicule by others : namely, 
 4 George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, 
 ' the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one 
 4 of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine 
 4 Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself ; and, across 
 ' all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine 
 ' through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on 
 ' their souls : who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, 
 ' God-possessed ; or even Gods, as in some periods it has 
 ' chanced. Sitting in his stall ; working on tanned hides, 
 amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a name- 
 ' less flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living 
 ' Spirit belonging to him ; also an antique Inspired Volume, 
 ' through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, 
 ' and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of 
 ' shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an 
 1 honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post 
 ' of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful 
 ' sewing, was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind : but 
 ' ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that 
 ' far country, came Splendours and Terrors ; for this poor 
 ' Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man ; and the Temple of Im- 
 4 mensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was 
 full of holy mystery to him. 
 
 ' The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained Watchers 
 
INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 145 
 
 4 and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with un- 
 1 affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the 
 solution of such doubts, to "drink beer and dance with the 
 
 * girls." Blind leaders of the blind ! For what end were their 
 4 tithes levied and eaten ; for what were their shovel - hats 
 ' scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on ; 
 4 and such a church -repairing, and chaffering, and organing, 
 1 and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth, if 
 4 Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its ad- 
 1 juncts the grand Reality ? Fox turned from them, with tears 
 ' and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. 
 4 Mountains of encumbrance, higher than ./Etna, had been 
 ' heaped over that Spirit : but it was a Spirit, and would not 
 4 lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent 
 ' agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be 
 4 free : how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultu- 
 4 ously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, 
 4 and emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Leicester shoe- 
 4 shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican 
 4 or Loretto-shrine. " So bandaged, and hampered, and hem- 
 4 med in," groaned he, "with thousand requisitions, obligations, 
 4 straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move : not 
 4 my own am I, but the World's ; and Time flies fast, and Hea- 
 4 ven is high, and Hell is deep : Man ! bethink thee, if thou 
 4 hast power of Thought ! Why not ; what binds me here ? Want, 
 4 want ! Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages 'under the 
 
 Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light ? Only 
 4 Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the 
 4 woods : the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed 
 4 me ; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit 
 ' of Leather !" 
 
 4 Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdrockh, ' is one 
 ' of the Arts I never practised ; therefore shall I not decide 
 4 whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. 
 4 Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of 
 1 man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the Cha- 
 4 otic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and 
 4 its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in His- 
 
 tory. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and 
 ' understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, 
 
I 4 6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and 
 ' cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them to- 
 ' gether into one continuous all - including Case, the farewell 
 ' service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble Fox : every prick 
 ' of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, 
 ' and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, 
 ' as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee 
 ' across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Work- 
 1 house and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty ; were the work 
 ' done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art 
 he! 
 
 ' Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest 
 ' height ; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. 
 ' Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Dio- 
 ' genes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted 
 1 Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest 
 ' of the Moderns, and greater than Diogenes himself : for he 
 ' too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting 
 1 aside all props and shears ; yet not, in half-savage Pride, un- 
 ' dervaluing the Earth ; valuing it rather, as a place to yield 
 ' him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, 
 ' and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still 
 ' Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, 
 ' truly, was that Tub ; a temple from which man's dignity and 
 ' divinity was scornfully preached abroad : but greater is the 
 ' Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and 
 1 not in Scorn but in Love.' 
 
 George Fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been 
 v.'orn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries : why, in a dis- 
 cussion on the Perfectibility of Society, reproduce it now ? Not 
 out of blind sectarian partisanship : Teufelsdrockh himself is 
 no Quaker ; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, 
 in that scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, 
 exhibit fire-arms ? 
 
 For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more 
 meant in this passage that meets the ear. At the same time, 
 who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity 
 (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which 
 that ' Incident* is here brought forward ; and, in the Professor's 
 
CHURCH-CLOTHES. 147 
 
 ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, 
 recommended to imitation ! Does Teufelsdrockh anticipate that, 
 in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the com- 
 munity, by way of testifying against the ' Mammon-god, ' and 
 escaping from what he calls ' Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' 
 where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hood- 
 winked sufficiently, will sheathe themselves in close-fitting 
 cases of Leather ? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will 
 Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and 
 train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide ? By which change 
 Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and 
 the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes ; and only 
 Day and Martin could profit. For neither would Teufels- 
 drockh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, 
 of levelling Society (levelling it indeed with a vengeance, into 
 one huge drowned marsh !), and so attaining the political effects 
 of Nudity without its frigorific or other consequences, be 
 thereby realised. Would not the rich man purchase a water- 
 proof suit of Russia Leather ; and the high-born Belle step-forth 
 in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy : the black cowhide 
 being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world ; and so 
 all the old Distinctions be reestablished ? 
 
 Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; and laughs 
 in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but 
 a part thereof? 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHURCH-CLOTHES. 
 
 NOT less questionable is his Chapter on Church- Clothes, 
 which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the 
 Volume. We here translate it entire : 
 
 ' By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean 
 ' infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices ; and do not at 
 ' all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go 
 ' to Church in. Far from it ! Church-Clothes are, in our vo- 
 1 cabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, under which men have at 
 1 various periods embodied and represented for themselves the 
 ' Religious Principle ; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea 
 
U 8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 of the World with a sensible and practically active Body, so 
 4 that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving 
 
 WORD. 
 
 ' These are unspeakably the most important of all the ves- 
 tures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are first 
 4 spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders, So 
 ' CIETY; for it is still only when "two or three are gathered 
 1 together," that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed inde- 
 1 structible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests 
 ' itself (as with "cloven tongues of fire"), and seeks to be em- 
 ' bodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mys- 
 ' tical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul with 
 4 Soul, both looking heavenward : here properly Soul first speaks 
 ' with Soul ; for only in looking heavenward, take it in what 
 ' sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can 
 ' call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How 
 
 true is that of Novalis : " It is certain, my Belief gains 
 4 quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind 
 4 thereof" ! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes 
 4 where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where 
 ' rages the lurid conflagration of Anger ; feel how thy own so 
 ' quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, 
 ' and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one 
 1 limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly- 
 ' grappling 1 Hate) ; and then say what miraculous virtue goes 
 out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied 
 ' hulls of our Earthly Life ; how much more when it is of the 
 4 Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, brought 
 1 into contact with inmost ME ! 
 
 ' Thus was it that I said, the Church- Clothes are first spun 
 ' and woven by Society ; outward Religion originates by So- 
 4 ciety, Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, 
 4 every conceivable Society, past and present, may well be 
 ' figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of 
 4 these three predicaments : an audibly preaching and prophe- 
 ' sying Church, which is the best ; second, a Church that strug- 
 1 gles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pente- 
 4 cost come ; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with 
 ' old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. 
 ' Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses 
 
CHURCH-CLOTHES. H9 
 
 ' and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech 
 ' and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, 
 4 light of heart (getrosten Muthes). 
 
 ' But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church- 
 4 Clothes specially recognised as Church-Clothes, I remark, fear- 
 4 lessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues 
 4 Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if Govern- 
 4 ment is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body Politic, 
 4 holding the whole together and protecting it ; and all your 
 4 Craft- Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of 
 ' head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tis- 
 1 sues (lying under such SKIN), whereby Society stands and 
 4 works ; then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous 
 4 Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation to the 
 ' whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and 
 ' Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Gal- 
 4 vanic vitality ; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or 
 4 fast-rotting raw-hide ; and Society itself a dead carcass, de- 
 4 serving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gre- 
 4 garious ; which latter state also could not continue, but must 
 4 gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage iso- 
 4 lation, and dispersion ; whereby, as we might continue to 
 4 say, the very dust and dead body of Society would have eva- 
 4 porated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, 
 ' all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civilised or even to 
 1 rational men. 
 
 4 Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church- 
 ' Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : nay, far worse, 
 many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, 
 ' under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; but 
 1 only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive 
 4 their trade ; and the mask still glares on you with its glass- 
 4 eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, some generation-and-half 
 4 after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed 
 4 nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to re- 
 4 appear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, 
 4 or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all 
 4 men, so is a Sham-priest (Schein-priester) the falsest and basest ; 
 neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' 
 ' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for 
 
1 50 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' the wounds of mankind ; or even to burn into tinder, for gene- 
 ral scientific or culinary purposes. 
 
 ' All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my 
 ' Second Volume, On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society ; 
 ' which volume, as treating practically of the Wear, Destruc- 
 4 tion, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, 
 4 properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate Portion of 
 ' this my work on Clothes, and is already in a state of forward- 
 ' ness." 
 
 And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary 
 being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, ter- 
 minate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SYMBOLS. 
 
 PROBABLY it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing ob- 
 scure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's 
 speculations on Symbols. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, 
 were beyond our compass : nowhere is he more mysterious, im- 
 palpable, than in this of ' Fantasy being the organ of the God- 
 ' like ;' and how ' Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, 
 ' on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the 
 ' infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his 
 ' Life is properly the bodying forth.' Let us, omitting these high 
 transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether 
 from the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems 
 logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree 
 of coherence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the 
 following not injudicious remarks : 
 
 'The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our Pro- 
 fessor, 'who shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY I 
 1 Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building 
 ' time) for universal worship. Silence is the element in which 
 ' great things fashion themselves together ; that at length they 
 ' may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 
 ' which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent 
 4 only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most 
 
SYMBOLS. 151 
 
 ' undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of 
 ' what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own 
 ' mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for 
 ' one day : on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes 
 ' and duties ; what wreck and rubbish have those mute work- 
 ' men within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut 
 ' out ! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman denned it, 
 ' the art of concealing Thought ; but of quite stifling and sus- 
 ' pending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too 
 ' is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says : 
 ' Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, 
 ' Silence is golden) ; or as I might rather express it : Speech is 
 ' of Time, Silence is of Eternity. 
 
 ' Bees will not work except in darkness ; Thought will not 
 ' work except in Silence : neither will Virtue work except in 
 ' Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
 ' doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of 
 ' " those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (Schaam) the soil 
 ' of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals ? Like 
 1 other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, 
 ' buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay 
 ' do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower 
 1 will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering 
 1 flowers that overwreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, 
 ' and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, 
 ' what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them 
 ' up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows 
 ' us the dung they flourish in ! Men speak much of the Print- 
 ' ing-Press with its Newspapers : du Himmel / what are these 
 ' to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose ?' 
 
 Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, 
 ' and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency 
 ' of Symbols. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revela- 
 ' tion : here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, 
 ' comes a double significance. And if both the Speech be itself 
 ' high, and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their 
 ' union be ! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal- 
 1 emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed 
 ' with quite new emphasis. 
 
 'For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland 
 
152 SARTOR RESARTUS, 
 
 ' plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and becomes in- 
 ' corporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can 
 4 call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, 
 ' some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite ; the Infinite 
 ' is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and 
 ' as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man 
 ' guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He 
 ' everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recog- 
 ' nised as such or not recognised : the Universe is but one 
 ' vast Symbol of God ; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man 
 ' himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all that he does sym- 
 ' bolical ; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force 
 ' that is in him ; a " Gospel of Freedom," which he, the " Mes- 
 ' sias of Nature," preaches, as he can, by act and word? Not 
 ' a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of a Thought ; 
 ' but bears visible record of invisible things ; but is, in the 
 ' transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real.' 
 
 ' Man,' says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal con- 
 trast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here 
 cut-short on the verge of the inane, ' Man is by birth somewhat 
 ' of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever pos- 
 ' sessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your 
 ' actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough 
 ' man has played, in his time ; has fancied himself to be most 
 ' things, down even to an animated heap of Glass : but to fancy 
 himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures 
 ' on, was reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his 
 ' Universe one huge Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be 
 ' weighed against each other ; and looks long-eared enough. 
 ' Alas, poor devil ! spectres are appointed to haunt him : one 
 4 age he is hagridden, bewitched ; the next, priestridden, be- 
 ' fooled ; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Me- 
 ' chanism smothers him worse than any Nightmare did ; till the 
 ' Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, 
 ' Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he can see 
 ' nothing but Mechanism ; has fear for nothing else, hope in 
 ' nothing else : the world would indeed grind him to pieces ; 
 ' but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly 
 1 compute these, and mechanise them to grind the other way ? 
 
 ' Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchant- 
 
SYMBOLS. 153 
 
 ' ment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. In 
 ' which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's his- 
 ' tory, or the history of any man, went-on by calculated or cal- 
 ' culable " Motives" ? What make ye of your Christianities, 
 ' and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillese Hymns, 
 ' and Reigns of Terror ? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive- 
 ' grinder himself been in Love ? Did he never stand so much 
 ' as a contested Election ? Leave him to Time, and the medi- 
 ' eating virtue of Nature.' . 
 
 1 Yes, Friends,' elsewhere observes the Professor, ' not our 
 1 Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King 
 ' over us ; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heaven- 
 ' ward ; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, 
 ' even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the imple- 
 ' ment of Fantasy ; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the 
 ' dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of 
 ' Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), 
 ' that gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours 
 ' with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understand- 
 1 ing is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it ; 
 ' but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour- giving retina, healthy 
 ' or diseased. Have not I myself known five -hundred living 
 ' soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, 
 ' which they called their Flag ; which, had you sold it at any 
 ' market -cross, would not have brought above three groschen? 
 ' Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous 
 ' moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron 
 ' Crown ; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size 
 ' and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe ? It 
 ' is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or uncon- 
 1 sciously, lives, works, and has his being : those ages, moreover, 
 ' are accounted the noblest which can the best recognise sym- 
 ' bolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol 
 * ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer reve- 
 ' lation of the Godlike ? 
 
 ' Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have 
 1 both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest the former 
 1 only. What, for instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which 
 ' the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their Bauern- 
 1 krieg (Peasants' War) ? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round 
 
I 5 4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' which the Netherland Gueux, glorying in that nickname of 
 ' Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King 
 4 Philip himself ? Intrinsic significance these had none : only 
 ' extrinsic ; as the accidental Standards of multitudes more or 
 4 less sacredly uniting together ; in which union itself, as above 
 ' noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the 
 ' Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the 
 
 stupidest heraldic Coats -of -arms; military Banners every- 
 1 where; and generally all national or other sectarian Costumes 
 ' and Customs : they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, 
 ' or even worth ; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Never- 
 ' theless through all these there glimmers something of a 
 1 Divine Idea ; as through military Banners themselves, the 
 ' Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring ; in some instances of 
 ' Freedom, of Right Nay the highest ensign that men ever 
 1 met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning 
 ' save an accidental extrinsic one. 
 
 ' Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has 
 1 intrinsic meaning, and is of itself fit that men should unite 
 ' round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to Sense ; let 
 ' but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the Time- 
 1 Figure (Zeitbilct) \ Then is it fit that men unite there ; and 
 ' worship together before such Symbol ; and so from day to 
 ' day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 
 
 ' Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in them (if 
 ' thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou 
 4 discern Eternity looking through Time ; the Godlike rendered 
 ' visible. Here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd 
 1 itself : thus certain Iliads, and the like, have, in three-thou- 
 
 sand years, attained quite new significance. But nobler than 
 1 all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men ; for 
 4 what other Work of Art is so divine ? In Death too, in the 
 4 Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, 
 1 may we not discern symbolic meaning ? In that divinely trans- 
 4 figured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved face which 
 ' now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the 
 ' confluence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the 
 1 latter peering through. 
 
 ' Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or 
 ' Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognise a pre- 
 
SYMBOLS. 155 
 
 ' sent God, and worship the same : I mean religious Symbols. 
 ' Various enough have been such religious Symbols, what we 
 4 call Religions; as men stood in this stage of culture or the 
 ' other, and could worse or better body-forth the Godlike : some 
 ' Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; many with only 
 
 * an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried it 
 ' in this manner, look on our divinest Symbol : on Jesus of 
 ' Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what followed 
 ' therefrom. Higher has the human Thought not yet reached : 
 ' this is Christianity and Christendom ; a Symbol of quite per- 
 ' ennial, infinite character ; whose significance will ever demand 
 
 * to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. 
 
 ' But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness 
 ' of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, 
 ' or even desecrates them ; and Symbols, like all terrestrial 
 ' Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be 
 ' true ; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the distance, 
 ' if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a 
 ' receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be 
 1 reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can 
 ' so much as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes 
 ' when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dim- 
 ' ness ; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw 
 ' be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Lumina- 
 ' ries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their 
 ' culmination, their decline.' 
 
 ' Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre 
 1 is but a piece of gilt-wood ; that the Pyx has become a most 
 4 foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, " of little 
 ' price." A right Conjuror might I name thee, couldst thou 
 ' conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they 
 ' once held.' 
 
 ' Of this thing, however, be certain : wouldst thou plant for 
 ' Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, 
 ' his Fantasy and Heart ; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, 
 
 * then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love 
 ' and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow there. A 
 4 Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, 
 ' the Poet and inspired Maker ; who, Prometheus-like, can shape 
 < new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. 
 
156 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 4 Such too will not always be wanting ; neither perhaps now 
 are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account 
 ' him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Sym- 
 ' bol has grown old, and gently remove it. 
 
 When, as the last English Coronation 1 was preparing," 
 concludes this wonderful Professor, I read in their Newspapers 
 ' that the " Champion of England," he who has to offer battle 
 1 to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far that 
 ' he could now " mount his horse with little assistance," I said 
 ' to myself : Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh superannu- 
 ' ated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters 
 ' and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair 
 ' of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, 
 ' to tether you ; nay, if you shake them not aside, threatening 
 ' to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation ?' 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HELOTAGE. 
 
 AT this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather 
 reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled 
 Institute for the Repression of Population; which lies, dishon- 
 ourably enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of 
 aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the 
 sake of the Tract itself, which we admire little ; but of the mar- 
 ginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather 
 copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place 
 here. 
 
 Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary schemes, 
 and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall 
 not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heu- 
 schrecke is a disciple of Malthus ; and so zealous for the doc- 
 trine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear 
 of Population possesses the Hofrath ; something like a fixed- 
 idea ; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. 
 Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light ; 
 
 * That of George IV. ED. 
 
HELOTAGE. 157 
 
 nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger ; open mouths opening 
 wider and wider ; a world to terminate by the frightfullest con- 
 summation : by its too dense inhabitants, famished into deli- 
 rium, universally eating one another. To make air for himself 
 in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, 
 the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this Institute of his, 
 as the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments 
 thereon that we concern ourselves. 
 
 First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative 
 Radical, has his own notions about human dignity ; that the 
 Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful 
 of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's 
 Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed : 
 
 ' Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn 
 ' Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously con- 
 ' quers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is 
 ' the hard Hand ; crooked, coarse ; wherein notwithstanding 
 ' lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of 
 ' this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather- 
 ' tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for it is the face 
 ' of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy 
 ' rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee ! 
 ' Hardly-entreated Brother ! For us was thy back so bent, for 
 ' us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed : thou wert 
 ' our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles 
 ' wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but 
 ' it was not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand with the 
 ' thick adhesions and defacements of Labour : and thy body, 
 ' like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on : 
 ' thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may ; thou toilest for 
 ' the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. 
 
 A second man I honour, and still more highly : Him who 
 ' is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily bread, 
 ' but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty ; endeavour- 
 ' ing towards inward Harmony ; revealing this, by act or by 
 ' word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or 
 ' low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endea- 
 1 vour are one : when we can name him Artist ; not earthly 
 ' Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made 
 * Implement conquers Heaven for us ! If the poor and humble 
 
158 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil 
 4 for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Free- 
 dom, Immortality ? These two, in all their degrees, I honour : 
 ' all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it 
 ' listeth. 
 
 ' Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dig- 
 ' nities united ; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest 
 ' of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sub- 
 ' limer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, 
 ' could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take 
 ' thee back to Nazareth itself ; thou wilt see the splendour of 
 1 Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like 
 ' a light shining in great darkness.' 
 
 And again : ' It is not because of his toils that I lament for 
 ' the poor : we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our 
 1 stealing), which is worse ; no faithful workman finds his task 
 ' a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst ; but for him also 
 1 there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden and weary ; but for 
 ' him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest ; in his 
 
 smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him, and 
 ' fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn 
 
 over is, that the lamp of his soul should go out ; that no ray 
 ' of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should visit him ; 
 ' but only, in the haggard darkness, like two spectres, Fear and 
 ' Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body stands 
 ' so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stu- 
 ' pefied, almost annihilated ! Alas, was this too a Breath of 
 ' God ; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded ! 
 ' That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity 
 ' for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more 
 ' than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it 
 4 does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united 
 ' Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why 
 ' is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all ?' 
 
 Quite in an opposite strain is the following : ' The old Spar- 
 ' tans had a wiser method ; and went out and hunted-down their 
 1 Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too 
 ' numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hof- 
 ' rath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing-armies, 
 ' how much easier were such a hunt ! Perhaps in the most 
 
HELOTAGE. 159 
 
 ' thickly-peopled country, some three days annually might sut- 
 1 fice to shoot all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated 
 ' within the year. Let Governments think of this. The expense 
 ' were trifling : nay the very carcasses would pay it. Have them 
 ' salted and barrelled ; could not you victual therewith, if not 
 ' Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in work- 
 ' houses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil 
 ' of them, might see good to keep alive ?' 
 
 'And yet,' writes he farther on, 'there must be something 
 ' wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from 
 ' twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or : such is his 
 ' worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth no- 
 ' thing to the world, but the world could afford him a round 
 ' sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Never- 
 ' theless, which of the two was the more cunningly - devised 
 ' article, even as an Engine ? Good Heavens ! A white Euro- 
 ' pean Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered 
 ' Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoul- 
 ' ders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!' 
 
 ' True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor elsewhere : 
 ' too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what portion of this incon- 
 ' siderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, 
 1 till it will grow no more ? How thick stands your Population 
 .' in the Pampas and Savannas of America ; round ancient Car- 
 ' thage, and in the interior of Africa ; on both slopes of the 
 ' Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia ; in Spain, Greece, 
 ' Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare ? One man, in 
 ' one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him Earth, will 
 ' feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts 
 ' and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe ; who, 
 4 when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like 
 ' Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indo- 
 ' mitable living Valour ; equipped, not now with the battle-axe 
 ' and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare ? 
 ' Where are they ? Preserving their Game !' 
 
160 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PHCENIX. 
 
 PUTTING which four singular Chapters together, and along- 
 side of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scat- 
 tered over these Writings of his, we come upon the startling 
 yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one 
 of those who consider Society, properly so called, to be as good 
 as extinct ; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old in- 
 herited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and 
 universal national, civil, domestic and personal war ! He says 
 expressly : ' For the last three centuries, above all for the last 
 ' three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous 
 ' Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life- 
 ' essence of Society, has been smote-at and perforated, need- 
 ' fully and needlessly ; till now it is quite rent into shreds ; and 
 ' Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded 
 ' as defunct ; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not 
 ' life ; neither indeed will they endure, galvanise as you may, 
 ' beyond two days.' 
 
 Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, ' where there is no 
 ' longer any Social Idea extant ; not so much as the Idea of a 
 ' common Home, but only of a common over-crowded Lodging- 
 ' house ? Where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, 
 ' turned against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and 
 ' cries " Mine !" and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse 
 ' and cut-throat Scramble, no* steel knives, but only a far cun- 
 ' ninger sort, can be employed ? Where Friendship, Commu- 
 nion, has become an incredible tradition ; and your holiest 
 ' Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook 
 ' for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate- 
 1 licking : and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide ; 
 ' but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed : Laissezfaire; 
 ' Leave us alone of your guidance, such light is darker than 
 ' darkness ; eat you your wages, and sleep ! 
 
 ' Thus, too,' continues he, ' does an observant eye discern 
 ' everywhere that saddest spectacle : The Poor perishing, like 
 ' reglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Over- 
 
THE PHCENIX. 161 
 
 ' work ; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, 
 4 and Over-growth. The Highest in rank, at length, without 
 ' honour from the Lowest ; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, 
 ' as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once- 
 ' sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men 
 ' grudge even the expense ; a World becoming dismantled : in 
 ' one word, the CHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and 
 ' apoplexy ; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened 
 ' to get its pay !' 
 
 We might ask, are there many ' observant eyes,' belonging 
 to practical men in England or elsewhere, which have descried 
 these phenomena ; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a 
 German Wahngasse that such wonders are visible ? Teufels- 
 drockh contends that the aspect of a ' deceased or expiring 
 Society' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 
 'What, for example,' says he, 'is the universally-arrogated 
 ' Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these 
 ' days ? For some half century, it has been the thing you name 
 ' " Independence." Suspicion of " Servility," of reverence for 
 1 Superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools ! 
 ' Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to 
 ' obey, reverence for them were even your only possible free- 
 ' dom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion ; if unjust re- 
 ' bellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it ?' 
 
 But what then ? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to 
 the state of Nature? 'The Soul Politic having departed,' says 
 Teufelsdrockh, 'what can follow but that the Body Politic be 
 ' decently interred, to avoid putrescence ? Liberals, Econo- 
 ' mists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and 
 ' chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid 
 c waitings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, 
 ' the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that 
 ' these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, 
 ' will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most 
 ' existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some 
 ' time ago ceased to be doubtful. 
 
 ' Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian 
 ' Armament come to light even in insulated England ? A living 
 nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there 
 1 also ; and under curious phasis ; properly as the inconsiderable 
 
 M 
 
162 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself 
 ' the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless 
 ' diffusion, activity, and cooperative spirit : has not Utilitarian- 
 ' ism flourished in high places of Thought, here among our- 
 1 selves, and in every European country, at some time or other, 
 4 within the last fifty years ? If now in all countries, except 
 ' perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, 
 
 among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular 
 
 mass, who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, 
 ' so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full 
 ' universal Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and enthu- 
 ' siastically laid to heart ? The fit pabulum, in these times, 
 1 for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise 
 ' without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, 
 
 it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes 
 ' enough. Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for 
 ' rebuilding ! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness ; till the 
 ' whole World-kennel will be rabid : then woe to the Huntsmen, 
 1 with or without their whips ! They should have given the 
 'quadrupeds water,' adds he; 'the water, namely, of Know- 
 ' ledge and of Life, while it was yet time.' 
 
 Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are 
 at this hour in a most critical condition ; beleaguered by that 
 boundless ' Armament of Mechanisers' and Unbelievers, threat- 
 ening to strip us bare ! The World,' says he, ' as it needs 
 ' must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, 
 ' whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker com- 
 ' bustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate 
 ' the past Forms of Society ; replace them with what it may. 
 1 For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole 
 ' Spiritual Interests are once divested, these innumerable stript- 
 ' off Garments shall mostly be burnt ; but the sounder Rags 
 ' among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watch- 
 ' coat for the defence of the Body only r This, we think, is 
 but Job's-news to the humane reader. 
 
 'Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdrockh, 'who can hinder it; 
 ' who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, 
 4 and say to the Spirit of the Time : Turn back, I command 
 ' thee ? Wiser were it that we yielded to the Inevitable and 
 ' Inexorable, and accounted even this the best.' 
 
THE PHCENIX. 163 
 
 Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own infer- 
 ences from what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh 
 individually had yielded to this same ' Inevitable and Inexor- 
 able* heartily enough ; and now sat waiting the issue, with his 
 natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity ? 
 Did we not hear him complain that the World was a ' huge 
 Ragfair,' and the ' rags and tatters of old Symbols' were rain- 
 ing-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him ? 
 What with those ' unhunted Helots' of his ; and the uneven 
 sic vos non vobis pressure and hard-crashing collision he is 
 pleased to discern in existing things ; what with the so hateful 
 ' empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on 
 him, from their glass eyes, ' with a ghastly affectation of life," 
 we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should 
 be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently ! Safe him- 
 self in that ' Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, with 
 a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, 
 indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and 
 every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do 
 her work ; to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples 
 with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new 
 and better might be built ! Remarkable in this point of view 
 are the following sentences. 
 
 ' Society," says he, ' is not dead : that Carcass, which you 
 ' call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled- 
 ' off, to assume a nobler ; she herself, through perpetual meta- 
 ' morphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till 
 1 Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two or three 
 4 Living Men are gathered together, there is Society ; or there 
 ' it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous struc- 
 ' tures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards 
 ' to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one 
 ' or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God 
 ' and of a Devil ; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows.' 
 
 Indeed, we already heard him speak of ' Religion, in un- 
 noticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ;' Teufels- 
 drockh himself being one of the loom-treadles ? Elsewhere he 
 quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint-Simon's, 
 concerning which and whom so much were to be said : ' L'dge 
 ' d'or, yu'une aveugle tradition aplact jusqu'ici dans lepasst, est 
 
164 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 devant nousj The golden age, which a blind tradition has 
 ' hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us.' But listen again : 
 ' When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there 
 
 not be sparks flying ! Alas, some millions of men, and among 
 ' them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that 
 
 * high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still 
 ' also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. 
 
 ' For the rest, in what year of grace such Phcenix-cremation 
 4 will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Persever- 
 ' ance is among the deepest in man : by nature he hates change ; 
 1 seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about 
 1 his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, 
 ' sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three-hun- 
 ' dred years and more after all life and sacredness had evapor- 
 ' ated out of them. And then, finally, what time the Phcenix 
 ' Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen contingen- 
 ' cies. Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, 
 ' say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or 
 1 less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we 
 ' to find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer 
 4 fighting but working, were it not perhaps prudent in Man- 
 4 kind to strike the bargain ?' 
 
 Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society should 
 be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice- 
 wood) ; in the faith that she is a Phcenix ; and that a new 
 heavenborn young one will rise out of her ashes ! We ourselves, 
 restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear commentary. 
 Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and 
 reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think : 
 From a Doctor utriusque Juris, titular Professor in a Uni- 
 versity, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society, 
 bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind), 
 but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to 
 his benefactress ; and less of a blind trust in the future, which 
 resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthu- 
 siast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Chris- 
 tian country. 
 
OLD CLOTHES. 165 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OLD CLOTHES. 
 
 As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a sansculottist, 
 is in practice probably the politest man extant : his whole heart 
 and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of polite- 
 ness ; a noble natural Courtesy shines through him, beautifying 
 his vagaries ; like sun-light, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow- 
 dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds ; nay brightening 
 London-smoke itself into gold vapour, as from the crucible of 
 an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he 
 expresses himself on this head : 
 
 ' Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the 
 ' rich ? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High- 
 ' breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, 
 ' rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I discern no 
 ' special connexion with wealth or birth : but rather that it lies 
 4 in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all 
 ' men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and 
 ' worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be 
 ' reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbour's 
 ' schoolmaster ; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Pea- 
 ' sant could no more be met with, than a Peasant unacquainted 
 ' with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he 
 ' broke was created in Heaven. 
 
 ' For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art 
 1 not thou ALIVE ; is not this thy brother ALIVE ? " There is 
 but one temple in the world," says Novalis, " and that temple 
 ' is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high Form. 
 4 Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in 
 ' the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a 
 ' human Body." 
 
 ' On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most 
 1 do ; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every 
 4 Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to every 
 ' Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not he 
 4 a Temple, then ; the visible Manifestation and Impersonation 
 ' of the Divinity ? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing 
 
r66 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a 
 ' Divinity ; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the former, 
 4 It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest 
 4 phasis of the Devil, in these times) ; therefore must we with- 
 ' hold it 
 
 1 The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to 
 ' those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devil- 
 4 ish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and 
 ' effigies of Man : I mean, to Empty, or even to Cast Clothes. 
 ' Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do reverence : to the 
 ' fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the " straddling animal with 
 ' bandy legs" which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who 
 ' ever saw any Lord my -lorded in tattered blanket fastened 
 ' with wooden skewer ? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such 
 ' worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception : for how 
 ' often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth 
 ' only I Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of 
 ' all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. That 
 ' reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion 
 ' when the Clothes are full, may have free course when they are 
 ' empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not 
 ' less sacred than the God ; so do I too worship the hollow 
 ' cloth Garment with equal fervour, as when it contained the 
 ' Man : nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself 
 1 or of others. 
 
 ' Did not King Toomtabard, or, in other words, John Baliol, 
 1 reign long over Scotland ; the man John Baliol being quite 
 ' gone, and only the " Toom Tabard" (Empty Gown) remain- 
 ' ing ? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast Clothes ! 
 ' How meekly it bears its honours ! No haughty looks, no scorn- 
 ' ful gesture : silent and serene, it fronts the world ; neither de- 
 ' manding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries 
 1 the physiognomy of its Head : but the vanity and the stupi- 
 ' dity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are 
 ' gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but not to strike ; the 
 4 Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at 
 ' last have a graceful flow ; the Waistcoat hides no evil passion, 
 4 no riotous desire ; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus 
 4 all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking 
 4 cares and foul vices of the World ; and rides there, on its 
 
OLD CLOTHES. 167 
 
 1 Clothes-horse ; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, 
 ' or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth. 
 
 ' Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of 
 1 Civilised Life, the Capital of England ; and meditated, and 
 ' questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, 
 ' and multifarious as Spartan broth ; and was one lone soul 
 ' amid those grinding millions ; often have I turned into their 
 ' Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk 
 ' through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through 
 ' a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expres- 
 ' sive in their silence : the past witnesses and instruments of 
 ' Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathom- 
 ' less tumult of Good and Evil in "the Prison men call Life." 
 ' Friends ! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes 
 < are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded 
 ' Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of 
 ' Doom, summons them from the four winds ! On his head, 
 ' like the Pope, he has three Hats, a real triple tiara ; on 
 c either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned 
 ' Garments come to alight ; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the 
 1 air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet 
 1 he were proclaiming : " Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment !" 
 ' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts : he will purify you in his Pur- 
 ' gatory, with fire and with water ; and, one day, new-created 
 ' ye shall reappear. O, let him in whom the flame of Devotion 
 ' is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not 
 ' what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the 
 ' pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and 
 ' his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long flut- 
 ' tering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, 
 ' where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which 
 ' Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left 
 ' them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, Dark- 
 1 ness and the Devil, then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, 
 ' where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes 
 1 awfully before us ; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and 
 ' mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows -ropes, farce -tragedy, 
 1 beast-godhood, the Bedlam of Creation !' 
 
 To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem 
 
1 68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; 
 but with little feeling of ' Devotion :' probably in part because 
 the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the 
 brood of money-changers who nestle in that Church, and im- 
 portune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas 
 Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy middle state, which leaves 
 to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and 
 so be allowed to linger there without molestation. Something 
 we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with 
 its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 
 4 pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish Street ; 
 which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural 
 Whispering-gallery, where the ' Ghosts of Life' rounded strange 
 secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that lis- 
 tenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum 
 hearest the grass grow ! 
 
 At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper -bag 
 Documents destined for an English work, there exists nothing 
 like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London ; and of 
 his Meditations among the Clothes -shops only the obscurest 
 emblematic shadows ? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he 
 was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard 
 him more than allude to the subject. 
 
 For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we 
 here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on 
 the now so distinguished Clothes -Professor. Might we but 
 fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom 
 of our own English ' ink-sea,' that this remarkable Volume first 
 took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul, as in 
 Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Uni- 
 verse 1 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 
 
 FOR us, who happen to live while the World - Phoenix is 
 burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh 
 calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to 
 have done within two centuries,' there seems to lie but an ashy 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 169 
 
 prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure 
 it. ' In the living subject,' says he, ' change is wont to be gra- 
 ' dual : thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is 
 1 already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning 
 ' of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn-out, 
 ' and lie as a dead cinereous heap ; and therefrom the young 
 4 one start-up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise ! 
 4 In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed to- 
 ' gether ; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do 
 ' organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves*; 
 ' and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-da* 
 ' ment come tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not 
 4 but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into 
 'the Fire - whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." 
 Let us actually look, then : to poor individuals, who cannot ex- 
 pect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, myste- 
 riously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spec- 
 tacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general : 
 
 ' In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor ; ' thou art my 
 1 Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies 
 * thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour : what is all this 
 4 but an inverted Sympathy ? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst 
 4 thou take the trouble to tell lies of me ? Not thou ! I should 
 ' grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. 
 
 ' Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all ; 
 ' whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of 
 1 Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I 
 4 said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, 
 4 such as provokes whimsical thoughts : " Wert thou, my little 
 4 Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imaginable 
 ' Glass-bell, what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for 
 4 the world ! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four 
 4 winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop un- 
 4 read : neither from within comes there question or response 
 4 into any Postbag ; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or 
 4 heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand : thou art no 
 4 longer a circulating venous -arterial Heart, that, taking and 
 1 giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time : there has 
 ' a Hole fallen-out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, 
 ' which must be darned-up again !" 
 
1 7 o SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 'Such venous -arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Mess- 
 ' ages, paper and other Packages, going out from him and 
 ' coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye : but the 
 1 finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest 
 
 that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of 
 ' his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so gene- 
 ' rates ever new blessing or new cursing : all this you cannot 
 
 see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunt- 
 ' ing by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the 
 4 whole world must smart for it : will not the price of beaver 
 ' r ise ? It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble 
 4 from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe. 
 
 If now an existing generation of men stand so woven to- 
 c gether, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. 
 4 Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition : how we 
 4 inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life ; 
 4 and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, 
 
 and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it 
 ' us ? Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Vol- 
 4 ume on the Philosophy of Clothes ? Not the Herren Still- 
 4 schweigen and Company ; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of 
 ' Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had 
 ' there been no Mcesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English 
 4 Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton ! it was Tubalcain 
 4 that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit 
 ' of thine. 
 
 Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, 
 4 much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates 
 1 Nature, without which Nature were not. As palpable life- 
 4 streams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many 
 
 life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main-currents 
 4 of what we call Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, 
 4 Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand 
 4 and know that a Thought did never yet die ; that as thou, the 
 4 originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the 
 4 whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It 
 4 is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, 
 4 still feels and sees in us of the latest ; that the Wise Man 
 4 stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud 
 4 of witnesses and brothers ; and there is a living, literal Co m- 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 171 
 
 ' munion of Saints, wide as the World itself, and as the His- 
 ' tory of the World. 
 
 ' Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this 
 1 same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Genera- 
 ' tions. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind : 
 4 Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that sum- 
 4 mon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advance- 
 ' ment. What the Father has made, the Son can make and 
 ' enjoy ; but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all 
 1 things wax, and roll onwards ; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, 
 ' nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton has learned 
 ' to see what Kepler saw ; but there is also a fresh heaven -de- 
 ' rived force in Newton ; he must mount to still higher points 
 4 of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, fol- 
 lowed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of De- 
 ' struction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, 
 ' thou findest a like sequence and perseverance : for Luther it 
 ' was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the Pope's 
 ' Bull ; Voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering 
 ' ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, 
 4 the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an 
 ' English Radical ; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, 
 4 will become an English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou 
 ' wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or 
 ' slower : the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, 
 4 filling Earth with her music ; or, as now, she sinks, and with 
 4 spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may 
 4 soar the higher and sing the clearer.' 
 
 Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, 
 lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. 
 We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles : 
 
 ' Remark, not without surprise,' says Teufelsdrockh, ' how 
 ' all high Titles of Honour come hitherto from Fighting. Your 
 4 Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader of Armies ; your Earl (Jart) 
 4 is Strong Man ; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. A Millen- 
 4 nium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of old been 
 ' prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubit- 
 ' able, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting-titles will 
 ' cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised? 
 
 ' The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity, 
 
i 7 2 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' is that of King. Konig (King), anciently Konning, means 
 ' Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Can-ning. 
 ' Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be fitly entitled King.' 
 
 ' Well, also,' says he elsewhere, 'was it written by Theo- 
 ' logians : a King rules by divine right. He carries in him an 
 ' authority from God, or man will never give it him. Can I 
 ' choose my own King ? I can choose my own King Popin- 
 ' jay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him : but he 
 ' who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my 
 ' will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such 
 ' Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as con- 
 ' ceivable.' 
 
 The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous 
 provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he 
 walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as 
 in the Political. How, with our English love of Ministry and 
 Opposition, and that generous conflict of Parties, mind warming 
 itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the Public Good, 
 by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Constitution kept 
 warm and alive ; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this 
 spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the 
 Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsid- 
 erable Film dividing the Past and the Future ? In those dim 
 longdrawn expanses, all is so immeasurable ; much so disastrous, 
 ghastly ; your very radiances and straggling light -beams have 
 a supernatural character. And then with such an indifference, 
 such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming 
 as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries 
 or only by days), does he sit ; and live, you would say, rather 
 in any other age than in his own ! It is our painful duty to 
 announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a 
 deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as 
 fills us with shuddering admiration. 
 
 Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the 
 Elective Franchise ; at least so we interpret the following : 
 ' Satisfy yourselves,' he says, 'by universal, indubitable experi- 
 1 ment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether FREEDOM, 
 4 heavenborn and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential 
 4 for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS. ?73 
 
 ' brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours ; or at worst, 
 1 in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steam- 
 ' mechanism. It were a mighty convenience ; and beyond all 
 ' feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh 
 acquainted with the British Constitution, even slightly? He 
 says, under another figure : ' But after all, were the problem, as 
 ' indeed it now everywhere is, To rebuild your old House from 
 ' the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what 
 ' better, what other, than the Representative Machine will serve 
 ' your turn ? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name 
 ' of Free, "when you have but knit-up my chains into orna- 
 ' mental festoons."' Or what will any member of the Peace 
 Society make of such an assertion as this : ' The lower people 
 ' everywhere desire War. Not so unwisely ; there is then a 
 1 demand for lower people to be shot !' 
 
 Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul -confusing 
 labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer re- 
 gions. Here, looking round, as was our hest, for ' organic fila- 
 ments,' we ask, may not this, touching 'Hero-worship,' be of 
 the number ? It seems of a cheerful character ; yet so quaint, 
 so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under 
 it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes : 
 
 ' True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all 
 ' things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey 
 ' cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he that is the inferior of 
 ' nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. 
 ' Nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of Re- 
 ' verence ; that if it slumber in him- it has gone dead. Painful 
 ' for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it has 
 1 become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fel- 
 ' lows does he feel safe ; only in reverently bowing down before 
 ' the Higher does he feel himself exalted. 
 
 ' Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even 
 ' in this : that man had forever cast away Fear, which is the 
 ' lower ; but not yet risen into perennial Reverence, which is 
 ' the higher and highest ? 
 
 ' Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature or- 
 ' dered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but 
 1 obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he 
 ' ever stand irreverent ; least of all, when the Godlike showed 
 
174 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious 
 4 Loyalty forever rooted in his heart ; nay in all ages, even in 
 ' ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox Hero-ivor- 
 1 ship. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, 
 ' and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou 
 ' discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all Polities for 
 ' the remotest time may stand secure.' 
 
 Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so 
 much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at ? He exclaims, Or 
 ' hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered 
 ' man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, 
 ' yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag man- 
 ' kind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from 
 1 him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair 
 ' beneath his feet ! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero- 
 ' worship ; though their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too 
 ' apish. 
 
 4 But if such things,' continues he, ' were done in the dry 
 1 tree, what will be done in the green ? If, in the most parched 
 ' season of Man's History, in the most parched spot of Europe, 
 ' when Parisian life was at best but a scientific Hortus Siccus, 
 ' bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could 
 ' come out of it ; what is to be looked for when Life again waves 
 ' leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing 
 ' apelike, but be wholly human ? Know that there is in man 
 ' a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Hea- 
 ' ven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show the 
 ' dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul 
 ' higher than himself is actually here ; were his knees stiffened 
 ' into brass, he must down and worship.' 
 
 Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously 
 spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following 
 passage : 
 
 There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice of Prophecy 
 has gone dumb ? This is even what I dispute : but in any 
 case, hast thou not still Preaching enough ? A Preaching Friar 
 settles himseli in every village ; and builds a pulpit, which he 
 calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most moment- 
 ous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation ; and dost not thou 
 listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 
 
 175 
 
 1 Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost 
 ' bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, 
 1 zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These 
 
 break in pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too 
 1 often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the 
 ' sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are 
 ' to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before 
 ' the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it ?' 
 
 Perhaps also in the following ; wherewith we now hasten to 
 knit-up this ravelled sleeve : 
 
 ' But there is no Religion ?' reiterates the Professor. Fool ! 
 
 I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies 
 ' in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE ? 
 ' Fragments of a genuine Church-Homifettc lie scattered there, 
 ' which Time will assort : nay fractions even of a Liturgy could 
 1 I point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the ves- 
 1 ture, environment, and dialect of this age ? None to whom 
 ' the Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest 
 ' forms of the Common ; and by him been again prophetically 
 1 revealed : in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gather- 
 1 ing and rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but 
 1 afar off, to be divine ? Knowest thou none such ? I know him, 
 ' and name him Goethe. 
 
 ' But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; joinest in no Psalm- 
 ' worship ; feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, 
 1 the people perish ? Be of comfort ! Thou art not alone, if 
 ' thou have Faith. Spake we not of a Communion of Saints, 
 ' unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother -like em- 
 1 bracing thee, so thou be worthy ? Their heroic Sufferings rise 
 ' up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out 
 ' of all times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions also, as 
 ' a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that 
 ' thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's Uni- 
 ' verse a Symbol of the Godlike ; is not Immensity a Temple ; 
 is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? 
 ' Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as oi old, hear the 
 1 Morning Stars sing together.' 
 
i 7 6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 
 
 IT is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Superna- 
 furalisvt, that the Professor first becomes a Seer ; and, after 
 long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under 
 his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious 
 possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle 
 with ; ' Cloth-webs and Cob-webs,' of Imperial Mantles, Super- 
 annuated Symbols, and what not : yet still did he courageously 
 pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world- 
 embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered 
 round him, perplexing and bewildering : but with these also 
 he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends 
 asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, 
 one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all 
 melted away ; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial 
 Holy of Holies lies disclosed. 
 
 Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes 
 attains to Transcendentalism ; this last leap, can we but clear 
 it, takes us safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia, in 
 ah 1 senses, may be considered as beginning. ' Courage, then !' 
 may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes 
 the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long 
 painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible ; but, on 
 the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. 
 Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative 
 intellect is in him, do his part ; as we, by judicious selection 
 and adjustment, shaU study to do ours : 
 
 ' Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus 
 quietly begins the Professor ; ' far deeper perhaps than we 
 ' imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were : What 
 ' specially is a Miracle ? To that Dutch King of Siam, an 
 ' icicle had been a miracle ; whoso had carried with him an 
 ' air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a 
 1 miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more 
 4 unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical " Open 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 177 
 
 1 sesame /" every time I please to pay twopence, and open f or 
 ' him an impassable Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike ? 
 
 ' " But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws 
 ' of Nature ?" ask several. Whom I answer by this new ques- 
 ' tion : What are the Laws of Nature ? To me perhaps the 
 ' rising of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, 
 ' but a confirmation ; were some far deeper Law, now first 
 ' penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have 
 ' all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. 
 
 1 Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment : 
 1 On what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim, come 
 ' and declare that therefore he can teach Religion ? To us, 
 ' truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept 
 1 enough ; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Cen- 
 1 tury, was full of meaning. 
 
 ' " But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be con- 
 ' stant ?" cries an illuminated class : " Is not the Machine of 
 ' the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules ?" Probable 
 ' enough, good friends : nay I, too, must believe that the God, 
 ' whom ancient inspired men assert to be " without variable- 
 ' ness or shadow of turning," does indeed never change ; that 
 ' Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases 
 ' can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the 
 ' most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the 
 old inquiry : What those same unalterable rules, forming the 
 ' complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be ? 
 
 ' They stand written in our Works of Science, say you ; 
 ' in the accumulated records of Man's Experience ? Was Man 
 ' with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how 
 ' it all went on ? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet 
 ' dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged 
 ' everything there ? Did the Maker take them into His coun- 
 ' sel ; that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible 
 ' All ; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more 
 1 than this ? Alas, not in anywise ! These scientific individuals 
 1 have been nowhere but where we also are ; have seen some 
 ' handbreaths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, 
 1 without bottom as without shore. 
 
 ' Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that cer- 
 1 tain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy 
 
 N 
 
178 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good for- 
 4 tune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting, 
 1 is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou 
 ' namest " Mechanism of the Heavens," and " System of the 
 ' World ;" this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Her- 
 1 schel's Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some 
 ' paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been looked 
 ' at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; so that 
 
 we can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, their Why, 
 ' their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane ? 
 
 System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide as is his 
 4 vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite 
 
 expansion ; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few 
 ' computed centuries and measured square-miles. The course 
 
 of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is 
 
 partially known to us : but who knows what deeper courses 
 
 these depend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our 
 ' little Epicycle revolves on ? To the Minnow every cranny 
 ' and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek 
 1 may have become familiar : but does the Minnow understand 
 4 the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and 
 4 Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by all which the condition 
 4 of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (un- 
 4 miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed ? Such 
 4 a minnow is Man ; his Creek this Planet Earth ; his Ocean 
 4 the immeasurable All ; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the 
 4 mysterious Course of Providence through ^Eons of ^Eons. 
 
 4 We speak of the Volume of Nature : and truly a Volume 
 ' it is, whose Author and Writer is God. To read it ! Dost 
 4 thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof ? 
 4 With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, 
 4 poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, 
 4 and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Vol- 
 4 ume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writ- 
 4 ing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read 
 1 here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and 
 ' Academies of Science, they strive bravely ; and, from amid 
 4 the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writ- 
 1 ing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some Letters in the 
 ' vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and the 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 1^9 
 
 ' other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Na- 
 ' ture is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, 
 * or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of 
 ' which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve 
 1 itself, the fewest dream. 
 
 ' Custom,' continues the Professor, ' doth make dotards of 
 ' us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the 
 ' greatest of Weavers ; and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits 
 ' of the Universe ; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, 
 ' as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops ; but 
 ' their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. 
 ' Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from 
 4 the first ; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by 
 ' it ; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we 
 4 may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard 
 1 questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a con- 
 4 tinual battle against Custom ; an ever-renewed effort to transcend 
 4 the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental ? 
 
 ' Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of 
 ' Custom : but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack 
 4 of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, 
 4 ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live ; 
 ' for man must work as well as wonder : and herein is Custom 
 ' so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she 
 ' is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurse- 
 4 lings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong 
 4 the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with 
 4 stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two-hun- 
 1 dred, or two-million times ? There is no reason in Nafure or 
 ' in Art why I should : unless, indeed, I am a mere Work- 
 ' Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other 
 ' than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a 
 ' power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's 
 ' worth realised. 
 
 ' Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the 
 ' potency of Names ; which indeed are but one kind of such 
 1 custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all 
 4 manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named 
 1 Madness and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that 
 
i8o SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' still the new question comes upon us : What is Madness, what 
 ' are Nerves ? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mys- 
 ' terious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether 
 ' Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, 
 ' which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's 
 ' Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed 
 ' within the bodily eye, or without it ? In every the wisest Soul 
 ' lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon- 
 ' Empire ; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been 
 ' creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark 
 ' foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. 
 
 ' But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Won- 
 ' dcr, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental 
 4 xvorld-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as 
 ' spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our 
 ' celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all- 
 ' embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby 
 ' all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and 
 ' paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you 
 ' endeavour to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them 
 ' asunder for moments, and look through. 
 
 ' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, 
 ' and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this 
 ' means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihii- 
 '-ated Space ; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. 
 ' Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of 
 
 Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, 
 
 what a world we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, 
 ' on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish 
 
 himself ; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating 
 ' Hats, make Time-annihilating ! Of both would I purchase, 
 1 were it with my last groschen ; but chiefly of this latter. To 
 ' clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Any- 
 ' where, straightway to be There / Next to clap-on your other 
 ' felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Anywfan, straight- 
 ' way to be Then ! This were indeed the grander : shooting 
 ' at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Con- 
 summation ; here historically present in the First Century, 
 conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca ; there pro- 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 181 
 
 ' phetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with 
 ' other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the 
 ' depth of that late Time ! 
 
 ' Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable ? Is 
 ' the Past annihilated, then, or only past ; is the Future non- 
 ' extant, or only future ? Those mystic faculties of thine, 
 ' Memory and Hope, already answer : already through those 
 ' mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past 
 ' and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, 
 ' and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop 
 ' down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up ; but Yesterday and 
 1 Tomorrow both are. Pierce through the Time-element, glance 
 ' into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the 
 ' sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, 
 ' have devoutly read it there : that Time and Space are not 
 ' God, but creations of God ; that with God as it is a universal 
 ' HERE, so is it an everlasting Now. 
 
 ' And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY ? O 
 ' Heaven ! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from 
 ' our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in 
 ' the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to 
 1 tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on 
 ' alone, but a pale spectral Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still 
 ' mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 
 ' God! Know of a truth that only the Time- shadows have 
 ' perished, or are perishable ; that the real Being of whatever 
 ' was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and 
 1 forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest 
 ' ponder at thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, or the next 
 1 twenty centuries : believe it thou must ; understand it thou 
 1 canst not. 
 
 ' That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once 
 4 for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition 
 { and determine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, 
 ' and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit, just, and un- 
 ' avoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway 
 ' over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder 
 ' everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space 
 ' and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought ; nay even, 
 ' if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities : and con- 
 
1 82 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 sider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us 
 ' the brightest God-effulgences ! Thus, were it not miraculous, 
 
 could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou 
 
 seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch 
 
 many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a 
 ' grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of 
 
 distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see 
 ' that the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, 
 ' that I can stretch forth my hand at all ; that I have free 
 
 Force to clutch aught therewith ? Innumerable other of this 
 
 sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which 
 ' Space practises on us. 
 
 ' Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti- 
 1 magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. 
 ' Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once 
 ' only, we should sec ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein 
 1 all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were 
 1 outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat ; and man, 
 ' poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself with- 
 ' out one. 
 
 ' Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Am- 
 ' phion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his 
 ' Lyre ? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo ; 
 ' summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from 
 ' the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful 
 ' green-mantled pools) ; and shape themselves into Doric and 
 1 Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets ? Was 
 ' it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past 
 ' centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civil- 
 
 ising Man ? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen- 
 ' hundred years ago : his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native 
 1 tones, took captive the ravished souls of men ; and, being of 
 ' a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with 
 ' thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through 
 1 all our hearts ; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is 
 ' that a wonder, which happens in two hours ; and does it ceas<; 
 1 to be wonderful if happening in two million ? Not only was 
 ' Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus ; but without the 
 1 music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no 
 
 work that man glories in ever done. 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 183 
 
 1 Sweep away the Illusion of Time ; glance, if thou have 
 ' eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover : 
 ' The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of 
 ' elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had 
 ' been struck, and sent flying ? O, could I (with the Time- 
 ' annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings 
 ' to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart 
 ' set naming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then sawest 
 ' thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province 
 ' thereof, is in very deed the star- domed City of God ; that 
 ' through every star, through every grass - blade, and most 
 ' through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still 
 ' beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and 
 ' reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 
 
 ' Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual 
 ' authentic Ghost ? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to 
 ' see one ; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and 
 ' thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish 
 ' Doctor ! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with 
 1 the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life 
 ' he so loved ; did he never so much as look into Himself? 
 ' The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as 
 ' heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travel- 
 ' ling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the 
 ' illusion of Time ; compress the threescore years into three 
 ' minutes : what else was he, what else are we ? Are we not 
 ' Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance ; and 
 4 that fade away again into air and Invisibility ? This is no 
 ' metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact : we start out of No- 
 ' thingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; round us, as 
 * round the veriest spectre, is Eternity ; and to Eternity minutes 
 are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and 
 1 Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified 
 ' Souls ? And again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our dis- 
 ' cordant, screech -owlish debatings and recriminatings) ; and 
 ' glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or uproar (pattern), 
 ' and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead, till the scent of 
 1 the morning air summons us to our still Home ; and dreamy 
 ' Night becomes awake and Day ? Where now is Alexander of 
 1 Macedon : does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle- 
 
184 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; or have they 
 4 all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must ? Napo- 
 ' Icon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns ! 
 1 Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt ; which has now, 
 4 with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away ? 
 ' Ghosts t There are nigh a thousand -million walking the 
 ' Earth openly at noontide ; some half-hundred have vanished 
 ' from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch 
 ' ticks once. 
 
 ' O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we 
 ' not only carry each a future Ghost within him ; but are, in 
 ' very deed, Ghosts 1 These Limbs, whence had we them ; this 
 ' stormy Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion ? They 
 ' are dust and shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round our 
 ' ME ; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine 
 ' Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his 
 ' strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force dwells 
 ' in his arm and heart : but warrior and war-horse are a vision ; 
 ' a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, 
 ' as if it were a firm substance : fool ! the Earth is but a film ; 
 ' it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond 
 ' plummet's sounding. Plummet's ? Fantasy herself will not fol- 
 ' low them. A little while ago, they were not ; a little while, and 
 ' they are not, their very ashes are not. 
 
 ' So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the 
 ' end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of 
 ' a Body ; and forth -issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Hea- 
 ' ven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he 
 ' expends : one grinding in the mill of Industry ; one hunter- 
 ' like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly 
 ' dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fei- 
 ' low : and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly Ves- 
 1 ture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished 
 1 Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train 
 4 of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder 
 4 and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through 
 4 the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
 1 Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste stormfully across 
 ' the astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. 
 : Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our 
 
CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 185 
 
 ' passage : can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, ro- 
 1 sist Spirits which have reality and are alive ? On the hardest 
 ' adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in ; the last Rear of 
 ' the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence ? 
 ' O Heaven, whither ? Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; 
 ' only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to 
 'God. 
 
 " We are sucA stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
 
 Is rounded with a sleep 1" ' 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 
 
 HERE, then, arises the so momentous question : Have many 
 British Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised 
 country ; is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening 
 around them ? Long and adventurous has the journey been : 
 from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man ; 
 through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social 
 Garnitures ; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, 
 to Time and Space themselves ! And now does the spiritual, 
 eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrap- 
 pages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? Can many read- 
 ers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, 
 some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable 
 divided from what is unchangeable ? Does that Earth-Spirit's 
 speech in Faust, 
 
 1 Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
 And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by ;' 
 
 or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, 
 Shakspeare, 
 
 ' And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
 The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 
 And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
 And like this unsubstantial pageant faded. 
 Leave not a wrack behind ;' 
 
1 86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at 
 length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Pa- 
 lingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, 
 and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen to be in- 
 evitable ? 
 
 Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the 
 Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to 
 conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but 
 only his fond hope, that many have travelled without accident. 
 No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with paved high- 
 way, could the Editor construct ; only, as was said, some zig- 
 zag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the 
 leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck charac- 
 ter; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against 
 us! 
 
 Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, 
 provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have 
 cleared the passage, in spite of all ? Happy few ! little band of 
 Friends ! be welcome, be of courage. By degrees, the eye grows 
 accustomed to its new Whereabout ; the hand can stretch itself 
 forth to work there : it is in this grand and indeed highest work 
 of Palingenesia that ye shall labour, each according to ability. 
 New labourers will arrive ; new Bridges will be built ; nay, may 
 not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and 
 repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, 
 passable even for the halt ? 
 
 Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with 
 us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable re- 
 mainder, whom we see no longer by our side ? The most have 
 recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonish- 
 ment, at our career : not a few, pressing forward with more 
 courage, have missed footing, or leaped short ; and now swim 
 weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some to- 
 wards that. To these also a helping hand should be held out ; 
 at least some word of encouragement be said. 
 
 Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance 
 Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us, can it be 
 hidden from the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading 
 quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than instructed 
 by the present Work ? Yes, long ago has many a British Reader 
 
CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 187 
 
 been, as now, demanding with something like a snarl : Whereto 
 does all this lead ; or what use is in it ? 
 
 In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding 
 thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and 
 there is no use in it ; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee 
 somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this unpromising Horn-gate, 
 Teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the 
 true Land of Dreams ; and through the Clothes - Screen, as 
 through a magical Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest, even for mo- 
 ments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest 
 that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder, 
 and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles, then art 
 thou profited beyond money's worth ; and hast a thankfulness 
 towards our Professor ; nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea- 
 circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. 
 
 Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made 
 aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes ; that all Forms 
 whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or 
 in the imagination, are Clothes ; and thus not only the parch- 
 ment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh cutting into mea- 
 sures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness of 
 Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worthships) are properly a 
 Vesture and Raiment ; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves 
 are articles of wear ing -apparel (for the Religious Idea) ? In 
 which case, must it not also be admitted that this Science of 
 Clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study on 
 thy part yield richer fruit : that it takes scientific rank beside 
 Codification, and Political Economy, and the Theory of the 
 British Constitution ; nay rather, from its prophetic height looks 
 down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and spinning- 
 mills, where the Vestures which it has to fashion, and conse- 
 crate and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry opera- 
 tives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven 
 and spun ? 
 
 But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural 
 Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulte- 
 rior or Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never 
 so remotely on that promised Volume of the Palingenesie der 
 menschlichen Gesellschaft (Newbirth of Society), we humbly 
 suggest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, 
 
1 88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 is without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences of 
 a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say nothing 
 of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, symbolical, 
 which crowd on the Clothes -Philosopher from the very thres- 
 hold of his Science ; nothing even of those 'architectural ideas,' 
 which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes, and 
 will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important 
 revolutions, let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest 
 light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habila- 
 tory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so 
 much were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, ful- 
 lers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in 
 their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may 
 live, let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divi- 
 sions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth- 
 animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth : 
 we mean, Dandies and Tailors. 
 
 In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted 
 without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philo- 
 sophy, is at fault ; and even that the dictates of humanity are 
 violated. As will perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the 
 two following Chapters. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DANDIACAL BODY. 
 
 FIRST, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific 
 strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes- 
 wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists 
 in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, 
 purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, 
 the wearing of Clothes wisely and well : so that as others 
 dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, 
 which a German Professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, 
 writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in 
 the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an instinct of 
 genius ; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teu- 
 felsdrockh would call a ' Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY. 189 
 
 him ; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself out- 
 wardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. 
 
 But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes 
 his Idea an Action ; shows himself in peculiar guise to man- 
 kind ; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to the eternal 
 worth of Clothes. We called him a Poet : is not his body the 
 (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning Hud- 
 dersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow ? Say, rather, 
 an Epos, and Clotha Virumque cano, to the whole world, in 
 Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you 
 grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Think- 
 ing-principle in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is 
 there not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing 
 sacrifice of the Immortal to the Perishable, something (though 
 in reverse order) of that blending and identification of Eternity 
 with Time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic 
 character ? 
 
 And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and 
 even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, 
 we may say, that you would recognise his existence ; would admit 
 him to be a living object ; or even failing this, a visual object, 
 or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold 
 (beyond what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he 
 solicits not ; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his 
 mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it ; do 
 but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry 
 shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor 
 boon ; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, 
 and Siamese Twins ; and over the domestic wonderful wonder 
 of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a 
 scarcely concealed contempt ! Him no Zoologist classes among 
 the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care : when did we 
 see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums ; 
 any specimen of him preserved in spirits ? Lord Herringbone 
 may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt 
 and shoes : it skills not ; the undiscerning public, occupied with 
 grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. 
 
 The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, pro- 
 perly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep : for here 
 arises the Clothes -Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough. 
 
1 90 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 both the one and the other ! Should sound views of this Science 
 come to prevail, the essential nature of the British Dandy, and 
 the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always remain 
 hidden under laughable and lamentable hallucination. The fol- 
 lowing long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh may set the 
 matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. It 
 is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the 
 Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred 
 by a certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of 
 some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency ; our readers shall 
 judge which : 
 
 c In these distracted times,' writes he, ' when the Religious 
 ' Principle, driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in 
 ' the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently work- 
 ' ing there towards some new Revelation ; or else wanders 
 ' homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its 
 ' terrestrial organisation, into how many strange shapes, of 
 ' Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and er- 
 ' rantly cast itself ! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is 
 ' for the while without Exponent ; yet does it continue inde- 
 ' stuctible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great 
 ' chaotic deep : thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, 
 ' bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. 
 
 ' Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthi- 
 ' est and worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely 
 ' the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such 
 ' moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. Among the 
 ' newer Sects of that country, one of the most notable, and 
 4 closely connected with our present subject, is that of the Dan- 
 ' dies; concerning which, what little information I have been 
 ' able to procure may fitly stand here. 
 
 'It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally 
 ' without sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its 
 ' manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if 
 ' this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious 
 1 one ; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and 
 ' even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. Whethet 
 4 it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships 
 1 or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present state 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY. 191 
 
 ' of our intelligence remain undecided (schweberi), A certain 
 ' touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is dis- 
 ' cernible enough : also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and 
 
 reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that 
 ' Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all 
 ' nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into 
 1 their own navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse 
 ' of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own surmise, it 
 ' appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modification, 
 
 adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, Self-wor- 
 ' ship; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and others, 
 ' strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate 
 ' and which only in the purer forms of Religion has been alto- 
 ' gather rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it 
 ' revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon -Worship, I 
 ' have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. 
 
 ' For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new 
 ' Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there 
 ' is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. They affect 
 ' great purity and separatism ; distinguish themselves by a par- 
 ' ticular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier 
 
 part of this Volume) ; likewise, so far as possible, by a par- 
 
 ticular speech (apparently some broken Lingua-franca, or Eng- 
 ' lish-French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true 
 
 Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the 
 ' world. 
 
 ' They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish 
 ' Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and is named Altnack's, 
 ' a word of uncertain etymology. They worship principally by 
 ' night ; and have their Highpriests and Highpriestesses, who, 
 ' however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some sup- 
 ' posed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleu- 
 ' sinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
 ' Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; these they call Fashion- 
 ' able Novels: however, the Canon is not completed, and some 
 1 are canonical and others not. 
 
 ' Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured 
 ' myself some samples ; and in hope of true insight, and with 
 1 the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, set to inter- 
 1 pret and study them. But wholly to no purpose : that tough 
 
I 9 2 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me 
 ' credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. In 
 vain that I summoned my whole energies (mich wddlich an- 
 1 strengte), and did my very utmost ; at the end of some short 
 ' space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can 
 ' call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsufferable, 
 ' Jew's-h; rping and scrannel-piping there ; to which the fright- 
 1 fullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I 
 ' strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, 
 ' there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of Delirium Tre- 
 ' metis, and a melting into total deliquium : till at last, by order 
 ' of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and 
 ' bodily faculties, and a general breaking-up of the constitution, 
 ' I reluctantly but determinedly forbore. Was there some mi- 
 ' racle at work here ; like those Fire-balls, and supernal and 
 1 infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, 
 8 have also more than once scared-back the Alien ? Be this as 
 1 it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must ex- 
 ' cuse the imperfection of this sketch ; altogether incomplete, 
 ' yet the completest I could, give of a Sect too singular to be 
 4 omitted. 
 
 ' Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall in- 
 ' duce me, as a private individual, to open another Fashionable 
 ' Novel. But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the 
 ' clouds ; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. 
 ' Round one of those Book-packages, which the Stillschweig- 
 ' en'sche Buchhandlung is in the habit of importing from Eng- 
 1 land, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets (Macu- 
 ' latur- blatter), by way of interior wrappage : into these the 
 ' Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mohamedan reverence even 
 ' for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, 
 
 disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his aston- 
 
 ishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the out- 
 1 cast fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name 
 ' Magazine, appears something like a Dissertation on this very 
 ' subject of Fashionable Novels ! It sets out, indeed, chiefly 
 ' from a Secular point of view ; directing itself, not without as- 
 ' perity, against some to me unknown individual named Pelham, 
 ' who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and 
 4 Preacher of the Sect ; so that, what indeed otherwise was not 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY. 193 
 
 ' to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true 
 1 secret, the Religious physiognomy and physiology of the Dan- 
 ' diacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, 
 ' scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby 1 
 ' have endeavoured to profit. Nay, in one passage selected from 
 ' the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are 
 ' (for the style seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find 
 ' what appears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of 
 ' Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Confession 
 ' or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so 
 ' authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct Articles, 
 ' and in very abridged shape lay before the German world ; 
 ' therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to 
 ' avoid possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally 
 ' from the Original : 
 
 ' ARTICLES OF FAITH. 
 
 "i. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; 
 1 at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. 
 " 2. The collar is a very important point : it should be low 
 behind, and slightly rolled. 
 
 " 3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste 
 to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 
 " 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 
 
 " 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely 
 ' developed than in his rings. 
 
 6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, 
 to wear white waistcoats. 
 
 " 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips." 
 ' All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself 
 with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. 
 
 ' In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands an- 
 other British Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, 
 where its chief seat still is ; but known also in the main Is- 
 1 land, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this Sect 
 ' has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to me in 
 1 the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has pub- 
 ' lished Books that the unassisted human faculties are inade- 
 ' quate to read. The members appear to be designated by a 
 1 considerable diversity of names, according to their various 
 
 o 
 
1 94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 1 places of establishment : in England they are generally called 
 ' the Drudge Sect ; also, unphilosophically enough, the White 
 ' Negroes; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, 
 ' the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them en- 
 titled Hallanshakers, or the Stook of Duds Sect ; any indivi- 
 ' dual communicant is named Stook of Duds (that is, Shock of 
 ' Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. 
 ; While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent 
 ' hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such 
 ' as Bogtrotters, Redshanks, Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day 
 ' Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor-Slaves: which last, 
 ' however, seems to be the primary and generic name ; whereto, 
 1 probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or 
 ' slight varieties ; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent 
 1 stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, 
 ' it were here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to under- 
 ' stand, what seems indubitable, that the original Sect is that 
 ' of the Poor-Slaves; whose doctrines, practices, and funda- 
 1 mental characteristics pervade and animate the whole Body, 
 ' howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. 
 
 'The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood : how 
 ' the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves 
 ' to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ; with what feelings and 
 ' opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the Pre- 
 ' sent, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to specify. 
 1 Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution : 
 ' we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty 
 1 and Obedience ; which Vows, especially the former, it is said, 
 ' they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have understood 
 1 it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordi- 
 ' nation or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even before 
 ' birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly en- 
 ' forced among them, I find no ground to conjecture. 
 
 Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect 
 ' in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of 
 ' which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed be 
 ' found in the present Volume ; for this reason, that by the im- 
 1 perfect organ of Language it did not seem describable. Their 
 ' raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and irregular 
 ' wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; through the labyrinthic 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY. 195 
 
 ' intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some un- 
 ' known process. It is fastened together by a multiplex com- 
 ' bination of buttons, thrums and skewers ; to which frequently 
 ' is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, 
 ' round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, 
 ' and often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they affect 
 ' a certain freedom : hats with partial brim, without crown, or 
 ' with only a loose, hinged, or valved crown ; in the former 
 1 case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim upper- 
 ' most, like a University-cap, with what view is unknown. 
 
 ' The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, 
 ' or Russian origin : not so, however, the interior essence and 
 ' spirit of their Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic 
 or Druidical character. One might fancy them worshippers 
 ' of Hertha, or the Earth : for they dig and affectionately work 
 ' continually in her bosom ; or else, shut-up in private Oratories, 
 ' meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her ; 
 ' seldom looking-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then 
 ' with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other 
 1 hand, they live in dark dwellings ; often even breaking their 
 ' glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with 
 ' pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit ob- 
 ' scurity is restored. Again, like all followers of Nature- Wor- 
 ' ship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising 
 
 to ferocity ; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod 
 
 cottages. 
 
 ' In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All 
 1 Poor- Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root -eaters) ; a few are 
 ' Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : other animal food 
 ' they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps some strange 
 ' inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as 
 1 die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the root 
 ' named Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and generally without 
 1 condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment 
 ' named Point, into the meaning of which I have vainly in- 
 ' quired ; the victual Potatoes-and-Point not appearing, at least 
 1 not with specific accuracy of description, in any European 
 1 Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they use, with an almost 
 4 epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which is the mildest 
 1 of liquors, and Potheen, which is the fiercest. This latter I 
 
196 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' have tasted, as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch 
 ' Whisky, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries : 
 ' it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state 
 1 of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on 
 ' the whole, the most pungent substance known to me.-r-indeed, 
 ' a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Po- 
 theen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely 
 ' consumed. 
 
 ' An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who pre- 
 ' sents himself under the to me unmeaning title of The late 
 ' John Bernard, offers the following sketch of a domestic esta- 
 1 blishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated ex- 
 ' pressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my 
 1 German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were 
 ' with their own eyes ; and even see him at meat. Moreover, 
 ' in the so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have 
 ' found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, 
 ' painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist : 
 1 this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall 
 1 look into. 
 
 ' First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to 
 ' have been a species cf Innkeeper. I quote from the original : 
 
 Poor-Slave Household. 
 
 ' " The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large 
 ' iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a 
 ' Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a 
 ' ladder), upon which the inmates slept ; and the space below 
 ' was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments ; the one for 
 ' their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On 
 ' entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in num- 
 ' ber, at dinner : the father sitting at the top, the mother at the 
 ' bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken Board, 
 ' which was scooped-out in the middle, like a trough, to receive 
 ' the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut 
 ' at equal distances to contain Salt ; and a bowl of Milk stood 
 ' on the table : all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives 
 1 and dishes were dispensed with." The Poor-Slave himself 
 ' our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, 
 1 of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY. 197 
 
 ' Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman ; and his 
 ' young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Oi 
 ' their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no no- 
 ' tice or hint. 
 
 ' But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, 
 ' truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Penman 
 ' himself has his abode : 
 
 Dandiacal Household. 
 
 ' " A Dressing-room splendidly furnished ; violet-coloured 
 ' curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full- 
 ' length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which 
 
 supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Per- 
 1 fumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller 
 ' table of mother-of-pearl : opposite to these are placed the ap- 
 ' purtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A 
 ' Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left ; the doors of which, being 
 ' partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes ; Shoes of a sin- 
 ' gularly small size monopolise the lower shelves. Fronting the 
 ' wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bath- 
 ' room. Folding-doors in the background. Enter the Author," 
 
 our Theogonist in person, "obsequiously preceded by a French 
 
 Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron." 
 
 ' Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the 
 ' more unsettled portion of the British People ; and agitate that 
 ' ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their 
 ' mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and 
 ' hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles of Dan- 
 ' diacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or 
 ' Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism 
 ' may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant 
 ' and nowise considerable shapes : nevertheless, in their roots 
 ' and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire 
 ' structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths 
 ' of English national Existence ; striving to separate and isolate 
 ' it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses. 
 
 ' In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves 
 ' or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dan- 
 1 diacal, again, is by nature no proselytising Sect ; but it boasts 
 
198 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union ; whereas 
 ' the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point ; 
 ' or at best only cooperate by means of partial secret affiliations. 
 ' If, indeed, there were to arise a Communion of Drudges, as 
 ' there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects 
 ' would follow therefrom ! Dandyism as yet affects to look- 
 
 down on Drudgism : but perhaps the hour of trial, when it 
 ' will be practically seen which ought to look down, and which 
 ' up, is not so distant. 
 
 ' To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day 
 1 part England between them ; each recruiting itself from the 
 ' intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either 
 ' side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandy- 
 4 ising Christians, will form one body : the Drudges, gathering 
 
 round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel 
 ' Pagan ; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radi- 
 
 cals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general 
 ' mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudg- 
 ' ism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out 
 ' on opposite quarters of the firm land : as yet they appear only 
 1 disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might 
 ' cover-in ; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening : 
 ' they are hollow Cones that boil-up from the infinite Deep, 
 ' over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind ! Thus 
 1 daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire 
 ' of the two Buchan-Bullers extending ; till now there is but a 
 ' foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them ; this too Is 
 ' washed away : and then we have the true Hell of Waters, and 
 4 Noah's Deluge is outdeluged ! 
 
 ' Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed 
 ' unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the " Machinery of 
 1 Society"), with batteries of opposite quality ; Drudgism the 
 ' Negative, Dandyism the Positive : one attracts hourly towards 
 k it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation 
 ' (namely, the Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with 
 ' the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 
 4 potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and 
 4 sputters : but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an elec- 
 ' trie state : till your whole vital Electricity, no longer health- 
 1 fully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and 
 
TAILORS. 199 
 
 ' Negative (of Money and of Hunger) ; and stands there bottled- 
 ' up in two World-Batteries ! The stirring of a child's finger 
 1 brings the two together ; and then What then ? The Earth 
 ' is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thun- 
 ' derpeal ; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and 
 ' thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon. Or better still, 
 ' I might liken' 
 
 O, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes ; in excess 
 of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or our- 
 selves sin the more. 
 
 We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and 
 over-refining ; from of old we have been familiar with his tend- 
 ency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in everything he 
 was still scenting-out Religion : but never perhaps did these 
 amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise most 
 piercing vision, as in this of the Dandiacal Body / Or was 
 there something of intended satire ; is the Professor and Seer 
 not quite the blinkard he affects to be ? Of an ordinary mortal 
 we should have decisively answered in the affirmative ; but with 
 a Teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. In 
 the mean while, if satire were actually intended, the case is 
 little better. There are not wanting men who will answer : 
 Does your Professor take us for simpletons ? His irony has 
 overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TAILORS. 
 
 THUS, however, has our first Practical Inference from the 
 Clothes -Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been suffi- 
 ciently drawn ; and we come now to the second, concerning 
 Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily quite coincides with 
 that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as expressed in the concluding 
 page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. 
 Let him speak his own last words, in his own way : 
 
 ' Upwards of a century,' says he, 'must elapse, and still the 
 
200 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perish- 
 ' ing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on 
 1 Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his victims, and the 
 ' Michael of Justice his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted 
 ' to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of 
 ' suffering Humanity be closed. 
 
 ' If aught in the history of the world's blindness could sur- 
 ' prise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea 
 ' has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide -spreading 
 ' rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in Physiology, 
 ' not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call any one a 
 ' Schneider (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood- 
 1 winked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent 
 ' to defying his perpetual fellest enmity ? The epithet schneider- 
 ' mdssig (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable de- 
 ' gree of pusillanimity : we introduce a Tailor's -Melancholy, 
 ' more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medi- 
 ' cine ; and fable I know not what of his generating it by living 
 ' on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a 
 ' Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his Schneider mil 
 ' dent Panier? Why of Shakspeare, in his Taming of the Shrew, 
 ' and elsewhere ? Does it not stand on record that the English 
 1 Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, 
 ' addressed them with a " Good morning, gentlemen both !" 
 ' Did not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regi- 
 1 ment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured ; her 
 ' Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares ? Thus everywhere 
 ' is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an indis- 
 ' putable fact. 
 
 ' Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, 
 ' whether it is disputable or not ? Seems it not at least pre- 
 1 sumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones and 
 ' viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious ? Which func- 
 ' tion of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to perform ? 
 ' Can he not arrest for debt ? Is he not in most countries a 
 ' tax-paying animal ? 
 
 ' To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which con- 
 ' viction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost 
 ' preternatural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will 
 ' have approximated towards a higher Truth ; and the doctrine, 
 
TAILORS. 201 
 
 ' which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, 
 ' will stand revealed in clear light : that the Tailor is not only 
 ' a Man, but something of a Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin 
 1 it was said, that " he snatched the Thunder from Heaven and 
 ' the Sceptre from Kings :" but which is greater, I would ask, 
 ' he that lends, or he that snatches ? For, looking away from 
 ' individual cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new-created 
 ' into a Nobleman, and clothed not only with Wool but with 
 ' Dignity and a Mystic Dominion, is not the fair fabric of 
 ' Society itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, 
 1 whereby, from nal'.edness and dismemberment, we are organ- 
 ' ised into Polities, into nations, and a whole cooperating Man- 
 ' kind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, 
 1 of the Tailor alone ? What too are all Poets and moral 
 1 Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical Tailors ? Touching 
 ' which high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumph- 
 ' antly asked us : " Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet 
 ' first made Gods for men ; brought them down to us ; and 
 ' raised us up to them ?" 
 
 ' And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis 
 ' of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth 
 1 part of a man ! Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with 
 ' the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble 
 ' better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, 
 ' wearing thy ankle-joints to horn ; like some sacred Anchorite, 
 ' or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's 
 ' richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope ! 
 ' Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds ; the thick 
 ' gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. 
 ' Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt : 
 ' the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped ; the 
 ' Fraction will become not an Integer only, but a Square and 
 1 Cube. With astonishment the world will recognise that the 
 ' Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God. 
 
 1 As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon 
 ' these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that 
 4 rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of 
 ' Mecca, I thought within myself : How many other Unholies 
 ' has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whjrt- 
 ' stone I 
 
202 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a 
 ' lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Sign- 
 ' post, whereon stood written that such and such a one was 
 ' " Breeches -Maker to his Majesty ;" and stood painted the 
 ' Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees 
 ' these memorable words, Sic ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not this 
 1 the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, 
 ' yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing 
 1 to a better day ? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches 
 ' would be revealed to man, and the Scissors become forever 
 ' venerable. 
 
 ' Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been 
 ' altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, when the 
 ' soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring 
 ' influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes : the 
 ' greatest I can ever hope to do ; which has already, after long 
 ' retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section 
 1 of my Life ; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion 
 ' may here find its conclusion.' 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FAREWELL. 
 
 So have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amorphous 
 Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teu- 
 felsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow mortals, to pick out the 
 choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our 
 own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise ; in which, 
 however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and 
 of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without 
 satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel 
 of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration 
 of our beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the 
 Editor desire ? If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur ? 
 Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed 
 him ; which having now done with, he sees his general Day's- 
 work so much the lighter, so much the shorter ? 
 
FAREWELL. 203 
 
 Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to take leave 
 without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude and dis- 
 approval. Who will not regret that talents, which might have 
 profited in the higher walks ' f Philosophy, or in Art itself, have 
 been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms ; 
 nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and 
 diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests ? Regret is 
 unavoidable ; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his 
 mad humours British Criticism would essay in vain : enough 
 for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such 
 among ourselves. What a result, should this piebald, entangled, 
 hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, be- 
 come general among our Literary men ! As it might so easily 
 do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over Teufels- 
 drockh's German, lost much of his own English purity ? Even 
 as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made 
 to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, 
 been forced to become portion of the greater, and, like it, see 
 all things figuratively : which habit time and assiduous effort 
 will be needed to eradicate. 
 
 Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is 
 there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity ? 
 Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much- 
 inflicting man, which almost attaches us. His attitude, we will 
 hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Be- 
 gone ; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be ; and to 
 Truth, Be thou in place of all to me : a man who had manfully 
 defied the ' Time-prince,' or Devil, to his face ; nay perhaps, 
 Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that 
 warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weap- 
 ons, in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, 
 were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome. 
 
 Still the question returns on us : How could a man occa- 
 sionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, 
 who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in 
 a shape bordering so closely on the absurd ? Which question 
 he were wiser than the present Editor who should satisfactorily 
 answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Ne- 
 cessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not 
 conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much 
 
204 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone, 
 Literature also would never rightty prosper : that striving with 
 his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Pic- 
 ture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his 
 sponge, full of all colours, against the canvas, to try whether it 
 will paint Foam ? With all his stillness, there were perhaps in 
 Teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this. 
 
 A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It 
 is, that Teufelsdrockh is not without some touch of the uni- 
 versal feeling, a wish to proselytise. How often already have 
 we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic na- 
 ture were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love and Hope only 
 seared into the figure of these ! Remarkable, moreover, is this 
 saying of his : ' How were Friendship possible ? In mutual 
 ' devotedness to the Good and True : otherwise impossible ; 
 ' except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. 
 ' A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself ; 
 ' yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of 
 ' doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the 
 ' help man can yield to man.' And now in conjunction there- 
 with consider this other : ' It is the Night of the World, and still 
 ' long till it be Day : we wander amid the glimmer of smoking 
 ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted 
 ' out for a season ; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPO- 
 ' CRISY and ATHEISM, with the Gowl, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad 
 ' over the Earth, and call it theirs : well at ease are the Sleep- 
 1 ers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.' 
 
 But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality ? 
 Should not these unite ; since even an authentic Spectre is not 
 visible to Two ? In which case were this enormous Clothes- 
 Volume properly an enormous Pitchpan, which our Teufels- 
 drockh in his lone watchtower had kindled, that it might flame 
 far and wide through the Night, and many a disconsolately 
 wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's bosom ! We 
 say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who knows what 
 mad Hopes this man may harbour ? 
 
 Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which har- 
 monises ill with such conjecture ; and, indeed, were Teufels- 
 drockh made like other men, might as good as altogether sub- 
 vert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire blazed its brightest 
 
FAREWELL. 205 
 
 the Watchman had quitted it ; that no pilgrim could now ask 
 him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor Teufelsdrockh, 
 be it known, is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but 
 again to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago, the Hof 
 rath Heuschrecke was pleased to favour us with another copious 
 Epistle; wherein much is said about the 'Population-Institute;' 
 much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hiero- 
 glyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to have sur- 
 mised ; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us 
 for the first time, in the following paragraph : 
 
 ' Ew. Wohlgeborcn will have seen from the public Prints, 
 ' with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weiss- 
 ' nichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. Might but 
 ' the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return ; nay 
 ' could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mys- 
 ' tery he went away ! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or 
 ' affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance : 
 1 in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up ; the Privy 
 ' Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 
 
 ' It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those 
 ' Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, and dinned 
 1 every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was not known, 
 ' at the Cans or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, 
 1 any syllable except once these three : Es geht an (It is be- 
 ' ginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgeboren knows, was the 
 ' public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition 
 ' of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps 
 ' mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter 
 ' of the Clothes- Volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, 
 ' the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable : nay, per- 
 ' haps through one humble individual, something thereof might 
 ' pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and so contribute to the 
 ' country's deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacifi- 
 ' cated. 
 
 ' To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss : 
 ' yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and 
 ' its Politics. For example, when the Saint-Simonian Society 
 ' transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole Cans was 
 4 one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our 
 ' Sage sat mute ; and at the end of the third evening said merely 
 
206 SARTOR RESARTUS. 
 
 ' " Here also are men who have discovered, not without amaze- 
 ' ment, that Man is still Man ; of which high, long-forgotten 
 ' Truth you already see them make a false application." Since 
 1 then, as has been ascertained by examination of the Post-Direc- 
 ' tor, there passed at least one Letter with its Answer between 
 1 the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of 
 ' what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night 
 ' following, he was seen for the last time I 
 
 ' Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hos- 
 ' tile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain 
 ' of their emissaries ; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head- 
 ' quarters to confer with them and confront them? Reason we 
 4 have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still liv- 
 4 ing ; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will 
 himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one 
 ' day, be opened by Authority ; where much, perhaps the Palin- 
 ' genesie itself, is thought to be reposited.' 
 
 Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like 
 an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 
 
 So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, 
 or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor : nay, perhaps the better 
 part thereof were only beginning? \Ve stand in a region of con- 
 jectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one can- 
 not be distinguished from the other. May Time, which solves 
 or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also ! Our 
 own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is 
 that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always 
 still, Teufelsdrdckh is actually in London ! 
 
 Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial 
 joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. 
 Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that 
 to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying con- 
 summation; that innumerable British readers consider him, dur- 
 ing these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their 
 ways of thought and digestion ; and indicate so much, not with- 
 out a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, 
 as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers ? 
 To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched 
 arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, 
 
FAREWELL. 207 
 
 miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and 
 with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy ail-too Irish mirth 
 and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange 
 work, farewell ; long as thou canst, fare-w<?// / Have we not, 
 in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life- 
 journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed 
 together, though in a state of quarrel ? 
 
APPENDIX: 
 TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 
 
THIS questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among 
 the mountain solitudes, in 1831 ; but, owing to impediments na- 
 tural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as 
 a Volume in England ; and had at last to clip itself in pieces, 
 and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous 
 Magazine that offered. Whereby now, to certain idly curious 
 readers, and even to myself till I make study, the insignificant 
 but at last irritating question, What its real history and chrono- 
 logy are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. 
 
 To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or 
 two American had now opened the way for, there was slight- 
 ingly prefixed, under the title ' Testimonies of Authors,' some 
 straggle of real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets 
 the matter into clear light and sequence ; and shall here, for 
 removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from 
 the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. (Author's 
 
 TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 
 I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER. 
 
 Taster to Bookseller. " The Author of Teufelsdrockh is a 
 person of talent ; his work displays here and there some felicity 
 of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge : 
 but whether or not it would take with the public seems doubt- 
 ful. For ajeu <T esprit of that kind it is too long; it would 
 have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. The 
 Author has no great tact ; his wit is frequently heavy ; and re- 
 minds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on tables, 
 and answered that he was learning to be lively. Is the work a 
 translation ?" 
 
 Bookseller to Editor. "Allow me to say that such a writer 
 requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as 
 
212 APPENDIX. 
 
 an able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent 
 your Ms. to a gentleman in the highest class of men of letters, 
 and an accomplished German scholar : I now enclose you his 
 opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just one ; and I have 
 too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c. Ms. (penes 
 nos), London, 17 th September 1831. 
 
 II. CRITIC OF THE SUN. 
 
 " Eraser's Magazine exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also 
 the" &c. " Sartor Resartus is what old Dennis used to call 'a 
 heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with 
 passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigour. But 
 what does the writer mean by 'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why 
 cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make him- 
 self generally intelligible ? We quote by way of curiosity a sen- 
 tence from the Sartor Resartus j which may be read either 
 backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either way : 
 indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, 
 we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at 
 its meaning: 'The fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thun- 
 der-riven, here feels its own freedom ; which feeling is its Ba- 
 phometic baptism : the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus 
 gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from 
 which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard bat- 
 tering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. ' 
 Here is a" Sun Newspaper, \st April 1834. 
 
 III. NORTH-AMERICAN REVIEWER. 
 
 " After a careful survey of the whole ground, our 
 
 belief is that no such persons as Professor Teufelsdrockh or 
 Counsellor Heuschrecke ever existed ; that the six Paper-bags, 
 with their China-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are 
 a mere figment of the brain ; that the present Editor' is the 
 only person who has ever written upon the Philosophy of Clothes ; 
 and that the Sartor Resartus is the only treatise that has yet 
 appeared upon that subject ; in short, that the whole account 
 of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed Editor 
 relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a 
 brief abstract, is, in plain English, a hum. 
 
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 213 
 
 'Without troubling our readers at any great length with our 
 reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that 
 the absence of all other information on the subject, except what 
 is contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant 
 character. The whole German press, as well as the particular 
 one where the work purports to have been printed, seems to be 
 under the control of Stillschweigen and Co. Silence and Com- 
 pany. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are making so 
 great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how hap- 
 pens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in 
 a few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London ? 
 How happens it that no intelligence about the matter has come 
 out directly to this country ? We pique ourselves here in New 
 England upon knowing at least as much of what is going on in 
 the literary way in the old Dutch Mother-land as our brethren 
 of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far we have no tidings what- 
 ever of the 'extensive close-printed close-meditated volume, 'which 
 forms the subject of this pretended commentary Again, we would 
 respectfully inquire of the ' present Editor' upon what part of 
 the map of Germany we are to look for the city of Weissnichtwo 
 ' Know-not-where' at which place the work is supposed to 
 have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been 
 our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and 
 to examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various 
 purposes, maps of the whole ; but we have no recollection of 
 any such place. We suspect that the city of Know-not-where 
 might be called, with at least as much propriety, Nobody-knows- 
 where, and is to be found in the kingdom of Nowhere. Again, 
 the village of Entepfuhl ' Duck-pond' where the supposed 
 Author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that 
 of Hinterschlag, where he had his education, are equally foreign 
 to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are 
 in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller in that coun- 
 try knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denomi- 
 nated Duck-pond is to us altogether terra incognita. The names 
 of the personages are not less singular than those of the places. 
 Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a 
 pair cf appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh ? The supposed 
 bearer of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his 
 pretended autobiography, that ' he had searched to no purpose 
 
214 APPENDIX. 
 
 through all the Heralds' books in and without the German em- 
 pire, and through all manner of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, 
 and other Name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find 
 ' the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his own per- 
 son.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt very much 
 whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a son 
 to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That 
 of Counsellor Heuschrecke ' Grasshopper' though not offen- 
 sive, looks much more like a piece of fancy work than a 'fair 
 business transaction.' The same may be said of Blumine 
 ' Flower-Goddess' the heroine of the fable; and so of the rest. 
 " In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that 
 the whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university 
 of Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a 
 Counsellor Grasshopper, a Flower -Goddess Blumine, and so 
 forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late enter- 
 taining account of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon. 
 Fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought 
 not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much severity ; but we 
 are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence in regard 
 to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public 
 as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended 
 German original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon 
 the subject of Clothes, or dress. Clothes, their Origin and In- 
 fluence, is the title of the supposed German treatise of Professor 
 Teufelsdrockh, and the rather odd name of Sartor Resartus 
 the Tailor Patched which the present Editor has affixed to 
 his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. But 
 though there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in 
 a half -serious, half- comic style upon dress, it seems to be in 
 reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, 
 which Teufelsdrockh is supposed to have professed at the uni- 
 versity of Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to 
 adopt a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a 
 little the propriety of offering to the public a treatise on Things 
 in General, under the name and in the form of an Essay on 
 Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the 
 journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is practically 
 a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying, that the 
 real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the osten- 
 
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 115 
 
 sible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass ol 
 readers. To the younger portion of the community, which con- 
 stitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress 
 is one of intense and paramount importance. An author who 
 treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men and maidens 
 virgi 'nibus puerisque and calls upon them, by all the mo- 
 tives which habitually operate most strongly upon their feelings, 
 to buy his book. When, after opening their purses for this pur- 
 pose, they have carried home the work in triumph, expecting 
 to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the tying 
 of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with 
 nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they 
 will to use the mildest term not be in very good humour. 
 If the last improvements in legislation, which we have made in 
 this country, should have found their way to England, the author, 
 we think, would stand some chance of being Lynched. Whether 
 his object in this piece of supercherie be merely pecuniary profit, 
 or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dan- 
 dies, we shajl not undertake to say. In the latter part of the 
 work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, 
 from the tenour of which we should be disposed to conclude, 
 that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their pro- 
 perty very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. 
 
 " The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it 
 is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German 
 treatise, is the style, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not 
 destitute, it is true, of richness, vigour, and at times a sort of 
 singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged through- 
 out with the peculiar idiom of the German language. This 
 quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a great 
 familiarity with German literature ; and we cannot, therefore, 
 look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing so 
 much evidence of an opposite character." North-American 
 Review, No. 89, October 1835. 
 
 IV. NEW-ENGLAND EDITORS. 
 
 " The Editors have been induced, by the express desire of 
 many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephe- 
 meral pamphlets* in which they first appeared, under the con- 
 * Eraser's (London) Magaaiite, 1833-4. 
 
216 APPENDIX. 
 
 viction that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer 
 date. 
 
 " The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will 
 have a sudden and general popularity. They will not under- 
 take, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which 
 the Author delights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms 
 with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is his 
 humour to advance the gravest speculations upon the gravest 
 topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If his masquerade of- 
 fend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not hear 
 what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to 
 his wisdom ; and what work of imagination can hope to please 
 all? But we will venture to remark that the distaste excited 
 by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at first, and 
 is soon forgotten ; and that the foreign dress and aspect of the 
 Work are quite superficial, and cover a genuine Saxon heart. 
 We believe, no book has been published for many years, written 
 in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers 
 an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The 
 Author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of 
 his genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendour, but 
 by the wit and sense which never fail him. 
 
 " But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning 
 reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism 
 upon the Spirit of the Age we had almost said, of the hour 
 in which we live ; exhibiting in the most just and novel light 
 the present aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and 
 Social Life. Under all his gaiety the Writer has an earnest 
 meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and 
 tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our po- 
 pular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sen- 
 timent, which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart 
 of every lover of virtue." Preface to Sartor Rtsartus : Boston, 
 1835, 1837. 
 
 SUNT, FUERUNT VEL FUERE. 
 London, ydh June 1838. 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 CHAP. I. Preliminary. 
 
 No Philosophy of Clothes yet, notwithstanding all our Science. 
 Strangely forgotten that Man is hy nature a naked animal. The Eng- 
 lish mind ail-too practically absorbed for any such inquiry. Not so, 
 deep-thinking Germany. Advantage of Speculation having free course. 
 Editor receives from Professor Teuf elsdrockh his new Work on Clothes, 
 (p. 1.) 
 
 CHAP II. Editorial Difficulties. 
 
 How to make known Teufelsdrockh and his Book to English read- 
 ers; especially such a booi? Editor receives from the Hofrath Heu- 
 schrecke a letter promising Biographic Documents. Negotiations with 
 Oliver Yorke. Sartor Resartus conceived. Editor's assurances and 
 advice to his British reader, (p. 5.) 
 
 CHAP. III. Reminiscences. 
 
 Tenfelsdrockh at Weissnichtwo. Professor of Things in General 
 at the University there : Outward aspect and character ; memorable 
 coffee-house utterances ; domicile and watch-tower : Sights thence of 
 City-Life by day and by night ; with reflections thereon. Old 'Liza 
 and her ways. Character of Hofrath Heuschrecke, and his relation to 
 Tenfelsdrockh. (p. 9.) 
 
 CHAP. IV. Characteri*ict. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh and his Work on Clothes : Strange freedom of speech : 
 transcendentalism; force of insight and expression; multifarious learn- 
 
21 8 SUMMARY. 
 
 ing : Style poetic, uncouth : Comprehensiveness of his hnmonr and 
 moral feeling. How the Editor once saw him laugh. Different kinds 
 of Laughter and their significance, (p. 18.) 
 
 CHAP. V. The World in Clothet. 
 
 Futile cause-and-effect Philosophies. Teufelsdrockh's Orbis Ves- 
 titus. Clothes first invented for the sake of Ornament. Picture of our 
 progenitor, the Aboriginal Siwage. Wonders of growth and progress 
 in mankind's history. Man defined as & Tool-using Animal, (p. 23.) 
 
 CHAP. VI. Aprons. 
 
 Divers Aprons in the world with divers uses. The Military and 
 Police Establishment Society's working Apron. The Episcopal Apron 
 with its corner tucked in. The Laystall. Journalists now our only 
 Kings and Clergy, (p. 28.) 
 
 CHAP. VII. Miscellaneous-Historical. 
 
 How Men and Fashions come and go. German Costume in the 
 fifteenth century. By what strange chances do we live in History ! 
 The costume of Bolivar's Cavalry, (p. 30.) 
 
 CHAP. Vin. The World out of Clothes. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh's Theorem, " Society founded upon Cloth;" his Me- 
 thod, Intuition quickened by Experience. The mysterious question, 
 Who am I ? Philosophic systems all at fault : A deeper meditation 
 has always taught, here and there an individual, that all visible things 
 are appearances only ; but also emblems and revelations of God. Ten- 
 felsdrockh first comes upon the question of Clothes : Baseness to which 
 Clothing may bring us. (p. 34.) 
 
 CHAP. IX. Adamitism. 
 
 The universal utility of Clothes, and their higher mystic virtue, 
 illustrated. Conception of Mankind stripped naked ; and immediate 
 consequent dissolution of civilised Society, (p. 39.) 
 
SUMMARY. 219 
 
 CHAP. X. Pure Reason. 
 
 A Naked World possible, nay actually exists, under the clothed 
 one. Man, in the eye of Pure Eeason, a visible God's Presence. The 
 beginning of all wisdom, to look fixedly on Clothes till they become 
 transparent. Wonder, the basis of Worship : Perennial in man. Mo- 
 dern Sciolists who cannot wonder : Teufelsdrockh's contempt for, and 
 advice to them. (p. 43.) 
 
 CHAP. XI. Prospective. 
 
 Nature not an Aggregate, but a Whole. All visible things are em- 
 blems, Clothes ; and exist for a time only. The grand scope of the 
 Pnilosophy of Clothes. Biographic Documents* arrive. Letter from 
 Heuschrecke on the importance of Biography. Heterogeneous cha- 
 racter of the documents : Editor sorely perplexed ; but desperately 
 grapples with bis work. (p. 47.) 
 
 BOOK II. 
 CHAP. I. Genesit. 
 
 Old Andreas Futteral and Gretchen his wife : their quiet home. 
 Advent of a mysterious stranger, who deposits with them a young in- 
 fant, the future Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. After-yearnings of the 
 youth for his unknown Father. Sovereign power of Names and Nam- 
 ing. Diogenes a flourishing Infant, (p. 55.) 
 
 CHAP. II. Idyllic. 
 
 Happy Childhood ! Entepfuhl : Sights, hearings and experiences 
 of the boy Teufelsdrockh ; their manifold teaching. Education ; what 
 it can do, what cannot. Obedience our universal duty and destiny 
 Gneichen sees the good Gretchca pray. (p. 61.) 
 
220 SUMMARY. 
 
 CHAP. III. Pedagogy. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh's School. His Education. How the ever - flowing 
 Knhbach speaks of Time and Eternity. The Hinterschlag Gymna- 
 sium : rude Boys ; and pedant Professors. The need of true Teachers, 
 and their due recognition. Father Andreas dies ; and Teufelsdrockh 
 learns the secret of his birth : His reflections thereon. The Nameless 
 University. Statistics of Imposture much wanted. Bitter fruits of 
 Rationalism : Teufelsdrockh's religious difficulties. The young Eng- 
 lishman Herr Towgood. Modern Friendship, (p. 69.) 
 
 CHAP. IV. Getting under Way. 
 
 The grand thaumaturgic Art of Thought. Difficulty in fitting Cap- 
 ability to Opportunity, or of getting under way. The advantage of 
 Hunger and Bread-Studies. Teufelsdrockh has to enact the stern mo- 
 nodrama of No object and no rest. Sufferings as Auscultator. Given 
 up as a man of genius. Zahdarm House. Intolerable presumption of 
 young men. Irony and its consequences. Teufelsdrockh's Epitaph on 
 Count ZaJbdarm. (p. 82.) 
 
 CHAP. V. Romance. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh gives up his Profession. The heavenly mystery of 
 Love. Teufelsdrockh's feeling of worship towards women. First and 
 only love. Blumine. Happy hearts and free tongues. The infinite 
 nature of Fantasy. Love's joyful progress ; sudden dissolution ; and 
 final catastrophe, (p. 92.) 
 
 CHAP. VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh. 
 
 Teufelsdrb'ckh's demeanour thereupon. Turns pilgrim. A last 
 wistful look on native Entepfuhl: Sunset amongst primitive Moun- 
 tains. Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four. Thoughts on View- 
 hunting. Wanderings and Sorrowings, (p. 102.) 
 
 CHAP. VII. The Everlasting No. 
 
 Loss of Hope, and of Belief. Profit-and-Loss Philosophy. Ten- 
 felsdrookh in his darkness and despair still clings to Truth and follows 
 
SUMMARY. 3*1 
 
 Duty. Inexpressible pains and fears of Unbelief. Fever-crisis : Pro- 
 test against tbe Everlasting No: Baphometic Fire-baptism, (p. 110.) 
 
 CHAP. VIII. Centre of Indifference. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh turns now outwardly to the Not-me ; and finds whole- 
 somer food. Ancient Cities : Mystery of their origin and growth : 
 Invisible inheritances and possessions. Power and virtue of a true 
 Book. Wagram Battlefield : War. Great Scenes beheld by the Pil- 
 grim : Great Events, and Great Men. Napoleon, a divine missionary, 
 preaching La carriere ouverte aux talent. Teufelsdrockh at the North 
 Gape : Modern means of self-defence. Gunpowder and duelling. The 
 Pilgrim, despising his miseries, reaches the Centre of Indifference. 
 (P- 1170 
 
 CHAP. IX. The Everlasting Yea. 
 
 Temptations in the Wilderness : Victory over the Tempter. An- 
 nihilation of Self. Belief in God, and love to Man. The Origin of 
 Evil, a problem ever requiring to be solved anew : Teufelsdrockh's 
 solution. Love of Happiness a vain whim: A Higher in man than 
 Love of Happiness. The Everlasting Yea. Worship of Sorrow. Vol- 
 taire : his task now finished. Conviction worthless, impossible, with- 
 out Conduct. The true Ideal, the Actual : Up and work I (p. 126.) 
 
 CHAP. X. Pause. 
 
 Conversion ; a spiritual attainment peculiar to the modern Era. 
 Teufelsdrockh accepts Authorship as his divine calling. The scope of 
 the command Thou skalt not steal. Editor begins to suspect the au- 
 thenticity of the Biographical documents ; and abandons them for the 
 great Clothes volume. Result of the preceding ten Chapters : Insight 
 into the character of Tenfelsdrockh : His fundamental beliefs, and how 
 he was forced to seek and find them. (p. 136.) 
 
222 SUMMARY. 
 
 BOOK IIL 
 CHAP. I. Incident in Modern History. 
 
 Story of George Fox the Quaker ; and his perennial suit of Leather 
 A man God-possessed, witnessing for spiritual freedom and manhood 
 (p. 143.) 
 
 CHAP. II. Church-Clothet. 
 
 Church -Clothes defined; the Forms under which the Religions 
 Principle is temporarily embodied. Outward Religion originates by 
 Society : Society becomes possible by Religion. The condition ol 
 Church -Clothes in our time. (p. 147.) 
 
 CHAP. III. Symbol*. 
 
 The benignant efficacies of Silence and Secrecy. Symbols ; reve- 
 lations of the Infinite in the Finite : Man everywhere encompassed 
 by them ; lives and works by them. Theory of Motive-millwrights, a 
 false account of human nature. Symbols of an extrinsic value; as 
 Banners, Standards : Of intrinsic value ; as Works of Art, Lives and 
 Deaths of Heroic men. Religious Symbols ; Christianity. Symbols 
 hallowed by Time ; but finally defaced and desecrated. Many super- 
 annuated Symbols in our time, needing removal, (p. 150.) 
 
 CHAP. IV. Helotage. 
 
 Heuschrecke's Malthusian Tract, and Teufelsdrockh's marginal 
 notes thereon. The true workman, for daily bread, or spiritual bread, 
 to be honoured; and no other. The real privation of the Poor not 
 poverty or toil, but ignorance. Over-population : With a world like 
 ours and wide as ours, can there be too many men? Emigration, 
 (p. 156.) 
 
 CHAP. V. The Phcenix. 
 
 Tenf elsdrockh considers Society as dead ; its soul (Religion) gone, 
 its body (existing Institutions) going. Utilitarianism, needing little far 
 
SUMMARY. 223 
 
 ther preaching, la now in full activity of destruction. Teufelsdrockh 
 would yield to the Inevitable, accounting that the beet : Assurance of 
 a fairer Living Society, arising, Phoenix-like, out of the ruins of the 
 old dead one. Before that Phoenix death-birth is accomplished, long 
 time, struggle, and suffering must intervene, (p. 160.) 
 
 CHAP. VI. Old Clothet. 
 
 Courtesy due from all men to all men : The Body of Man a Reve. 
 lation in the Flesh. Teufelsdrockh's respect for Old Clothes, as the 
 " Ghosts of Life." Walk inMonmouth Street, and meditations there, 
 (p. 165.) 
 
 CHAP. VII. Organic Filaments. 
 
 Destruction and Creation ever proceed together ; and organic fila- 
 ments of the Future are even now spinning. Wonderful connection 
 of each man with all men ; and of each generation with all genera- 
 tions, before and after : Mankind is One. Sequence and progress of 
 all human work, whether of creation or destruction, from age to age. 
 Titles, hitherto derived from Fighting, must give way to others. Kings 
 will remain and their title. Political Freedom, not to be attained by 
 any mechanical contrivance. Hero-worship, perennial amongst men ; 
 the cornerstone of polities in the Future. Organic filaments of the 
 New Religion : Newspapers and Literature. Let the faithful soul take 
 courage I (p. 168.) 
 
 CHAP. VIII. Natural Supernaturalitm. 
 
 Deep significance of Miracles. Littleness of human Science : Di- 
 viue incomprehensibility of Nature. Custom blinds us to the miracul 
 ousness of daily-recurring miracles ; so do Names. Space and Time, 
 appearances only ; forms of human Thought : A glimpse of Immor- 
 tality. How Space hides from us the wondrousness of our commonest 
 powers ; and Time, the divinely miraculous course of human history, 
 (p. 176.) 
 
 CHAP. IX. Circumspective. 
 
 Recapitulation. Editor congratulates the few British readers who 
 have accompanied Teufelsdrockh through all his speculations. The 
 
224 SUMMARY. 
 
 true use of the Sartor Resartut, to exhibit the Wonder of daily life 
 and common things ; and to show that all Forms are but Clothes, and 
 temporary. Practical inferences enough will follow, (p. 185.) 
 
 CHAP. X. The Dandiacal Body. 
 
 The Dandy defined. The Dandiacal Sect a new modification of tho 
 primeval superstition Self -worship : How to be distinguished. Their 
 Sacred Books (Fashionable Novels) unreadable. Dandyism's Articles 
 of Faith. Brotherhood of Poor-Slaves ; vowed to perpetual Poverty ; 
 worshippers of Earth ; distinguished by peculiar costume and diet. 
 Picture of a Poor-Slave Household ; and of a Dandiacal. Teuf elsdrockh 
 fears these two Sects may spread, till they part all England between 
 thorn, and then frightfully collide, (p. 188.) 
 
 CHAP. XI. Tailort. 
 
 Injustice done to Tailors, actual and metaphorical. Their righte 
 and great services will one day be duly recognised, (p. 199.) 
 
 CHAP. XII. Farewell, 
 
 TeaMsdrockh's strange manner of speech, but resolute, truthful 
 character : His purpose seemingly to proselytise, to unite the wakeful 
 earnest in these dark times. Letter from Hofrath Heuschrecke an- 
 ooanoing that Tenfelsdrockh has disappeared from Weisenicbtwo. 
 Editor guesses he will appear again. Friendly Farewell, (p. 202.) 
 
INDEX TO SARTOR. 
 
 ACTION the true end of Man, 108, in. 
 Actual, the, the true Ideal, 135, 136. 
 Adamitism, 39. 
 Afflictions, merciful, 133. 
 Ambition, 71. 
 Apprenticeships, 84. 
 Aprons, use and significance of, 39. 
 Art, all true Works of, symbolic, 154. 
 
 Baphometic Fire-baptism, 117. 
 
 Battle-field, a, 119. 
 
 Battle, Life-, our, 59 ; with Folly and Sin, 
 
 86, 88. 
 
 Being, the boundless Phantasmagoria of, 
 
 Belief and Opinion, 134, 135. 
 
 Bible of Universal History, 123, 134. 
 
 Biography, meaning and uses of, 51 ; sig- 
 nificance of biographic facts, 139. 
 
 Blumine, 95; her environment, 96; cha- 
 racter, and relation to Teufelsdrbckh, 
 97; blissful bonds rent asunder, 100; 
 on her way to England, 106. 
 
 Bolivar's Cavalry-uniform, 33. 
 
 Books, influence of, 119, 137. 
 
 Childhood, happy season of, 61 ; early in- 
 fluences and sports, 63. 
 
 Christian Faith, a good Mother's simple 
 version of the, 68 ; Temple of the, now 
 in ruins, 133 ; Passive-half of, 134. 
 
 Christian Love, 130, 132. 
 
 Church -Clothes, 147; living and dead 
 Churches, 148 ; the modern Church and 
 its Newspaper-Pulpits, 174. 
 
 Circumstances, influence of, 64. 
 
 Clergy, the, with their surplices and cas- 
 sock-aprons girt-on, 29, 145. 
 
 Clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the 
 human animal, but an artificial device, 
 a; analogy between the Costumes of 
 the body and the Customs of the spirit, 
 23 ; Decoration the first purpose of 
 Clothes, 26; what Clothes have done 
 for us, and what they threaten to do, 
 
 87, 38; fantastic garbs of the Middle 
 Ages, 31; a simple costume, 33; tan- 
 
 gible and mystic influences of Clothes, 
 34, 40; animal and human Clothing 
 contrasted, 37 ; a Court-Ceremonial mi- 
 nus Clothes, 41 ; necessity for Clothes, 
 43; transparent Clothes, 45; all Em- 
 blematic things are Clothes, 49, 187; 
 Genesis of the modern Clothes-Philo- 
 sopher, 55; Character and conditions 
 needed, 141, 143 ; George Fox's suit of 
 Leather, 144 ; Church-Clothes, 147; Old- 
 Clothes, 165 ; practical inferences, 188. 
 
 Codification, 46. 
 
 Combination, value of, 92, 204. 
 
 Commons, British House of, 28. 
 
 Concealment See Secrecy. 
 
 Constitution, our invaluable British, 173. 
 
 Conversion, 136. 
 
 Courtesy, due to all men, 165. 
 
 Courtier, a luckless, 33. 
 
 Custom the greatest of Weavers, 179. 
 
 Dandy, mystic significance of the, 188 ; 
 
 dandy worship, 190 ; sacred books, 191 ; 
 
 articles of faith, 193 ; a dandy house, 
 
 hold, 197 ; tragically undermined by 
 
 growing Drudgery, 198. 
 Death, nourishment even in, 73, 116. 
 Devil, internecine war with the, 8, 82, 
 
 117, 127 ; cannot now so much as believe 
 
 in him, 115. 
 Dilettantes and Pedants, 47 ; patrons of 
 
 Literature, 87. 
 Diogenes, 146. 
 Doubt can only be removed by Action., 
 
 135. See Unbelief. 
 Drudgery contrasted with Dandyism, 103 ; 
 
 'Communion of Drudges,' and what 
 
 may come of it, 198. 
 Duelling, a picture of, 125. 
 Duty, 110 longer a divine Messenger and 
 
 Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, 112, 
 
 113; infinite nature of, 135. 
 
 Editor's first acquaintance with Teufels 
 drbckh and his Philosophy of Clothes, 
 4 ; efforts to make known his discovery 
 to British readers, 5 ; admitted into the 
 
226 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 TeufelsdrBckh watch-tower, 13,12; first 
 feels the pressure of his task, 34 ; his 
 bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, 50; stre- 
 nuous efforts to evolve some historic 
 order out of such interminable docu- 
 mentary confusion, 54 ; partial success, 
 6z, 69, 107; mysterious hints, 139, 162; 
 astonishment and hesitation, 172; con- 
 gratulations, 1 86; farewell, 302. 
 
 Education, influence of early, 64 ; insig- 
 nificant portion depending on Schools, 
 70 ; educational Architects, 73 ; the in- 
 spired Thinker, 157. 
 
 Emblems, all visible things, 49. 
 
 Emigration, 159. 
 
 Eternity, looking through Time, 13, 50, 
 
 Evil, Origin of, 131. 
 Eyes and Spectacles, 47. 
 
 Facts, engraved Hierograms, for which 
 the fewest have the key, 140. 
 
 Faith, the one thing needful, in. 
 
 Fantasy, the true Heaven-gate or Hell- 
 gate of man, 99, 153. 
 
 Fashionable Novels, 191. 
 
 Fatherhood, 58. 
 
 Feebleness, the true misery, 113, 
 
 Fire, and vital fire, 48, 118. 
 
 Force, universal presence of, 48. 
 
 Fortunatus' Wishing-hat, 180, 182. 
 
 Fox's, George, heavenward aspirations and 
 earthly independence, 144. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 6, 207. 
 
 Frederick the Great, symbolic glimpse of, 
 
 Friendship, now obsolete, 81 ; an incre- 
 dible tradition, 114, 160; how it were 
 possible, 148, 204. 
 
 Futteral and his Wife, 55. 
 
 Future, organic filaments of the, 168. 
 
 Genius, the world's treatment of, 86. 
 
 German speculative Thought, 3, 9, 18, 21, 
 37 ; historical researches, 25, 51. 
 
 Gerund-grinding, 72. 
 
 Ghost, an authentic, 183. 
 
 God, the unslumbering, omnipresent, eter- 
 nal, 36; God's presence manifested to 
 our eyes and hearts, 44; an absentee 
 God, 112. 
 
 Goethe's inspired melody, 175. 
 
 Good, growth and propagation of, 68. 
 
 Great Men, 122. See Man. 
 
 Gullibility, blessings of, 77. 
 
 Gunpowder, use of, 27, 124. 
 
 Habit, how, makes dullards of us all, 38. 
 
 Half-men, 127. 
 
 Happiness, the whim of, 131. 
 
 Hero-worship, the comer-stone of all So- 
 ciety, 174. 
 
 Heuschrecke and his biographic docu- 
 ments, 7 ; his loose, zigzag, thin- visa get) 
 
 character, 16 ; unaccustomed eloquence, 
 and interminable documentary super- 
 fluities, 51 ; bewildered darkness, 205. 
 
 History, all-inweaving tissue of, 13; by 
 what strange chances do we live in, 33 ; 
 a perpetual Revelation, 122, 133, 175. 
 
 Homer's Iliad, 155. 
 
 Hope, this world emphatically the place 
 of, in; false shadows of, 128. 
 
 Horse, his own tailor, 37. 
 
 Ideal, the, exists only in the Actual, 135, 
 
 I 37; 
 
 Imagination. See Fantasy. 
 Immortality, a glimpse of, 181. 
 Imposture, statistics of, 76. 
 Independence, foolish parade of, 161, 173. 
 Indifference, centre of, 117. 
 Infant intuitions and acquirements, 60; 
 
 genius and dulness, 64. 
 Inspiration, perennial, 134, 144, 175. 
 Invention, 26, no. 
 Invisible, the, Nature the visible Garment 
 
 of, 37 ; invisible bonds, binding all Men 
 
 together, 41 ; the Visible and Invisible, 
 
 45, ISO- 
 Irish, the, Poor-Slave, 194. 
 Isolation, 74. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, our divinest Symbol, 
 155, 158. 
 
 King, our true, chosen for us in Heaven, 
 
 172. 
 
 Kingdom, a man's, 83. 
 Know thyself, and what thou canst work 
 
 at, 114. 
 
 Labour, sacredness of, 157. 
 
 Land-owning, trade of, 88. 
 
 Language, the Garment of Thought, 49; 
 dead vocables, 72. 
 
 Laughter, significance of, 22. 
 
 Lieschen, 15. 
 
 Life, Human, picture of, 13, 104, 118, 129; 
 life-purpose, 92 ; speculative mystery of, 
 114, 166, 183 ; the most important trans- 
 action in, 116; nothingness of, 126, 127. 
 
 Light the beginning of all Creation, 135. 
 
 Logic-mortar and wordy Air-castles, 36; 
 underground workshop of Logic, 46, 
 152- 
 
 Louis XV., ungodly age of, 113. 
 
 Love, what we emphatically name, 93 ; 
 pyrotechnic phenomena of, 93, 152 ; not 
 altogether a delirium, 99 ; how possible, 
 in its highest form, 131, 148, 204. 
 
 Ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, 
 32, 124. 
 
 Magna Charta, 187. 
 Mahhus's over-population panic, 156. 
 Man, by nature naked, 2, 38, 42 ; essen- 
 tially a tool-using animal, 27 ; the true 
 
INDEX. 
 
 227 
 
 Shekinah,44 : a divine Emblem, 49, 150, 
 152, 165, 184 ; two men alone honour- 
 able, 157. See Thinking Man. 
 
 Metaphors the stuff of Language, 49. 
 
 Metaphysics inexpressibly unproductive, 
 ?6, 40. 
 
 Milton, 113. 
 
 Miracles, significance of, 176, 182. 
 
 Monmouth- Street, and its "Ou' clo'" 
 Angels of Doom, 167. 
 
 Mother's, a, religious influence, 68. 
 
 Motive-Millwrights, 152. 
 
 Mountain scenery, 105. 
 
 Mystery, all-pervading domain of, 47. 
 
 Nakedness and hypocritical Clothing, 38, 
 43; a naked Court -Ceremonial, 41 ; a 
 naked Duke addressing a naked House 
 of Lords, 42. 
 
 Names, significance and influence of, 59, 
 179. 
 
 Napoleon and his Political Evangel, 123. 
 
 Nature, the God-written Apocalypse of, 
 35, 44 ; not an Aggegate but a Whole, 
 48, 106, 169, 178 ; Nature alone antique, 
 ji ', sympathy with, 104, 123 ; the 'Liv- 
 ing Garment of God,' 130; Laws of 
 Nature, 177. 
 
 Necessity, brightened into Duty, 67. 
 
 Newspaper Editors, 30 ; our Mendicant 
 Friars, 174. 
 
 Nothingness of life, 126. 
 
 Obedience, the lesson of, 68, 172. 
 
 Orpheus, 182. 
 
 Over-population, 156. 
 
 Own, conservation of a man's, 138. 
 
 Paradise and Fig-leaves, 25 ; prospective 
 
 Paradises, 93, too. 
 Passivity and Activity, 67, HI. 
 Past, the, inextricably linked with the 
 
 Present, 118 ; forever extant, 180. 
 Paupers, what to do with, 159. 
 Peace-Era, the much-predicted, 121. 
 Peasant Saint, the, 158. 
 Pelham, and the Whole Duty of Dandies, 
 
 192. 
 
 Perseverance, law of, 164. 
 Person, mystery of a, 44,90, 92, 165. 
 Philosophies, Cause-and-Effect, 24. 
 Phoenix Death-birth, 164, 168, 186. 
 Property, 138. 
 Proselytising, 5, 204. 
 
 Radicalism, Speculative, 9, 19, 43. 
 Raleigh's, Sir Walter, fine mantle, 33. 
 Religion, dead letter and living spint of, 
 
 80 ; weaving new vestures, 148, ipi. 
 Reverence, early growth of, 68 ; indispen- 
 
 sability of, 173. 
 Richter, 22. 
 
 Saints, living Communion of, 170, 175. 
 
 Sarcasm, the panoply of, 90. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, genesis of, 5 ; its pur- 
 pose, 185. 
 
 Saturn or Chronos, 89. 
 
 Savage, the aboriginal, 26. 
 
 Scarecrow, significance of the, 42. 
 
 Sceptical goose-cackle, 46. 
 
 School education, insignificance of, 70, 72 ; 
 tin -kettle terrors and incitements, 71 ; 
 need of Soul-Architects, 73. 
 
 Science, the Torch of, i ; the Scientific 
 Head, 46. 
 
 Secrecy, benignant efficacies of, 150. 
 
 Self-activity, 18. 
 
 Self-annihilation, 128. 
 
 Shame, divine, mysterious growth of, 27 ; 
 the soil of all Virtue, 151. 
 
 Silence, 124 ; the element in which all 
 great things fashion themselves, 150. 
 
 Simon's, Saint, aphorism of the golden 
 age, 163 ; a false application, 205. 
 
 Smoke, advantage of consuming one's, 
 104. 
 
 Society founded upon Cloth, 34, 41, 43 ; 
 how Society becomes possible, 148 ; so- 
 cial Death and New- Birth, 149, 163, 
 169, 186 ; as good as extinct, 160. 
 
 Solitude. See Silence. 
 
 Sorrow-pangs of Self-deliverance, 104, no, 
 iii ; divine depths of Sorrow, 130; Wor- 
 ship of Sorrow, 133. 
 
 Space and Time, the Dream-Canvas upon 
 which Life is imaged, 36, 44, 176, ifkx 
 
 Spartan wisdom, 158. 
 
 Speculative intuition, 35. See German. 
 
 Speech, great, but not greatest, 151. 
 
 Sphinx-riddle, the Universe a, 83. 
 
 Stealing, 138, 158. 
 
 Stupidity, blessings of, 112, 
 
 Style, varieties of, 49. 
 
 Suicide, 115. 
 
 Summary, 217. 
 
 Sunset, 63, 106. 
 
 Swallows, migrations and cooperative in- 
 stincts of, 66. 
 
 Swineherd, the, 64. 
 
 Symbols, 150 ; wond_rous agency of, 151 
 extrinsic and intrinsic, 154 ; superan- 
 nuated, 156, 161. 
 
 Tailors, symbolic significance of, 200. 
 
 Temptations in the wilderness, 126. 
 
 Testimonies of Authors, 211. 
 
 Teufelsdrbckh's Philosophy of Clothes, 4 ; 
 he proposes a toast, 9 ; his personal 
 aspect, and silent deepseated Sanscu- 
 lottism, 10 ; thawed into speech, 12 ; 
 memorable watch-tower utterances, 13 ? 
 alone with the Stars, 15 ; extremely 
 miscellaneous environment, 15 ; plain- 
 ness of speech, 19 ; universal learning, 
 and multiplex literary style, 20 ; am- 
 biguous-looking morality, 21 ; one in- 
 stance of laughter, 22 ; almost total want 
 
228 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of arrangement, ej ; feeling of the lu- 
 dicrous, 32 ; speculative Radicalism, 43 ; 
 a singular Character, 51 ; Genesis pro- 
 perly an Exodus, 55 ; unprecedented 
 Name, 59 ; infantine experience, 60 ; 
 Pedagogy, 69 ; an almost Hindoo Pas- 
 sivity, 69 ; school -boy jostling, 71 ; he- 
 terogeneous University-Life, 75 ; fever- 
 paroxysms of Doubt, 79 ; first practical 
 Knowledge of the English, 80 ; getting 
 under way, 82 ; ill success, 86 ; glimpse 
 of high -life, 87; casts himself on the 
 Universe, 92 ; reverent feeling towards 
 Women, 93 ; frantically in love, 94 ; _first 
 interview with Blumme, 97 ; inspired 
 moments, 98 ; short of practical kitchen- 
 stuff, 101 ; ideal bliss, and actual cata- 
 strophe, 102 ; sorrows, and peripatetic 
 stoicism, 103 ; a parting glimpse of his 
 Beloved on her way to England, 106 ; 
 bow he overran the whole earth, 107 ; 
 Doubt darkened into Unbelief, in ; 
 love of Truth, 113 ; a feeble unit, amidst 
 a threatening Infinitude, 114; Bapho- 
 metic Fire-baptism, 117 : placid indiffer- 
 ence, 117 ; a Hyperborean intruder, 124 ; 
 Nothingness of life, 126 ; Temptations 
 in the wilderness, 126 ; dawning of a 
 better day, 129 ; the Ideal in the Actual, 
 135 ; finds his true Calling, 137 ; his 
 Biography a symbolic Adumbration, 
 significant to those who can decipher it, 
 138 ; a wonder-lover, seeker and worker, 
 
 144 ; in Monmouth- Street among the 
 
 Hebrews, 167 ; concluding hints, 203 ; 
 
 his public History not yet done, perhaps 
 
 the better part only beginning, 206. 
 Thinking Man, a, the worst enemy of 
 
 the Prince of Darkness, 83, 137 ; true 
 
 Thought can never die, 170. 
 Time-Spirit, life -battle with the, 59, 89; 
 
 Time, the universal wonder-hider, 182. 
 Titles of Honour, 171. 
 Tools, influence of, 27; the Pen, most 
 
 miraculous of tools, 137. 
 
 Unbelief, era of, 78, 112 ; Doubt darken- 
 ing into, in ; escape from, 127. 
 Universities, 76. 
 Utilitarianism, m, 161. 
 
 View-hunting and diseased Self-conscious- 
 ness, 107. 
 Voltaire, 133 ; the Parisian Divinity, 174. 
 
 War, 118. 
 
 Wisdom, 45. 
 
 Woman's influence, 93. 
 
 Wonder the basis of Worship, 46 ; region 
 
 of, 187. 
 Words, slavery to, 36; Word-mongering 
 
 and Motive-grinding, 112. 
 Workshop of Life, 137. See Labour. 
 
 Young Men and Maidens, 88, gc. 
 
LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night. Birds of darkness are on the 
 wing ; spectres uproar ; the dead walk ; the living dream. Thou, Eternal Provi- 
 dence, wilt make the Day dawn ! JEAN PAUL. 
 
 Then said his Lordship, "Well, God mend all 1 " " Nay, by God, Donald, we must 
 help him to mend it ! " said the other. RUSHWORTH (Sir David Ramsay and 
 Lord Rea, in 1630). 
 
 LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. 
 
 1895 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 NO. PAGB 
 
 i. THE PRESENT TIME i 
 
 ii. MODEL PRISONS 41 
 
 in. DOWNING STREET 74 
 
 iv. THE NEW DOWNING STREET . . . .108 
 
 v. STUMP-ORATOR . . . . . .146 
 
 vi. PARLIAMENTS . . . . . . .182 
 
 vii. HUDSON'S STATUE . . . . . .216 
 
 vni. JESUITISM 249 
 
 SUMMARY 287 
 
 INDEX 295 
 
LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 No. I. THE PRESENT TIME, 
 [ist February 1850.] 
 
 THE Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir 
 of all the Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of 
 all the Future, is ever a ' New Era' to the thinking man ; and 
 comes with new questions and significance, however common- 
 place it look : to know it, and what it bids us do, is ever the 
 sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of 
 Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens ; amid the bustling 
 trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which, 
 if we cannot read and obey, it will not be well with us ! No ; 
 nor is there any sin more fearfully avenged on men and 
 Nations than that same, which indeed includes and presup- 
 poses all manner of sins : the sin which our old pious fathers 
 called 'judicial blindness;' which we, with our light habits, 
 may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is ; dis- 
 loyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of 
 these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and 
 mere current semblances of these. This is true of all times 
 and days. 
 
 But in the days that are now passing-over us, even fools 
 are arrested to ask the meaning of them ; few of the genera- 
 tions of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless 
 calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded : 
 if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of 
 utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the 
 ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. 
 
 B 
 
2 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all ! 
 That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old 
 sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance 
 there ; this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days 
 of universal death must be days of universal newbirth, if the 
 ruin is not to be total and final ! It is a Time to make the 
 dullest man consider ; and ask himself, Whence he came ? 
 Whither he is bound ? A veritable ' New Era,' to the foolish 
 as well as to the wise. 
 
 Not long ago, the world saw, with thoughtless joy which 
 might have been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not here- 
 tofore considered possible or conceivable in the world, a Re- 
 forming Pope. A simple pious creature, a good country-priest, 
 invested unexpectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Testa- 
 ment, declares that this henceforth shall be his rule of govern- 
 ing. No more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul 
 dealing of any kind : God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice 
 shall be done, on the throne called of St. Peter : an honest 
 Pope, Papa, or Father of Christendom, shall preside there. 
 And such a throne of St. Peter ; and such a Christendom, for 
 an honest Papa to preside in ! The European populations 
 everywhere hailed the omen ; with shouting and rejoicing, 
 leading-articles and tar-barrels ; thinking people listened with 
 astonishment, not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise ; 
 with awe rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as 
 of victory beyond death ! Something pious, grand and as if 
 awful in that joy, revealing once more the Presence of a Divine 
 Justice in this world. For, to such men it was very clear how 
 this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with his New Testament 
 in his hand. An alarming business, that of governing in the 
 throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity ! By the rule of ver- 
 acity, the so-called throne of St. Peter was openly declared, 
 above three-hundred years ago, to be a falsity, a huge mistake, 
 a pestilent dead carcass, which this Sun was weary of. More 
 than three hundred years ago, the throne of St. Peter received 
 peremptory judicial notice to quit ; authentic order, registered 
 in Heaven's chancery and since legible in the hearts of all 
 brave men, to take itself away, to begone, and let us have 
 no more to do with // and its delusions and impious deliriums ; 
 and it has been sitting every day since, it may depend upon 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 3 
 
 it, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay exact damages 
 yet for every day it has so sat. Law of veracity ? What this 
 Popedom had to do by the law of veracity, was to give-up its 
 own foul galvanic life, an offence to gods and men ; honestly to 
 die, and get itself buried ! 
 
 Far from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook in 
 regard to it ; and yet, on the whole, it was essentially this 
 too. " Reforming Pope ?" said one of our acquaintance, often 
 in those weeks, "Was there ever such a miracle? About to 
 " break-up that huge imposthume too, by ' curing' it ? Turgot 
 " and Necker were nothing to this. God is great ; and when 
 " a scandal is to end, brings some devoted man to take charge 
 " of it in hope, not in despair !" But cannot he reform ? asked 
 many simple persons ; to whom our friend in grim banter 
 would reply : " Reform a Popedom, hardly. A wretched old 
 " kettle, ruined from top to bottom, and consisting mainly now 
 " of foul grime and rust : stop the holes of it, as your anteces- 
 " sors have been doing, with temporary putty, it may hang- 
 " together yet a while ; begin to hammer at it, solder at it, to 
 " what you call mend and rectify it, it will fall to sherds, as 
 " sure as rust is rust ; go all into nameless dissolution, and 
 " the fat in the fire will be a thing worth looking at, poor 
 
 " Pope !" So accordingly it has proved. The poor Pope, 
 
 amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds, went on joy- 
 fully for a season : but he had awakened, he as no other man 
 could do, the sleeping elements ; mothers of the whirlwinds, 
 conflagrations, earthquakes. Questions not very soluble at 
 present, were even sages and heroes set to solve them, began 
 everywhere with new emphasis to be asked. Questions which 
 all official men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till 
 Doomsday. Doomsday itself had come ; that was the terrible 
 truth ! 
 
 For, sure enough, if once the law of veracity be acknow- 
 ledged as the rule for human things, there will not anywhere 
 be want of work for the reformer ; in very few places do hu- 
 man things adhere quite closely to that law I Here was the 
 Papa of Christendom proclaiming that such was actually the 
 case ; whereupon all over Christendom such results as we 
 have seen. The Sicilians, I think, were the first notable body 
 that set-about applying this new strange rule sanctioned by the 
 general Father ; they said to themselves, We do not by the law 
 
4 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 of veracity belong to Naples and these Neapolitan Officials ; 
 we will, by favour of Heaven and the Pope, be free of these. 
 Fighting ensued ; insurrection, fiercely maintained in the Sici- 
 lian Cities ; with much bloodshed, much tumult and loud noise, 
 vociferation extending through all newspapers and countries. 
 The effect of this, carried abroad by newspapers and rumour, 
 was great in all places ; greatest perhaps in Paris, which for 
 sixty years past has been the City of Insurrections. The 
 French People had plumed themselves on being, whatever else 
 they were not, at least the chosen 'soldiers of liberty,' who 
 took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at least ; and had 
 become, as their orators, editors and litterateurs diligently 
 taught them, a People whose bayonets were sacred, a kind of 
 Messiah People, saving a blind world in its own despite, and 
 earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory 
 very considerable indeed. And here were the wretched down- 
 trodden populations of Sicily risen to rival them, and threat- 
 ening to take the trade out of their hand. 
 
 No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very Pope's 
 glory as a Reformer, of the very Sicilians fighting divinely for 
 liberty behind barricades, must have bitterly aggravated the 
 feeling of every Frenchman, as he looked around him, at 
 home, on a Louis-Philippism which had become the scorn of 
 all the world. " Ichabodj is the glory departing from us ? 
 " Under the sun is nothing baser, by all accounts and evi- 
 " dences, than the system of repression and corruption, of 
 " shameless dishonesty and unbelief in anything but human 
 " baseness, that we now live under. The Italians, the very 
 
 " Pope, have become apostles of liberty, and France is 
 
 " what is France !" We know #hat France suddenly became 
 in the end of February next ; and by a clear enough genealogy, 
 we can trace a considerable share in that event to the good 
 simple Pope with the New Testament in his hand. An out- 
 break, or at least a radical change and even inversion of affairs 
 hardly to be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was 
 inevitable in France : but it had been universally expected that 
 France would as usual take the initiative in that matter ; and 
 had there been no reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, 
 France had certainly not broken-out then and so, but only 
 afterwards and otherwise. The French explosion, not antici- 
 pated by the cunningest men there on the spot scrutinising 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 5 
 
 it, burst-up unlimited, complete, defying computation or con- 
 trol. 
 
 Close following which, as if by sympathetic subterranean 
 electricities, all Europe exploded, boundless, uncontrollable ; 
 and we had the year 1 848, one of the most singular, disastrous, 
 amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European 
 world ever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Bar- 
 barians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable 
 Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the 
 voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was 
 scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane : Enter, all 
 the world, see what kind of Official holy it is. Kings every- 
 where, and reigning persons, stared in sudden horror, the voice 
 of the whole world bellowing in their ear, " Begone, ye imbe- 
 cile hypocrites, histrios not heroes ! Off with you, off !" and, 
 what was peculiar and notable in this year for the first time, 
 the Kings all made haste to go, as if exclaiming, "We are 
 " poor histrios, we sure enough ; did you want heroes ? Don't 
 " kill us ; we couldn't help it !" Not one of them turned round, 
 and stood upon his Kingship, as upon a right he could afford 
 to die for, or to risk his skin upon ; by no manner of means. 
 That, I say, is the alarming peculiarity at present. Demo- 
 cracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kings conscious that they 
 are but Playactors. The miserable mortals, enacting their 
 High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that this Universe 
 may perhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis, the truculent 
 Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters : " Scandalous 
 " Phantasms, what do you here? Are 'solemnly constituted 
 " Impostors' the proper Kings of men ? Did you think the 
 " Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes ? To be led 
 " always by the squeak of your paltry fiddle ? Ye miserable, 
 " this Universe is not an upholstery Puppet-play, but a ter- 
 " rible God's Fact ; and you, I think, had not you better 
 " begone !" They fled precipitately, some of them with what 
 we may call an exquisite ignominy, in terror of the treadmill 
 or worse. And everywhere the people, or the populace, take 
 their own government upon themselves ; and open ' kingless- 
 ness,' what we call anarchy ', how happy if it be anarchy plus 
 a street-constable ! is everywhere the order of the day. Such 
 was the history, from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, 
 Prussia, Austria, iroin end to end of Europe, in those March 
 
6 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 days of 1848. Since the destruction of the old Roman Em- 
 pire by inroad of the Northern Barbarians, I have known no- 
 thing similar. 
 
 And so, then, there remained no King in Europe ; no King 
 except the Public Haranguer, haranguing on barrel-head, in 
 leading-article ; or getting himself aggregated into a National 
 Parliament to harangue. And for about four months all France, 
 and to a great degree all Europe, rough-ridden by every species 
 of delirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was 
 a weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine at the 
 H6tel-de-Ville ; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman, 
 whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest and hea- 
 ven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine 
 discerned to be properly ' the first stump-orator in the world, 
 standing too on the highest stump, for the time.' A sorrow- 
 ful spectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, 
 that poor M. de Lamartine ; with nothing in him but melodi- 
 ous wind and soft soivder, which he and others took for some- 
 thing divine and not diabolic ! Sad enough : the eloquent 
 latest impersonation of Chaos-come-again ; able to talk for it- 
 self, and declare persuasively that *'/ is Cosmos ! However, 
 you have but to wait a little, in such cases ; all balloons do 
 and must give-up their gas in the pressure of things, and are 
 collapsed in a sufficiently wretched manner before long. 
 
 And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and 
 truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins ; popu- 
 lace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or ab- 
 sconds ; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed- 
 up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted 
 than ever before ; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless 
 volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutin- 
 ous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, 
 Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, 
 in the present epoch, rests ! The kind of persons who excite 
 or give signal to such revolutions, students, young men of 
 letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or 
 fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on 
 the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame, 
 might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. 
 Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such 
 a command in human affairs. A changed time since the word 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 7 
 
 Senior (Seigneur, or Elder) was first devised to signify ' lord,' 
 or superior ; as in all languages of men we find it to have 
 been 1 Not an honourable document this either, as to the spi- 
 ritual condition of our epoch. In times when men love wis- 
 dom, the old man will ever be venerable, and be venerated, 
 and reckoned noble : in times that love something else than 
 wisdom, and indeed have little or no wisdom, and see little or 
 none to love, the old man will cease to be venerated ; and 
 looking more closely, also, you will find that in fact he has 
 ceased to be venerable, and has begun to be contemptible ; a 
 foolish boy still, a boy without the graces, generosities and 
 opulent strength of young boys. In these days, what of lord- 
 ship or leadership is still to be done, the youth must do it, not 
 the mature or aged man; the mature man, hardened into scep- 
 tical egoism, knows no monition but that of his own frigid 
 cautions, avarices, mean timidities ; and can lead nowhither 
 towards an object that even seems noble. But to return. 
 
 This mad state of matters will of course before long allay 
 itself, as it has everywhere begun to do ; the ordinary necessi- 
 ties of men's daily existence cannot comport with it, and these, 
 whatever else is cast aside, will have their way. Some remount- 
 ing, very temporary remounting, of the old machine, under 
 new colours and altered forms, will probably ensue soon in 
 most countries : the old histrionic Kings will be admitted back 
 under conditions, under ' Constitutions,' with national Parlia- 
 ments, or the like fashionable adjuncts ; and everywhere the 
 old daily life will try to begin again. But there is now no hope 
 that such arrangements can be permanent ; that they can be 
 other than poor temporary makeshifts, which, if they try to 
 fancy and make themselves permanent, will be displaced by 
 new explosions recurring more speedily than last time. In 
 such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid raging bottomless ed- 
 dies and conflicting sea-currents, not steadfast as on fixed 
 foundations, must European Society continue swaying, now 
 disastrously tumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, at ever 
 shorter intervals, till once the new rock-basis does come to 
 light, and the weltering deluges of mutiny, and of need to 
 mutiny, abate again ! 
 
 For universal Democracy, whatever we may think of it, has 
 declared itseli as an inevitable fact of the days in which we 
 
8 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 live ; and he who has any chance to instruct, or lead, in bis 
 days, must begin by admitting that : new street-barricades, and 
 new anarchies, still more scandalous if still less sanguinary, 
 must return and again return, till governing persons everywhere 
 know and admit that. Democracy, it may be said everywhere, 
 is here: for sixty years now, ever since the grand or First 
 French Revolution, that fact has been terribly announced to 
 all the world ; in message after message, some of them very 
 terrible indeed ; and now at last all the world ought really to 
 believe it. That the world does believe it ; that even Kings 
 now as good as believe it, and know, or with just terror sur- 
 mise, that they are but temporary phantasm Playactors, and 
 that Democracy is the grand, alarming, imminent and indis- 
 putable Reality: this, among the scandalous phases we wit- 
 nessed in the last two years, is a phasis full of hope : a sign 
 that we are advancing closer and closer to the very Problem 
 itself, which it will behove us to solve or die ; that all fight- 
 ing and campaigning and coalitioning in regard to the exist- 
 ence of the Problem, is hopeless and superfluous henceforth. 
 The gods have appointed it so; no Pitt, nor body of Pitts or 
 mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise. Democracy, sure 
 enough, is here : one knows not how long it will keep hidden 
 underground even in Russia ; and here in England, though 
 we object to it resolutely in the form of street-barricades and 
 insurrectionary pikes, and decidedly will not open doors to it 
 on those terms, the tramp of its million feet is on all streets 
 and thoroughfares, the sound of its bewildered thousandfold 
 voice is in all writings and speakings, in all thinkings and 
 modes and activities of men : the soul that does not now, with 
 hope or terror, discern it, is not the one we address on this 
 occasion. 
 
 What is Democracy ; this huge inevitable Product of the 
 Destinies, which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in 
 these latter days ? There lies the question for us. Whence 
 comes it, this universal big black Democracy ; whither tends 
 it ; what is the meaning of it ? A meaning it must have, or it 
 would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of it, we 
 may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still 
 hope to live in the midst of it ; if we cannot find the right 
 meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to 
 live will not be possible ! The whole social wisdom 01 the 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 9 
 
 Present Time is summoned, in the name of the Giver of Wis- 
 dom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeply to heart with an 
 eye to strenuous valiant practice and" effort, what the meaning 
 of this universal revolt of the European Populations, which 
 calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, 
 may be. 
 
 Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following 
 event ; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are 
 interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, 
 simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift -up their 
 voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high ; in rhyme and prose 
 announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, 
 and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has 
 come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, 
 heroic barricades ; triumph of civil and religious liberty O 
 Heaven ! one of the inevitables! private miseries, to an earn- 
 est man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of 
 oratory and psalmody, from the universal foolish human throat ; 
 drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the 
 sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long- 
 eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same. 
 The front wall of your wretched old crazy dwelling, long de- 
 nounced by you to no purpose, having at last fairly folded it- 
 self over, and fallen prostrate into the street, the floors, as 
 may happen, will still hang-on by the mere beam-ends, and co- 
 herency of old carpentry, though in a sloping direction, and 
 depend there till certain poor rusty nails and wormeaten dove- 
 tailings give way : but is it cheering, in such circumstances, 
 that the whole household burst-forth into celebrating the new 
 joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness of 
 position, and thank God that now they have got a house to 
 their mind ? My dear household, cease singing and psalmody- 
 ing ; lay aside your fiddles, take out your work-implements, if 
 you have any ; for I can say with confidence the laws of gra- 
 vitation are still active, and rusty nails, wormeaten dovetafl- 
 ings, and secret coherency of old carpentry, are not the best 
 basis for a household ! In the lanes of Irish cities, I have 
 heard say, the wretched people are sometimes found living, 
 and perilously boiling their potatoes, on such swing-floors and 
 inclined planes hanging-on by the joist-ends ; but I did not 
 hear that they sang very much in celebration of such lodg- 
 
io LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ing. No, they slid gently about, sat near the back wall, 
 and perilously boiled their potatoes, in silence for most 
 part ! 
 
 High shouts of exultation, in every dialect, by every vehicle 
 of speech and writing, rise from far and near over this last 
 avatar of Democracy in 1848: and yet, to wise minds, the first 
 aspect it presents seems rather to be one of boundless misery 
 and sorrow. What can be more miserable than this universal 
 hunting-out of the high dignitaries, solemn functionaries, and 
 potent, grave and reverend signiors of the world ; this stormful 
 rising-up of the inarticulate dumb masses everywhere, against 
 f hose who pretended to be speaking for them and guiding them? 
 These guides, then, were mere blind men only pretending to 
 see ? These rulers were not ruling at all ; they had merely got- 
 on the attributes and clothes of rulers, and were surreptitiously 
 drawing the wages, while the work remained undone ? The 
 Kings were Sham-Kings, playacting as at Drury Lane ; and 
 what were the people withal that took them for real ? 
 
 It is probably the hugest disclosure of falsity in human 
 things that was ever at one time made. These reverend Dig- 
 nitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols and long-sound- 
 ing long-admitted professions, were mere Impostors, then ? 
 Not a true thing they were doing, but a false thing. The 
 story they told men was a cunningly-devised fable ; the gospels 
 they preached to them were not an account of man's real posi- 
 tion in this world, but an incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts 
 and unborn shadows, of traditions, cants, indolences, coward- 
 ices, a falsity of falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. 
 Wilfully and against their will, these high units of mankind 
 were cheats, then ; and the low millions who believed in them 
 were dupes, a kind of inverse cheats, too, or they would not 
 have believed in them so long. A universal Bankruptcy of Im- 
 posture j,- that may be the brief definition of it. Imposture 
 everywhere declared once more to be contrary to Nature ; no- 
 body will change its word into an act any farther : fallen in- 
 solvent ; unable to keep its head up by these false pretences, 
 or make its pot boil any more for the present ! A more scan- 
 4alous phenomenon, wide as Europe, never afflicted the face 
 of the sun. Bankruptcy everywhere ; foul ignominy, and the 
 abomination ol desolation, in all high places : odious to look 
 upon, as the carnage of a battle-field on the morrow morning ; 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. n 
 
 a massacre not of the innocents ; we cannot call it a mass- 
 acre of the innocents ; but a universal tumbling of Impostors 
 and of Impostures into the street ! 
 
 Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful ? There is a joy in 
 it, to the wise man too ; yes, but a joy full of awe, and as it 
 were sadder than any sorrow, like the vision of immortality, 
 unattainable except through death and the grave ! And yet 
 who would not, in his heart of hearts, feel piously thankful that 
 Imposture has fallen bankrupt ? By all means let it fall bank- 
 rupt ; in the name of God let it do so, with whatever misery 
 to itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then, 
 known it must and shall be, is hateful, unendurable to God 
 and man. Let it understand this everywhere ; and swiftly 
 make ready for departure, wherever it yet lingers ; and let it 
 learn never to return, if possible ! The eternal voices, very 
 audibly again, are speaking to proclaim this message, from 
 side to side of the world. Not a very cheering message, but a 
 very indispensable one. 
 
 Alas, it is sad enough that Anarchy is here ; that we are 
 not permitted to regret its being here, for who that had, for 
 this divine Universe, an eye which was human at all, could 
 wish that Shams of any kind, especially that Sham-Kings 
 should continue ? No : at all costs, it is to be prayed by all 
 men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths 
 have we got, when this to many a man seems strange ! Yet 
 strange to many a man it does seem ; and to many a solid 
 Englishman, wholesomely digesting his pudding among what 
 are called the cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly ; 
 a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere 
 ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since fallen 
 empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown cere- 
 monial, what you in your iconoclast humour call shams, 
 all his life long ; never heard that there was any harm in them, 
 that there was any getting-on without them. Did not cotton 
 spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in 
 from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of 
 shams ? Kings reigned, what they were pleased to call reign- 
 ing ; lawyers pleaded, bishops preached, and honourable mem- 
 bers perorated ; and to crown the whole, as if it were all real 
 and no sham there, did not scrip continue saleable, and the 
 banker pay in bullion, or paper with a metallic basis ? " The 
 
12 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " greatest sham, I have always thought, is he that would 
 " destroy shams." 
 
 Even so. To such depth have /, the poor knowing person 
 of this epoch, got; almost below the level of lowest humanity, 
 and down towards the state of apehood and oxhood ! For never 
 till in quite recent generations was such a scandalous blasphemy 
 quietly set forth among the sons of Adam ; never before did the 
 creature called man believe generally in his heart that lies were 
 the rule in this Earth ; that in deliberate long-established lying 
 could there be help or salvation for him, could there be at 
 length other than hindrance and destruction for him. O Heavy- 
 side, my solid friend, this is the sorrow of sorrows : what on 
 earth can become of us till this accursed enchantment, the 
 general summary and consecration of delusions, be cast forth 
 from the heart and life of one and all ! Cast forth it will be ; 
 it must, or we are tending at all moments, whitherward I do 
 not like to name. Alas, and the casting of it out, to what 
 heights and what depths will it lead us, in the sad universe 
 mostly of lies and shams and hollow phantasms (grown very 
 ghastly now), in which, as in a safe home, we have lived this 
 century or two! To heights and depths of social and individual 
 divorce from delusions, of ' reform' in right sacred earnest, 
 of indispensable amendment, and stern sorrowful abrogation 
 and order to depart, such as cannot well be spoken at pre- 
 sent ; as dare scarcely be thought at present ; which neverthe- 
 less are very inevitable, and perhaps rather imminent several 
 of them ! Truly we have a heavy task of work before us ; and 
 there is a pressing call that we should seriously begin upon it, 
 before it tumble into an inextricable mass, in which there will 
 be no working, but only suffering and hopelessly perishing ! 
 
 Or perhaps Democracy, which we announce as now come, 
 will itself manage it ? Democracy, once modelled into suffrages, 
 furnished with ballot-boxes and suchlike, will itself accomplish 
 the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real, and make 
 a new blessed world of us by and by ? To the great mass of 
 men, I am aware, the matter presents itself quite on this hope- 
 ful side. Democracy they consider to be a kind of ' Govern- 
 ment.' The old model, formed long since, and brought to 
 perfection in England now two hundred years ago, has pro- 
 claimed itself to all Nations as the new healing for every woe ; 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 13 
 
 44 Set-up a Parliament," the Nations everywhere say, when the 
 old King is detected to be a Sham-King, and hunted out or 
 not; "set-up a Parliament; let us have suffrages, universal 
 " suffrages ; and all either at once or by due degrees will be 
 " right, and a real Millennium come !" Such is their way of con- 
 struing the matter. 
 
 Such, alas, is by no means my way of construing the mat 
 ter ; if it were, I should have had the happiness of remaining 
 silent, and been without call to speak here. It is because the 
 contrary of all this is deeply manifest to me, and appears to be 
 forgotten by multitudes of my contemporaries, that I have had 
 to undertake addressing a word to them. The contrary of all 
 this; and the farther I look into the roots of all this, the more 
 hateful, ruinous and dismal does the state of mind all this 
 could have originated in appear to me. To examine this recipe 
 of a Parliament, how fit it is for governing Nations, nay how 
 fit it may now be, in these new times, for governing England 
 itself where we are used to it so long: this, too, is an alarming 
 inquiry, to which all thinking men, and good citizens of their 
 country, who have an ear for the small still voices and eternal 
 intimations, across the temporary clamours and loud blaring 
 proclamations, are now solemnly invited. Invited by the rigor- 
 ous fact itself ; which will one day, and that perhaps soon, de- 
 mand practical decision or redecision of it from us, with 
 enormous penalty if we decide it wrong ! I think we shall all 
 have to consider this question, one day; better perhaps now 
 than later, when the leisure may be less. If a Parliament, with 
 suffrages and universal or any conceivable kind of suffrages, 
 is the method, then certainly let us set about discovering the 
 kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. 
 But it is possible a Parliament may not be the method ! Pos- 
 sible the inveterate notions of the English People may have 
 settled it as the method, and the Everlasting Laws of Nature 
 may have settled it as not the method! Not the whole method; 
 nor the method at all, if taken as the whole ? If a Parliament 
 with never such suffrages is not the method settled by this lat- 
 ter authority, then it will urgently behove us to become aware 
 of that fact, and to quit such method ; we may depend upon 
 it, however unanimous we be, every step taken in that direction 
 will, by the Eternal Law of things, be a step from improvement, 
 not towards it. 
 
14 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Not towards it, I say, if so ! Unanimity of voting, that 
 will do nothing for us if so. Your ship cannot double Cape 
 Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this 
 and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious ex- 
 quisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape 
 Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed 
 with adamantine rigour by the ancient Elemental Powers, who 
 are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or 
 without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly con- 
 form to them, you will get round the Cape : if you cannot, 
 the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again ; the inexor- 
 able Icebergs, dumb privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge 
 you with most chaotic ' admonition ;' you will be flung half- 
 frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or admonished into shivers by 
 your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, 
 and will never get round Cape Horn at all ! Unanimity on 
 board ship ; yes indeed, the ship's crew may be very unani- 
 mous, which doubtless, for the time being, will be very com- 
 fortable to the ship's crew, and to their Phantasm Captain if 
 they have one : but if the tack they unanimously steer upon is 
 guiding them into the belly of the Abyss, it will not profit them 
 much! Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box at all; 
 and they reject the Phantasm species of Captains : one wishes 
 much some other Entities, since all entities lie under the same 
 rigorous set of laws, could be brought to show as much wis- 
 dom, and sense at least of self-preservation, thejirst command 
 of Nature. Phantasm Captains with unanimous votings : this is 
 considered to be all the law and all the prophets, at present. 
 
 If a man could shake-out of his mind the universal noise 
 of political doctors in this generation and in the last generation 
 or two, and consider the matter face to face, with his own sin- 
 cere intelligence looking at it, I venture to say he would find 
 this a very extraordinary method ot navigating, whether in the 
 Straits of Magellan or the undiscovered Sea of Time. To pro- 
 sper in this world, to gain felicity, victory and improvement, 
 either for a man or a nation, there is but one thing requisite, 
 That the man or nation can discern what the true regulations 
 of the Universe are in regard to him and bis pursuit, and can 
 faithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him to 
 victory ; whoever it may be that sets him in the way oi these, 
 were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 15 
 
 Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy 
 the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political Economy, 
 sets him in the sure way to please the Author of this Uni- 
 verse, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever does 
 the contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. This 
 may be taken as fixed. 
 
 And now by what method ascertain the monition of the gods 
 in regard to our affairs ? How decipher, with best fidelity, the 
 eternal regulation of the Universe ; and read, from amid such 
 confused embroilments of human clamour and folly, what the 
 real Divine Message to us is ? A divine message, or eternal 
 regulation of the Universe, there verily is, in regard to every 
 conceivable procedure and affair of man : faithfully following this, 
 said procedure or affair will prosper, and have the whole Uni- 
 verse to second it, and carry it, across the fluctuating contra- 
 dictions, towards a victorious goal ; not following this, mistak- 
 ing this, disregarding this, destruction and wreck are certain 
 for every affair. How find it ? All the world answers me, 
 " Count heads ; ask Universal Suffrage, by the ballot-boxes, 
 and that will tell." Universal Suffrage, ballot-boxes, count of 
 heads ? Well, I perceive we have got into strange spiritual 
 latitudes indeed. Within the last half century or so, either the 
 Universe or else the heads of men must have altered very 
 much. Half a century ago, and down from Father Adam's 
 time till then, the Universe, wherever I could hear tell of it, 
 was wont to be of somewhat abstruse nature ; by no means 
 carrying its secret written on its face, legible to every passer- 
 by ; on the contrary, obstinately hiding its secret from all fool- 
 ish, slavish, wicked, insincere persons, and partially disclosing 
 it to the wise and noble-minded alone, whose number was not 
 the majority in my time ! 
 
 Or perhaps the chief end of man being now, in these im- 
 proved epochs, to make money and spend it, his interests in 
 the Universe have become amazingly simplified of late ; capa- 
 ble of being voted-on with effect by almost anybody ? ' To 
 buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest :' truly if 
 that is the summary of his social duties, and the final divine- 
 message he has to follow, we may trust him extensively to vote 
 upon that. But if it is not, and never was, or can be ? If the 
 Universe will not carry on its divine bosom any commonwealth 
 of mortals that have no higher aim, being still ' a Temple and 
 
16 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Hall of Doom,' not a mere Weaving-shop and Cattle-pen ? If 
 the unfathomable Universe has decided to reject Human Bea- 
 vers pretending to be Men ; and will abolish, pretty rapidly 
 perhaps, in hideous mud-deluges, their 'markets' and them, 
 unless they think of it ? In that case it were better to think 
 of it : and the Democracies and Universal Suffrages, I can ob- 
 serve, will require to modify themselves a good deal ! 
 
 Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation that 
 could subsist upon Democracy. Of ancient Republics, and 
 Demoi and Populi, we have heard much ; but it is now pretty 
 well admitted to be nothing to our purpose ; a universal-suf- 
 frage republic, or a general-suffrage one, or any but a most- 
 limited-suffrage one, never came to light, or dreamed of doing 
 so, in ancient times. When the mass of the population were 
 slaves, and the voters intrinsically a kind of kings, or men 
 born to rule others ; when the voters were real ' aristocrats' 
 and manageable dependents of such, then doubtless voting, 
 and confused jumWing of talk and intrigue, might, without im- 
 mediate destruction, or the need of a Cavaignac to intervene 
 with cannon and sweep the streets clear of it, go on ; and beau- 
 tiful developments of manhood might be possible beside it, for 
 a season. Beside it ; or even, if you will, by means of it, and 
 in virtue of it, though that is by no means so certain as is often 
 supposed. Alas, no : the reflective constitutional mind has 
 misgivings as to the origin of old Greek and Roman nobleness; 
 and indeed knows not how this or any other human nobleness 
 could well be ' originated,' or brought to pass, by voting or 
 without voting, in this world, except by the grace of God very 
 mainly ; and remembers, with a sigh, that of the Seven Sages 
 themselves no fewer than three were bits of Despotic Kings, 
 Tvgavvoi, 'Tyrants' so-called (such being greatly wanted there) ; 
 and that the other four were very far from Red Republicans, 
 if of any political faith whatever ! We may quit the Ancient 
 Classical concern, and leave it to College-clubs and speculative 
 debating-societies, in these late days. 
 
 Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or 
 that are still on trial, of these also it is not needful to say 
 any word. But there is one modern instance of Democracy 
 nearly perfect, the Republic of the United States, which has 
 actually subsisted for threescore years or more, with immense 
 success as is affirmed ; to which many still appeal, as to a sign 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 17 
 
 of hope for all nations, and a ' Model Republic.' Is not Ame- 
 rica an instance in point ? Why should not all Nations sub- 
 sist and flourish on Democracy, as America does ? 
 
 Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me 
 perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak un- 
 patriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America 
 is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phe- 
 nomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-saxon 
 men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy ; and, with 
 the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer 
 kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing-out wide spaces, 
 seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for 
 the future history of the world ; doing, in their day and gene- 
 ration, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as 
 to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among 
 themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. 
 Nay the title hitherto to be a Commonwealth or Nation at all, 
 among the tt)vv) of the world, is, strictly considered, still a thing 
 they are but striving for, and indeed have not yet done much 
 towards attaining. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was 
 made here, not there ; went over with them from the Old-Puri- 
 tan English workshop ready-made. Deduct what they carried 
 with them from England ready-made, their common English 
 Language, and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of con- 
 stitutions, their inveterate and now, as it were, inborn rever- 
 ence for the Constable's Staff ; two quite immense attainments, 
 which England had to spend much blood, and valiant sweat of 
 brow and brain, for centuries long, in achieving ; and what 
 rfew elements of polity or nationhood, what noble new phasis 
 of human arrangement, or social device worthy of Prometheus 
 or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light in America? Cotton- 
 crops and Indian-corn and dollars come to light ; and half a 
 world of untilled land, where populations that respect the con- 
 stable can live, for the present without Government : this comes 
 to light ; and the profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, here ut- 
 tering itself as silent patient unspeakable ennui, there com- 
 ing out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is still next to 
 nothing more. ' Anarchy plus a street-constable :' that also is 
 anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely ! 
 
 I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are full, the 
 very street-constable, on these poor terms, will have become 
 
 C 
 
1 8 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 impossible : without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I 
 do not see how he could continue possible many weeks. Cease 
 to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and con- 
 stitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in 
 this world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit 
 idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic 
 ancestors, saying, " It is well, it is well !" Corn and bacon are 
 granted: not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon 
 moreover which, on such conditions, cannot last ! No : America 
 too will have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than 
 this ; to crack its sinews, and ail-but break its heart, as the rest 
 of us have had to do, in thousandfold wrestle with the Pythons 
 and mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the 
 gods. America's battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful 
 though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New 
 Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them ; enormous Megatherions, as 
 ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of 
 the twilight Future on America; and she will have her own 
 agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet 
 quite aware of. Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a 
 very successful manner ; hitherto, in spite of her ' roast-goose 
 with apple-sauce," she is not much. ' Roast-goose with apple- 
 sauce for the poorest working-man :' well, surely that is some- 
 thing, thanks to your respect for the street-constable, and to 
 your continents of fertile waste land ; but that, even if it could 
 continue, is by no means enough ; that is not even an instal- 
 ment towards what will be required of you. My friend, brag 
 not yet of our American cousins ! Their quantity of cotton, 
 dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be almost unspeak- 
 able ; but I can by no means worship the like of these. What 
 great human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing 
 that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been pro- 
 duced there ? None : the American cousins have yet done none 
 of these things. " What they have done ?" growls Smelfungus, 
 tired of the subject: "They have doubled their population 
 " every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity be- 
 " yond recorded example, Eighteen Millions of the greatest 
 " bores ever seen in this world before, that hitherto is their 
 " feat in History!" And so we leave them, for the present ; 
 and cannot predict the success of Democracy, on this side of 
 the Atlantic, from their example. 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 19 
 
 Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, 
 we apprehend, is forever impossible ! So much, with certainty 
 of loud astonished contradiction from all manner of men at 
 present, but with sure appeal to the Law of Nature and the 
 ever-abiding Fact, may be suggested and asserted once more. 
 The Universe itself is a Monarchy and Heirarchy; large liberty 
 of ' voting' there, all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but 
 with conditions inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every 
 exercise of the same. A most free commonwealth of ' voters ;' 
 but with Eternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice en- 
 forced by Almighty Power ! This is the model of ' constitu- 
 tions;' this: nor in any Nation where there has not yet (in 
 some supportable and withal some constantly-increasing degree) 
 been confided to the Noblest, with his select series of Nobler, 
 the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ig- 
 noble, has the ' Kingdom of God,' which we all pray for, ' come,' 
 nor can ' His will' even tend to be done on Earth as it is in 
 Heaven' till then. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham- 
 Christian and Anti-Christian, and all manner of men, are in- 
 vited to reflect on this. They will find it to be the truth of the 
 case. The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; 
 that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's 
 Law. 
 
 To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him 
 by whatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from 
 old wont, this, little as we may regard it, is, in all times and 
 countries, a practical blasphemy, and Nature will in no wise 
 forget it. Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, of 
 modern Democracy everywhere. It is the Noblest, not the 
 Sham-Noblest ; it is God -Almighty's Noble, not the Court- 
 Tailor's Noble, nor the Able-Editor's Noble, that must in some 
 approximate degree, be raised to the supreme place; he and 
 not a counterfeit, under penalties ! Penalties deep as death, 
 and at length terrible as hell-on-earth, my constitutional friend ! 
 Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does 
 any sane man deliberately believe such a thing ? That never- 
 theless is the indispensable result, attain it how we may : if that 
 is attained, all is attained; if not that, nothing. He that can- 
 not believe the ballot-box to be attaining it, will be compara- 
 tively indifierent to the ballot-box. Excellent for keeping the 
 ship's crew at peace under their Phantasm Captain; but un- 
 
20 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 serviceable, under such, for getting round Cape Horn. Alas, 
 that there should be human beings requiring to have these 
 things argued of, at this late time of day ! 
 
 I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be 
 governed by the wise ; to be guided in the right path by those 
 who know it better than they. This is the first 'right of man;' 
 compared with which all other rights are as nothing, mere 
 superfluities, corollaries which will follow of their own accord 
 out of this ; if they be not contradictions to this, and less than 
 nothing ! To the wise it is not a privilege ; far other indeed. 
 Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it implies 
 preservation of themselves withal ; but intrinsically it is the 
 harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his 
 hand. A duty which he would fain enough shirk ; which ac- 
 cordingly, in these sad times of doubt and cowardly sloth, he 
 has long everywhere been endeavouring to reduce to its min- 
 imum, and has in fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. 
 It is an ungoverned world ; a world which we flatter ourselves 
 will henceforth need no governing. On the dust of our heroic 
 ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is 
 well, it is well ! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we 
 have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not 
 by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Ex- 
 istence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for 
 us ; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops 
 forever, find it now in a too questionable state ; peremptorily 
 requiring real labour and agriculture again. Real ' agriculture* 
 is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with 
 ballot-box or otherwise) than to plough ! 
 
 Who would govern that can get along without governing ? 
 He that is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless 
 constrained. By multifarious devices we have been endeavour- 
 ing to dispense with governing; and by very superficial specu- 
 lations, of laissez-faire, supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade 
 ourselves that it is best so. The Real Captain, unless it be 
 some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, where 
 is he in these days ? Most likely, in silence, in sad isolation 
 somewhere, in remote obscurity ; trying if, in an evil ungo- 
 verned time, he cannot at least govern himself. The Real 
 Captain undiscoverable ; the Phantasm Captain everywhere 
 very conspicuous : it is thought Phantasm Captains, aided by 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 21 
 
 ballot-boxes, are the true method, after all. They are much 
 the pleasantest for the time being ! And so no Dux or Duke 
 of any sort, in any province of our affairs, now leads: the 
 Duke's Bailiff leads, what little leading is required for getting- 
 in the rents ; and the Duke merely rides in the state-coach. 
 It is everywhere so : and now at last we see a world all rush- 
 ing towards strange consummations, because it is and has long 
 been so ! 
 
 I do not suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in 
 England at all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality and 
 the Revolutionary Millenniums preached by the French Pro- 
 phets in this age : but there are many movements here too 
 which tend inevitably in the like direction ; and good men, 
 who would stand aghast at Red Republic and its adjuncts, 
 seem to me travelling at full speed towards that or a similar 
 goal ! Certainly the notion everywhere prevails among us too, 
 and preaches itself abroad in every dialect, uncontradicted any- 
 where so far as I can hear, That the grand panacea for social 
 woes is what we call ' enfranchisement,' ' emancipation ;' or, 
 translated into practical language, the cutting asunder of hu- 
 man relations, wherever they are found grievous, as is like to 
 be pretty universally the case at the rate we have been going 
 for some generations past. Let us all be ' free' of one another ; 
 we shall then be happy. Free, without bond or connection 
 except that of cash-payment ; fair day's wages for the fair day's 
 work ; bargained for by voluntary contract, and law of supply- 
 and-demand : this is thought to be the true solution of all dif- 
 ficulties and injustices that have occurred between man and 
 man. 
 
 To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there 
 no method, then, but that of ending it ? The old relation has 
 become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust ; it imperatively 
 requires to be amended ; and the remedy is, Abolish it, let 
 there henceforth be no relation at all. From the ' Sacrament 
 of Marriage' downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly 
 related, one to another, and each to all ; and there was no re- 
 lation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its 
 grievances and difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear 
 and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed 
 all that, by favour of Heaven: 'the voluntary principle' has 
 
*2 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 come-up, which will itself do the business for us ; and now let 
 a new Sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call emancipa- 
 tion, and spout-of on our platforms, be universally the order 
 of the day ! Have men considered whither all this is tending, 
 and what it certainly enough betokens ? Cut every human re- 
 lation which has anywhere grown uneasy sheer asunder ; reduce 
 whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was per- 
 manent among us to the condition of nomadic : in other words, 
 loosen by assiduous wedges in every joint, the whole fabric of 
 social existence, stone from stone ; till at last, all now being 
 loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be 
 overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage ; and, lying 
 as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing 
 Fraternity &c. over it, and to rejoice in the new remarkable era 
 of human progress we have arrived at. 
 
 Certainly Emancipation proceeds with rapid strides among 
 us, this good while ; and has got to such a length as might 
 give rise to reflections in men of a serious turn. West-Indian 
 Blacks are emancipated, and it appears refuse to work: Irish 
 Whites have long been entirely emancipated ; and nobody asks 
 them to work, or on condition of finding them potatoes (which, 
 of course, is indispensable), permits them to work. Among 
 speculative persons, a question has sometimes risen: In the 
 progress of Emancipation, are we to look for a time when all 
 the Horses also are to be emancipated, and brought to the 
 supply-and-demand principle ? Horses too have ' motives ;' are 
 acted-on by hunger, fear, hope, love of oats, terror of platted 
 leather ; nay they have vanity, ambition, emulation, thankful- 
 ness, vindictiveness ; some rude outline of all our human spi- 
 ritualities, a rude resemblance to us in mind and intelligence, 
 even as they have in bodily frame. The Horse, poor dumb 
 four-footed fellow, he too has his private feelings, his affec- 
 tions, gratitudes ; and deserves good usage ; no human master, 
 without crime, shall treat him unjustly either, or recklessly 
 lay-on the whip where it is not needed : I am sure if I could 
 make him 'happy,' I should be willing to grant a small vote 
 (in addition to the late twenty millions) for that object ! 
 
 Him too you occasionally tyrannise over; and with bad re- 
 sult to yourselves, among others ; using the leather in a tyran- 
 nous unnecessary manner ; withholding, or scantily furnishing, 
 the oats and ventilated stabling that are due. Rugged horse- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 23 
 
 subduers, one fears they are a little tyrannous at times. " Am 
 I not a horse, and hatf-broiher ?" To remedy which, so far 
 as remediable, fancy the horses all ' emancipated ;' restored 
 to their primeval right of property in the grass of this Globe : 
 turned-out to graze in an independent supply-and-demand man- 
 ner ! So long as grass lasts, I dare say they are very -happy, 
 or think themselves so. And Farmer Hodge sallying forth, 
 on a dry spring morning, with a sieve of oats in his hand, and 
 agony of eager expectation in his heart, is he happy ? Help 
 me to plough this day, Black Dobbin : oats in full measure if 
 thou wilt. " Hlunh, No thank 1" snorts Black Dobbin ; he 
 prefers glorious liberty and the grass. Bay Darby, wilt not 
 thou perhaps ? " Hlunh !" Gray Joan, then, my beautiful 
 broad-bottomed mare, O Heaven, she too answers Hlunh ! 
 Not a quadruped of them will plough a stroke for me. Corn- 
 crops are ended in this world ! For the sake, if not of Hodge, 
 then of Hodge's horses, one prays this benevolent practice 
 might now cease, and a new and better one try to begin. 
 Small kindness to Hodge's horses to emancipate them ! The 
 fate of all emancipated horses is, sooner or later, inevitable. 
 To have in this habitable Earth no grass to eat, in Black 
 Jamaica gradually none, as in White Connemara already none ; 
 to roam aimless, wasting the seed-fields of the world ; and 
 be hunted home to Chaos, by the due watch-dogs and due 
 hell-dogs, with such horrors of forsaken wretchedness as were 
 never seen before ! These things are not sport ; they are ter- 
 ribly true, in this country at this hour. 
 
 Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, 
 between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of 
 famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we 
 made oi it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our bene- 
 volent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses oi one kind 
 and another ! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary 
 Principle, Time will mend it: till British industrial existence 
 seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pesti- 
 lence physical and moral ; a hideous living Golgotha of souls 
 and bodies buried alive ; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating 
 with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. These 
 scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all 
 minds of men, thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers 
 have seldom done, ought to excite unspeakable reflections in 
 
24 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 every mind. Thirty-thousand outcast Needlewomen working 
 themselves swiftly to death ; three-million Paupers rotting in 
 forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die : these are 
 but items in the sad ledger of despair. 
 
 Thirty-thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrefying 
 well of abominations ; they have oozed-in upon London, from 
 the universal Stygian quagmire of British industrial life ; are 
 accumulated in the well of the concern, to that extent. Brit- 
 ish charity is smitten to the heart, at the laying-bare of such 
 a scene ; passionately undertakes, by enormous subscription of 
 money, or by other enormous effort, to redress that individual 
 horror ; as I and all men hope it may. But, alas, what 
 next ? This general well and cesspool once baled clean out 
 today, will begin before night to fill itself anew. The uni- 
 versal Stygian quagmire is still there ; opulent in women ready 
 to be ruined, and in men ready. Towards the same sad cess- 
 pool will these waste currents of human ruin ooee and gravitate 
 as heretofore ; except in draining the universal quagmire itself 
 there is no remedy. " And for that, what is the method ?" cry 
 many in an angry manner. To whom, for the present, I ans- 
 wer only, " Not ' emancipation,' it would seem, my friends ; 
 " not the cutting-loose of human ties, something far the re- 
 " verse of that !" 
 
 Many things have been written about shirtmaking ; but 
 here perhaps is the saddest thing of all, not written anywhere 
 till now, that I know of. Shirts by the thirty-thousand are 
 made at twopence-halfpenny each ; and in the mean while 
 no needlewoman, distressed or other, can be procured in Lon- 
 don by any housewife to give, for fair wages, fair help in sew- 
 ing. Ask any thrifty house-mother, high or low, and she will 
 answer. In high houses and in low, there is the same answer : 
 no real needlewoman, 'distressed' or other, has been found 
 attainable in any of the houses I frequent. Imaginary needle- 
 women, who demand considerable wages, and have a deepish 
 appetite for beer and viands, I hear of everywhere ; but their 
 sewing proves too often a distracted puckering and botching ; 
 not sewing, only the fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination 
 of the mind. Good sempstresses ate to be hired in every vil- 
 lage ; and in London, with its famishing thirty-thousand, not 
 at all, or hardly. Is not No-government beautiful in human 
 business ? To such length has the Leave-alone principle car- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 25 
 
 ried it, by way of organising labour, in this affair of shirtmak- 
 ing. Let us hope the Leave-alone principle has now got its 
 apotheosis; and taken wing towards higher regions than ours, 
 to deal henceforth with a class of affairs more appropriate 
 for it ! 
 
 Reader, did you ever hear of ' Constituted Anarchy' ? An- 
 archy ; the choking, sweltering, deadly and killing rule of No- 
 rule ; the consecration of cupidity, and braying folly, and dim 
 stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men ? Slop- 
 shirts attainable three-halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living 
 bodies and immortal souls ? Solemn Bishops and high Digni- 
 taries, our divine ' Pillars of Fire by night,' debating mean- 
 while, with their largest wigs and gravest look, upon something 
 they call ' prevenient grace' ? Alas, our noble men of genius, 
 Heaven's real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly fu- 
 tile by the wasteful time ; preappointed they everywhere, and 
 assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to 
 'rise in Parliament,' to compose orations, write books, or in 
 short speak -words, for the approval of reviewers ; instead of 
 doing real kingly work to be approved of by the gods ! Our 
 'Government,' a highly 'responsible' one; responsible to no 
 God that I can hear of, but to the twenty-seven million gods 
 of the shilling gallery. A Government tumbling and drifting 
 on the whirlpools and mud-deluges, floating atop in a con- 
 spicuous manner, no-whither, like the carcass of a drowned 
 ass. Authentic Chaos come up into this sunny Cosmos again ; 
 and all men singing Gloria in excelsis to it. In spirituals and 
 temporals, in field and workshop, from Manchester to Dor- 
 setshire, from Lambeth Palace to the Lanes of Whitechapel, 
 wherever men meet and toil and traffic together, Anarchy, 
 Anarchy ; and only the street-constable (though with ever-in- 
 creasing difficulty) still maintaining himself in the middle of 
 it ; that so, for one thing, this blessed exchange of slop-shirts 
 for the souls of women may transact itself in a peaceable man- 
 ner ! I, for my part, do profess myself in eternal opposition 
 to this, and discern well that universal Ruin has us in the 
 wind, unless we can get out of this. My friend Crabbe, in a 
 late number of his Intermittent Radiator, pertinently enough 
 exclaims : 
 
 ' When shall we have done with all this of British Liberty, 
 Voluntary Principle, Dangers of Centralisation, and the like ? 
 
26 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ' It is really getting too bad. For British Liberty, it seems, 
 ' the people cannot be taught to read. British Liberty, shud- 
 ' dering to interfere with the rights of capital, takes six or 
 ' eight millions of money annually to feed the idle labourer 
 1 whom it dare not employ. For British Liberty we live over 
 ' poisonous cesspools, gully -drains, and detestable abomina- 
 ' tions ; and omnipotent London cannot sweep the dirt out of 
 ' itself. British Liberty produces what ? Floods of Hansard 
 ' Debates every year, and apparently little else at present. If 
 ' these are the results of British Liberty, I, for one, move we 
 ' should lay it on the shelf a little, and look-out for something 
 ' other and farther. We have achieved British Liberty hun- 
 ' dreds of years ago ; and are fast growing, on the strength of 
 ' it, one of the most absurd populations the Sun, among his 
 ' great Museum of Absurdities, looks down upon at present.' 
 
 Curious enough : the model of the world just now is Eng- 
 land and her Constitution ; all Nations striving towards it : 
 poor France swimming these last sixty years in seas of horrid 
 dissolution and confusion, resolute to attain this blessedness 
 of free voting, or to die in chase of it. Prussia too, solid 
 Germany itself, has all broken out into crackling of musketry, 
 loud pamphleteering and Frankfort parliamenting and palaver- 
 ing ; Germany too will scale the sacred mountains, how steep 
 soever, and, by talisman of ballot-box, inhabit a political Ely- 
 sium henceforth. All the Nations have that one hope. Very 
 notable, and rather sad to the humane onlooker. For it is 
 sadly conjectured, all the Nations labour somewhat under a 
 mistake as to England, and the causes of her freedom and her 
 prosperous cotton-spinning ; and have much misread the na- 
 ture of her Parliament, and the effect of ballot-boxes and uni- 
 versal-suffrages there. 
 
 What if it were because the English Parliament was from 
 the first, and is only just now ceasing to be, a Council of actual 
 Rulers, real Governing Persons (called Peers, Mitred Abbots, 
 Lords, Knights of the Shire, or howsoever called), actually rul- 
 ing each his section of the country, and possessing (it must 
 be said) in the lump, or when assembled as a Council, uncom- 
 mon patience, devoutness, probity, discretion and good fortune, 
 that the said Parliament ever came to be good for much ? 
 In that case it will not be easy to ' imitate* the English Parlia- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 27 
 
 ment ; and the ballot-box and suffrage will be the mere bow of 
 Robin Hood, which it is given to very few to bend, or shoot 
 with to any perfection. And if the Peers become mere big 
 Capitalists, Railway Directors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings of 
 Scrip, without lordly quality, or other virtue except cash ; and 
 the Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors, masters of 
 Parliamentary Eloquence, Doctors of Political Economy, and 
 suchlike ; and all have to be elected by a universal-suffrage 
 ballot-box, I do not see how the English Parliament itself will 
 long continue sea-worthy ! Nay, I find England in her own 
 big dumb heart, wherever you come upon her in a silent medi- 
 tative hour, begins to have dreadful misgivings about it. 
 
 The model of the world, then, is at once unattainable by 
 the world, and not much worth attaining ? England, as I read 
 the omens, is now called a second time to ' show the Nations 
 how to live ;' for by her Parliament, as chief governing entity, 
 I fear she is not long for this world ! Poor England must her- 
 self again, in these new strange times, the old methods being 
 quite worn out, 'learn how to live.' That now is the terrible 
 problem for England, as for all the Nations ; and she alone of 
 all, not yet sunk into open Anarchy, but left with time for re- 
 pentance and amendment ; she, wealthiest of all in material 
 resource, in spiritual energy, in ancient loyalty to law, and in 
 the qualities that yield such loyalty, she perhaps alone of all 
 may be able, with huge travail, and the strain of all her facul- 
 ties, to accomplish some solution. She will have to try it, she 
 has now to try it ; she must accomplish it, or perish from her 
 place in the world ! 
 
 England, as I persuade myself, still contains in it many 
 kings j possesses, as Old Rome did, many men not needing 
 ' election' to command, but eternally elected for it by the Maker 
 Himself. England's one hope is in these, just now. They are 
 among the silent, I believe ; mostly far away from platforms 
 and public palaverings ; not speaking forth the image of their 
 nobleness in transitory words, but imprinting it, each on his 
 own little section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiant 
 actions, that will endure forevermore. They must sit silent no 
 longer. They are summoned to assert themselves ; to act forth, 
 and articulately vindicate, in the teeth of howling multitudes, 
 of a world too justly maddened into all manner oi delirious 
 clamours, what of wisdom they derive from God. England, 
 
28 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and the Eternal Voices, summon them ; poor England never 
 so needed them as now. Up, be doing everywhere : the hour 
 of crisis has verily come ! In all sections of English life, the 
 god-made king is needed ; is pressingly demanded in most ; in 
 some, cannot longer, without peril as of conflagration, be dis- 
 pensed with. He, wheresoever he finds himself, can say, "Here 
 " too am I wanted ; here is the kingdom I have to subjugate, 
 "and introduce God's Laws into, God's Laws, instead of 
 " Mammon's and M'Croudy's and the Old Anarch's ! Here 
 
 " is my work, here or nowhere." Are there many such, who 
 
 will answer to the call, in England ? It turns on that, whether 
 England, rapidly crumbling in these very years and months, 
 shall go down to the Abyss as her neighbours have all done, 
 or survive to new grander destinies without solution of con- 
 tinuity ! Probably the chief question of the world at pre- 
 sent. 
 
 The true ' commander' and king ; he who knows for him- 
 self the divine Appointments of this Universe, the Eternal Laws 
 ordained by God the Maker, in conforming to which lies vic- 
 tory and felicity, in departing from which lies, and forever must 
 lie, sorrow and defeat, for each and all of the Posterity of Adam 
 in every time and every place ; he who has sworn fealty to 
 these, and dare alone against the world assert these, and dare 
 not with the whole world at his back deflect from these ; he, 
 I know too well, is a rare man. Difficult to discover ; not quite 
 discoverable, I apprehend, by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and 
 riddling of the popular clamour according to the most approved 
 methods. He is not sold at any shop I know of, though some- 
 times, as at the sign oi the Ballot-box, he is advertised for sale. 
 Difficult indeed to discover : and not very much assisted, or 
 encouraged in late times, to discover himself; which, I think, 
 might be a kind of help ? Encouraged rather, and commanded 
 in all ways, if he be wise, to hide himself, and give place to the 
 windy Counterfeit of himself ; such as the universal-suffrages 
 can recognise, such as loves the most sweet voices of the uni- 
 versal-suffrages ! O Peter, what becomes of such a People ; 
 what can become ? 
 
 Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that fate- 
 ful Hebrew Prophecy, I think the fatefulest of all, which sounds 
 daily through the streets, "Ou* clo' ! Ou' clo' 1" A certain Peo- 
 ple, once upon a time, clamorously voted by overwhelming ma- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 29 
 
 jority, " Not he; Barabbas, not he ! Him, and what he is, 
 " and what he deserves, we know well enough : a reviler of 
 " the Chief Priests and sacred Chancery wigs ; a seditious 
 " Heretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country 
 " and mankind : To the gallows and the cross with him ! 
 " Barabbas is our man ; Barabbas, we are for Barabbas !" 
 They got Barabbas : have you well considered what a fund 
 of purblind obduracy, of opaque flunkyism grown truculent and 
 transcendent ; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of 
 eye for the eternal noblenesses ; sordid loyalty to the prosper- 
 ous Semblances, and high-treason against the Supreme Fact, 
 such a vote betokens in these natures ? For it was the con- 
 summation of a long series of such ; they and their fathers had 
 long kept voting so. A singular People ; who could both pro- 
 duce such divine men, and then could so stone and crucify 
 them ; a People terrible from the beginning ! Well, they got 
 Barabbas ; and they got, of course, such guidance as Barabbas 
 and the like of him could give them ; and, of course, they 
 stumbled ever downwards and devilwards, in their truculent 
 stiffnecked way ; and and, at this hour, after eighteen cen- 
 turies of sad fortune, they prophetically sing " Ou' clo' !" in all 
 the cities of the world. Might the world, at this late hour, but 
 take note of them, and understand their song a little ! 
 
 Yes, there are some things the universal-suffrage can de- 
 cide, and about these it will be exceedingly useful to consult 
 the universal-suffrage : but in regard to most things of import- 
 ance, and in regard to the choice of men especially, there is 
 (astonishing as it may seem) next to no capability on the part 
 of universal-suffrage. I request all candid persons, who have 
 never so little originality of mind, and every man has a little, 
 to consider this. If true, it involves such a change in our now- 
 fashionable modes of procedure as fills me with astonishment 
 and alarm, ./f popular suffrage is not the way of ascertaining 
 what the Laws of the Universe are, and who it is that will best 
 guide us in the way of these, then woe is to us if we do not 
 take another method. Delolme on the British Constitution 
 will not save us ; deaf will the Parcse be to votes of the House, 
 to leading-articles, constitutional philosophies. The other me- 
 thod alas, it involves a stopping short, or vital change of 
 direction, in the glorious career which all Europe, with shouts 
 heaven-high, is now galloping along : and that, happen when 
 
3 o LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 it may, will, to many of us, be probably a rather surprising 
 business ! 
 
 One thing I do know, and can again assert with great con- 
 fidence, supported by the whole Universe, and by some Two- 
 hundred generations of men, who have left us some record of 
 themselves there, That the few Wise will have, by one method 
 or another, to take command of the innumerable Foolish ; that 
 they must be got to take it ; and that, in fact, since Wisdom, 
 which means also Valour and heroic Nobleness, is alone strong 
 in this world, and one wise man is stronger than all men un- 
 wise, they can be got. That they must take it ; and having 
 taken, must keep it, and do their God's-Message in it, and de- 
 fend the same, at their life's peril, against all men and devils. 
 This I do clearly believe to be the backbone of all Future So- 
 ciety, as it has been of all Past ; and that without it, there is 
 no Society possible in the world. And what a business this 
 will be, before it end in some degree of victory again, and whe- 
 ther the time for shouts of triumph and tremendous cheers upon 
 it is yet come, or not yet by a great way, I perceive too well ! 
 A business to make us all very serious indeed. A business not 
 to be accomplished but by noble manhood, and devout all-dar- 
 ing, ail-enduring loyalty to Heaven, such as fatally sleeps at 
 present, such as is not dead at present either, unless the gods 
 have doomed this world of theirs to die 1 A business which 
 long centuries of faithful travail and heroic agony, on the part 
 of all the noble that are born to us, will not end ; and which 
 to us, of this ' tremendous cheering' century, it were blessed- 
 ness very great to see successfully begun. Begun, tried by all 
 manner of methods, if there is one wise Statesman or man left 
 among us, it verily must be ; begun, successfully or unsuccess- 
 fully, we do hope to see it 1 
 
 In all European countries, especially in England, one class 
 of Captains and commanders of men, recognisable as the be- 
 ginning of a new real and not imaginary 'Aristocracy,' has 
 already in some measure developed itself: the Captains of In- 
 dustry ; happily the class who above all, or at least first of all, 
 are wanted in this time. In the doing of material work, we 
 have already men among us that can command bodies of men. 
 And surely, on the other hand, there is no luck of men need- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 31 
 
 ing to be commanded : the sad class of brother-men whom we 
 had to describe as 'Hodge's emancipated horses/ reduced to 
 roving famine, this too has in all countries developed itself; 
 and, in fatal geometrical progression, is ever more developing 
 itself, with a rapidity which alarms every one. On this ground, 
 if not on all manner of other grounds, it may be truly said, 
 the ' Organisation of Labour' (not organisable by the mad me- 
 thods tried hitherto) is the universal vital Problem of the world. 
 
 To bring these hordes of outcast captainless soldiers under 
 due captaincy ? This is really the question of questions ; on 
 the answer to which turns, among other things, the fate of all 
 Governments, constitutional and other, the possibility of their 
 continuing to exist, or the impossibility. Captainless, uncom- 
 manded, these wretched outcast ' soldiers," since they cannot 
 starve, must needs become banditti, street-barricaders, de- 
 stroyers of every Government that cannot put them under cap- 
 tains, and send them upon enterprises, and in short render life 
 human to them. Our English plan of Poor Laws, which we 
 once piqued ourselves upon as sovereign, is evidently fast break- 
 ing down. Ireland, now admitted into the Idle Workhouse, is 
 rapidly bursting it in pieces. That never was a ' human' destiny 
 for any honest son of Adam ; nowhere but in England could it 
 have lasted at all ; and now, with Ireland sharer in it, and the 
 fulness of time come, it is as good as ended. Alas, yes. Here 
 in Connemara, your crazy Ship of the State, otherwise dread- 
 fully rotten in many of its timbers I believe, has sprung a leak : 
 spite of all hands at the pump, the water is rising ; the Ship, I 
 perceive, will founder, if you cannot stop this leak 1 
 
 To bring these Captainless under due captaincy ? The 
 anxious thoughts of all men that do think are turned upon that 
 question ; and their efforts, though as yet blindly and to no 
 purpose, under the multifarious impediments and obscurations, 
 all point thitherward. Isolated men, and their vague efforts, 
 cannot do it. Government everywhere is called upon, in Eng- 
 land as loudly as elsewhere, to give the initiative. A new 
 strange task of these new epochs ; which no Government, never 
 so ' constitutional,' can escape from undertaking. For it is 
 vitally necessary to the existence of Society itself ; it must be 
 undertaken, and succeeded in too, or worse will follow, and, 
 as we already see in Irish Connaught and some other places, 
 will follow soon. To whatever thing still calls itself by the name 
 
32 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 of Government, were it never so constitutional and impeded by 
 official impossibilities, all men will naturally look for help, and 
 direction what to do, in this extremity. If help or direction is 
 not given ; if the thing called Government merely drift and 
 tumble to and fro, no-whither, on the popular vortexes, like 
 some carcass of a drowned ass, constitutionally put ' at the top 
 of affairs,' popular indignation will infallibly accumulate upon 
 it ; one day, the popular lightning, descending forked and hor- 
 rible from the black air, will annihilate said supreme carcass, 
 and smite it home to its native ooze again ! Your Lordship, 
 this is too true, though irreverently spoken : indeed one knows 
 not how to speak of it ; and to me it is infinitely sad and miser- 
 able, spoken or not ! Unless perhaps the Voluntary Principle 
 will still help us through ? Perhaps this Irish leak, in such a 
 rotten distressed condition of the Ship, with all the crew so 
 anxious about it, will be kind enough to stop of itself ? 
 
 Dismiss that hope, your Lordship ! Let all real and ima- 
 ginary Governors of England, at the pass we have arrived at, 
 dismiss forever that fallacious fatal solace to their do-nothingism : 
 of itself, too clearly, the leak will never stop ; by human skill 
 and energy it must be stopped, or there is nothing but the sea- 
 bottom for us all ! A Chief Governor of England really onght 
 to recognise his situation ; to discern that, doing nothing, and 
 merely drifting to and fro, in however constitutional a manner, 
 he is a squanderer of precious moments, moments that perhaps 
 are priceless ; a truly alarming Chief Governor. Surely, to a 
 Chief Governor of England, worthy of that high name, surely 
 to him, as to every living man, in every conceivable situation 
 short of the Kingdom of the Dead, there is something pos- 
 sible ; some plan of action other than that of standing mildly, 
 with crossed arms, till he and we sink ? Complex as his situ- 
 ation is, he, of all Governors now extant among these distracted 
 Nations, has, as I compute, by far the greatest possibilities. 
 The Captains, actual or potential, are there, and the million 
 Captainless : and such resources for bringing them together as 
 no other has. To these outcast soldiers of his, unregimented 
 roving banditti for the present, or unworking workhouse pri- 
 soners who are almost uglier than banditti ; to these floods of 
 Irish Beggars, Able-bodied Paupers, and nomadic Lackalls, 
 now stagnating or roaming everywhere, drowning the face of 
 the world (too truly) into an untenantable swamp and Stygian 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 33 
 
 quagmire, has the Chief Governor of this country no word what- 
 ever to say? Nothing but "Rate in aid," "Time will mend 
 it," " Necessary business of the Session ;" and " After me the 
 Qeluge" ? A Chief Governor that can front his Irish difficulty, 
 and steadily contemplate the horoscope of Irish and British 
 Pauperism, and whitherward it is leading him and us, in this 
 humour, must be a What shall we call such a Chief Governor ? 
 Alas, in spite of old use and wont, little other than a toler- 
 ated Solecism, growing daily more intolerable ! He decidedly 
 ought to have some word to say on this matter, to be inces- 
 santly occupied in getting something which he could practi- 
 cally say ! Perhaps to the following, or a much finer effect ? 
 
 Speech of the British Prime-Minister to the floods of Irish and 
 other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or station- 
 ary, and the general assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the 
 Pauper Populations of these Realms. 
 
 " Vagrant Lackalls, foolish most of you, criminal many of 
 " you, miserable all ; the sight of you fills me with astonish- 
 " ment and despair. What to do with you I know not; long 
 " have I been meditating, and it is hard to tell. Here are 
 " some three millions of you, as I count : so many of you fallen 
 " sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to 
 " think, every new unit that falls is loading so much more the 
 " chain that drags the others over. On the edge of the preci- 
 " pice hang uncounted millions; increasing, I am told, at the 
 " rate of 1200 a-day. They hang there on the giddy edge, 
 " poor souls, cramping themselves down, holding-on with all 
 "their strength; but falling, falling one after another; and 
 " the chain is getting heavy, so that ever more fall; and who 
 " at last will stand? What to do with you? The question, 
 " What to do with you ? especially since the potato died, is 
 " like to break my heart ! 
 
 " One thing, after much meditating, I have at last dis- 
 " covered, and now know for some time back : That you can- 
 " not be left to roam abroad in this unguided manner, stumbling 
 " over the precipices, and loading ever heavier the fatal chain 
 " upon those who might be able to stand ; that this of locking 
 " you up in temporary Idle Workhouses, when you stumble, 
 
 D 
 
34 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " and subsisting you on Indian meal, till you can sally forth 
 " again on fresh roamings, and fresh stumblings, and ultimate 
 " descent to the devil; that this is not the plan; and that it 
 " never was, or could out of England have been supposed to be, 
 " much as I have prided myself upon it ! 
 
 " Vagrant Lackalls, I at last perceive, all this that has been 
 " sung and spoken, for a long while, about enfranchisement, 
 " emancipation, freedom, suffrage, civil and religious liberty 
 " over the world, is little other than sad temporary jargon, 
 " brought upon us by a stern necessity, but now ordered by 
 " a sterner to take itself away again a little. Sad temporary 
 "jargon, I say: made-up of sense and nonsense, sense in 
 " small quantities, and nonsense in very large; and, if taken 
 " for the whole or permanent truth of human things, it is no 
 " better than fatal infinite nonsense eternally untrue. All men, 
 " I think, will soon have to quit this, to consider this as a 
 " thing pretty well achieved; and to look-out towards another 
 " thing much more needing achievement at the time that now 
 "is. 
 
 "All men will have to quit it, I believe. But to you, my 
 " indigent friends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived ! 
 " To talk of glorious self-government, of suffrages and hust- 
 " ings, and the fight of freedom and suchlike, is a vain thing 
 " in your case. By all human definitions and conceptions of 
 " the said fight of freedom, you for your part have lost it, and 
 " can fight no more. Glorious self-government is a glory not 
 " for you, not for Hodge's emancipated horses, nor you. No ; 
 " I say, No. You, for your part, have tried it, and failed. 
 " Left to walk your own road, the will-o'-wisps beguiled you, 
 " your short sight could not descry the pitfalls; the deadly 
 " tumult and press has whirled you hither and thither, regard- 
 " less of your struggles and your shrieks; and here at last you 
 " lie; fallen flat into the ditch, drowning there and dying, un- 
 " less the others that are still standing please to pick you up. 
 " The others that still stand have their own difficulties, I can tell 
 " you ! But you, by imperfect energy and redundant appetite, 
 " by doing too little work and drinking too much beer, you (I 
 " bid you observe) have proved that you cannot do it ! You 
 " lie there plainly in the ditch. And I am to pick you up 
 " again, on these mad terms ; help you ever again, as with our 
 " best heart's-blood, to do what, once for all, the gods have 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 35 
 
 " made impossible ? To load the fatal chain with your per- 
 " petual staggerings and sprawlings ; and ever again load it, 
 " till we all lie sprawling ? My indigent, incompetent friends, 
 " I will not ! Know that, whoever may be ' sons of freedom,' 
 " you for your part are not and cannot be such. Not ' free' 
 " you, I think, whoever may be free. You palpably are fallen 
 " captive, caitiff, as they once named it: you do, silently, 
 " but eloquently, demand, in the name of mercy itself, that 
 " some genuine command be taken of you. 
 
 " Yes, my indigent incompetent friends ; some genuine 
 " practical command. Such, if I rightly interpret those mad 
 " Chartisms, Repeal Agitations, Red Republics, and other de- 
 " lirious inarticulate bowlings and bellowings which all the 
 " populations of the world now utter, evidently cries of pain 
 " on their and your part, is the demand which you, Captives, 
 " make .of all men that are not Captive, but are still Free. 
 " Free men, alas, had you ever any notion who the free men 
 " were, who the not-free, the incapable of freedom ! The free 
 " men, if you could have understood it, they are the wise men; 
 " the patient, self-denying, valiant ; the Nobles of the World; 
 " who can discern the Law of this Universe, what it is, and 
 " piously obey it ; these, in late sad times, having cast you 
 " loose, you are fallen captive to greedy sons of profit-and-loss ; 
 " to bad and ever to worse ; and at length to Beer and the 
 " Devil. Algiers, Brazil or Dahomey hold nothing in them 
 " so authentically slave as you are, my indigent incompetent 
 " friends i 
 
 " Good Heavens, and I have to raise some eight or nine 
 " millions annually, six for England itself, and to wreck the 
 " morals of my working population beyond all money's worth, 
 " to keep the life from going out of you: a small service to 
 " you, as I many times bitterly repeat! Alas, yes; before high 
 " Heaven I must declare it such. I think the old Spartans, 
 " who would have killed you instead, had shown more 'hu- 
 " manity,' more of manhood, than I thus do ! More humanity, 
 " I say, more of manhood, and of sense for what the dignity 
 " of man demands imperatively of you and of me and of us all. 
 " We call it charity, beneficence, and other fine names, this 
 " brutish Workhouse Scheme of ours ; and it is but sluggish 
 " heartlessness, and insincerity, and cowardly lowness of soul. 
 " Not ' humanity' or manhood, I think ; perhaps afiehood. ra- 
 
36 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " ther, paltry imitancy, from the teeth outward, of what our 
 " heart never felt nor our understanding ever saw; dim indol- 
 " ent adherence to extraneous hearsays and extinct traditions; 
 " traditions now really about extinct; not living now to almost 
 " any of us, and still haunting with their spectralities and gib- 
 " bering ghosts (in a truly baleful manner) almost all of us ! 
 " Making this our struggling 'Twelfth Hour of the Night' in- 
 " expressibly hideous ! 
 
 " But as for you, my indigent incompetent friends, I have 
 " to repeat with sorrow, but with perfect clearness, what is 
 " plainly undeniable, and is even clamorous to get itself ad- 
 " mitted, that you are of the nature of slaves, or if you prefer 
 " the word, of nomadic, and now even vagrant and vagabond, 
 " servants that can find no master on those terms; which seems 
 " to me a much uglier word. Emancipation ? You have been 
 " 'emancipated' with a vengeance ! Foolish souls, I say the 
 " whole world cannot emancipate you. Fealty to ignorant 
 " Unruliness, to gluttonous sluggish Improvidence, to the Beer- 
 " pot and the Devil, who is there that can emancipate a man 
 " in that predicament ? Not a whole Reform Bill, a whole 
 " French Revolution executed for his behoof alone : nothing 
 " but God the Maker can emancipate him, by making him 
 " anew. 
 
 " To forward which glorious consummation, will it not be 
 " well, O indigent friends, that you, fallen flat there, shall 
 " henceforth learn to take advice of others as to the methods 
 " of standing ? Plainly I let you know, and all the world and 
 " the worlds know, that I for my part mean it so. Not as 
 " glorious unfortunate sons of freedom, but as recognised cap- 
 " lives, as unfortunate fallen brothers requiring that I should 
 " command you, and if need were, control and compel you, 
 " can there henceforth be a relation between us. Ask me not 
 " for Indian meal ; you shall be compelled to earn it first ; 
 " know that on other terms I will not give you any. Before 
 " Heaven and Earth, and God the Maker of us all, I declare 
 " it is a scandal to see such a life kept in you, by the sweat and 
 " heart's-blood of your brothers ; and that, if we cannot mend 
 " it, death were preferable ! Go to, we must get out of this 
 " unutterable coil of nonsenses, constitutional, philanthropical 
 " &c., in which (surely without mutual hatred, il with less of 
 " 'love' than is supposed) we are ail strangling one another 1 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 37 
 
 " Your want of wants, I say, is that you be commanded in this 
 " world, not being able to command yourselves. Know there- 
 " fore that it shall be so with you. Nomadism, I give you 
 " notice, has ended ; needful permanency, soldier-like obedience, 
 " and the opportunity and the necessity of hard steady labour 
 " for your living, have begun. Know that the Idle Workhouse 
 " is shut against you henceforth; you cannot enter there at 
 " will, nor leave at will; you shall enter a quite other Refuge, 
 " under conditions strict as soldiering, and not leave till I have 
 " done with you. He that prefers the glorious (or perhaps 
 " even the rebellious zwglorious) 'career of freedom," let him 
 " prove that he can travel there, and be the master of himself ; 
 " and right good speed to him. He who has proved that he 
 " cannot travel there or be the master of himself, let him, in 
 " the name of all the gods, become a servant, and accept the 
 " just rules of servitude ! 
 
 " Arise, enlist in my Irish, my Scotch and English ' Regi- 
 " ments of the New Era,'- which I have been concocting, day 
 " and night, during these three Grouse-seasons (taking earnest 
 " incessant counsel, with all manner of Industrial Notabilities 
 " and men of insight, on the matter), and have now brought to 
 " a kind of preparation for incipiency, thank Heaven! Enlist 
 "there, ye poor wandering banditti; obey, work, suffer, ab- 
 " stain, as all of us have had to do : so shall you be useful in 
 " God's creation, so shall you be helped to gain a manful liv- 
 " ing for yourselves ; not otherwise than so. Industrial Regi- 
 " ments" [Hers numerous persons, with big wigs many of them, 
 and austere aspect, -whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal 
 Science, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Pre- 
 mier resolutely beckons them down again] "Regiments not to 
 " fight the French or others, who are peaceable enough towards 
 " us; but to fight the Bogs and Wildernesses at home and 
 " abroad, and to chain the Devils of the Pit which are walking 
 " too openly among us. 
 
 "Work, for you? Work, surely, is not quite undiscover- 
 " able in an Earth so wide as ours, if we will take the right 
 " methods for it ! Indigent friends, we will adopt this new re- 
 " lation (which is old as the world) ; this will lead us toward* 
 " such. Rigorous conditions, not to be violated on either side, 
 " lie in this relation; conditions planted there by God Him- 
 " sell ; which woe will betide us if we do not discover, gradu- 
 
38 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " ally more and more discover, and conform to ! Industrial 
 " Colonels, Workmasters, Taskmasters, Life - commanders, 
 " equitable as Rhadamanthus and inflexible as he : such, I per- 
 " ceive, you do need; and such, you being once put under law 
 " as soldiers are, will be discoverable for you. I perceive, with 
 " boundless alarm, that I shall have to set about discovering 
 " such, I, since I am at the top of affairs, with all men look- 
 " ing to me. Alas, it is my new task in this New Era; and 
 " God knows, I too, little other than a redtape Talking-ma- 
 " chine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence hither- 
 " to, am far behind with it! But street-barricades rise every- 
 " where : the hour of Fate has come. In Connemara there has 
 " sprung a leak, since the potato died ; Connaught, if it were 
 " not for Treasury-grants and rates-in-aid, would have to recur 
 " to Cannibalism even now, and Human Society would cease to 
 " pretend that it existed there. Done this thing must be. Alas, 
 " I perceive that if I cannot do it, then surely I shall die, and 
 " perhaps shall not have Christian burial ! But I already raise 
 " near upon Ten Millions for feeding you in idleness, my no- 
 " madic friends ; work, under due regulations, I really might 
 " try to get of" [Here arises indescribable uproar, no longer 
 repressive, from all manner of Economists, Emancipationists, 
 Constitutionalists, and miscellaneous Professors of the Dismal 
 Science, pretty mtmerously scattered about; and cries of "Private 
 Enterprise," "Rights of Capital," "Voluntary Principle," "Doc- 
 trines of the British Constitution," swollen by the general assent- 
 ing hum of all the world, quite drown the Chief Minister for a 
 while. He, with invincible resolution, persists; obtains hearing 
 again .] 
 
 " Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science, soft you a 
 " little. Alas, I know what you would say. For my sins, I have 
 " read much in those inimitable volumes of yours, really I 
 " should think, some barrowfuls of them in my time, and, in 
 " these last forty years of theory and practice, have pretty well 
 " seized what of Divine Message you were sent with to me. 
 " Perhaps as small a message, give me leave to say, as ever 
 " there was such a noise made about before. Trust me, I have 
 " not forgotten it, shall never forget it. Those Laws of the 
 " Shop-till are indisputable to me ; and practically useful in 
 " certain departments of the Universe, as the multiplication- 
 " table itself. Once I even tried to sail through the Immensi- 
 
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 39 
 
 " ties with them, and to front the big coming Eternities with 
 " them ; but I found it would not do. As the Supreme Rule of 
 " Statesmanship, or Government of Men, since this Universe 
 " is not wholly a Shop, no. You rejoice in my improved 
 " tariffs, free-trade movements and the like, on every hand ; for 
 " which be thankful, and even sing litanies if you choose. But 
 " here at last, in the I die- Workhouse movement, unexampled 
 " yet on Earth or in the waters under the Earth, I am fairly 
 " brought to a stand; and have had to make reflections, of the 
 " most alarming, and indeed awful, and as it were religious 
 "nature! Professors of the Dismal Science, I perceive that 
 " the length of your tether is now pretty well run ; and that I 
 " must request you to talk a little lower in future. By the side 
 " of the shop-till, see, your small ' Law of God' is hung up, 
 " along with the multiplication-table itself. But beyond and 
 " above the shop-till, allow me to say, you shall as good as 
 " hold your peace. Respectable Professors, I perceive it is not 
 " now the Gigantic Hucksters, but it is the Immortal Gods, 
 " yes they, in their terror and their beauty, in their wrath and 
 " their beneficence, that are coming into play in the affairs of 
 " this world ! Soft you a little. Do not you interrupt me, but 
 " try to understand and help me! 
 
 "Work, was I saying? My indigent unguided friends, 
 " I should think some work might be discoverable for you. 
 " Enlist, stand drill ; become, from a nomadic Banditti of Idle- 
 " ness, Soldiers of Industry! I will lead you to the Irish Bogs, 
 " to the vacant desolations of Connaught now falling into Can- 
 " nibalism, to mistilled Connaught, to ditto Munster, Leinster, 
 " Ulster, I will lead you : to the English fox-covers, furze-grown 
 " Commons, New Forests, Salisbury Plains : likewise to the 
 " Scotch Hill-sides, and bare rushy slopes, which as yet feed 
 " only sheep, moist uplands, thousands of square miles in 
 " extent, which are destined yet to grow green crops, and fresh 
 " butter and milk and beef without limit (wherein no ' For- 
 " eigner can compete with us'), were the Glasgow sewers once 
 " opened on them, and you with your Colonels carried thither. 
 " In the Three Kingdoms, or in the Forty Colonies, depend 
 " upon it, you shall be led to your work! 
 
 " To each of you I will then say : Here is work for you ; 
 " strike into it with manlike, soldierlike obedience and hearti- 
 " ness, according to the methods here prescribed, wages fol- 
 
40 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " low for you without difficulty ; all manner of just remunera- 
 " tion, and at length emancipation itself follows. Refuse to 
 " strike into it ; shirk the heavy labour, disobey the rules, I 
 " will admonish and endeavour to incite you ; if in vain, I will 
 " flog you; if still in vain, I will at last shoot you, and make 
 " God's Earth, and the forlorn-hope in God's Battle, free of 
 " you. Understand it, I advise you ! The Organisation of La- 
 " bour" \Left speaking, says our reporter.] 
 
 ' Left speaking :* alas, that he should have to ' speak* so 
 much ! There are things that should be done, not spoken ; that 
 till the doing of them is begun, cannot well be spoken. He 
 may have to ' speak' seven years yet, before a spade be struck 
 into the Bog of Allen; and then perhaps it will be too late! 
 
 You perceive, my friends, we have actually got into the 
 ' New Era' there has been such prophesying of: here we all 
 are, arrived at last ; and it is by no means the land flowing 
 with milk and honey we were led to expect ! Very much the 
 reverse. A terrible new country this : no neighbours in it yet, 
 that I can see, but irrational flabby monsters (philanthropic 
 and other) of the giant species; hyaenas, laughing hyaenas, pre- 
 datory wolves ; probably devils, blue (or perhaps blue-and-yel- 
 low) devils, as St. Guthlac found in Croyland long ago. A huge 
 untrodden haggard country, the ' chaotic battle-field of Frost 
 and Fire ;' a country of savage glaciers, granite mountains, of 
 foul jungles, unhewed forests, quaking bogs ; which we shall 
 have our own ados to make arable and habitable, I think ! We 
 must stick by it, however ; of all enterprises the impossiblest 
 is that of getting out of it, and shifting into another. To work, 
 then, one and all ; hands to work ! 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 
 
 [ist March 1850.] 
 
 THE deranged condition of our affairs is a universal topic 
 among men at present ; and the heavy miseries pressing, in 
 their rudest shape, on the great dumb inarticulate class, and 
 from this, by a sure law, spreading upwards, in a less palp 
 able but not less certain and perhaps still more fatal shape on 
 all classes to the very highest, are admitted everywhere to be 
 great, increasing and now almost unendurable. How to di- 
 minish them, this is every man's question. For in fact they 
 do imperatively need diminution ; and unless they can be di- 
 minished, there are many other things that cannot very long 
 continue to exist beside them. A serious question indeed, How 
 to diminish them ! 
 
 Among the articulate classes, as they may be called, there 
 are two ways of proceeding in regard to this. One large body 
 of the intelligent and influential, busied mainly in personal 
 affairs, accepts the social iniquities, or whatever you may call 
 them, and the miseries consequent thereupon ; accepts them, 
 admits them to be extremely miserable, pronounces them en- 
 tirely inevitable, incurable except by Heaven, and eats its pud- 
 ding with as little thought of them as possible. Not a very 
 noble class of citizens these ; not a very hopeful or salutary 
 method of dealing with social iniquities this of theirs, however 
 it may answer in respect to themselves and their personal 
 affairs ! But now there is the select small minority, in whom 
 some sentiment of public spirit and human pity still survives, 
 among whom, or not anywhere, the Good Cause may expect 
 to find soldiers and servants : their method of proceeding, in 
 these times, is also very strange. They embark in the ' phi- 
 lanthropic movement ;' they calculate that the miseries of the 
 world can be cured by bringing the philanthropic movement 
 to bear on them. To universal public misery, and universal 
 neglect of the clearest public duties, let private charity super- 
 
4 2 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 add itself: there will thus be some balance restored, and main- 
 tained again ; thus, or by what conceivable method ? On 
 these terms they, for their part, embark in the sacred cause ; 
 resolute to cure a world's woes by rose-water ; desperately bent 
 on trying to the uttermost that mild method. It seems not 
 to have struck these good men that no world, or thing here 
 below, ever fell into misery, without having first fallen into 
 folly, into sin against the Supreme Ruler of it, by adopting 
 as a law of conduct what was not a law, but the reverse of 
 one ; and that, till its folly, till its sin be cast out of it, there 
 is not the smallest hope of its misery going, that not for all 
 the charity and rose-water in the world will its misery try to 
 go till then I 
 
 This is a sad error ; all the sadder as it is the error chiefly 
 of the more humane and noble-minded of our generation ; among 
 whom, as we said, or elsewhere not at all, the cause of real 
 Reform must expect its servants. At present, and for a long 
 while past, whatsoever young soul awoke in England with some 
 disposition towards generosity and social heroism, or at lowest 
 with some intimation of the beauty of such a disposition, he, 
 in whom the poor world might have looked for a Reformer, 
 and valiant mender of its foul ways, was almost sure to be- 
 come a Philanthropist, reforming merely by this rose-water 
 method. To admit that the world's ways are foul, and not 
 the ways of God the Maker, but of Satan the Destroyer, many 
 of them, and that they must be mended or we all die ; that if 
 huge misery prevails, huge cowardice, falsity, disloyalty, uni- 
 versal Injustice high and low, have still longer prevailed, and 
 must straightway try to cease prevailing: this is what no visible 
 reformer has yet thought of doing. All so-called ' reforms' hi- 
 therto are grounded either on openly-admitted egoism (cheap 
 bread to the cotton-spinner, voting to those that have no vote, 
 and the like), which does not point towards very celestial de- 
 velopments of the Reform movement ; or else upon this of 
 remedying social injustices by indiscriminate contributions of 
 philanthropy, a method surely still more unpromising. Such 
 contributions, being indiscriminate, are but a new injustice ; 
 these will never lead to reform, or abolition of injustice, what- 
 ever else they lead to ! 
 
 Not by that method shall we 'get round Cape Horn,' by 
 never such unanimity of voting, under the most approved Phan- 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 43 
 
 tasm Captains ! It is miserable to see. Having, as it were, 
 quite lost our way round Cape Horn, and being sorely ' ad- 
 monished' by the Iceberg and other dumb councillors, the 
 pilots, instead of taking to their sextants, and asking with 
 a seriousness unknown for a long while, What the Laws of 
 wind and water, and of Earth and of Heaven are, decide 
 that now, in these new circumstances, they will, to the worthy 
 and unworthy, serve-out a double allowance of grog. In this 
 way they hope to do it, by steering on the old wrong tack, 
 and serving-out more and more copiously what little aqnavitce 
 may be still on board ! Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity 
 for human calamity is very beautiful ; but the deep oblivion of 
 the Law of Right and Wrong ; this ' indiscriminate mashing- 
 up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle' of the Philan- 
 thropic movement, is by no means beautiful ; this, on the con- 
 trary, is altogether ugly and alarming. 
 
 Truly if there be not something inarticulate among us, not 
 yet uttered but pressing towards utterance, which is much wiser 
 than anything we have lately articulated or brought into word 
 or action, our outlooks are rather lamentable. The great majority 
 of the powerful and active-minded, sunk in egoistic scepticisms, 
 busied in chase of lucre, pleasure, and mere vulgar objects, 
 looking with indifference on the world's woes, and passing care- 
 lessly by on the other side ; and the select minority, of whom 
 better might have been expected, bending all their strength to 
 cure them by methods which can only make bad worse, and 
 in the end render cure hopeless. A blind loquacious pruri- 
 ency of indiscriminate Philanthropism substituting itself, with 
 much self-laudation, for the silent divinely awful sense of Right 
 and Wrong ; testifying too clearly that here is no longer a 
 divine sense of Right and Wrong ; that, in the smoke of this 
 universal, and alas inevitable and indispensable revolutionary 
 fire, and burning-up of worn-out rags of which the world is 
 full, our life-atmosphere has (for the time) become one vile 
 London fog, and the eternal loadstars are gone out for us ! 
 Gone out ; yet very visible if you can get above the fog ; still 
 there in their place, and quite the same as they always were ! 
 To whoever does still know of loadstars, the proceedings, which 
 expand themselves daily, of these sublime philanthropic asso- 
 ciations, and 'universal sluggard-and-scoundrel protection-so- 
 cieties,' are a perpetual affliction. With their emancipations 
 
44 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and abolition-principles, and reigns of brotherhood and new 
 methods of love, they have done great things in the White 
 and in the Black World, during late years ; and are preparing 
 for greater. 
 
 In the interest of human reform, if there is ever to be any 
 reform, and return to prosperity or to the possibility of pro- 
 spering, it is urgent that the nonsense of all this (and it is 
 mostly nonsense, but not quite) should be sent about its busi- 
 ness straightway, and forbidden to deceive the well-meaning 
 souls among us any more. Reform, if we will understand that 
 divine word, cannot begin till then. One day, I do know, this, 
 as is the doom of all nonsense, will be drummed-out of the 
 world, with due placard stuck on its back, and the populace 
 flinging dead cats at it : but whether soon or not, is by no 
 means so certain. I rather guess, not at present, not quite 
 soon. Fraternity, in other countries, has gone on, till it found 
 itself unexpectedly manipulating guillotines by its chosen Robes- 
 pierres, and become a fraternity like Cain's. Much to its amaze- 
 ment ! For in fact it is not all nonsense ; there is an infinitesimal 
 fraction of sense in it withal ; which is so difficult to disengage ; 
 which must be disengaged, and laid hold of, before Frater- 
 nity can vanish. 
 
 But to our subject, the Model Prison, and the strange 
 theory of life now in action there. That, for the present, is 
 my share in the wide adventure of Philanthropism ; the world's 
 share, and how and when it is to be liquidated and ended, 
 rests with the Supreme Destinies. 
 
 Several months ago, some friends took me with them to 
 see one of the London Prisons ; a Prison of the exemplary or 
 model kind. An immense circuit of buildings ; cut-out, girt 
 with a high ring-wall, from the lanes and streets of the quar- 
 ter, which is a dim and crowded one. Gateway as to a forti- 
 fied place ; then a spacious court, like the square of a city ; 
 broad staircases, passages to interior courts ; fronts of stately 
 architecture all round. It lodges some Thousand or Twelve- 
 hundred prisoners, besides the officers of the establishment. 
 Surely one of the most perfect buildings, within the compass 
 of London. We looked at the apartments, sleeping-cells, din- 
 ing-rooms, working-rooms, general courts or special and pri- 
 vate : excellent all, the ne-plus-ultra oi human care and in- 
 genuity ; in my life I never saw so clean a building ; probably 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 45 
 
 no Duke in England lives in a mansion of such perfect and 
 thorough cleanness. 
 
 The bread, the cocoa, soup, meat, all the various sorts of 
 food, in their respective cooking-places, we tasted : found them 
 of excellence superlative. The prisoners sat at work, light 
 work, picking oakum, and the like, in airy apartments with 
 glass-roofs, of agreeable temperature and perfect ventilation ; 
 silent, or at least conversing only by secret signs : others were 
 out, taking their hour of promenade in clean flagged courts : 
 methodic composure, cleanliness, peace, substantial wholesome 
 comfort reigned everywhere supreme. The women in other 
 apartments, some notable murderesses among them, all in the 
 like state of methodic composure and substantial wholesome 
 comfort, sat sewing: in long ranges of wash-houses, drying- 
 houses and whatever pertains to the getting-up of clean linen, 
 were certain others, with all conceivable mechanical further- 
 ances, not too arduously working. The notable murderesses 
 were, though with great precautions of privacy, pointed out 
 to us ; and we were requested not to look openly at them, or 
 seem to notice them at all, as it was found to ' cherish their 
 vanity' when visitors looked at them. Schools too were there ; 
 intelligent teachers of both sexes, studiously instructing the 
 still ignorant of these thieves. 
 
 From an inner upper room or gallery, we looked down 
 into a range of private courts, where certain Chartist Nota- 
 bilities were undergoing their term. Chartist Notability First 
 struck me very much : I had seen him about a year before, by 
 involuntary accident and much to my disgust, magnetising a 
 silly young person ; and had noted well the unlovely voracious 
 look of him, his thick oily skin, his heavy dull-burning eyes, 
 his greedy mouth, the dusky potent insatiable animalism that 
 looked out of every feature of him : a fellow adequate to animal- 
 magnetise most things, I did suppose ; and here was the post 
 I now found him arrived at. Next neighbour to him was Nota- 
 bility Second, a philosophic or literary Chartist ; walking ra- 
 pidly to and fro in his private court, a clean, high-walled place ; 
 the world and its cares quite excluded, for some months to 
 come : master of his own time and spiritual resources to, as 
 I supposed, a really enviable extent. What ' literary man' to 
 an equal extent I I fancied I, for my own part, so left with 
 paper and ink, and all taxes and botherations shut-out from 
 
46 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 me, could have written such a Book as no reader will here 
 ever get of me. Never, O reader, never here in a mere house 
 with taxes and botherations. Here, alas, one has to snatch 
 one's poor Book, bit by bit, as from a conflagration ; and to 
 think and live, comparatively, as if the house were not one's 
 own, but mainly the world's and the devil's. Notability Se- 
 cond might have filled one with envy. 
 
 The Captain of the place, a gentleman of ancient Military 
 or Royal-Navy habits, was one of the most perfect governors ; 
 professionally and by nature zealous for cleanliness, punctu- 
 ality, good order of every kind ; a humane heart and yet a 
 strong one ; soft of speech and manner, yet with an inflexible 
 rigour of command, so far as his limits went : ' iron hand in 
 a velvet glove,' as Napoleon defined it. A man of real worth, 
 challenging at once love and respect : the light of those mild 
 bright eyes seemed to permeate the place as with an all-per- 
 vading vigilance, and kindly yet victorious illumination ; in the 
 soft definite voice it was as if Nature herself were promulgat- 
 ing her orders, gentlest mildest orders, which however, in the 
 end, there would be no disobeying, which in the end there 
 would be no living without fulfilment of. A true ' aristos,' and 
 commander of men. A man worthy to have commanded and 
 guided forward, in good ways, Twelve-hundred of the best 
 commonpeople in London or the world : he was here, for many 
 years past, giving all his care and faculty to command, and 
 guide forward in such ways as there were, Twelve-hundred of 
 the worst. I looked with considerable admiration on this gen- 
 tleman ; and with considerable astonishment, the reverse of 
 admiration, on the work he had here been set upon. 
 
 This excellent Captain was too old a Commander to com- 
 plain of anything ; indeed he struggled visibly the other way, 
 to find in his own mind that all here was best ; but I could 
 sufficiently discern that, in his natural instincts, if not mount- 
 ing up to the region of his thoughts, there was a continual 
 protest going on against much of it ; that nature and all his 
 inarticulate persuasion (however much forbidden to articulate 
 itself) taught him the futility and unfeasibility of the system 
 followed here. The Visiting Magistrates, he gently regretted 
 rather than complained, had lately taken his treadwheel from 
 him, men were just now pulling it down ; and how he was 
 henceforth to enforce discipline on these bad subjects, was 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 47 
 
 much a difficulty with him. "They cared for nothing but the 
 treadwheel, and for having their rations cut short :" of the 
 two sole penalties, hard work and occasional hunger, there re- 
 mained now only one, and that by no means the better one, 
 as he thought. The ' sympathy' of visitors, too, their ' pity* 
 for his interesting scoundrel-subjects, though he tried to like 
 it, was evidently no joy to this practical mind. Pity, yes : 
 but pity for the scoundrel-species ? For those who will not 
 have pity on themselves, and will force the Universe and the 
 Laws of Nature to have no pity' on them ? Meseems I could 
 discover fitter objects of pity ! 
 
 In fact it was too clear, this excellent man had got a field 
 for his faculties which, in several respects, was by no means 
 the suitable one. To drill Twelve-hundred scoundrels by 'the 
 method of kindness,' and of abolishing your very treadwheel, 
 how could any commander rejoice to have such a work cut- 
 out for him ? You had but to look in the faces of these Twelve- 
 hundred, and despair, for most part, of ever ' commanding' 
 them at all. Miserable distorted blockheads, the generality ; 
 ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces, heavy sullen ox-faces ; de- 
 graded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of zVzdocility, greedy 
 mutinous darkness, and in one word, of STUPIDITY, which is 
 the general mother of such. Stupidity intellectual and stupidity 
 moral (for the one always means the other, as you will, with 
 surprise or not, discover if you look) had born this progeny : 
 base-natured beings, on whom in the course of a maleficent 
 subterranean life of London Scoundrelism, the Genius of Dark- 
 ness (called Satan, Devil, and other names) had now visibly 
 impressed his seal, and had marked them out as soldiers of 
 Chaos and of him, appointed to serve in his Regiments, First 
 of the line, Second ditto, and so on in their order. Him, you 
 could perceive, they would serve ; but not easily another than 
 him. These were the subjects whom our brave Captain and Pri- 
 son-Governor was appointed to command, and reclaim to other 
 service, by 'the method of love,' with a treadwheel abolished. 
 
 Hopeless forevermore such a project. These abject, ape, 
 wolf, ox, imp and other diabolic-animal specimens of humanity, 
 who of the very gods could ever have commanded them by 
 love ? A collar round the neck, and a cartwhip flourished over 
 the back ; these, in a just and steady human hand, were what 
 the gods would have appointed them ; and now when, by long 
 
48 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 misconduct and neglect, they had sworn themselves into the De- 
 vil's regiments of the line, and got the seal oi Chaos impressed 
 on their visage, it was very doubtful whether even these would 
 be of avail for the unfortunate commander of Twelve-hun- 
 dred men ! By ' love,' without hope except of peaceably teasing 
 oakum, or fear except of a temporary loss of dinner, he was to 
 guide these men, and wisely constrain them, whitherward ? 
 No-whither : that was his goal, if you will think well of it ; that 
 was a second fundamental falsity in his problem. False in the 
 warp and false in the woof, thought one of us ; about as false 
 a problem as any I have seen a good man set upon lately I To 
 guide scoundrels by ' love ;' that is a false woof, I take it, a 
 method that will not hold together ; hardly for the flower of 
 men will love alone do ; and for the sediment and scoundrelism 
 of men it has not even a chance to do. And then to guide 
 any class of men, scoundrel or other, No-whither, which was 
 this poor Captain's problem, in this Prison with oakum for its 
 one element of hope or outlook, how can that prosper by 'love' 
 or by any conceivable method ? That is a warp wholly false. 
 Out of which false warp, or originally false condition to start 
 from, combined and daily woven into by your false woof, or 
 methods of ' love* and suchlike, there arises for our poor Cap- 
 tain the falsest of problems, and for a man of his faculty the 
 unfairest of situations. His problem was, not to command good 
 men to do something, but bad men to do (with superficial dis- 
 guises) nothing. 
 
 On the whole, what a beautiful Establishment here fitted- 
 up for the accommodation of the scoundrel-world, male and 
 female ! As I said, no Duke in England is, for all rational 
 purposes which a human being can or ought to aim at, lodged, 
 fed, tended, taken care of, with such perfection. Of poor crafts- 
 men that pay rates and taxes from their day's wages, of the dim 
 millions that toil and moil continually under the sun, we know 
 what is the lodging and the tending. Of the Johnsons, Gold- 
 smiths, lodged in their squalid garrets ; working often enough 
 amid famine, darkness, tumult, dust and desolation, what work 
 they have to do : of these as of ' spiritual backwoodsmen,' 
 understood to be preappointed to such a life, and like the pigs 
 to killing, 'quite used to it,' I say nothing. But of Dukes, 
 which Duke, I could ask, has cocoa, soup, meat, and food in 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 49 
 
 general made ready, so fit for keeping him in health, in ability 
 to do and to enjoy ? Which Duke has a house so thoroughly 
 clean, pure and airy ; lives in an element so wholesome, and 
 perfectly adapted to the uses of soul and body as this same, 
 which is provided here for the Devil's regiments of the line ? 
 No Duke that I have ever known. Dukes are waited-on by 
 deleterious French cooks, by perfunctory grooms of the cham- 
 bers, and expensive crowds of eye-servants, more imaginary than 
 real : while here, Science, Human Intellect and Beneficence 
 have searched and sat studious, eager to do their very best ; 
 they have chosen a real Artist in Governing to see their best, 
 in all details of it, done. Happy regiments of the line, what 
 soldier to any earthly or celestial Power has such a lodging and 
 attendance as you here ? No soldier or servant direct or in- 
 direct of God or of man, in this England at present. Joy to 
 you, regiments of the line. Your Master, I am told, has his 
 Elect, and professes to be ' Prince of the Kingdoms of this 
 World ;' and truly I see he has power to do a good turn to 
 those he loves, in England at least. Shall we say, May he, may 
 the Devil give you good of it, ye Elect of Scoundrelism ? I 
 will rather pass by, uttering no prayer at all ; musing rather in 
 silence on the singular 'worship of God," or practical 'rever- 
 ence done to Human Worth* (which is the outcome and essence 
 of all real ' worship' whatsoever) among the posterity of Adam 
 at this day. 
 
 For all round this beautiful Establishment, or Oasis of 
 Purity, intended for the Devil's regiments of the line, lay contin- 
 ents of dingy poor and dirty dwellings, where the unfortunate 
 not yet enlisted into that Force were struggling manifoldly, 
 in their workshops, in their marble-yards and timber-yards and 
 tan-yards, in their close cellars, cobbler-stalls, hungry garrets, 
 and poor dark trade-shops with red-herrings and tobacco-pipes 
 crossed in the window, to keep the Devil out-of-doors, and 
 not enlist with him. And it was by a tax on these that the 
 Barracks for the regiments of the line were kept up. Visiting 
 Magistrates, impelled by Exeter Hall, by Able-Editors, and the 
 Philanthropic Movement of the Age, had given orders to that 
 effect. Rates on the poor servant of God and of her Majesty, 
 who still serves both in his way, painfully selling red-herrings ; 
 rates on him and his red-herrings to boil right soup for the 
 Devil's declared Elect ! Never in my travels, in any age or 
 
 B 
 
SO LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 clime, had I fallen-in with such Visiting Magistrates before. 
 Reserved they, I should suppose, for these ultimate or penulti- 
 mate ages of the world, rich in all prodigies, political, spiritual, 
 ages surely with such a length of ears as was never paralleled 
 before. 
 
 If I had a commonwealth to reform or to govern, certainly 
 it should not be the Devil's regiments of the line that I would 
 first of all concentrate my attention on t With them I should 
 be apt to make rather brief work ; to them one would apply the 
 besom, try to sweep them with some rapidity into the dust-bin, 
 and well out of one's road, I should rather say. Fill your thrash- 
 ing-floor with docks, ragweeds, mugworths, and ply your flail 
 upon them, that is not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. 
 Away, you ; begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line : in the 
 name of God and of His poor struggling servants, sore put to 
 it to live in these bad days, I mean to rid myself of you with 
 some degree of brevity. To feed you in palaces, to hire cap- 
 tains and schoolmasters and the choicest spiritual and material 
 artificers to expend their industries on you, No, by the Eter- 
 nal I I have quite other work for that class of artists ; Seven- 
 and-twenty Millions of neglected mortals who have not yet 
 quite declared for the Devil. Mark it, my diabolic friends, I 
 mean to lay leather on the backs of you, collars round the necks 
 of you ; and will teach you, after the example of the gods, that 
 this world is #0/your inheritance, or glad to see you in it. You, 
 ye diabolic canaille, what has a Governor much to do with you ? 
 You, I think, he will rather swiftly dismiss from his thoughts, 
 which have the whole celestial and terrestrial for their scope, 
 and not the subterranean of scoundreldom alone. You, I con- 
 sider, he will sweep pretty rapidly into some Norfolk Island, 
 into some special Convict Colony or remote domestic Moorland, 
 into some stone-walled Silent-System, under hard drill-sergeants, 
 just as Rhadamanthus, and inflexible as he, and there leave you 
 to reap what you have sown ; he meanwhile turning his endea- 
 vours to the thousandfold immeasurable interests of men and 
 gods, dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of 
 scoundrels ; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over 
 London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful ! Who are 
 you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should forever 
 be pestered with you ? Have we no work to do but drilling 
 Devil's regiments of the line ? 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 51 
 
 If I had schoolmasters, my benevolent friend, do you ima- 
 gine I would set them on teaching a set of unteachables, who 
 as you perceive have already made up their mind that black is 
 white, that the Devil namely is the advantageous Master to 
 serve in this world ? My esteemed Benefactor of Humanity, it 
 shall be far from me. Minds open to that particular convic- 
 tion are not the material I like to work upon. When once my 
 schoolmasters have gone over all the other classes of society 
 from top to bottom ; and have no other soul to try with teach- 
 ing, all being thoroughly taught, I will then send them to 
 operate on these regiments of the line : then, and, assure your- 
 self, never till then. The truth is, I am sick of scoundreldom, 
 my esteemed Benefactor ; it always was detestable to me ; and 
 here where I find it lodged in palaces and waited on by the 
 benevolent of the world, it is more detestable, not to say insuf- 
 ferable to me than ever. 
 
 Of Beneficence, Benevolence, and the people that come to- 
 gether to talk on platforms and subscribe five pounds, I will 
 say nothing here ; indeed there is not room here for the twen- 
 tieth part of what were to be said of them. The beneficence, 
 benevolence, and sublime virtue which issues in eloquent talk 
 reported in the Newspapers, with the subscription of five pounds, 
 and the feeling that one is a good citizen and ornament to so- 
 ciety, concerning this, there were a great many unexpected 
 remarks to be made ; but let this one, for the present occasion, 
 suffice : 
 
 My sublime benevolent friends, don't you perceive, for one 
 thing, that here is a shockingly unfruitful investment for your 
 capital of Benevolence ; precisely the worst, indeed, which human 
 ingenuity could select for yoa ? " Laws are unjust, temptations 
 great," &c. &c. : alas, I know it, and mourn for it, and passion- 
 ately call on all men to help in altering it. But according to 
 every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and pres- 
 sures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all the so- 
 ciety, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the worst 
 substance for enduring pressure I The others yet stand and 
 make resistance to temptation, to the law's injustice ; under all 
 the perversities and strangling impediments there are, the rest 
 of the society still keep their feet, and struggle forward, march- 
 ing under the banner of Cosmos, of God and Human Virtue ; 
 these select Few, as I explain to you, are they who have fallen 
 
5 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 to Chaos, and are sworn into certain regiments of the line. A 
 superior proclivity to Chaos is declared in these, by the very 
 fact of their being here ! Of all the generation we live in, these 
 are the worst stuff. These, I say, are the Elixir of the Infatu- 
 ated among living mortals : if you want the -worst investment 
 for your Benevolence, here you accurately have it. O my sur- 
 prising friends 1 Nowhere so as here can you be certain that 
 a given quantity of wise teaching bestowed, of benevolent trouble 
 taken, will yield zero, or the net minimum of return. It is sow- 
 ing of your wheat upon Irish quagmires ; laboriously harrowing 
 it in upon the sand of the sea-shore. O my astonishing bene- 
 volent friends ! 
 
 Yonder, in those dingy habitations, and shops of red-her- 
 ring and tobacco-pipes, where men have not yet quite declared 
 for the Devil ; there, I say, is land : here is mere sea-beach. 
 Thither go with your benevolence, thither to those dingy ca- 
 verns of the poor ; and there instruct and drill and manage, 
 there where some fruit may come from it. And, above all and 
 inclusive of all, cannot you go to those Solemn human Shams, 
 Phantasm Captains, and Supreme Quacks that ride prosper- 
 ously in every thoroughfare ; and with severe benevolence, ask 
 them, What they are doing here ? They are the men whom 
 it would behove you to drill a little, and tie to the halberts in a 
 benevolent manner, if you could ! " We cannot," say you ? 
 Yes, my friends, to a certain extent you can. By many well- 
 known active methods, and by all manner of passive methods, 
 you can. Strive thitherward, I advise you; thither, with what- 
 ever social effort there may lie in you ! The well-head and 
 ' consecrated' thrice-accursed chief fountain of all those waters 
 of bitterness, it is they, those Solemn Shams and Supreme 
 Quacks of yours, little as they or you imagine it ! Them, with 
 severe benevolence, put a stop to ; them send to their Father, 
 far from the sight of the true and just, if you would ever see 
 a just world here ! 
 
 What sort of reformers and workers are you, that work only 
 on the rotten material ? That never think of meddling with 
 the material while it continues sound ; that stress it and strain 
 it with new rates and assessments, till once it has given way 
 and declared itself rotten ; whereupon you snatch greedily at 
 it, and say, Now let us try to do some good upon it ! You mis- 
 take in every way, my friends : the fact is, you fancy yourselves 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 53 
 
 men of virtue, benevolence, what not ; and you are not even 
 men of sincerity and honest sense. I grieve to say it ; but it 
 is true. Good from you, and your operations, is not to be ex- 
 pected. You may go down ! 
 
 Howard is a beautiful Philanthropist, eulogised by Burke, 
 and in most men's minds a sort of beatified individual. How 
 glorious, having finished-off one's affairs in Bedfordshire, or in 
 fact finding them very dull, inane, and worthy of being quitted 
 and got away from, to set out on a cruise over the Jails first 
 of Britain ; then, finding that answer, over the Jails of the 
 habitable Globe 1 ' A voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation 
 ' of charity ; to collate distresses, to gauge wretchedness, to 
 ' take the dimensions of human misery:' really it is very fine. 
 Captain Cook's voyage for the Terra Australis, Ross's, Frank- 
 lin's for the ditto Borealis : men make various cruises and 
 voyages in this world, for want of money, want of work, and 
 one or the other want, which are attended with their diffi- 
 culties too, and do not make the cruiser a demigod. On the 
 whole, I have myself nothing but respect, comparatively speak- 
 ing, for the dull solid Howard, and his 'benevolence,' and 
 other impulses that set him cruising ; Heaven had grown weary 
 of Jail-fevers, and other the like unjust penalties inflicted upon 
 scoundrels, for scoundrels too, and even the very Devil, should 
 not have more than their due ; and Heaven, in its opulence, 
 created a man to make an end of that. Created him ; dis- 
 gusted him with the grocer business ; tried him with Calvinism, 
 rural ennui, and sore bereavement in his Bedfordshire retreat ; 
 and, in short, at last got him set to his work, and in a con- 
 dition to achieve it. For which I am thankful to Heaven ; 
 and do also, with doffed hat, humbly salute John Howard. 
 A practical solid man, if a dull and even dreary ; ' carries his 
 weighing-scales in his pocket :' when your jailor answers, "The 
 " prisoner's allowance of food is so and so ; and we observe 
 " it sacredly ; here, for example, is a ration." " Hey! a ration 
 " this ?" and solid John suddenly produces his weighing-scales ; 
 weighs it, marks down in his tablets what the actual quantity 
 of it is. That is the art and manner of the man. A man full 
 of English accuracy ; English veracity, solidity, simplicity ; by 
 whom this universal Jail-commission, not to be paid for in 
 
54 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 money but far otherwise, is set about, with all the slow energy, 
 the patience, practicality, sedulity and sagacity common to the 
 best English commissioners paid in money and not expressly 
 otherwise. 
 
 For it is the glory of England that she has a turn for fidelity 
 in practical work ; that sham-workers, though very numerous, 
 are rarer than elsewhere ; that a man who undertakes work for 
 you will still, in various provinces of our affairs, do it, instead 
 of merely seeming to do it. John Howard, without pay in 
 money, did this of the Jail-fever, as other Englishmen do work, 
 in a truly workmanlike manner : his distinction was that he 
 did it without money. He had not 5oo/. or 5ooo/. a-year of 
 salary for it ; but lived merely on his Bedfordshire estates, and 
 as Snigsby irreverently expresses it, ' by chewing his own cud.' 
 And, sure enough, if any man might chew the cud of placid 
 reflections, solid Howard, a mournful man otherwise, might at 
 intervals indulge a little in that luxury. No money-salary had 
 he for his work ; he had merely the income of his properties, 
 and what he could derive from within. Is this such a sublime 
 distinction, then ? Well, let it pass at its value. There have 
 been benefactors of mankind who had more need of money 
 than he, and got none too. Milton, it is known, did his Para- 
 dise Lost at the easy rate of five pounds. Kepler worked out 
 the secret of the Heavenly Motions in a dreadfully painful 
 manner ; ' going over the calculations sixty times ;' and hav- 
 ing not only no public money, but no private either ; and, in 
 fact, writing almanacs for his bread-and-water, while he did 
 this of the Heavenly Motions ; having no Bedfordshire estates ; 
 nothing but a pension of 1 8/. (which they would not pay him), 
 the valuable faculty of writing almanacs, and at length the in- 
 valuable one of dying, when the Heavenly bodies were van- 
 quished, and battle's conflagration had collapsed into cold dark 
 ashes, and the starvation reached too high a pitch for the poor 
 man. 
 
 Howard is not the only benefactor that has worked without 
 money for us ; there have been some more, and will be, I 
 hope t For the Destinies are opulent ; and send here and 
 there a man into the world to do work, for which they do not 
 mean to pay him in money. And they smite him beneficently 
 with sore afflictions, and blight his world all into grim trozen 
 ruins round him, and can make a wandering Exile of their 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 55 
 
 Dante, and not a soft-bedded Podesta of Florence, if they wish 
 to get a Divine Comedy out of him. Nay that rather is their 
 way, when they have worthy work for such a man ; they scourge 
 him manifoldly to the due pitch, sometimes nearly of despair, 
 that he may search desperately for his work, and find it ; they 
 urge him on still with beneficent stripes when needful, as is 
 constantly the case between whiles ; and, in fact, have privately 
 decided to reward him with beneficent death by and by, and 
 not with money at all. O my benevolent friend, I honour 
 Howard very much ; but it is on this side idolatry a long way, 
 not to an infinite, but to a decidedly finite extent ! And you, 
 put not the modest noble Howard, a truly modest man, to 
 the blush, by forcing these reflections on us ! 
 
 Cholera Doctors, hired to dive into black dens of infection 
 and despair, they, rushing about all day from lane to lane, with 
 their life in their hand, are found to do their function ; which 
 is a much more rugged one than Howard's. Or what say we, 
 Cholera Doctors ? Ragged losels gathered by beat of drum 
 from the overcrowded streets of cities, and drilled a little and 
 dressed in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable man- 
 ner ; and handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of 
 a shilling per day ? Human virtue, if we went down to the 
 roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are 
 everywhere abundant as the light of the sun : raw materials, 
 O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so 
 seldom are elaborated, and built into a result ! that they lie 
 yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide -spread 
 dreary millions, fermenting, festering ; and issue at last as 
 energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue ! A Mrs. Man- 
 ning ' dying game,' alas, is not that the foiled potentiality of 
 a kind of heroine too ? Not a heroic Judith, not a mother of 
 the Gracchi now, but a hideous murderess, fit to be the mother 
 of hyaenas ! To such extent can potentialities be foiled. Edu- 
 cation, kingship, command, where is it, whither has it fled ? 
 Woe a thousand times, that this, which is the task of all kings, 
 captains, priests, public speakers, land-owners, book-writers, 
 mill-owners, and persons possessing or pretending to possess 
 authority among mankind, is left neglected among them all ; 
 and instead of it so little done but protocoling, black-or-\vhite 
 surplicing, partridge-shooting, parliamentary eloquence and 
 popular twaddle-literature ; with such results as we see ! 
 
56 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Howard abated the Jail-fever ; but it seems to me he has 
 been the innocent cause of a far more distressing fever which 
 rages high just now ; what we may call the Benevolent-Plat- 
 form Fever. Howard is to be regarded as the unlucky fountain 
 of that tumultuous frothy ocean-tide of benevolent sentimen- 
 tality, 'abolition of punishment,' all-absorbing 'prison-discip- 
 line,' and general morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, 
 for scoundrels ; which is threatening to drown human society 
 as in deluges, and leave, instead of an ' edifice of society* fit 
 for the habitation of men, a continent of fetid ooze inhabitable 
 only by mud-gods and creatures that walk upon their belly. 
 Few things more distress a thinking soul at this time. 
 
 Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous jargon 
 of philanthropy, the reign of love, new era of universal brother- 
 hood, and not Paradise to the Well-deserving but Paradise to 
 All-and-sundry, which possesses the benighted minds of men 
 and women in our day. My friends, I think you are much mis- 
 taken about Paradise ! ' No Paradise for anybody : he that 
 cannot do without Paradise, go his ways :' suppose you tried 
 that for a while 1 I reckon that the safer version. Unhappy 
 sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other ; contrary to the 
 fact ; not a tatter of it will hang together in the wind and wea- 
 ther of fact. In brotherhood with the base and foolish I, for 
 one, do not mean to live. Not in brotherhood with them was 
 life hitherto worth much to me ; in pity, in hope not yet quite 
 swallowed of disgust, otherwise in enmity that must last 
 through eternity, in unappeasable aversion shall I have to live 
 with these ! Brotherhood ? No, be the thought far from me. 
 They are Adam's children, alas yes, I well remember that 
 and never shall forget it ; hence this rage and sorrow. But 
 they have gone over to the dragons ; they have quitted the Fa- 
 ther's house, and set-up with the Old Serpent : till they return, 
 how can they be brothers ? They are enemies, deadly to them- 
 selves and to me and to you, till then ; till then, while hope 
 yet lasts, I will treat them as brothers fallen insane ; when 
 hope has ended, with tears grown sacred and wrath grown sa- 
 cred, I will cut them off in the name of God ! It is at my peril 
 if I do not. With the servant of Satan I dare not continue in 
 partnership. Him I must put away, resolutely and forever ; 
 ' lest,' as it is written, ' I become partaker of his plagues.' 
 
 Beautiful Black Peasantry, who have fallen idle and have 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 57 
 
 got the Devil at your elbow ; interesting White Felonry, who 
 are not idle, but have enlisted into the Devil's regiments of the 
 line, know that my benevolence for you is comparatively 
 trifling 1 What I have of that divine feeling is due to others, 
 not to you. A ' universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection 
 Society' is not the one I mean to institute in these times, where 
 so much wants protection, and is sinking to sad issues for want 
 of it ! The scoundrel needs no protection. The scoundrel 
 that will hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way 
 for him ! Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural 
 proclivity, than be so expensively dammed-up and detained, 
 poisoning everything as he stagnates and meanders along, to 
 arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred 
 times bigger ! Benevolent men should reflect on this. And 
 you Quashee, my pumpkin, (not a bad fellow either, this poor 
 Quashee, when tolerably guided !) idle Quashee, I say you 
 must get the Devil sent away, from your elbow, my poor dark 
 friend ! In this world there will be no existence for you other- 
 wise. No, not as the brother of your folly will I live beside 
 you. Please to withdraw out of my way, if I am not to con- 
 tradict your folly, and amend it, and put it in the stocks if it 
 will not amend. By the Eternal Maker, it is on that footing 
 alone that you and I can live together ! And if you had re- 
 spectable traditions dated from beyond Magna Charta, or from 
 beyond the Deluge, to the contrary, and written sheepskins 
 that would thatch the face of the world, behold I, for one in- 
 dividual, do not believe said respectable traditions, nor regard 
 said written sheepskins except as things which you, till you 
 grow wiser, will believe. Adieu, Quashee ; I will wish you 
 better guidance than you have had of late. 
 
 On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot bestow 
 on an unworthy man any particle of our benevolence, our pa- 
 tronage, or whatever resource is ours, without withdrawing 
 it, it and all that will grow of it, from one worthy, to whom it 
 of right belongs ! We cannot, I say ; impossible ; it is the 
 eternal law of things. Incompetent Duncan M'Pastehorn, the 
 hapless incompetent mortal to whom I give the cobbling of my 
 boots, and cannot find in my heart to refuse it, the poor 
 drunken wretch having a wife and ten children ; he withdraws 
 the job from sober, plainly competent, and meritorious Mr. 
 Sparrowbill, generally short of work too ; discourages Spar- 
 
58 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 rowbill ; teaches him that he too may as well drink and loiter 
 and bungle ; that this is not a scene for merit and demerit at 
 all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cob- 
 bling of every description ; clearly tending to the ruin of poor 
 Sparrowbill ! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I 
 should so help to ruin him ? And I couldn't save the insalv- 
 able M'Pastehorn ; I merely yielded him, for insufficient work, 
 here and there a half-crown, which he oftenest drank. And 
 now Sparrowbill also is drinking ! 
 
 Justice, Justice : woe betides us everywhere when, for this 
 reason or for that, we fail to do justice ! No beneficence, be- 
 nevolence, or other virtuous contribution will make good the 
 want. And in what a rate of terrible geometrical progression, 
 far beyond our poor computation, any act of Injustice once 
 done by us grows ; rooting itself ever anew, spreading ever 
 anew, like a banyan-tree, blasting all life under it, for it is 
 a poison-tree ! There is but one thing needed for the world ; 
 but that one is indispensable. Justice, Justice, in the name 
 of Heaven ; give us Justice, and we live ; give us only coun- 
 terfeits of it, or succedanea for it, and we die ! 
 
 O this universal syllabub of philanthropic twaddle ! My 
 friend, it is very sad, now when Christianity is as good as ex- 
 tinct in all hearts, to meet this ghastly Phantasm of Christi- 
 anity parading through almost all. " I will clean your foul 
 thoroughfares, and make your Devil' s-cloaca of a world into 
 a garden of Heaven," jabbers this Phantasm, itself a phos- 
 phorescence and unclean ! The worst, it is written, comes 
 from corruption of the best : Semitic forms now lying putres- 
 cent, dead and still unburied, this phosphorescence rises. I 
 say sometimes, such a blockhead Idol, and miserable White 
 Mumbojumbo, fashioned out of deciduous sticks and cast 
 clothes, out of extinct cants and modern sentimentalisms, as 
 that which they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall and extensively 
 elsewhere, was perhaps never set-up by human folly before. 
 Unhappy creatures, that is not the Maker of the Universe, 
 not that, look one moment at the Universe, and see ! That 
 is a paltry Phantasm, engendered in your own sick brain ; 
 whoever follows that as a Reality will fall into the ditch. 
 
 Reform, reform, all men see and feel, is imperatively 
 needed. Reform must either be got, and speedily, or else we 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 59 
 
 die : and nearly all the men that speak, instruct us, saying, 
 " Have you quite done your interesting Negroes in the Sugar 
 11 Islands ? Rush to the Jails, then, O ye reformers ; snatch-up 
 " the interesting scoundrel-population there, to them be nurs- 
 " ing-fathers and nursing-mothers. And O wash, and dress, 
 " and teach, and recover to the service of Heaven these poor 
 " lost souls : so, we assure you, will society attain the need- 
 " ful reform, and life be still possible in this world." Thus 
 sing the oracles everywhere ; nearly all the men that speak, 
 though we doubt not, there are, as usual, immense majori- 
 ties consciously or unconsciously wiser who hold their tongue. 
 But except this of whitewashing the scoundrel-population, one 
 sees little 'reform' going on. There is perhaps some endea- 
 vour to do a little scavengering ; and, as the all-including 
 point, to cheapen the terrible cost of Government : but neither 
 of these enterprises makes progress, owing to impediments. 
 
 " Whitewash your scoundrel-population ; sweep-out your 
 " abominable gutters (if not in the name of God, ye brutish 
 " slatterns, then in the name of Cholera and the Royal Col- 
 " lege of Surgeons) : do these two things ; and observe, 
 " much cheaper if you please !" Well, here surely is an 
 Evangel of Freedom, and real Program of a new Era. What 
 surliest misanthrope would not find this world lovely, were 
 these things done : scoundrels whitewashed ; some degree of 
 scavengering upon the gutters ; and at a cheap rate, thirdly ? 
 That surely is an occasion on which, if ever on any, the Genius 
 of Reform may pipe all hands ! Poor old Genius of Reform ; 
 bedrid this good while ; with little but broken ballot-boxes, 
 and tattered stripes of Benthamee Constitutions lying round 
 him ; and on the walls mere shadows of clothing-colonels, 
 rates-in-aid, poor-law unions, defunct potato and the Irish 
 difficulty, he does not seem long for this world, piping to 
 that effect ? 
 
 Not the least disgusting feature of this Gospel according 
 to the Platform is its reference to religion, and even to the 
 Christian Religion, as an authority and mandate for what it 
 does. Christian Religion ? Does the Christian or any reli- 
 gion prescribe love of scoundrels, then ? I hope it prescribes 
 a healthy hatred of scoundrels ; otherwise what am I, in 
 
60 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Heaven's name, to make of it ? Me, for one, it will not serve 
 as a religion on those strange terms. Just hatred of scoun- 
 drels, I say ; fixed, irreconcilable, inexorable enmity to the 
 enemies of God : this, and not love for them, and incessant 
 whitewashing, and dressing and cockering of them, must, if 
 you look into it, be the backbone of any human religion what- 
 soever. Christian Religion ! In what words can I address 
 you, ye unfortunates, sunk in the slushy ooze till the worship 
 of mud-serpents, and unutterable Pythons and poisonous slimy 
 monstrosities, seems to you the worship of God ? This is the 
 rotten carcass of Christianity ; this malodorous phosphores- 
 cence of post-mortem sentimentalism. O Heavens, from the 
 Christianity of Oliver Cromwell, wrestling in grim fight with 
 Satan and his incarnate Blackguardisms, Hypocrisies, Injus- 
 tices, and legion of human and infernal angels, to that of elo- 
 quent Mr. Hesperus Fiddlestring denouncing capital punish- 
 ments, and inculcating the benevolences on platforms, what 
 a road have we travelled ! 
 
 A foolish stump-orator, perorating on his platform mere 
 benevolences, seems a pleasant object to many persons ; a 
 harmless or insignificant one to almost all. Look at him, 
 however ; scan him till you discern the nature of him, he is 
 not pleasant, but ugly and perilous. That beautiful speech of 
 his takes captive every long ear, and kindles into quasi-sacred 
 enthusiasm the minds of not a few ; but it is quite in the 
 teeth of the everlasting facts of this Universe, and will come 
 only to mischief for every party concerned. Consider that 
 little spouting wretch. Within the paltry skin of him, it is 
 too probable, he holds few human virtues, beyond those essen- 
 tial for digesting victual : envious, cowardly, vain, splenetic 
 hungry soul ; what heroism, in word or thought or action, 
 will you ever get from the like of him ? He, in his necessity, 
 has taken into the benevolent line ; warms the cold vacuity 
 of his inner man to some extent, in a comfortable manner, 
 not by silently doing some virtue of his own, but by fiercely 
 recommending hearsay pseudo-virtues and respectable benevo- 
 lences to other people. Do you call that a good trade ? Long- 
 eared fellow-creatures, more or less resembling himself, ans- 
 wer, " Hear, hear ! Live Fiddlestring forever !" Wherefrom 
 follow Abolition Congresses, Odes to the Gallows ; perhaps 
 some dirty little Bill, getting itself debated next Session in 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 61 
 
 Parliament, to waste certain nights of our legislative Year, 
 and cause skipping in our Morning Newspaper, till the abor- 
 tion can be emptied out again and sent fairly floating down the 
 gutters. 
 
 Not with entire approbation do I, for one, look on that 
 eloquent individual. Wise benevolence, if it had authority, 
 would order that individual, I believe, to find some other trade : 
 " Eloquent individual, pleading here against the Laws of Na- 
 " ture, for many reasons, I bid thee close that mouth of 
 " thine. Enough of balderdash these long-eared have now 
 " drunk. Depart thou ; do some benevolent work ; at lowest, 
 " be silent. Disappear, I say ; away, and jargon no more in 
 " that manner, lest a worst thing befal thee." Exeat Fiddle- 
 string ! Beneficent men are not they who appear on platforms, 
 pleading against the Almighty Maker's Laws ; these are the 
 maleficent men, whose lips it is pity that some authority can- 
 not straightway shut. Pandora's Box is not more baleful than 
 the gifts these eloquent benefactors are pressing on us. Close 
 your pedlar' s-pack, my friend ; swift, away with it ! Perni- 
 cious, fraught with mere woe and sugary poison is that kind 
 of benevolence and beneficence. 
 
 Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is that of 
 poor creatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situa- 
 tions, making and unmaking ' Laws ;' in whose soul, full of 
 mere vacant hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image 
 of Heaven's Law ; whom it never struck that Heaven had a 
 Law, or that the Earth could not have what kind of Law 
 you pleased ! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing 
 horrible to think of. An impiety and poisonous futility every 
 Law of them that is so made ; all Nature is against it ; it will 
 and can do nothing but mischief wheresoever it shows itself 
 in Nature : and such Laws lie now like an incubus over this 
 Earth, so innumerable are they. How long, O Lord, how 
 long ! O ye Eternities, Divine Silences, do you dwell no 
 more, then, in the hearts of the noble and the true ; and is 
 there no inspiration of the Almighty any more vouchsafed us? 
 The inspiration of the Morning Newspapers alas, we have 
 had enough of that, and are arrived at the gates of death by 
 means of that ! 
 
 11 Really, one of the most difficult questions this we have in 
 
6a LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 these times, What to do with our criminals ?" blandly observed 
 a certain Law-dignitary, in my hearing once, taking the cigar 
 from his mouth, and pensively smiling over a group of us under 
 the summer beech-tree, as Favonius carried off the tobacco- 
 smoke; and the group said nothing, only smiled and nodded, 
 answering by new tobacco-clouds. "What to do with our 
 criminals ?" asked the official Law-dignitary again, as if en- 
 tirely at a loss. " I suppose," said one ancient figure not en- 
 gaged in smoking, " the plan would be to treat them according 
 " to the real law of the case; to make the Law of England, in 
 " respect of them, correspond to the Law of the Universe. 
 " Criminals, I suppose, would prove manageable in that way : 
 " if we could do approximately as God Almighty does towards 
 " them ; in a word, if we could try to do Justice towards them." 
 " I'll thank you for a definition of Justice ?" sneered the offi- 
 cial person in a cheerily scornful and triumphant manner, 
 backed by a slight laugh from the honourable company; which 
 irritated the other speaker. "Well, I have no pocket-definition 
 " of Justice," said he, " to give your Lordship. It has not quite 
 " been my trade to look for such a definition ; I could rather 
 " fancy it had been your Lordship's trade, sitting on your high 
 " place this long while. But one thing I can tell you : Justice 
 " always is, whether we define it or not. Everything done, 
 " suffered or proposed, in Parliament or out of it, is either just 
 " or else unjust ; either is accepted by the gods and eternal 
 " facts, or is rejected by them. Your Lordship and I, with or 
 " without definition, do a little know Justice, I will hope; if we 
 " don't both know it and do it, we are hourly travelling down 
 " towards Heavens, must I name such a place ! That is the 
 " place we are bound to, with all our trading-pack, and the 
 " small or extensive budgets of human business laid on us ; 
 " and there, if we don't know Justice, we, and all our budgets 
 " and Acts of Parliament, shall find lodging when the day is 
 " done !" The official person, a polite man otherwise, grinned 
 as he best could some semblance of a laugh, mirthful as that 
 of the ass eating thistles, and ended in " Hah, oh, ah 1" 
 
 Indeed, it is wonderful to hear what account we at present 
 give ourselves of the punishment of criminals. No ' revenge' 
 O Heavens, no ; all preachers on Sunday strictly forbid that ; 
 and even (at least on Sundays) prescribe the contrary of that. 
 It is for the sake of ' example,' that you punish ; to ' protect 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 63 
 
 society* and its purse and skin ; to deter the innocent from 
 falling into crime ; and especially withal, for the purpose of 
 improving the poor criminal himself, or at lowest, of hanging 
 and ending him, that he may not grow worse. For the poor 
 criminal is to be ' improved' if possible : against him no ' re- 
 venge' even on weekdays ; nothing but love for him, and pity 
 and help ; poor fellow, is he not miserable enough? Very miser- 
 able, though much less so than the Master of him, called 
 Satan, is understood (on Sundays) to have long deservedly 
 been ! 
 
 My friends, will you permit me to say that all this, to one 
 poor judgment among your number, is the mournfulest twaddle 
 that human tongues could shake from them; that it has no 
 solid foundation in the nature of things ; and to a healthy hu- 
 man heart no credibility whatever? Permit me to say, only to 
 hearts long drowned in dead Tradition, and for themselves 
 neither believing nor disbelieving, could this seem credible. 
 Think, and ask yourselves, in spite of all this preaching and 
 perorating from the teeth outward ! Hearts that are quite 
 strangers to eternal Fact, and acquainted only at all hours with 
 temporary Semblances parading about in a prosperous and 
 persuasive condition ; hearts that from their first appearance in 
 this world have breathed since birth, in all spiritual matters, 
 which means in all matters not pecuniary, the poisonous atmo- 
 sphere of universal Cant, could believe such a thing. Cant 
 moral, Cant religious, Cant political ; an atmosphere which en- 
 velops all things for us unfortunates, and has long done ; which 
 goes beyond the Zenith and below the Nadir for us, and has as 
 good as choked the spiritual life out of all of us, God pity such 
 wretches, with little or nothing real about them but their purse 
 and their abdominal department ! Hearts, alas, which every- 
 where except in the metallurgic and cottonspinning provinces, 
 have communed with no Reality, or awful Presence of a Fact, 
 godlike or diabolic, in this Universe or this unfathomable Life 
 at all. Hunger-stricken asphyxied hearts, which have nourished 
 themselves on what they call religions, Christian religions. 
 Good Heaven, once more fancy the Christian religion of Oliver 
 Cromwell ; or of some noble Christian man, whom you yourself 
 may have been blessed enough, once, long since, in your life, 
 to know ! These are not untrue religions ; they are the putres- 
 cences and foul residues of religions that are extinct, that have 
 
64 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 plainly to every honest nostril been dead some time, and the 
 remains of which O ye eternal Heavens, will the nostril never 
 be delivered from them ! Such hearts, when they get upon 
 platforms, and into questions not involving money, can 'be- 
 lieve' many things ! 
 
 I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, 
 and only one, for either punishing a man or rewarding him in 
 this world ; one reason, which ancient piety could well define : 
 That you may do the will and commandment of God with re- 
 gard to him ; that you may do justice to him. This is your one 
 true aim in respect of him ; aim thitherward, with all your 
 heart and all your strength and all your soul ; thitherward, and 
 not elsewhither at all ! This aim is true, and will carry you to 
 all earthly heights and benefits, and beyond the stars and 
 Heavens. All other aims are purblind, illegitimate, untrue ; 
 and will never carry you beyond the shop-counter, nay very 
 soon will prove themselves incapable of maintaining you even 
 there. Find out what the Law of God is with regard to a man ; 
 make that your human law, or I say it will be ill with you, and 
 not well! If you love your thiei or murderer, if Nature and 
 eternal Fact love him, then do as you are now doing. But if 
 Nature and Fact do not love him ? If they have set inexorable 
 penalties upon him, and planted natural wrath against him in 
 every god-created human heart, then I advise you, cease, and 
 change your hand. 
 
 Reward and punishment ? Alas, alas, I must say you re- 
 ward and punish pretty much alike ! Your dignities, peerages, 
 promotions, your kingships, your brazen statues erected in 
 capital and county towns to our select demigods of your select- 
 ing, testify loudly enough what kind of heroes and hero-wor- 
 shippers you are. Woe to the People that no longer venerates, 
 as the emblem of God himseh, the aspect of Human Worth; 
 that no longer knows what human worth and unworth is ! Sure 
 as the Decrees of the Eternal, that People cannot come to 
 good. By a course too clear, by a necessity too evident, that 
 People will come into the hands of the unworthy ; and either 
 turn on its bad career, or stagger downwards to ruin and aboli- 
 tion. Does the Hebrew People prophetically sing "Ou* clo'!" 
 in all thoroughfares, these eighteen hundred years in vain ? 
 
 To reward men according to their worth : alas, the perfec- 
 tion of this, we know, amounts to the millennium ! Neither is 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 65 
 
 perfect punishment, according to the like rule, to be attained, 
 nor even, by a legislator of these chaotic days, to be too 
 zealously attempted. But when he does attempt it, yes, when 
 he summons out the Society to sit deliberative on this matter, 
 and consult the oracles upon it, and solemnly settle it in the 
 name of God ; then, if never before, he should try to be a little 
 in the right in settling it ! In regard to reward of merit, I do 
 not bethink me of any attempt whatever, worth calling an at- 
 tempt, on the part of modern Governments ; which surely is an 
 immense oversight on their part, and will one day be seen to 
 have been an altogether fatal one. But as to the punishment 
 of crime, happily this cannot be quite neglected. When men 
 have a purse and a skin, they seek salvation at least for these ; 
 and the Four Pleas of the Crown are a thing that must and will 
 be attended to. By punishment, capital or other, by treadmill- 
 ing and blind rigour, or by whitewashing and blind laxity, the 
 extremely disagreeable offences of theft and murder must be 
 kept down within limits. 
 
 And so you take criminal caitiffs, murderers, and the like, 
 and hang them on gibbets ' for an example to deter others.' 
 Whereupon arise friends of humanity, and object. With very 
 great reason, as I consider, \lyour hypothesis be correct. What 
 right have you to hang any poor creature ' for an example' ? 
 He can turn round upon you and say, " Why make an ' ex- 
 " ample' of me, a merely ill-situated, pitiable man ? Have you 
 " no more respect for misfortune ? Misfortune, I have been 
 " told, is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fallen into 
 " your hands; choke the life out of me, for an example! Again 
 " I ask, Why make an example of me, for your own conveni- 
 " ence alone ?" All ' revenge' being out of the question, it 
 seems to me the caitiff is unanswerable ; and he and the phil- 
 anthropic platforms have the logic all on their side. 
 
 The one answer to him is: "Caitiff, we hate thee; and 
 " discern for some six thousand years now, that we are called 
 " upon by the whole Universe to do it. Not with a diabolic 
 " but with a divine hatred. God himself, we have always 
 " understood, 'hates sin,' with a most authentic, celestial, and 
 " eternal hatred. A hatred, a hostility inexorable, unappeas- 
 " able, which blasts the scoundrel, and all scoundrels ulti- 
 " mately, into black annihilation and disappearance from the 
 " sum of things. The path of it as the path of a flaming sword: 
 
 F 
 
66 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " he that has eyes may see it, walking inexorable, divinely 
 " beautiful and divinely terrible, through the chaotic gulf of 
 " Human History, and everywhere burning, as with unquench- 
 " able fire, the false and death-worthy from the true and life- 
 " worthy; making all Human History, and the Biography of 
 " every man, a God's Cosmos in place of a Devil's Chaos. So 
 " is it, in the end; even so, to every man who is a man, and 
 " not a mutinous beast, and has eyes to see. To thee, caitiff, 
 " these things were and are, quite incredible ; to us they are 
 " too awfully certain, the Eternal Law of this Universe, whe- 
 " ther thou and others will believe it or disbelieve. We, not to 
 " be partakers in thy destructive adventure of defying God and 
 " all the Universe, dare not allow thee to continue longer among 
 " us. As a palpable deserter from the ranks where all men, at 
 " their eternal peril, are bound to be: palpable deserter, taken 
 " with the red hand fighting thus against the whole Universe 
 " and its Laws, we send thee back into the whole Universe, 
 " solemnly expel thee from our community; and will, in the 
 " name of God, not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow 
 " stern as thy own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so 
 " end." 
 
 Other ground on which to deliberately slay a disarmed 
 fellow-man I can see none. Example, effects upon the public 
 mind, effects upon this and upon that : all this is mere append- 
 age and accident ; of all this I make no attempt to keep ac- 
 count, sensible that no arithmetic will or can keep account 
 of it; that its 'effects,' on this hand and on that, transcend all 
 calculation. One thing, if I can calculate it, will include all, 
 and produce beneficial effects beyond calculation, and no ill 
 effect at all, anywhere or at any time : What the Law of the 
 Universe, or Law of God, is with regard to this caitiff? That, 
 by all sacred research and consideration, I will try to find out ; 
 to that I will come as near as human means admit ; that shall 
 be my exemplar and ' example ;' all men shall through me see 
 that, and be profited beyond calculation by seeing it. 
 
 What this Law of the Universe, or Law made by God, is ? 
 Men at one time read it in their Bible. In many Bibles, Books, 
 and authentic symbols and monitions of Nature and the Word 
 (of Fact, that is, and of Human Speech, or Wise Interpretation 
 of Fact), there are still clear indications towards it. Most im- 
 portant it is, for this and for some other reasons, that men do, 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 67 
 
 in some way, get to see it a little ! And if no man could now 
 see it by any Bible, there is written in the heart of every man an 
 authentic copy of it direct from Heaven itself: there, if he have 
 learnt to decipher Heaven's writing, and can read the sacred 
 oracles (a sad case for him if he altogether cannot), every born 
 man may still find some copy of it. 
 
 1 Revenge," my friends ! revenge, and the natural hatred of 
 scoundrels, and the ineradicable tendency to revancher oneself 
 upon them, and pay them what they have merited : this is for- 
 evermore intrinsically a correct, and even a divine feeling in 
 the mind of every man. Only the excess of it is diabolic; the 
 essence I say is manlike, and even godlike, a monition sent 
 to poor man by the Maker himself. Thou, poor reader, in spite 
 of all this melancholy twaddle, and blotting-out of Heaven's 
 sunlight by mountains of horsehair and ofHciality, hast still a 
 human heart. If, in returning to thy poor peaceable dwelling- 
 place, after an honest hard day's work, thou wert to find, for 
 example, a brutal scoundrel who for lucre or other object of his, 
 had slaughtered the life that was dearest to thee ; thy true wife, 
 for example, thy true old mother, swimming in her blood ; the 
 human scoundrel, or two-legged wolf, standing over such a tra- 
 gedy : I hope a man would have so much divine rage in his 
 heart as to snatch the nearest weapon, and put a conclusion 
 upon said human wolf, for one ! A palpable messenger of Sa- 
 tan, that one ; accredited by all the Devils, to be put an end 
 to by all the children of God. The soul of every god-created 
 man flames wholly into one divine blaze of sacred wrath at 
 sight of such a Devil's messenger ; authentic first-hand moni- 
 tion from the Eternal Maker himself as to what is next to be 
 done. Do it, or be thyself an ally of Devil' s-messengers ; a 
 sheep for two-legged human wolves, well deserving to be eaten, 
 as thou soon wilt be ! 
 
 My humane friends, I perceive this same sacred glow of 
 divine wrath, or authentic monition at first hand from God him- 
 self, to be the foundation for all Criminal Law, and Official 
 horsehair-and-bombazeen procedure against Scoundrels in this 
 world. This first-hand gospel from the Eternities, imparted to 
 every mortal, this is still, and will forever be, your sanction 
 and commission for the punishment of human scoundrels. See 
 well how you will translate this message from Heaven and the 
 Eternities into a form suitable to this World and its Times. 
 
68 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Let not violence, haste, blind impetuous impulse, preside in 
 executing it ; the injured man, invincibly liable to fall into these, 
 shall not himself execute it : the whole world, in person of a 
 Minister appointed for that end, and surrounded with the due 
 solemnities and caveats, with bailiffs, apparitors, advocates, and 
 the hushed expectation of all men, shall do it, as under the eye 
 of God who made all men. How it shall be done? this is ever 
 a vast question, involving immense considerations. Thus Ed- 
 mund Burke saw, in the Two Houses of Parliament, with King, 
 Constitution, and all manner of Civil-Lists, and Chancellors' 
 wigs and Exchequer budgets, only the ' method of getting twelve 
 just men put into a jury-box :' that, in Burke's view, was the 
 summary of what they were all meant for. How the judge will 
 do it? Yes, indeed: but let him see well that he does do it; 
 for it is a thing that must by no means be left undone ! A 
 sacred gospel from the Highest : not to be smothered under 
 horsehair and bombazeen, or drowned in platform froth, or in 
 anywise omitted or neglected, without the most alarming penal- 
 ties to all concerned! 
 
 Neglect to treat the hero as hero, the penalties, which are 
 inevitable too, and terrible to think of, as your Hebrew friends 
 can tell you, may be some time in coming; they will only 
 gradually come. Not all at once will your Thirty -thousand 
 Needlewomen, your Three -million Paupers, your Connaught 
 fallen into potential Cannibalism, and other fine consequences 
 of the practice, come to light ; though come to light they will ; 
 and " Ou' clo' !" itself may be in store for you, if you persist 
 steadily enough. But neglect to treat even your declared scoun- 
 drel as scoundrel, this is the last consummation of the process, 
 the drop by which the cup runs over ; the penalties of this, 
 most alarming, extensive, and such as you little dream of, will 
 straightway very rapidly come. Dim oblivion of Right and 
 Wrong, among the masses of your population, will come; doubts 
 as to Right and Wrong, indistinct notion that Right and Wrong 
 are not eternal, but accidental, and settled by uncertain votings 
 and talkings, will come. Prurient influenza of Platform Benevo- 
 lence, and 'Paradise to All -and -sundry,' will come. In the 
 general putrescence of your 'religions,' as you call them, a 
 strange new religion, named of Universal Love, with Sacraments 
 mainly of Divorce, with Balzac, Sue and Company for Evan- 
 gelists, and Madame Sand for Virgin, will come, and re- 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 69 
 
 suits fast following therefrom which will astonish you very 
 much! 
 
 'The terrible anarchies of these years,' says Crabbe, in his 
 Radiator, ' are brought upon us by a necessity too visible. By 
 4 the crime of Kings, alas, yes; but by that of Peoples too. 
 
 Not by the crime of one class, but by the fatal obscuration, 
 ' and all but obliteration of the sense of Right and Wrong, in 
 ' the minds and practices of every class. What a scene in the 
 ' drama of Universal History, this of ours ! A world-wide loud 
 ' bellow and bray of universal Misery ; lowing, with crushed 
 ' maddened heart, its inarticulate prayer to Heaven : very par- 
 ' donable to me, and in some of its transcendent developments, 
 ' as in the grand French Revolution, most respectable and 
 ' ever-memorable. For Injustice reigns everywhere ; and this 
 ' murderous struggle for what they call " Fraternity," and so 
 ' forth, has a spice of eternal sense in it, though so terribly dis- 
 ' figured! Amalgam of sense and nonsense; eternal sense by 
 ' the grain, and temporary nonsense by the square mile : as is 
 ' the habit with poor sons of men. Which pardonable amal- 
 ' gam, however, if it be taken as the pure final sense, I must 
 4 warn you and all creatures, is unpardonable, criminal, and 
 ' fatal nonsense; with which I, for one, will take care not to 
 
 concern myself! 
 
 ' Dogs should not be taught to eat leather, says the old adage : 
 ' no ; and where, by general fault and error, and the inevitable 
 ' nemesis of things, the universal kennel is set to diet upon 
 ' leather ; and from its keepers, its " Liberal Premiers," or 
 ' whatever their title is, will accept or expect nothing else, and 
 ' calls it by the pleasant name of progress, reiorm, emancipa- 
 ' tion, abolition-principles, and the like, I consider the fate of 
 
 said kennel and of said keepers to be a thing settled. Red 
 1 republic in Phrygian nightcap, organisation of labour a ia 
 ' Louis Blanc ; street-barricades, and then murderous cannon- 
 1 volleys a la Cavaignac and Windischgratz, follow out of one 
 1 another, as grapes, must, new wine, and sour all-splitting vine- 
 ' gar do: vinegar is but -vin-aigre, or the self-same "wine" 
 ' grown sharp! If, moreover, I find the Worship of Human 
 ' Nobleness abolished in any country, and a new astonishing 
 ' Phallus -Worship, with universal Balzac -Sand melodies and 
 ' litanies in treble and in bass, established in its stead, what 
 ' can I compute but that Nature, in horrible throes, will repugn 
 
7 o LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 1 against such substitution, that, in short, the astonishing new 
 ' Phallus-Worship, with its finer sensibilities of the heart, and 
 "great satisfying loves," with its sacred kiss of peace for 
 4 scoundrel and hero alike, with its all-embracing Brotherhood, 
 ' and universal Sacrament of Divorce, will have to take itself 
 4 away again !' 
 
 The Ancient Germans, it appears, had no scruple about 
 public executions ; on the contrary, they thought the just gods 
 themselves might fitly preside over these ; that these were a so- 
 lemn and highest act of worship, if justly done. When a German 
 man had done a crime deserving death, they, in solemn general 
 assembly of the tribe, doomed him, and considered that Fate 
 and all Nature had from the beginning doomed him, to die 
 with ignominy. Certain crimes there were of a supreme nature; 
 him that had perpetrated one of these, they believed to have 
 declared himself a prince of scoundrels. Him once convicted 
 they laid hold of, nothing doubting; bore him, after judgment, 
 to the deepest convenient Peatbog ; plunged him in there, drove 
 an oaken frame down over him, solemnly in the name of gods 
 and men: "There, prince of scoundrels, that is what we have 
 44 had to think of thee, on clear acquaintance; our grim good- 
 " night to thee is that! In the name of all the gods, lie there, 
 " and be our partnership with thee dissolved henceforth. It 
 44 will be better for us, we imagine!" 
 
 My friends, after all this beautiful whitewash and humanity 
 and prison -discipline; and such blubbering and whimpering, 
 and soft Litany to divine and also to quite other sorts of Pity, 
 as we have had for a century now, give me leave to admonish 
 you that that of the Ancient Germans too was a thing inex- 
 pressibly necessary to keep in mind. If that is not kept in 
 mind, the universal Litany to Pity is a mere universal nuisance, 
 and torpid blasphemy against the gods. I do not much respect 
 it, that purblind blubbering and litanying, as it is seen at pre- 
 sent ; and the litanying over scoundrels I go the length of disre- 
 specting, and in some cases even of detesting. Yes, my friends, 
 scoundrel is scoundrel : that remains for ever a fact ; and there 
 exists not in the earth whitewash that can make the scoundrel 
 a friend of this Universe ; he remains an enemy if you spent 
 your life in whitewashing him. He won't whitewash; this one 
 won't. The one method clearly is, That, after fair trial, you 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 71 
 
 dissolve partnership with him ; send him, in the name of Hea- 
 ven, whither he is striving all this while, and have done with 
 him. And, in a time like this, I would advise you, see likewise 
 that you be speedy about it ! For there is immense work, and 
 flf a far hopefuler sort, to be done elsewhere. 
 
 Alas, alas, to see once the 'prince of scoundrels,' the Su- 
 preme Scoundrel, him whom of all men the gods liked worst, 
 solemnly laid hold of, and hung upon the gallows in sight of 
 the people ; what a lesson to all the people ! Sermons might be 
 preached ; the Son of Thunder and the Mouth of Gold might 
 turn their periods now with some hope ; for here, in the most im- 
 pressive way, is a divine sermon acted. Didactic as no spoken 
 sermon could be. Didactic, devotional too; in awed solem- 
 nity, a recognition that Eternal Justice rules the world ; that 
 at the call of this human pity shall fall silent, and man be stern 
 as his Master and Mandatory is ! Understand too that except 
 upon a basis of even such rigour, sorrowful, silent, inexorable 
 as that of Destiny and Doom, there is no true pity possible. 
 The pity that proves so possible and plentiful without that 
 basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy ; maudlin laxity 
 of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of head contemptible 
 as a drunkard's tears. 
 
 To see our Supreme Scoundrel hung upon the gallows, alas, 
 that is far from us just now ! There is a worst man in England, 
 too, curious to think of, whom it would be inexpressibly ad- 
 vantageous to lay hold of, and hang, the first of all. But we 
 do not know him with the least certainty, the least approach 
 even to a guess, such buzzards and dullards and poor chil- 
 dren of the Dusk are we, in spite of our Statistics, Unshackled 
 Presses, and Torches of Knowledge ; not eagles soaring sun- 
 ward, not brothers of the lightnings and the radiances we ; a 
 dim horn-eyed, owl-population, intent mainly on the catching 
 of mice ! Alas, the supreme scoundrel, alike with the supreme 
 hero, is very far from being known. Nor have we the smallest 
 apparatus for dealing with either of them, if he were known. 
 Our supreme scoundrel sits, 1 conjecture, well -cushioned, in 
 high places, at this time; rolls softly through the world, and 
 lives a prosperous gentleman ; instead of sinking him in peat- 
 bogs, we mount the brazen image of him on high columns : such 
 is the world's temporary judgment about its supreme scoun- 
 
72 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 drels; a mad world, my masters. To get the supreme scoun- 
 drel always accurately the first hanged, this, which presup- 
 poses that the supreme hero were always the first promoted, 
 this were precisely the millennium itself, clear evidence that 
 the millennium had come : alas, we must forbear hope of this. 
 Much water will run-by before we see this. 
 
 And yet to quit all aim towards it ; to go blindly flounder- 
 ing along, wrapt-up in clouds of horsehair, bombazeen, and 
 sheepskin officiality, oblivious that there exists such an aim : 
 this is indeed fatal. In every human law there must either 
 exist such an aim, or else the law is not a human but a dia- 
 bolic one. Diabolic, I say: no quantity of bombazeen, or 
 lawyers' wigs, three-readings, and solemn trumpeting and 
 bow-wowing in high places or in low, can hide from me its 
 frightful infernal tendency; bound, and sinking at all mo- 
 ments gradually to Gehenna, this 'law;' and dragging down 
 much with it! 'To decree injustice by a law: inspired Pro- 
 phets have long since seen, what every clear soul may still 
 see, that of all Anarchies and Devil-worships there is none 
 like this ; that this is the ' Throne of Iniquity' set up in the 
 name of the Highest, the human Apotheosis of Anarchy it- 
 self. "Quiet Anarchy," you exultingly say? Yes; quiet An- 
 archy, which the longer it sits ' quiet' will have the frightfuler 
 account to settle at last. For every doit of the account, as 
 I often say, will have to be settled one day, as sure as God 
 lives. Principal, and compound interest rigorously computed; 
 and the interest is at a terrible rate per cent in these cases ! 
 Alas, the aspect of certain beatified Anarchies, sitting ' quiet ;' 
 and of others in a state of infernal explosion for sixty years 
 back : this, the one view our Europe offers at present, makes 
 these days very sad. 
 
 My unfortunate philanthropic friends, it is this long-con- 
 tinued oblivion of the soul of law that has reduced the Crimi- 
 nal Question to such a pass among us. Many other things 
 have come, and are coming, for the same sad reason, to a 
 pass ! Not the supreme scoundrel have our laws aimed at ; 
 but, in an uncertain fitful manner, at the inferior or lowest 
 scoundrel, who robs shop-tills and puts the skin of mankind 
 in danger. How can Parliament get through the Criminal 
 Question ? Parliament, oblivious of Heavenly Law, will find 
 itself in hopeless reductio ad absurdum in regard to innumer- 
 
No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 73 
 
 able other questions, in regard to all questions whatsoever 
 by and by. There will be no existence possible for Parlia- 
 ment on these current terms. Parliament, in its law-makings, 
 must really try to attain some vision again of what Heaven's 
 Laws are. A thing not easy to do ; a thing requiring sad 
 sincerity of heart, reverence, pious earnestness, valiant man- 
 ful wisdom ; qualities not overabundant in Parliament just 
 now, nor out of it, I fear. 
 
 Adieu, my friends. My anger against you is gone ; my 
 sad reflections on you, and on the depths to which you and 
 I and all of us are sunk in these strange times, are not to be 
 uttered at present. You would have saved the Sarawak Pi- 
 rates, then ? The Almighty Maker is wroth that the Sarawak 
 cutthroats, with their poisoned spears, are away? What must 
 his wrath be that the Thirty-thousand Needlewomen are still 
 here, and the question of ' prevenient grace' not yet settled ! 
 O my friends, in sad earnest, sad and deadly earnest, there 
 much needs that God would mend all this, and that we should 
 help him to mend it ! And don't you think, for one thing, 
 ' Farmer Hodge's horses' in the Sugar Islands are pretty well 
 emancipated' now? My clear opinion farther is, we had 
 better quit the Scoundrel-province of Reform ; better close 
 that under hatches, in some rapid summary manner, and go 
 elsewhither with our Reform efforts. A whole world, for want 
 of Reform, is drowning and sinking ; threatening to swamp 
 itself into a Stygian quagmire, uninhabitable by any noble- 
 minded man. Let us to the well-heads, I say; to the chief 
 fountains of these waters of bitterness ; and there strike home 
 and dig ! To puddle in the embouchures and drowned out- 
 skirts, and ulterior and ultimate issues and cloacas of the af- 
 fair : what profit can there be in that ? Nothing to be saved 
 there ; nothing to be fished-up there, except, with endless 
 peril and spread of pestilence, a miscellany of broken waifs 
 and dead dogs ! In the name of Heaven, quit that 1 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 
 
 [ist April 1850.] 
 
 FROM all corners of the wide British Dominion there rises 
 one complaint against the ineffectuality of what are nicknamed 
 our 'redtape' establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial 
 Office, Foreign Office and the others, in Downing Street and 
 the neighbourhood. To me individually these branches of 
 human business are little known ; but every British citizen 
 and reflective passr-by has occasion to wonder much, and 
 inquire earnestly, concerning them. To all men it is evident 
 that the social interests of One-hundred and fifty Millions of 
 us depend on the mysterious industry there carried on ; and 
 likewise that the dissatisfaction with it is great, universal, and 
 continually increasing in intensity, in fact, mounting, we 
 might say, to the pitch of settled despair. 
 
 Every colony, every agent for a matter colonial, has his 
 tragic tale to tell you of his sad experiences in the Colonial 
 Office ; what blind obstructions, fatal indolences, pedantries, 
 stupidities, on the right and on the left, he had to do battle 
 with ; what a world-wide jungle of redtape, inhabited by dole- 
 ful creatures, deaf or nearly so to human reason or entreaty, 
 he had entered on ; and how he paused in amazement, almost 
 in despair; passionately appealed now to this doleful creature, 
 now to that, and to the dead redtape jungle, and to the living 
 Universe itself, and to the Voices and to the Silences ; and, 
 on the whole, found that it was an adventure, in sorrowful 
 fact, equal to the fabulous ones by old knights-errant against 
 dragons and wizards in enchanted wildernesses and waste 
 howling solitudes ; not achievable except by nearly super- 
 human exercise of all the four cardinal virtues, and unexpected 
 favour of the special blessing of Heaven. His adventure 
 achieved or found unachievable, he has returned with experi- 
 ences new to him in the affairs of men. What this Colonial 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 75 
 
 Office, inhabiting the head of Downing Street, really was, and 
 had to do, or try doing, in God s practical Earth, he could 
 not by any means precisely get to know ; believes that it does 
 not itself in the least precisely know. Believes that nobody 
 knows ; that it is a mystery, a kind of Heathen myth ; and 
 stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon ; 
 for // practically presides over the destinies of many millions 
 of living men. 
 
 Such is his report of the Colonial Office : and if we oftener 
 hear such a report of that than we do of the Home Office, For- 
 eign Office or the rest, the reason probably is, that Colonies 
 excite more attention at present than any of our other inter- 
 ests. The Forty Colonies, it appears, are all pretty like re- 
 belling just now; and are to be pacified with constitutions ; 
 luckier constitutions, let us hope, than some late ones have 
 been. Loyal Canada, for instance, had to quench a rebellion 
 the other year ; and this year, in virtue of its constitution, it 
 is called upon to pay the rebels their damages ; which surely 
 is a rather surprising result, however constitutional ! Men 
 have rents and moneys dependent in the Colonies ; Emigra- 
 tion schemes, Black Emancipations, New-Zealand and other 
 schemes ; and feel and publish more emphatically what their 
 Downing-Street woes in these respects have been. 
 
 Were the state of poor sallow English ploughers and weav- 
 ers, what we may call the Sallow or Yellow Emancipation in- 
 terest, as much an object with Exeter-Hall Philanthropists as 
 that of the Black blockheads now all emancipated, and going 
 at large without work, or need of working, in West-India clover 
 (and fattening very much in it, one delights to hear), then 
 perhaps the Home Office, its huge virtual task better under- 
 stood, and its small actual performance better seen into, might 
 be found still more deficient, and behind the wants of the age, 
 than the Colonial itself is. 
 
 How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less 
 knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances 
 of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with 
 big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, 
 and in the air making horrid circles (horrid Catherine-wheels 
 and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to 
 see how they will like it, do from time to time astonish the 
 world, in a not pleasant manner. Hercules-Harlequin, the 
 
7 6 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody: none of these 
 are parts this Nation has a turn for ; she, if you consulted 
 her, would rather not play these parts, but another ! Seizures 
 of Sapienza, correspondences with Sotomayor, remonstrances 
 to Otho King of Athens, fleets hanging by their anchor in be- 
 half of the Majesty of Portugal ; and in short the whole, or 
 at present very nearly the whole, of that industry of proto- 
 colling, diplomatising, remonstrating, admonishing, and 'hav- 
 ing the honour to be,' has sunk justly in public estimation 
 to a very low figure. 
 
 For in fact, it is reasonably asked, What vital interest has 
 England in any cause now deciding itself in foreign parts ? 
 Once there was a Papistry and Protestantism, important as 
 life eternal and death eternal ; more lately there was an in- 
 terest of Civil Order and Horrors of the French Revolution, 
 important at least as rent-roll and preservation of the game ; 
 but now what is there ? No cause in which any god or man 
 of this British Nation can be thought to be concerned. Sham- 
 kingship, now recognised and even self-recognised everywhere 
 to be sham, wrestles and struggles with mere ballot-box An- 
 archy: not a pleasant spectacle to British minds. Both par- 
 ties in the wrestle professing earnest wishes of peace to us, 
 what have we to do with it except answer earnestly, " Peace, 
 yes certainly," and mind our affairs elsewhere. The British 
 Nation has no concern with that indispensable sorrowful and 
 shameful wrestle now going on everywhere in foreign parts. 
 The British Nation already, by self-experience centuries old, 
 understands all that ; was lucky enough to transact the greater 
 part of that, in noble ancient ages, while the wrestle had not 
 yet become a shameful one, but on both sides of it there was 
 wisdom, virtue, heroic nobleness fruitful to all time, thrice- 
 lucky British Nation ! The British Nation, I say, has nothing 
 to learn there ; has now quite another set of lessons to learn, 
 far ahead 01 what is going on there. Sad example there, of 
 what the issue is, and how inevitable and how imminent, 
 might admonish the British Nation to be speedy with its new 
 lessons ; to bestir itself, as men in peril of conflagration do, 
 with the neighbouring houses all on fire ! To obtain, for its 
 own very pressing behoof, if by possibility it could, some real 
 Captaincy instead of an imaginary one : to remove resolutely, 
 and replace by a better sort, its own peculiar species 01 teach- 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 77 
 
 ing and guiding histrios of various name, who here too are 
 numerous exceedingly, and much in need of gentle removal, 
 while the play is still good, and the comedy has not yet be- 
 come tragic j and to be a little swift about it withal ; and 
 so to escape the otherwise inevitable evil day ! This Britain 
 might learn: but she does not need a protocoling estab- 
 lishment, with much ' having the honour to be,' to teach it 
 her. 
 
 No : she has in fact certain cottons, hardwares and such- 
 like to sell in foreign parts, and certain wines, Portugal oranges, 
 Baltic tar and other products to buy ; and does need, I sup- 
 pose, some kind of Consul, or accredited agent, accessible to 
 British voyagers, here and there, in the chief cities of the Con- 
 tinent : through which functionary, or through the penny-post, 
 if she had any specific message to foreign courts, it would be 
 easy and proper to transmit the same. Special message-car- 
 riers, to be still called Ambassadors, if the name gratified 
 them, could be sent when occasion great enough demanded ; 
 not sent when it did not. But for all purposes of a resident 
 ambassador, I hear persons extensively and well acquainted 
 among our foreign embassies at this date declare, That a well- 
 selected Times reporter or ' own correspondent' ordered to re- 
 side in foreign capitals, and keep his eyes open, and (though 
 sparingly) his pen going, would in reality be much more effec- 
 tive ; and surely we see well, he would come a good deal 
 cheaper ! Considerably cheaper in expense of money ; and in 
 expense of falsity and grimacing hypocrisy (of which no human 
 arithmetic can count the ultimate cost] incalculably cheaper ! If 
 this is the fact, why not treat it as such ? If this is so in any 
 measure, we had better in that measure admit it to be so ! 
 The time, I believe, has come for asking with considerable 
 severity, How far is it so ? Nay there are men now current 
 in political society, men of weight though also of wit, who have 
 been heard to say, " That there was but one reform for the 
 Foreign Office, to set a live coal under it," and with, of 
 course, a fire-brigade which could prevent the undue spread 
 of the devouring element into neighbouring houses, let that 
 reform it ! In such odour is the Foreign Office too, if it were 
 not that the Public, oppressed and nearly stifled with a mere 
 infinitude of bad odours, neglects this one, in fact, being able 
 nearly always to avoid the street where it is, escapes this one. 
 
78 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and (except a passing curse, once in the quarter or so) as 
 good as forgets the existence of it. 
 
 Such, from sad personal experience and credited prevailing 
 rumour, is the exoteric public conviction about these sublime 
 establishments in Downing Street and the neighbourhood, 
 the esoteric mysteries of which are indeed still held sacred 
 by the initiated, but believed by the world to be mere Dalai- 
 Lama pills, manufactured let not refined lips hint how, and 
 quite wwsalvatory to mankind. Every one may remark what 
 a hope animates the eyes of any circle, when it is reported or 
 even confidently asserted, that Sir Robert Peel has in his mind 
 privately resolved to go, one day, into that stable of King 
 Augias, which appals human hearts, so rich is it, high-piled 
 with the droppings of two hundred years ; and Hercules-like 
 to load a thousand night-wagons from it, and turn running 
 water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it 
 till the antique pavement, and real basis of the matter, show 
 itself clean again ! In any intelligent circle such a rumour, 
 like the first break of day to men in darkness, enlightens all 
 eyes; and each says devoutly, "Faxitis, O ye righteous Powers 
 " that have pity on us ! All England grateful, with kindling 
 " looks, will rise in the rear of him, and from its deepest heart 
 " bid him good speed !" 
 
 For it is universally felt that some esoteric man, well ac- 
 quainted with the mysteries and properties good and evil of 
 the administrative stable, is the fittest to reform it, nay can 
 alone reform it otherwise than by sheer violence and destruc- 
 tion, which is a way we would avoid ; that in fact Sir Robert 
 Peel is, at present, the one likely or possible man to reform 
 it. And secondly it is felt that 'reform' in that Downing- 
 Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were 
 worth all others ; that those administrative establishments in 
 Downing Street are really the Government of this huge un- 
 governed Empire ; that to clean-out the dead pedantries, un- 
 veracities, indolent somnolent impotences, and accumulated 
 dung-mountains there, is the beginning of all practical good 
 whatsoever. Yes, get down once again to the actual pavement 
 of that ; ascertain what the thing is, and was before dung ac- 
 cumulated in it ; and what it should and may, and must, for 
 the life's sake of this Empire, henceforth become : here clearly 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 79 
 
 lies the heart of the whole matter. Political reform, if this be 
 not reformed, is naught and a mere mockery. 
 
 What England wants, and will require to have, or sink in 
 nameless anarchies, is not a Reformed Parliament, meaning 
 thereby a Parliament elected according to the six or the four 
 or any other number of ' points' and cunningly-devised im- 
 provements in hustings mechanism, but a Reformed Executive 
 or Sovereign Body of Rulers and Administrators, some im- 
 proved method, innumerable improvements in our poor blind 
 methods, of getting hold of these. Not a better Talking- Ap- 
 paratus, the best conceivable Talking-Apparatus would do very 
 little for us at present ; but an infinitely better Acting-Ap- 
 paratus, the benefits of which would be invaluable now and 
 henceforth. The practical question puts itself with ever-in- 
 creasing stringency to all English minds: Can we, by no in- 
 dustry, energy, utmost expenditure of human ingenuity, and 
 passionate invocation of the Heavens and the Earth, get to 
 attain some twelve or ten or six men to manage the affairs of 
 this nation in Downing Street and the chief posts elsewhere, 
 who are abler for the work than those we have been used to, 
 this long while ? For it is really a heroic work, and cannot 
 be done by histrios, and dextrous talkers having the honour 
 to be : it is a heavy and appalling work ; and, at the starting 
 of it especially, will require Herculean men ; such mountains 
 of pedant exuviae and obscene owl-droppings have accumulated 
 in those regions, long the habitation of doleful creatures ; the 
 old pavements, the natural facts and real essential functions of 
 those establishments, have not been seen by eyes for these 
 two-hundred years last past ! Herculean men acquainted with 
 the virtues of running water, and with the divine necessity of 
 getting down to the clear pavements and old veracities ; who 
 tremble before no amount of pedant exuviae, no loudest shriek- 
 ing of doleful creatures ; who tremble only to live, themselves, 
 like inane phantasms, and to leave their life as a paltry con- 
 tribution to the guano mountains, and not as a divine eternal 
 protest against them ! 
 
 These are the kind of men we want ; these, the nearest 
 possible approximation to these, are the men we must find and 
 have, or go bankrupt altogether ; for the concern as it is will 
 evidently not hold long together. How true is this of Crabbe : 
 1 Men sit in Parliament eighty-three hours per week, debating 
 
8o LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ' about many things. Men sit in Downing Street, doing pro- 
 ' tocols, Syrian treaties, Greek questions, Portuguese, Spanish, 
 French, Egyptian and ^Ethiopian questions ; dextrously writ- 
 ' ing despatches, and having the honour to be. Not a ques- 
 ' tion of them is at all pressing in comparison with the English 
 ' question. Pacifico the miraculous Gibraltar Jew has been 
 ' hustled by some populace in Greece : upon him let the Brit- 
 ' ish Lion drop, very rapidly indeed, a constitutional tear. 
 ' Radetzky is said to be advancing upon Milan ; I am sorry 
 ' to hear it, and perhaps it does deserve a despatch, or friendly 
 ' letter, once and away: but the Irish Giant, named of Despair, 
 1 is advancing upon London itself, laying waste all English 
 ' cities, towns and villages ; that is the interesting Govern- 
 ' ment-despatch of the day ! I notice him in Piccadilly, blue- 
 ' visaged, thatched in rags, a blue child on each arm ; hunger- 
 ' driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom he may devour : he, 
 4 missioned by the just Heavens, too truly and too sadly their 
 1 " divine missionary" come at last in this authoritative man- 
 ' ner, will throw us all into Doubting Castle, I perceive ! That 
 ' is the phenomenon worth protocoling about, and writing des- 
 ' patches upon, and thinking of with all one's faculty day and 
 ' night, if one wishes to have the honour to be anything but 
 ' a Phantasm Governor of England just now ! I entreat your 
 ' Lordship's ail-but undivided attention to that Domestic Irish 
 ' Giant, named of Despair, for a great many years to come. 
 1 Prophecy of him there has long been ; but now by the rot 
 ' of the potato (blessed be the just gods, who send us either 
 ' swift death or some beginning of cure at last !), he is here in 
 ' person, and there is no denying him, or disregarding him any 
 ' more ; and woe to the public watchman that ignores him, and 
 ' sees Pacifico the Gibraltar Jew instead !' 
 
 What these strange Entities in Downing Street intrinsic- 
 ally are ; who made them, why they were made ; how they do 
 their function ; and what their function, so huge in appearance, 
 may in net-result amount to, is probably known to no mortal. 
 The unofficial mind passes by in dark wonder ; not pretend- 
 ing to know. The official mind must not blab ; the official 
 mind, restricted to its own square foot of territory in the vast 
 labyrinth, is probably itself dark, and unable to blab. We see 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 81 
 
 the outcome ; the mechanism we do not see. How the tailors 
 clip and sew, in that sublime sweating establishment of theirs 
 we know not : that the coat they bring us out is the sorrow- 
 fulest fantastic mockery of a coat, a mere intricate artistic net- 
 work of traditions and formalities, an embroiled reticulation 
 made of web-listings and superannuated thrums and tatters, 
 endurable to no grown Nation as a coat, is mournfully clear ! 
 Two kinds of fundamental error are supposable in such a 
 set of Offices ; these two, acting and reacting, are the vice of 
 all inefficient Offices whatever. First, that the work, such as 
 it may be, is ill-done in these establishments. That it is de- 
 layed, neglected, slurred over, committed to hands that cannot 
 do it well ; that, in a word, the questions sent thither are not 
 wisely handled, but unwisely ; not decided truly and rapidly, 
 but with delays and wrong at last : which is the principal cha- 
 racter, and the infallible result, of an insufficient Intellect being 
 set to decide them. Or second, what is still fataler, the work 
 done there may itself be quite the wrong kind of work. Not 
 the kind of supervision and direction which Colonies, and other 
 such interests, Home or Foreign, do by the nature of them re- 
 quire from the Central Government ; not that, but a quite other 
 kind ! The Sotomayor correspondence, for example, is con- 
 sidered by many persons not to be mismanaged merely, but to 
 be a. thing which should never have been managed at all ; a 
 quite superfluous concern, which and the like of which the Brit- 
 ish Government has almost no call to get into, at this new 
 epoch of time. And not Sotomayor only, nor Sapienza only, 
 in regard to that Foreign Office, but innumerable other things, 
 if our witty friend of the ' live coal' have reason in him ! Of 
 the Colonial Office, too, it is urged that the questions they de- 
 cide and operate upon are, in very great part, questions which 
 they never should have meddled with, but almost all of which 
 should have been decided in the Colonies themselves, Mother 
 Country or Colonial Office reserving its energy for a quite other 
 class of objects, which are terribly neglected just now. 
 
 These are the two vices that beset Government Offices ; 
 both of them originating in insufficient Intellect, that sad in- 
 sufficiency from which, directly or indirectly, all evil whatso- 
 ever springs ! And these two vices act and react, so that where 
 the one is, the other is sure to be ; and each encouraging the 
 growth of the other, both (if some cleaning of the Augias stable 
 
 G 
 
83 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 have not intervened for a long while) will be found in frightful 
 development. You cannot have your work well done, if the 
 work be not of the right kind, if it be not work prescribed by 
 the law of Nature as well as by the rules of the office. Lazi- 
 ness, which lies in wait rdund all human labour-offices, will in 
 that case infallibly leak in, and vitiate the doing of the work. 
 The work is but idle ; if the doing of it will but pass, what need 
 of more ? The essential problem, as the rules of office prescribe 
 it for you, if Nature and Fact say nothing, is that your work be 
 got to pass ; if the work itself is worth nothing, or little or an 
 uncertain quantity, what more can gods or men require of it, 
 or, above all, can I who am the doer of it require, but that it 
 be got to pass ? 
 
 And now enters another fatal effect, the mother of ever-new 
 mischiefs, which renders well-doing or improvement impossible, 
 and drives bad everywhere continually into worse. The work 
 being what we see, a stupid subaltern will do as well as a gifted 
 one ; the essential point is, that he be a quiet one, and do not 
 bother me who have the driving of him. Nay, for this latter 
 object, is not a certain height of intelligence even dangerous ? 
 I want no mettled Arab horse, with his flashing glances, arched 
 neck and elastic step, to draw my wretched sand-cart through 
 the streets ; a broken, grassfed galloway, Irish garron, or pain- 
 ful ass with nothing in the belly of him but patience and furze, 
 will do it safelier for me, if more slowly. Nay I myself, am I 
 the worse for being of a feeble order of intelligence ; what the 
 irreverent speculative world calls barren, redtapish, limited, and 
 even intrinsically dark and small, and if it must be said, stu- 
 pid ? To such a climax does it come in all Government and 
 other Offices, where Human Stupidity has once introduced it- 
 self (as it will everywhere do), and no Scavenger God inter- 
 venes. The work, at first of some worth, is ill done, and 
 becomes of less worth and of ever less, and finally of none : 
 the worthless work can now affbrdto be ill done ; and Human 
 Stupidity, at a double geometrical ratio, -with frightful expan- 
 sion grows and accumulates, towards the unendurable. 
 
 The reforming Hercules, Sir Robert Peel or whoever he is 
 to be, that enters Downing Street, will ask himself this question 
 first of all, What work is now necessary, not in form and by 
 traditionary use and wont, but in very fact, for the vital inter- 
 ests of the British Nation, to be done here ? The second ques- 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 83 
 
 tion, How to get it well done, and to keep the best hands doing 
 it well, will be greatly simplified by a good answer to that. O 
 for an eye that could see in those hideous mazes, and a heart 
 that could dare and do ! Strenuous faithful scrutiny, not of 
 what is thought to be what in the redtape regions, but of what 
 really is what in the realms of Fact and Nature herself ; deep- 
 seeing, wise and courageous eyes, that could look through in- 
 numerable cobweb veils, and detect what fact or no-fact lies at 
 heart of them, how invaluable these ! For, alas, it is long 
 since such eyes were much in the habit of looking steadfastly 
 at any department of our affairs ; and poor commonplace crea- 
 tures, helping themselves along, in the way of makeshift, from 
 year to year, in such an element, do wonderful works indeed. 
 Such creatures, like moles, are safe only underground, and 
 their engineerings there become very da^dalean. In fact, such 
 unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we 
 call Pedants ; to ensconce themselves in a safe world of habi- 
 tudes, of applicable or inapplicable traditions ; not coveting, 
 rather avoiding the general daylight of common-sense, as very 
 extraneous to them and their procedure ; by long persistence 
 in which course they become Completed Pedants, hide-bound, 
 impenetrable, able to defy the hostile extraneous element : an 
 alarming kind of men. Such men, left to themselves for a cen- 
 tury or two, in any Colonial, Foreign, or other Office, will make 
 a terrible affair of it ! 
 
 For the one enemy we have in this Universe is Stupidity, 
 Darkness of Mind ; of which darkness, again, there are many 
 sources, every sin a source, and probably self-conceit the chief 
 source. Darkness of mind, in every kind and variety, does to 
 a really tragic extent abound : but of all the kinds of darkness, 
 surely the Pedant darkness, which asserts and believes itself to 
 be light, is the most formidable to mankind ! For empires or 
 for individuals there is but one class of men to be trembled at ; 
 and that is the Stupid Class, the class that cannot see, who 
 alas are they mainly that will not see. A class of mortals under 
 which as administrators, kings, priests, diplomatists, &c., the 
 interests of mankind in every European country have sunk 
 overloaded, as under universal nightmare, near to extinction ; 
 and indeed are at this moment convulsively writhing, decided 
 either to throw off the unblessed superincumbent nightmare, or 
 roll themselves and it to the Abyss. Vain to reform Parliament, 
 
84 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 to invent ballot-boxes, to reform this or that ; the real Adminis- 
 tration, practical Management of the Commonwealth, goes all 
 awry ; choked-up with long-accumulated pedantries, so that 
 your appointed workers have been reduced to work as moles ; 
 and it is one vast boring and counterboring, on the part of 
 eyeless persons irreverently called stupid ; and a dasdalean be- 
 wilderment, writing 'impossible' on all efforts or proposals, 
 supervenes. 
 
 The State itself, not in Downing Street alone but in every 
 department of it, has altered much from what it was in past 
 times ; and it will again have to alter very much, to alter I 
 think from top to bottom, if it means to continue existing in the 
 times that are now coming and come ! 
 
 The State, left to shape itself by dim pedantries and tradi- 
 tions, without distinctness of conviction, or purpose beyond that 
 of helping itself over the difficulty of the hour, has become, in- 
 stead of a luminous vitality permeating with its light all pro- 
 vinces of our affairs, a most monstrous agglomerate of inanities, 
 as little adapted for the actual wants of a modern community 
 as the worst citizen need wish. The thing it is doing is by no 
 means the thing we want to have done. What we want ! Let 
 the dullest British man endeavour to raise in his mind this 
 question, and ask himself in sincerity what the British Nation 
 wants at this time. Is it to have, with endless jargoning, de- 
 bating, motioning and counter-motioning, a settlement affected 
 between the Honourable Mr. This and the Honourable Mr. 
 That, as to their respective pretensions to ride the high horse ? 
 Really it is unimportant which of them ride it. Going upon 
 past experience long continued now, I should say with brevity, 
 "Either of them Neither of them." If our Government is 
 to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers 
 it ? Fling an orange-skin into St. James's Street ; let the man 
 it hits be your man. He, if you breed him a little to it, and 
 tie the due official bladders to his ankles, will do as well as 
 another this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the 
 vortexes, with the long loaded-pole in his hands ; and will, with 
 straddling painful gestures, float hither and thither, walking the 
 waters in that singular manner for a little while, as well as his 
 foregoers did, till he also capsize, and be left floating feet up- 
 permost ; after which you choose another. 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 85 
 
 What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering 
 in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that ! 
 I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can 
 learn to discharge it : fling out your orange-skin again ; and 
 save an incalculable labour, and an emission of nonsense and 
 falsity, and electioneering beer and bribery and balderdash, 
 which is terrible to think of, in deciding. Your National Par- 
 liament, in so far as it has only that question to decide, may 
 be considered as an enormous National Palaver existing mainly 
 for imaginary purposes ; and certain, in these days of abbre- 
 viated labour, to get itself sent home again to its partridge- 
 shootings, fox-huntings, and above all, to its rat-catchings, if 
 it could but understand the time of day, and know (as our 
 indignant Crabbe remarks) that ' the real Nimrod of this era, 
 who alone does any good to the era, is the rat-catcher ! ' 
 
 The notion that any Government is or can be a No-Govern- 
 ment, without the deadliest peril to all noble interests of the 
 Commonwealth, and by degrees slower or swifter to all ignoble 
 ones also, and to the very gullydrains, and thief lodging-houses, 
 and Mosaic sweating establishments, and at last without de- 
 struction to such No-Government itself, was never my notion : 
 and I hope it will soon cease altogether to be the world's or to 
 be anybody's. But if it be the correct notion, as the world 
 seems at present to natter itself, I point out improvements and 
 abbreviations. Dismiss your National Palaver ; make the Times 
 Newspaper your National Palaver, which needs no beer-barrels 
 or hustings, and is cheaper in expense of money and of falsity 
 a thousand and a million fold ; have an economical redtape 
 drilling establishment (it were easier to devise such a thing than 
 a right Modern University] ; and fling out your orange-skin 
 among the graduates, when you want a new Premier. 
 
 A mighty question indeed ! Who shall be Premier, and 
 take in hand the ' rudder of government,' otherwise called the 
 'spigot of taxation ;' shall it be the Honourable Felix Parvulus, 
 or the Right Honourable Felicissimus Zero ? By our election- 
 eerings and Hansard Debatings, and ever-enduring tempest of 
 jargon that goes on everywhere, we manage to settle that ; to 
 have it declared, with no bloodshed except insignificant blood 
 from the nose in hustings-time, but with immense beershed and 
 inkshed and explosion of nonsense, which darkens all the air, 
 that the Right Honourable Zero is to be the man. That we 
 
86 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 firmly settle ; Zero, all shivering with rapture and with terror, 
 mounts into the high saddle ; cramps himself on, with knees, 
 heels, hands and feet ; and the horse gallops whither it lists. 
 That the Right Honourable Zero should attempt controlling the 
 horse Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too 
 happy if the horse will only gallop anywhither, and not throw 
 him. Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, 
 is not in the head of Felicissimus ; except, if he could but de- 
 vise it, some measure that would please his horse for the mo- 
 ment, and encourage him to go with softer paces, godward or 
 devilward as it might be, and save Felicissimus's leather, which 
 is fast wearing. This is what we call a Government in Eng- 
 land, for nearly two centuries now. 
 
 I wish Felicissimus were saddle-sick forever and a day ! 
 He is a dreadful object, however much we are. used to him. 
 If the horse had not been bred and broken in, for a thousand 
 years, by real riders and horse-subduers, perhaps the best and 
 bravest the world ever saw, what would have become of Feli- 
 cissimus and him long since ? This horse, by second-nature, 
 religiously respects all fences ; gallops, if never so madly, on 
 the highways alone ; seems to me, of late, like a desperate 
 Sleswick thunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the 
 labyrinthic lanes of a woody flat country ; passionate to reach 
 his goal ; unable to reach it, because in the flat leafy lanes 
 there is no outlook whatever, and in the bridle there is no 
 guidance whatever. So he gallops stormfully along, thinking 
 it is forward and forward ; and alas, it is only round and round, 
 out of one old lane into the other ; nay (according to some) 
 ' he mistakes his own footprints, which of course grow ever 
 ' more numerous, for the sign of a more and more frequented 
 ' road ;' and his despair is hourly increasing. My impression 
 is, he is certain soon, such is the growth of his necessity and 
 his despair, to plunge across the fence, into an opener survey 
 of the country ; and to sweep Felicissimus off his back, and 
 comb him away very tragically in the process ! Poor Sles- 
 wicker, I wish you were better ridden. I perceive it lies in the 
 Fates you must now either be better ridden, or else not long 
 at all. This plunging in the heavy labyrinth of over-shaded 
 lanes, with one's stomach getting empty, one's Ireland falling 
 into cannibalism, and no vestige of a goal either visible or 
 possible, cannot last. 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 3? 
 
 Colonial Offices, Foreign, Home and other Offices, got to- 
 gether under these strange circumstances, cannot well be ex- 
 pected to be the best that human ingenuity could devise; the 
 wonder rather is to see them so good as they are. Who made 
 them, ask me not. Made they clearly were ; for we see them 
 here in a concrete condition, writing despatches, and drawing 
 salary with a view to buy pudding. But how those Offices in 
 Downing Street were made ; who made them, or for what kind 
 of objects they were made, would be hard to say at present. 
 Dim visions and phantasmagories gathered from the Books of 
 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of Bubb Doddington, Memoirs of 
 my Lady Sundon, Lord Fanny Hervey, and innumerable others, 
 rise on us, beckoning fantastically towards, not an answer, but 
 some conceivable intimations of an answer, and proclaiming 
 very legibly the old text, 'Quam parvA sapientid,' in respect of 
 this hard-working much-subduing British Nation ; giving rise 
 to endless reflections in a thinking Englishman of this day. 
 Alas, it is ever so : each generation has its task, and does it 
 better or worse ; greatly neglecting what is not immediately its 
 task. Our poor grandfathers, so busy conquering Indias, found- 
 ing Colonies, inventing spinning-jennies, kindling Lancashires 
 and Bromwichams, took no thought about the government of 
 all that ; left it all to be governed by Lord Fanny and the 
 Hanover Succession, or how the gods pleased. And now we 
 the poor grandchildren find that it will not stick together on 
 these terms any longer ; that our sad, dangerous and sore task 
 is to discover some government for this b'ig world which has 
 been conquered to us ; that the redtape Offices in Downing 
 Street are near the end of their rope ; that if we can get no- 
 thing better, in the way of government, it is all over with our 
 world and us. How the Downing-Street Offices originated, 
 and what the meaning of them was or is, let Dryasdust, when 
 in some lucid moment the whim takes him, instruct us. Enough 
 for us to know and see clearly, with urgent practical inference 
 derived from such insight, That they were not made for us or 
 for our objects at all ; that the devouring Irish Giant is here, 
 and that he cannot be fed with redtape, and will eat us ii we 
 cannot feed him. 
 
 On the whole, let us say Felicissimus made them ; or 
 rather it was the predecessors of Felicissimus, who were not so 
 dreadfully hunted, sticking to the wild and ever more desperate 
 
88 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Sleswicker in the leafy labyrinth of lanes, as he now is. He. 
 I think, will never make anything ; but be combed off by the 
 elm-boughs, and left sprawling in the ditch. But in past time, 
 this and the other heavy-laden redtape soul had withal a glow 
 of patriotism in him ; now and then, in his whirling element, a 
 gleam of human ingenuity, some eye towards business that 
 must be done. At all events, for him and every one, Parlia- 
 ment needed to be persuaded that business was done. By 
 the contributions of many such heavy-laden souls, driven on 
 by necessity outward and inward, these singular Establish- 
 ments are here. Contributions who knows how far back 
 they go, far beyond the reign of George the Second, or per- 
 haps the reign of William Conqueror. Noble and genuine 
 some of them were, many of them were, I need not doubt : 
 for there is no human edifice that stands long but has got it- 
 self planted, here and there, upon the basis of fact ; and being 
 built, in many respects, according to the laws of statics : no 
 standing edifice, especially no edifice of State, but has had 
 the wise and brave at work in it, contributing their lives to it ; 
 and is 'cemented,' whether it know the fact or not, 'by the 
 blood of heroes ! ' None ; not even the Foreign Office, Home 
 Office, still less the National Palaver itself. William Con- 
 queror, I find, must have had a first-rate Home Office, for his 
 share. The Domesday Book, done in four years, and done as 
 it is, with such an admirable brevity, explicitness and com- 
 pleteness, testifies emphatically what kind of under-secretaries 
 and officials William had. Silent officials and secretaries, I 
 suppose ; not wasting themselves in parliamentary talk ; reserv- 
 ing all their intelligence for silent survey of the huge dumb 
 fact, silent consideration how they might compass the mastery 
 of that. Happy secretaries, happy William ! 
 
 But indeed nobody knows what inarticulate traditions, 
 remnants of old wisdom, priceless though quite anonymous, 
 survive in many modern things that still have life in them. 
 Ben Brace, with his taciturnities, and rugged stoical ways, with 
 his tarry breeches, stiff as plank-breeches, I perceive is still a 
 kind of Lod-brog (Loaded-breeks) in more senses than one ; 
 and derives, little conscious of it, many of his excellences from 
 the old Seakings and Saxon Pirates themselves ; and how many 
 Blakes and Nelsons since have contributed to Ben ! " Things 
 "are not so false always as they seem," said a certain Pro- 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 89 
 
 fessor to me once : " of this you will find instances in every 
 " country, and in your England more than any and I hope 
 " will draw lessons from them. An English Seventy-four, if 
 " you look merely at the articulate law and methods of it, is 
 " one of the impossiblest entities. The captain is appointed 
 " not by preeminent merit in sailorship, but by parliamentary 
 " connexion ; the men " (this was spoken some years ago) " are 
 " got by impressment ; a press-gang goes out, knocks men 
 " down on the streets of sea-towns, and drags them on board, 
 " if the ship were to be stranded, I have heard they would 
 " nearly all run ashore and desert. Can anything be more un- 
 " reasonable than a Seventy-four ? Articulately almost nothing. 
 " But it has inarticulate traditions, ancient methods and habi- 
 *' tudes in it, stoicisms, noblenesses, true rules both of sailing 
 " and of conduct ; enough to keep it afloat on Nature's veridi- 
 " cal bosom, after all. See ; if you bid it sail to the end of 
 " the world, it will lift anchor, go, and arrive. The raging 
 " oceans do not beat it back ; it too, as well as the raging 
 " oceans, has a relationship to Nature, and it does not sink, 
 " but under the due conditions is borne along. If it meet with 
 " hurricanes, it rides them out ; if it meet an Enemy's ship, it 
 " shivers it to powder ; and in short, it holds on its way, and 
 " to a wonderful extent does what it means and pretends to do. 
 " Assure yourself, my friend, there is an immense fund of truth 
 " somewhere or other stowed in that Seventy-four." 
 
 More important than the past history of these Offices in 
 Downing Street, is the question of their future history ; the 
 question, How they are to be got mended ! Truly an immense 
 problem, inclusive of all others whatsoever ; which demands to 
 be attacked, and incessantly persisted in, by all good citizens, 
 as the grand problem of Society, and the one thing needful 
 for the Commonwealth ! A problem in which all men, with 
 all their wisdoms and all their virtues, faithfully and continually 
 cooperating at it, will never have done enough, and will still 
 only be struggling towards perfection in it. In which some 
 men can do much ; in which every man can do something. 
 Every man, and thou my present Reader canst do this : Be 
 thyself a man abler to be governed ; more reverencing the di- 
 vine faculty of governing, more sacredly detesting the diaboli- 
 cal semblance of said faculty in self and others ; so shalt thou, 
 
go LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 if not govern, yet actually according to thy strength assist in 
 real governing. And know always, and even lay to heart with 
 a quite unusual solemnity, with a seriousness altogether of a 
 religious nature, that as ' Human Stupidity' is verily the ac- 
 cursed parent of all this mischief, so Human Intelligence alone, 
 to which and to which only is victory and blessedness appointed 
 here below, will or can cure it. If we knew this as devoutly 
 as we ought to do, the evil, and all other evils were curable ; 
 alas, if we had from of old known this, as all men made in 
 God's image ought to do, the evil never would have been ! 
 Perhaps few Nations have ever known it less than we, for a 
 good while back, have done. Hence these sorrows. 
 
 What a people are the poor Thibet idolaters, compared with 
 us and our 'religions,' which issue in the worship of King Hud- 
 son as our Dalai-Lama ! They, across such hulls of abject ig- 
 norance, have seen into the heart of the matter ; we, with our 
 torches of knowledge everywhere brandishing themselves, and 
 such a human enlightenment as never was before, have quite 
 missed it. Reverence for Human Worth, earnest devout search 
 for it and encouragement of it, loyal furtherance and obedience 
 to it : this, I say, is the outcome and essence of all true ' reli- 
 gions,' and was and ever will be. We have not known this. 
 No ; loud as our tongues sometimes go in that direction, we 
 have no true reverence for Human Intelligence, for Human 
 Worth and Wisdom : none, or too little, and I pray for a 
 restoration of such reverence, as for the change from Stygian 
 darkness to Heavenly light, as for the return of life to poor sick 
 moribund Society and all its interests. Human Intelligence 
 means little for most of us but Beaver Contrivance, which pro- 
 duces spinning mules, cheap cotton, and large fortunes. Wis- 
 dom, unless it give us railway scrip, -is not wise. 
 
 True nevertheless it forever remains that Intellect is the 
 real object of reverence, and of devout prayer, and zealous wish 
 and pursuit, among the sons of men ; and even, well under- 
 stood, the one object. It is the Inspiration of the Almighty 
 that giveth men understanding. For it must be repeated, and 
 ever again repeated till poor mortals get to discern it, and 
 awake from their baleful paralysis, and degradation under foul 
 enchantments, That a man of Intellect, of real and not sham 
 Intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of 
 nobleness, a man of courage, rectitude, pious strength; who, 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 91 
 
 even because he is and has been loyal to the Laws of this Uni- 
 verse, is initiated into discernment of the same; to this hour a 
 Missioned of Heaven; whom if men follow, it will be well with 
 them; whom if men do not follow, it will not be well. Human 
 Intellect, if you consider it well, is the exact summary of Hu- 
 man Worth; and the essence of all worth-ships and worships 
 is reverence for that same. This much surprises you, friend 
 Peter ; but I assure you it is the fact ; and I would advise you 
 to consider it, and to try if you too do not gradually find it so. 
 With me it has long been an article, not of ' faith' only, but of 
 settled insight, of conviction as to what the ordainments of the 
 Maker in this Universe are. Ah, could you and the rest of us 
 but get to know it, and everywhere religiously act upon it, as 
 our Fortieth Article, which includes all the other Thirty-nine, 
 and without which the Thirty-nine are good for almost nothing, 
 there might then be some hop.; for us! In this world there 
 is but one appalling creature : the Stupid man considered to be 
 the Missioned of Heaven, and followed by men. He is our 
 King, men say, he ; and they follow him, through straight or 
 winding courses, I for one know well whitherward. 
 
 Abler men in Downing Street, abler men to govern us : 
 yes, that, sure enough, would gradually remove the dung-moun- 
 tains, however high they are ; that would be the way, nor is 
 there any other way, to remedy whatsoever has gone wrong in 
 Downing Street and in the wide regions, spiritual and tempo- 
 ral, which Downing Street presides over! For the Able Man, 
 meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of 
 Falsity and Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order- 
 into what absurdest element soever you put him, he is there to 
 make it a little less absurd, to fight continually with it till it 
 become a little sane and human again. Peace on other terms 
 he, for his part, cannot make with it; not he, while he con- 
 tinues able, or possessed of real intellect and not imaginary. 
 There is but one man fraught with blessings for this world, 
 fated to diminish and successively abolish the curses of the 
 world ; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and 
 follow ; know that to find htm or miss him, means victory or 
 defeat for you, in all Downing Streets, and establishments and 
 
 enterprises here below. 1 leave your Lordship to judge 
 
 whether this has been our practice hitherto ; and would humbly 
 inquire what your Lordship thinks is likely to be the conse- 
 
92 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 quence of continuing to neglect this. It ought to have been 
 our practice ; ought, in all places and all times, to be the prac- 
 tice in this world; so says the fixed law of things forevermore : 
 and it must cease to be not the practice, your Lordship; and 
 cannot too speedily do so, I think ! 
 
 Much has been done in the way of reforming Parliament in 
 late -years ; but that of itself seems to avail nothing, or almost 
 less. The men that sit in Downing Street, governing us, are 
 not abler men since the Reform Bill than were those before it. 
 Precisely the same kind of men ; obedient formerly to Tory 
 traditions, obedient now to Whig ditto and popular clamours. 
 Respectable men of office: respectably commonplace in faculty, 
 while the situation is becoming terribly original ! Rendering 
 their outlooks, and ours, more ominous every day. 
 
 Indisputably enough the meaning of all reform-movement, 
 electing and electioneering, of popular agitation, parliamentary 
 eloquence, and all political effort whatsoever, is that you may 
 get the ten Ablest Men in England put to preside over your 
 ten principal departments of affairs. To sift and riddle the 
 Nation, so that you might extricate and sift-out the true ten 
 gold grains, or ablest men, and of these make your Governors 
 or Public Officers; leaving the dross and common sandy or 
 silty material safely aside, as the thing to be governed, not to 
 govern ; certainly all ballot-boxes, caucuses, Kennington-Com- 
 mon meetings, Parliamentary debatings, Red Republics, Rus- 
 sian Despotisms, and constitutional or unconstitutional methods 
 of society among mankind, are intended to achieve this one 
 end; and some of them, it will be owned, achieve it very ill! 
 If you have got your gold grains, if the men you have got are 
 actually the ablest, then rejoice; with whatever astonishment, 
 accept your Ten, and thank the gods ; under this Ten your de- 
 struction will at least be milder than under another. But if 
 you have not got them, if you are very far from having got 
 them, then do not rejoice at all, then lament very much ; then 
 admit that your sublime political constitutions and contrivances 
 do not prove themselves sublime, but ridiculous and contempt- 
 ible ; that your world's wonder of a political mill, the envy of 
 surrounding nations, does not yield you real meal; yields you 
 only powder of millstones (called Hansard Debatings), ami a 
 detestable brown substance not unlike the grindings of dried 
 horse-dung or prepared street-mud, which though sold under 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 93 
 
 royal patent, and much recommended by the trade, is quite 
 unfit for culinary purposes! 
 
 But the disease at least is not mysterious, whatever the 
 remedy be. Our disease, alas, is it not clear as the sun, that 
 we suffer under what is the disease of all the miserable in this 
 world, want of wisdom; that in the Head there is no vision, 
 and that thereby all the members are dark and in bonds? No 
 vision in the head; heroism, faith, devout insight to discern 
 what is needful, noble courage to do it, greatly defective there : 
 not seeing eyes there, but spectacles constitutionally ground, 
 which, to the unwary, seem to see. A quite fatal circumstance, 
 had you never so many Parliaments ! How is your ship to be 
 steered by a Pilot with no eyes but a pair of glass ones got from 
 the constitutional optician? He must steer by the ear, I think, 
 rather than by the eye; by the shoutings he catches from the 
 shore, or from the Parliamentary benches nearer hand : one 
 of the frightfulest objects to see steering in a difficult sea! Re- 
 formed Parliaments in that case, reform-leagues, outer agita- 
 tions and excitements in never such abundance, cannot profit : 
 all this is but the writhing, and painful blind convulsion of the 
 limbs that are in bonds, that are all in dark misery till the 
 head be delivered, till the pressure on the brain be removed. 
 
 Or perhaps there is now no heroic wisdom left in England ; 
 England, once the land of heroes, is itself sunk now to a dim 
 owlery, and habitation of doleful creatures, intent only on mo- 
 ney-making and other forms of catching mice, for whom the 
 proper gospel is the gospel of M'Croudy, and all nobler im- 
 pulses and insights are forbidden henceforth? Perhaps these 
 present agreeable Occupants of Downing Street, such as the 
 parliamentary mill has yielded them, are the best the miserable 
 soil had grown? The most Herculean Ten Men that could be 
 found among the English Twenty-seven Millions, are these? 
 There are not, in any place, under any figure, ten diviner men 
 among us? Well; in that case, the riddling and searching of 
 the twenty-seven millions has been successful. Here are our 
 ten divinestmen; with these, unhappily not divine enough, we 
 must even content ourselves and die in peace; what help is 
 there? No help, no hope, in that case. 
 
 But, again, if these are0/our divinest men, then evidently 
 there always is hope, there always is possibility of help ; and 
 
94 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ruin never is quite inevitable, till we have sifted out our actu- 
 ally divinest ten, and set these to try their hand at governing ! 
 That this has been achieved ; that these ten men are the 
 most Herculean souls the English population held within it, is 
 a proposition credible to no mortal. No, thank God; low as 
 we are sunk in many ways, this is not yet credible ! Evidently 
 the reverse of this proposition is the fact. Ten much diviner 
 men do certainly exist. By some conceivable, not forever im- 
 possible, method and methods, ten very much diviner men 
 could be sifted cut ! Courage ; let us fix our eyes on that im- 
 portant fact, and strive all thitherward as towards a door of 
 hope ! 
 
 Parliaments, I think, have proved too well, in late years, 
 that they are not the remedy. It is not Parliaments, reformed 
 or other, that will ever send Herculean men to Downing Street, 
 to reform Downing Street for us; to diffuse therefrom a light 
 of Heavenly Order, instead of the murk of Stygian Anarchy, 
 over this sad world of ours. That function does not lie in 
 the capacities of Parliament. That is the function of a King, 
 if we could get such a priceless entity, which we cannot just 
 now! Failing which, Statesmen, or Temporary-Kings, and at 
 the very lowest one real Statesman, to shape the dim tenden- 
 cies of Parliament, and guide them wisely to the goal : he, I 
 perceive, will be a primary condition, indispensable for any 
 progress whatsoever. 
 
 One such, perhaps, might be attained; one such might 
 prove discoverable among our Parliamentary populations ? 
 That one, in such an enterprise as this of Downing Street, 
 might be invaluable ! One noble man, at once of natural wis- 
 dom and practical experience; one Intellect still really human, 
 and not redtapish, owlish and pedantical, appearing there in 
 that dim chaos, with word of command; to brandish Hercules- 
 like the divine broom and shovel, and turn running water in 
 upon the place, and say as with a fiat, " Here shall be truth, 
 " and real work, and talent to do it henceforth ; I will seek for 
 " able men to work here, as for the elixir of life to this poor 
 " place and me:" what might not one such man effect there! 
 
 Nay one such is not to be dispensed with anywhere in the 
 affairs of men. In every ship, I say, there must be a seeing 
 pilot, not a mere hearing one ! It is evident you can never 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 95 
 
 get your ship steered through the difficult straits by persons 
 standing ashore, on this bank and that, and shouting their 
 confused directions to you: "'Ware that Colonial Sandbank! 
 " Starboard now, the Nigger Question ! Larboard, lar- 
 " board, the Suffrage Movement ! Financial Reform, your 
 " Clothing - Colonels overboard! The Qualification Move- 
 " ment, 'Ware-re-re ! Helm-a-lee ! Bear a hand there, will 
 " you ! Hr-r-r, lubbers, imbeciles, fitter for a tailor's shop- 
 " board than a helm of Government, Hr-r-r !" And so the 
 ship wriggles and tumbles, and, on the whole, goes as wind 
 and current drive. No ship was ever steered except to de- 
 struction in that manner. I deliberately say so : no ship of 
 a State either. If you cannot get a real pilot on board, and 
 put the helm into his hands, your ship is as good as a wreck. 
 One real pilot on board may save you ; all the bellowing from 
 the banks that ever was, will not and by the nature of things 
 cannot. Nay your pilot will have to succeed, if he do suc- 
 ceed, very much in spite of said bellowing ; he will hear all 
 that, and regard very little of it, in a patient mild-spoken 
 wise manner, will regard all of it as what it is. And I never 
 doubt but there is in Parliament itself, in spite of its vague 
 palaverings which fill us with despair in these times, a dumb 
 instinct of inarticulate sense and stubborn practical English 
 insight and veracity, that would manfully support a States- 
 man who could take command with really manful notions of 
 Reform, and as one deserving to be obeyed. O for one such ; 
 even one ! More precious to us than all the bullion in the 
 Bank, or perhaps that ever was in it, just now ! 
 
 For it is Wisdom alone that can recognise wisdom: Folly 
 or Imbecility never can; and that is the fatalest ban it labours 
 under, dooming it to perpetual failure in all things. Failure 
 which, in Downing Street and places of command, is especi- 
 ally accursed ; cursing not one but hundreds of millions ! 
 Who is there that can recognise real intellect, and do rever- 
 ence to it ; and discriminate it well from sham intellect, which 
 is so much more abundant, and deserves the reverse of rever- 
 ence ? He that himself has it ! One really human Intellect, 
 invested with command, and charged to reform Downing 
 Street for us, would continually attract real intellect to those 
 regions, and with a divine magnetism search it out from the 
 modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession 
 
96 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 of intellect to Downing Street would bring to it benefit only, 
 and would increase such divine attraction in it, the parent of 
 all benefit there and elsewhere ! 
 
 "What method, then; by what method?" ask many. 
 Method, alas ! To secure an increased supply of Human In- 
 tellect to Downing Street, there will evidently be no quite 
 effectual 'method' but that of increasing the supply of Human 
 .Intellect, otherwise definable as Human Worth, in Society 
 generally ; increasing the supply of sacred reverence for it, of 
 loyalty to it, and of life-and-death desire and pursuit of it, 
 among all classes, if we but knew such a ' method' ! Alas, 
 that were simply the method of making all classes Servants 
 of Heaven; and except it be devout prayer to Heaven, I have 
 never heard of any method ! To increase the reverence for 
 Human Intellect or God's Light, and the detestation of Human 
 Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness, what method is there ? No 
 method, except even this, that we should each of us ' pray' 
 for it, instead of praying for mere scrip and the like ; that 
 Heaven would please to vouchsafe us each a little of it, one 
 by one ! As perhaps Heaven, in its infinite bounty, by stern 
 methods, gradually will ? Perhaps Heaven has mercy too in 
 these sore plagues that are oppressing us ; and means to 
 teach us reverence for Heroism and Human Intellect, by such 
 baleful experience of what issue Imbecility and Parliamentary 
 Eloquence lead to ? Such reverence, I do hope, and even 
 discover and observe, is silently yet extensively going on 
 among us even in these sad years. In which small salutary 
 fact there burns for us, in this black coil of universal base- 
 ness fast becoming universal wretchedness, an inextinguish- 
 able hope ; far-off but sure, a divine ' pillar of fire by night.' 
 Courage, courage ! 
 
 Meanwhile, that our one reforming Statesman may have 
 free command of what Intellect there is among us, and room 
 to try all means for awakening and inviting ever more of it, 
 there has one small Project of Improvement been suggested ; 
 which finds a certain degree of favour wherever I hear it 
 talked of, and which seems to merit much more considera- 
 tion than it has yet received. Practical men themselves ap- 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 97 
 
 prove of it hitherto, so far as it goes ; the one objection being 
 that the world is not yet prepared to insist on it, which of 
 course the world can never be, till once the world consider it, 
 and in the first place hear tell of it ! I have, for my own 
 part, a good opinion of this project. The old unreformed 
 Parliament of rotten boroughs had one advantage ; but that 
 is hereby, in a far more fruitful and effectual manner, secured 
 to the new. 
 
 The Proposal is, That Secretaries under and upper, that 
 all manner of changeable or permanent servants in the Go- 
 vernment Offices shall be selected without reference to their 
 power of getting into Parliament ; that, in short, the Queen 
 shall have power of nominating the half-dozen or half-score 
 Officers of the Administration, whose presence is thought ne- 
 cessary in Parliament, to official seats there, without reference 
 to any constituency but her own only, which of course will 
 mean her Prime Minister's. A very small encroachment on 
 the present constitution of Parliament ; offering the minimum 
 of change in present methods, and I almost think a maximum 
 in results to be derived therefrom. The Queen nominates 
 John Thomas (the fittest man she, much-inquiring, can hear 
 tell of in her three kingdoms) President of the Poor-Law 
 Board, Under Secretary of the Colonies, Under, or perhaps 
 even Upper Secretary of what she and her Premier find suit- 
 ablest for a working head so eminent, a talent so precious ; 
 and grants him, by her direct authority, seat and vote in Par- 
 liament so long as he holds that office. Upper Secretaries, 
 having more to do in Parliament, and being so bound to be 
 in favour there, would, I suppose, at least till new times and 
 habits come, be expected to be chosen from among the Peo- 
 ple's Members as at present. But whether the Prime Minister 
 himself is, in all times, bound to be first a People's Member; 
 and which, or how many, of his Secretaries and subordinates 
 he might be allowed to take as Queen's Members, my autho- 
 rity does not say, perhaps has not himself settled ; the pro- 
 ject being yet in mere outline or foreshadow, the practical 
 embodiment in all details to be fixed by authorities much 
 more competent than he. The soul of his project is, That 
 the Crown also have power to elect a few members to Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 From which project, however wisely it were embodied, there 
 
 H 
 
98 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 could probably, at first or all at once, no great ' accession ol 
 intellect* to the Government Offices ensue; though a little might, 
 even at first, and a little is always precious : but in its ulterior 
 operation, were that faithfully developed, and wisely presided 
 over, I fancy an immense accession of intellect might ensue ; 
 nay a natural ingress might thereby be opened to all manner 
 of accessions, and the actual flower of whatever intellect the 
 British Nation had might be attracted towards Downing Street, 
 and continue flowing steadily thither ! For, let us see a little 
 what effects this simple change carries in it the possibilities of. 
 Here are beneficent germs, which the presence of one truly wise 
 man as Chief Minister, steadily fostering them for even a few 
 years, with the sacred fidelity and vigilance that would beseem 
 him, might ripen into living practices and habitual facts, in- 
 valuable to us all. 
 
 What it is that Secretaries of State, Managers of Colonial 
 Establishments, of Home and Foreign Government interests, 
 have really and truly to do in Parliament, might admit of va- 
 rious estimate in these times. An apt debater in Parliament 
 is by no means certain to be an able administrator of Colonies, 
 of Home or Foreign Affairs; nay, rather quite the contrary is 
 to be presumed of him ; for in order to become a ' brilliant 
 speaker,' if that is his character, considerable portions of his 
 natural internal endowment must have gone to the surface, in 
 order to make a shining figure there, and precisely so much the 
 less (few men in these days know how much less !) must re- 
 main available in the internal silent state, or as faculty for 
 thinking, for devising and acting, which latter and which alone 
 is the function essential for him in his Secretaryship. Not to 
 tell a good story for himself ' in Parliament and to the twenty- 
 seven millions, many of them fools ;' not that, but to do good 
 administration, to know with sure eye, and decide with just 
 and resolute heart, what is what in the things committed to his 
 charge : this and not that is the service which poor England, 
 whatever it may think and maundev, does require and want of 
 the Official Man in Downing Street. Given a good Official 
 Man or Secretary, he really ought, as far as it is possible, tc 
 be left working in the silent state. No mortal can both work 
 and do good talking in Parliament, or out of it : the feat is im 
 possible as that of serving two hostile masters. 
 
 Nor would I, if it could be helped, much trouble my good 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 99 
 
 Secretary with addressing Parliament : needful explanations ; 
 yes, in a free country, surely; but not to every frivolous and 
 vexatious person, in or out of Parliament, who chooses to apply 
 for them. There should be demands for explanation too which 
 were reckoned frivolous and vexatious, and censured as such. 
 These, I should say, are the not needful explanations : and if 
 my poor Secretary is to be called out from his workshop to 
 answer every one of these, his workshop will become (what we 
 at present see it, deservedly or not) -little other than a pillory; 
 the poor Secretary a kind of talking-machine, exposed to dead- 
 cats and rotten-eggs ; and the ' work' got out of him or of it 
 will, as heretofore, be very inconsiderable indeed ! Alas, on 
 this side also, important improvements are conceivable; and 
 will even, I imagine, get them whence we may, be found indis- 
 pensable one day. The honourable gentleman whom you inter- 
 rupt here, he, in his official capacity, is not an individual now, 
 but the embodiment of a Nation; he is the 'People of England* 
 engaged in the work of Secretaryship, this one ; and cannot 
 forever afford to let the three Tailors of Tooley-street break in 
 upon him at all hours! 
 
 But leaving this, let us remark one thing wh^;h is very 
 plain : That whatever be the uses and duties, real or supposed, 
 of a Secretary in Parliament, his faculty to accomplish these 
 is a point entirely unconnected with his ability to get elected 
 into Parliament, and has no relation or proportion to it, and 
 no concern with it whatever. Lord Tommy and the Honour- 
 able John are not a whit better qualified for Parliamentary 
 duties, to say nothing of Secretary duties, than plain Tom 
 and Jack ; they are merely better qualified, as matters stand, 
 for getting admitted to try them. Which state of matters a 
 reforming Premier, much in want of abler men to help him, 
 now proposes altering. Tom and Jack, once admitted by the 
 Queen's writ, there is every reason to suppose will do quite as 
 well there as Lord Tommy and the Honourable John. In 
 Parliament quite as well : and elsewhere, in the other infinitely 
 more. important duties of a Government Office, which indeed 
 are and remain the essential, vital and intrinsic duties of such 
 a personage, is there the faintest reason to surmise that Tom 
 and Jack, if well chosen, will fall short of Lord Tommy and 
 the Honourable John ? No shadow of a reason. Were the 
 intrinsic genius of the men exactly equal, there is no shadow 
 
ioo LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 of a reason : but rather there is quite the reverse ; for Tom 
 and Jack have been at least workers all their days, not idlers, 
 game-preservers and mere human clothes-horses, at any period 
 of their lives ; and have gained a schooling thereby, of which 
 Lord Tommy and the Honourable John, unhappily strangers 
 to it for most part, can form no conception ! Tom and Jack 
 have already, on this most narrow hypothesis, a decided supe- 
 riority of likelihood over Lord Tommy and the Honourable 
 John. 
 
 But the hypothesis is very narrow, and the fact is very 
 wide ; the hypothesis counts by units, the fact by millions. 
 Consider how many Toms and Jacks there are to choose from, 
 well or ill ! The aristocratic class from whom Members of 
 Parliament can be elected extends only to certain thousands ; 
 from these you are to choose your Secretary, if a seat in Par- 
 liament is the primary condition. But the general population 
 is of Twenty-seven Millions ; from all sections of which you 
 can choose, if the seat in Parliament is not to be primary. 
 Make it ultimate instead of primary, a last investiture instead 
 of a first indispensable condition, and the whole British Na- 
 tion, learned, unlearned, professional, practical, speculative 
 and miscellaneous, is at your disposal ! In the lowest broad 
 strata of the population, equally as in the highest and nar- 
 rowest, are produced men of every kind of genius ; man for 
 man, your chance of genius is as good among the millions as 
 among the units ; and class for class, what must it be ! From 
 all classes, not from certain hundreds now but from several 
 millions, whatsoever man the gods had gifted with intellect 
 and nobleness, and power to help his country, could be chosen : 
 O Heavens, could, if not by Tenpound Constituencies and 
 the force of beer, then by a Reforming Premier with eyes in 
 his head, who I think might do it quite infinitely better. Infi- 
 nitely better. For ignobleness cannot, by the nature of it, 
 choose the noble : no, there needs a seeing man who is himself 
 noble, cognisant by internal experience of the symptoms of 
 nobleness. Shall we never think of this ; shall we never more 
 remember this, then ? It is forever true ; and Nature and Fact, 
 however we may rattle our ballot-boxes, do at no time forget it. 
 
 From the lowest and broadest stratum of Society, where 
 the births are by the million, there was born, almost in our 
 own memory, a Robert Burns ; son of one who ' had not capi- 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 101 
 
 tal for his poor moor-farm of Twenty Pounds a-year.' Robert 
 Burns never had the smallest chance to get into Parliament, 
 much as Robert Burns deserved, for all our sakes, to have 
 been found there. For the man, it was not known to men 
 purblind, sunk in their poor dim vulgar element, but might 
 have been known to men of insight who had any loyalty or 
 any royalty of their own, was a born king of men : full of 
 valour, of intelligence and heroic nobleness ; fit for far other 
 work than to break his heart among poor mean mortals, gaug- 
 ing beer ! Him no Tenpound Constituency chose, nor did 
 any Reforming Premier : in the deep-sunk British Nation, 
 overwhelmed in foggy stupor, with the loadstars all gone out 
 for it, there was no whisper of a notion that it could be de- 
 sirable to choose him, except to come and dine with you, and 
 in the interim to gauge. And yet heaven-born Mr. Pitt, at 
 that period, was by no means without need of Heroic Intellect, 
 for other purposes than gauging ! But sorrowful strangula- 
 tion by redtape, much tighter then than it now is when so 
 many revolutionary earthquakes have tussled it, quite tied up 
 the meagre Pitt ; and he said, on hearing of this Burns and 
 his sad hampered case, " Literature will take care of itself." 
 " Yes, and of you too, if you don't mind it !" answers one. 
 
 And so, like Apollo taken for a Neatherd, and perhaps 
 for none of the best on the Admetus establishment, this new 
 Norse Thor had to put-up with what was going ; to gauge 
 ale, and be thankful ; pouring his celestial sunlight through 
 Scottish Song-writing, the narrowest chink ever offered to a 
 Thundergod before ! And the meagre Pitt, and his Dundasses 
 and redtape Phantasms (growing very ghastly now to think 
 of), did not in the least know or understand, the impious, 
 god-forgetting mortals, that Heroic Intellects, if Heaven were 
 pleased to send such, were the one salvation for the world and 
 for them and all of us. No ; they ' had done very well with- 
 out' such ; did not see the use of such ; went along ' very well' 
 without such ; well presided over by a singular Heroic Intel- 
 lect called George the Third : and the Thundergod, as was 
 rather fit of him, departed early, still in the noon of life, some- 
 what weary of gauging ale ! O Peter, what a scandalous tor- 
 pid element of yellow London fog, favourable to owls only and 
 their mousing operations, has blotted out the stars of Heaven 
 for us these several generations back, which, I rejoice to see, 
 
102 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 is now visibly about to take itself away again, or perhaps to 
 be dispelled in a very tremendous manner ! 
 
 For the sake of my Democratic friends, one other obser- 
 vation. Is not this Proposal the very essence of whatever 
 truth there is in ' Democracy ;' this, that the able man be 
 chosen, in whatever rank he is found ? That he be searched 
 for as hidden treasure is ; be trained, supervised, set to the 
 work which he alone is fit for. All Democracy lies in this ; 
 this, I think, is worth all the ballot-boxes and suffrage-move- 
 ments now going. Not that the noble soul, born poor, should 
 be set to spout in Parliament, but that he should be set to 
 assist in governing men : this is our grand Democratic inter- 
 est. With this we can be saved ; without this, were there a 
 Parliament spouting in every parish, and Hansard Debates 
 to stem the Thames, we perish, die constitutionally drowned, 
 in mere oceans of palaver. 
 
 All reformers, constitutional persons, and men capable of 
 reflection, are invited to reflect on these things. Let us brush 
 the cobwebs from our eyes ; let us bid the inane traditions 
 be silent for a moment ; and ask ourselves, like men dread- 
 fully intent on having it done, " By what method or methods 
 " can the able men from every rank of life be gathered, as 
 " diamond-grains from the general mass of sand : the able 
 " men, not the sham-able ; and set to do the work of govern- 
 " ing, contriving, administering and guiding for us !" It is 
 the question of questions. All that Democracy ever meant 
 lies there : the attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, 
 or Government again by the Best. 
 
 Reformed Parliaments have lamentably failed to attain it 
 for us ; and I believe will and must forever fail. One true 
 Reforming Statesman, one noble worshipper and knower of 
 human intellect, with the quality of an experienced Politician 
 too ; he, backed by such a Parliament as England, once re- 
 cognising him, would loyally send, and at liberty to choose 
 his working subalterns from all the Englishmen alive ; he 
 surely might do something ? Something, by one means or 
 another, is becoming fearfully necessary to be done ! He, I 
 think, might accomplish more for us in ten years, than the 
 best conceivable Reformed Parliament, and utmost extension 
 of the suffrage, in twice or ten times ten. 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 103 
 
 What is extremely important too, you could try this me- 
 thod with safety ; extension of the suffrage you cannot so try. 
 With even an approximately heroic Prime Minister, you could 
 get nothing but good from prescribing to him thus, to choose 
 the fittest man, under penalties ; to choose, not the fittest ol 
 the four or the three men that were in Parliament, but the 
 fittest from the whole Twenty-seven Millions that he could 
 hear of, at his peril. Nothing but good from this. From 
 extension of the suffrage, some think, you might get quite 
 other than good. From extension of the suffrage, till it be- 
 came a universal counting of heads, one sees not in the least 
 what wisdom could be extracted. A Parliament of the Paris 
 pattern, such as we see just now, might be extracted : and 
 from that ? Solution into universal slush ; drownage of all in- 
 terests divine and human, in a Noah's-Deluge of Parliament- 
 ary eloquence, such as we hope our sins, heavy and manifold 
 though they are, have not yet quite deserved 1 
 
 Who, then, is to be the Reforming Statesman, and begin 
 the noble work for us ? He is the preliminary ; one such ; 
 with him we may prosecute the enterprise to length after 
 length ; without him we cannot stir in it at all. A true king, 
 temporary-king, that dare undertake the government of Bri- 
 tain, on condition of beginning in sacred earnest to ' reform' 
 it, not at this or that extremity, but at the heart and centre. 
 That will expurgate Downing Street, and the practical Ad- 
 ministration of our Affairs ; clear out its accumulated moun- 
 tains of pedantries and cobwebs ; bid the Pedants and the 
 Dullards depart, bid the Gifted and the Seeing enter and in- 
 habit. So that henceforth there be Heavenly light there, in- 
 stead of Stygian dusk ; that God's vivifying light instead of 
 Satan's deadening and killing dusk, may radiate therefrom, 
 and visit with healing all regions of this British Empire, which 
 now writhes through every limb of it, in dire agony as if of 
 death ! The enterprise is great, the enterprise may be called 
 formidable and even awful ; but there is none nobler among 
 the sublunary affairs of mankind just now. Nay tacitly it is 
 the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British Pre- 
 mier in these times ; and I cannot esteem him an enviable 
 Premier who, because the engagement is iacit, flatters himself 
 
104 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 that it does not exist ! " Show it me in the bond," he says. 
 Your Lordship, it actually exists : and I think you will see it 
 yet, in another kind of ' bond' than that sheepskin one ! 
 
 But truly, in any time, what a strange feeling, enough to 
 alarm a very big Lordship, this : that he, of the size he is, 
 has got to the apex of English affairs ! Smallest wrens, we 
 know, by training and the aid of machinery, are capable of 
 many things. For this world abounds in miraculous combi- 
 nations, far transcending anything they do at Drury Lane in 
 the melodramatic way. A world which, as solid as it looks, 
 is made all of aerial and even of spiritual stuff ; permeated 
 all by incalculable sleeping forces and electricities ; and liable 
 to go off, at any time, into the hugest developments, upon a 
 scratch thoughtfully or thoughtlessly given on the right point : 
 Nay, for every one of us, could not the sputter of a poor 
 pistol-shot shrivel the Immensities together like a burnt scroll, 
 and make the Heavens and the Earth pass away with a great 
 noise ? Smallest wrens, and canary-birds of some dexterity, 
 can be trained to handle lucifer-matches ; and have, before 
 now, fired-off whole powder-magazines and parks of artillery. 
 Perhaps without much astonishment to the canary-bird. The 
 canary-bird can hold only its own quantity of astonishment ; 
 and may possibly enough retain its presence of mind, were 
 even Doomsday to come. It is on this principle that I ex- 
 plain to myself the equanimity of some men and Premiers 
 whom we have known. 
 
 This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect 
 coolness. And yet, I say, what a strange feeling, to find him- 
 self Chief Governor of England ; girding on, upon his moder- 
 ately-sized new soul, the old battle-harness of an Oliver Crom- 
 well, an Edward Longshanks, a William Conqueror. " I, then, 
 " am the Ablest of English attainable Men ? This English 
 " People, which has spread itself over all lands and seas, and 
 " achieved such works in the ages, which has done America, 
 " India, the Lancashire Cotton-trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, 
 " Newton's Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the British 
 " Constitution, the apex of all its intelligences and mighty 
 " instincts and dumb longings : it is I ? William Conqueror's 
 " big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's ; Oliver's lightning 
 " soul, noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord : these 
 
No. 111. DOWNING STREET. 105 
 
 " are mine, I begin to perceive, to a certain extent. These 
 "heroisms have I, though rather shy of exhibiting them. 
 " These ; and something withal of the huge beaver-faculty of 
 " our Arkwrights, Brindleys ; touches too of the phoenix-me- 
 " lodies and sunny heroisms of our Shakspeares, of our Sing- 
 " ers, Sages and inspired Thinkers ; all this is in me, I will 
 " hope, though rather shy of exhibiting it on common occa- 
 " sions. The Pattern Englishman, raised by solemn accla- 
 " mation upon the bucklers of the English People, and saluted 
 " with universal ' God save THEE !' has now the honour to 
 " announce himself. After fifteen-hundred years of constitu- 
 " tional study as to methods of raising on the bucklers, which 
 " is the operation of operations, the English People, surely 
 " pretty well skilled in it by this time, has raised the remark- 
 " able individual now addressing you. The best-combined 
 " sample of whatsoever divine qualities are in this big People, 
 " the consummate flower of all that they have done and been, 
 " the ultimate product of the Destinies, and English man of 
 " men, arrived at last in the fulness of time, is who think 
 " you ? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by which, with all 
 " these heroisms and accumulated energies old and new, the 
 " English People means to smite and pierce, is this poor 
 " tailor's-bodkin, hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, who 
 
 " now has the honour to" Good Heavens, if it were not 
 
 that men generally are very much of the canary-bird, here 
 are reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost before 
 starting ! 
 
 But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflection ! 
 This, then, is the length we have brought it to, with our con- 
 stitutioning, and ballot-boxing, and incessant talk and effort 
 in every kind for so many centuries back ; this ? The golden 
 flower of our grand alchemical projection, which has set the 
 world in astonishment so long, and been the envy of surround- 
 ing nations, is what we here see. To be governed by his 
 Lordship, and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time 
 by this respectable degree of human faculty. With our utmost 
 soul's travail we could discover, by the sublimest methods eu- 
 logised by all the world, no abler Englishman than this ? 
 
 Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime 
 methods, and ask ourselves very seriously, whether, notwith- 
 standing the eulogy of all the world, they can be other than 
 
106 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 extremely astonishing methods, that require revisal and recon- 
 sideration very much indeed ! For the kind of ' man' we get 
 to govern us, all conclusions whatsoever centre there, and like- 
 wise all manner of issues flow infallibly therefrom. ' Ask well, 
 ' who is your Chief Governor,' says one: 'for around him men 
 ' like to him will infallibly gather, and by degrees all the world 
 ' will be made in his image.' ' He who is himself a noble man, 
 1 has a chance to know the nobleness of men ; he who is not, 
 has none. And as for the poor Public, alas, is not the kind 
 4 of "man" you set upon it the liveliest symbol of its and your 
 4 veracity and victory and blessedness, or unveracity and misery 
 4 and cursedness ; the general summation and practical outcome 
 4 of all else whatsoever in the Public and in you ?' 
 
 Time was when an incompetent Governor could not be 
 permitted among men. He was, and had to be, by one me- 
 thod or the other, clutched up from his place at the helm of 
 affairs, and hurled down into the hold, perhaps even over- 
 board, if he could not really steer. And we call those ages 
 barbarous, because they shuddered to see a Phantasm at the 
 helm of their affairs ; an eyeless Pilot with constitutional spec- 
 tacles, steering by the ear mainly ? And we have changed all 
 that : no-government is now the best ; and a tailor's foreman, 
 who gives no trouble, is preferable to any other for governing ? 
 My friends, such truly is the current idea ; but you dreadfully 
 mistake yourselves, and the fact is not such. The fact, now 
 beginning to disclose itself again in distressed Needlewomen, 
 famishing Connaughts, revolting Colonies, and a general rapid 
 advance towards Social Ruin, remains really what it always 
 was, and will so remain 1 
 
 Men have very much forgotten it at present ; and only 
 here a man and there a man begins again to bethink himself 
 of it : but all men will gradually get reminded of it, perhaps 
 terribly to their cost ; and the sooner they all lay it to heart 
 again, I think it will be the better. For in spite of our ob- 
 livion of it, the thing remains forever true ; nor is there any 
 Constitution or body of Constitutions, were they clothed with 
 never such venerabilities and general acceptabilities, that avails 
 to deliver a Nation from the consequences of forgetting it. 
 Nature, I assure you, does forevermore remember it ; and a 
 hundred British Constitutions are but as a hundred cobwebs 
 between her and the penalty she levies for forgetting it. Tell 
 
No. III. DOWNING STREET. 107 
 
 me what kind of man governs a People, you tell me, with 
 much exactness, what the net sum-total of social worth in that 
 People has for some time been. Whether they have loved the 
 phylacteries or the eternal noblenesses ; whether they have 
 been struggling heavenward like eagles, brothers of the radi- 
 ances, or groping owl-like with horn-eyed diligence, catching 
 mice and balances at their banker's, poor devils, you will 
 see it all in that one fact. A fact long prepared beforehand ; 
 which, if it is a peaceably received one, must have been ac- 
 quiesced in, judged to be ' best,' by the poor mousing owls, 
 intent only to have a large balance at their banker's and keep 
 a whole skin. 
 
 Such sordid populations, which were long blind to Hea- 
 ven's light, are getting themselves burnt-up rapidly, in these 
 days, by street-insurrection and Hellfire ; as is indeed inevit- 
 able, my esteemed M'Croudy! Light, accept the blessed light, 
 if you will have it when Heaven vouchsafes. You refuse ? You 
 prefer Delolme on the British Constitution, the Gospel accord- 
 ing to M'Croudy, and a good balance at your banker's ? Very 
 well : the ' light' is more and more withdrawn ; and for some 
 time you have a general dusk, very favourable for catching 
 mice ; and the opulent owlery is very ' happy,' and well-off at 
 its banker's ; and furthermore, by due sequence, infallible as 
 the foundations of the Universe and Nature's oldest law, the 
 light returns on you, condensed, this time, into lightning, 
 which there is not any skin whatever too thick for taking in ! 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 
 
 [iSth April 1850.] 
 
 IN looking at this wreck of Governments in all European 
 countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly 
 elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we 
 may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one rea- 
 son inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not 
 wise enough ; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the 
 virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we 
 designate it, was not adequate, probably had long been in- 
 adequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or per- 
 haps invited falsity to introduce itself ; had suffered injustices, 
 and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to ac- 
 cumulate in more than tolerable measure ; whereupon said 
 Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures 
 to be too false. 
 
 This is a reflection sad but important to the modern Go- 
 vernments now fallen anarchic, That they had not spiritual 
 talent enough. And if this is so, then surely the question, How 
 these Governments came to sink for want of intellect ? is a 
 rather interesting one. Intellect, in some measure, is born 
 into every Century ; and the Nineteenth flatters itself that it 
 is rather distinguished that way ! What had become of this 
 celebrated Nineteenth Century's intellect ? Surely some of it 
 existed, and was 'developed' withal; nay in the 'undeveloped,' 
 unconscious, or inarticulate state, it is not dead ; but alive and 
 at work, if mutely not less beneficently, some think even more 
 so ! And yet Governments, it would appear, could by no means 
 get enough of it ; almost none of it came their way : what had 
 become of it ? Truly there must be something very question- 
 able, either in the intellect of this celebrated Century, or in 
 the methods Governments now have of supplying their wants 
 from the same. One or other of two grand fundamental short- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 109 
 
 comings, in regard to intellect or human enlightenment, are 
 very visible in this enlightened Century of ours ; for it has 
 now become the most anarchic of Centuries ; that is to say, 
 has fallen practically into such Egyptian darkness that it can- 
 not grope its way at all ! 
 
 Nay I rather think both of these shortcomings, fatal de- 
 ficits both, are chargeable upon us ; and it is the joint harvest 
 of both that we are now reaping, with such havoc to our affairs. 
 I rather guess, the intellect of the Nineteenth Century, so full 
 of miracle to Heavyside and others, is itself a mechanical or 
 beaver intellect rather than a high or eminently human one. 
 A dim and mean though authentic kind of intellect, this ; ven- 
 erable only in defect of better. This kind will avail but little 
 in the higher enterprises oi human intellect, especially in that 
 highest enterprise of guiding men Heavenward, which, after 
 all, is the one real ' governing' of them on this God's-Earth : 
 an enterprise not to be achieved by bearer intellect, but by 
 other higher and highest kinds. This is deficit first. And 
 then secondly, Governments have, really to a fatal and extra- 
 ordinary extent, neglected in late ages to supply themselves 
 with what intellect was going ; having, as was too natural in 
 the dim time, taken up a notion that human intellect, or even 
 beaver intellect, was not necessary to them at all, but that a 
 little of the vulpine sort (if attainable), supported by routine, 
 redtape traditions, and tolerable parliamentary eloquence on 
 occasion, would very well suffice. A most false and impious 
 notion ; leading to fatal lethargy on the part of Governments, 
 while Nature and Fact were preparing strange phenomena in 
 contradiction to it. 
 
 These are two very fatal deficits ; the remedy of either of 
 which would be the remedy of both, could we but find it ! For 
 indeed they are vitally connected : one of them is sure to pro- 
 duce the other ; and both once in action together, the advent 
 of darkness, certain enough to issue in anarchy by and by, 
 goes on with frightful acceleration. If Governments neglect to 
 invite what noble intellect there is, then too surely all intellect, 
 not omnipotent to resist bad influences, will tend to become 
 beaverish ignoble intellect ; and quitting high aims, which seem 
 shut-up from it, will help itself forward in the way of making 
 money and suchlike ; or will even sink to be sham intellect : 
 helping itself by methods which are not only beaverish but 
 
Iio LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 vulpine, and so ' ignoble' as not to have common honesty. The 
 Government, taking no thought to choose intellect for itself, will 
 gradually find that there is less and less of a good quality to 
 choose from : thus, as in all impieties it does, bad grows worse 
 at a frightful double rate of progression ; and your impiety is 
 twice cursed. If you are impious enough to tolerate darkness, 
 you will get ever more darkness to tolerate ; and at that in- 
 evitable stage of the account (inevitable in all such accounts) 
 when actual light or else destruction is the alternative, you 
 will call to the Heavens and the Earth for light, and none will 
 come ! 
 
 Certainly this evil, for one, has not ' wrought its own cure ;' 
 but has wrought precisely the reverse, and has been hourly eat- 
 ing away what possibilities of cure there were. And so, I fear, 
 in spite of rumours to the contrary, it always is with evils, with 
 solecisms against Nature, and contradictions to the divine fact 
 of things : not an evil of them has ever wrought its own cure in 
 my experience ; but has continually grown worse and wider 
 and uglier, till some good (generally a good man) not able to 
 endure the abomination longer, rose upon it and cured or else 
 extinguished it. Evil Governments, divested of God's light be- 
 cause they have loved darkness rather, are not likelier than 
 other evils to work their own cure out of that bad plight. 
 
 It is urgent upon all Governments to pause in this fatal 
 course ; persisted in, the goal is fearfully evident ; every hour's 
 persistence in it is making return more difficult. Intellect ex- 
 ists in all countries ; and the function appointed it by Heaven, 
 Governments had better not attempt to contradict that, for 
 they cannot ! Intellect has to govern in this world ; and will 
 do it, if not in alliance with so-called ' Governments' of redtape 
 and routine, then in divine hostility to such, and sometimes 
 alas in diabolic hostility to such ; and in the end, as sure as 
 Heaven is higher than Downing Street, and the Laws ot Na- 
 ture are tougher than redtape, with entire victory over them 
 and entire ruin to them. If there is one thinking man among 
 the Politicians of England, I consider these things extremely 
 well worth his attention just now. 
 
 Who are available to your Offices in Downing Street ? All 
 the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this 
 generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal ' divine 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. in 
 
 right' which will never become obsolete, to be your governors 
 and administrators ; and precisely as you employ them, or 
 neglect to employ them, will your State be favoured of Hea- 
 ven or disfavoured. This noble young soul, you can have him 
 on either of two conditions ; and on one of them, since he is 
 here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and co- 
 adjutor ; or failing that, as your natural enemy : which shall it 
 be ? I consider that every Government convicts itself of in- 
 fatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself before God 
 and man, according as it answers this question. With all sub- 
 lunary entities, this is the question of questions. What talent 
 is born to you ? How do you employ that ? The crop of spi- 
 ritual talent that is born to you, of human nobleness and in- 
 tellect and heroic faculty, this is infinitely more important than 
 your crops of cotton or corn, or wine or herrings or whale-oil, 
 which the Newspapers record with such anxiety every season. 
 This is not quite counted by seasons, therefore the Newspapers 
 are silent : but by generations and centuries, I assure you it 
 becomes amazingly sensible ; and surpasses, as Heaven does 
 Earth, all the corn and wine, and whale-oil and California bul- 
 lion, or any other crop you grow. If that crop cease, the other 
 crops please 1C take them also, if you are anxious about them. 
 That once ceasing, we may shut shop ; for no other crop what- 
 ever will stay with us, nor is worth having if it would. 
 
 To promote men of talent, to search and sift the whole 
 society in every class for men of talent, and joyfully promote 
 them, has not always been found impossible. In many forms 
 of polity they have done it, and still do it, to a certain degree. 
 The degree to which they succeed in doing it marks, as I have 
 said, with very great accuracy the degree of divine and human 
 worth that is in them, the degree of success or real ultimate 
 victory they can expect to have in this world. Think, for ex- 
 ample, of the old Catholic Church, in its merely terrestrial re- 
 lations to the State ; and see if your reflections, and contrasts 
 with what now is, are of an exulting character. Progress of 
 the species has gone on as with seven-league boots, and in 
 various directions has shot ahead amazingly, with three cheers 
 from all the world ; but in this direction, the most vital and 
 indispensable, it has lagged terribly, and has even moved back- 
 ward, till now it is quite gone out of sight in clouds of cotton- 
 
112 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 fuzz and railway-scrip, and has fallen fairly over the horizon to 
 rearward ! 
 
 In those most benighted Feudal societies, full of mere tyran- 
 nous steel Barons, and totally destitute of Tenpound Franchises 
 and Ballot-boxes, there did nevertheless authentically preach 
 itself everywhere this grandest of gospels, without which no 
 other gospel can avail us much, to all souls of men, "Awake, 
 ye noble souls ; here is a noble career for you !" I say, every- 
 where a road towards promotion, for human nobleness, lay 
 wide open to all men. The pious soul, which, if you reflect, 
 will mean the ingenuous anc* ingenious, the gifted, intelligent 
 and nobly-aspiring soul, such a soul, in whatever rank of life 
 it were born, had one path inviting it ; a generous career, 
 whereon, by human worth and valour, all earthly heights and 
 Heaven itself were attainable. In the lowest stratum of social 
 .thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, 
 and die ignobly. The Church, poor old benighted creature, 
 had at least taken care of that : the noble aspiring soul, not 
 doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run 
 into the neighbouring Convent, and there take refuge. Edu- 
 cation awaited it there ; strict training not only to whatever 
 useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but 
 to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of 
 self, really to human nobleness in many most essential re- 
 spects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quan- 
 tity of money-capital or the like ; the one question was, "Is 
 there some human nobleness in you, or is there not ?" The 
 poor neatherd's son, if he were a Noble of Nature, might rise 
 to Priesthood, to High-priesthood, to the top of this world, 
 and best of all, he had still high Heaven lying high enough 
 above him, to keep his head steady, on whatever height or in 
 whatever depth his way might lie ! 
 
 A thrice-glorious arrangement, when I reflect on it ; most 
 salutary to all high and low interests ; a truly human arrange- 
 ment. You made the born noble yours, welcoming him as 
 what he was, the Sent of Heaven : you did not force him either 
 to die or become your enemy ; idly neglecting or suppressing 
 him as what he was not, a thing of no worth. You accepted the 
 blessed light; and in the shape of infernal lightning it needed 
 not to visit you. How, like an immense mine-shaft through the 
 dim oppressed strata of society, this Institution of the Priest- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 113 
 
 hood ran ; opening, from the lowest depths towards all heights 
 and towards Heaven itself, a free road of egress and emergence 
 towards virtuous nobleness, heroism and well-doing, for every 
 born man. This we may call the living lungs and blood-cir- 
 culation of those old Feudalisms. When I think of that im- 
 measurable all-pervading lungs ; present in every corner of 
 human society, every meanest hut a cell of said lungs ; inviting 
 whatsoever noble pious soul was born there to the path that was 
 noble for him ; and leading thereby sometimes, if he were 
 worthy, to be the Papa of Christendom, and Commander of all 
 Kings, I perceive how the old Christian society continued 
 healthy, vital, and was strong and heroic. When I contrast 
 this with the noble aims now held out to noble souls born in 
 remote huts, or beyond the verge of Palace-Yard ; and think 
 of what your Lordship has done in the way of making priests 
 and papas, I see a society without lungs, fast wheezing itself 
 to death, in horrid convulsions ; and deserving to die. 
 
 Over Europe generally in these years, I consider that the 
 State has died, has fairly coughed its last in street musketry, 
 and fallen down dead, incapable of any but galvanic life hence- 
 forth, owing to this same fatal want of lungs, which includes 
 all other wants for a State. And furthermore that it will never 
 come alive again, till it contrive to get such indispensable vital 
 apparatus ; the outlook toward which consummation is very 
 distant in most communities of Europe. If you let it come to 
 death or suspended-animation in States, the case is very bad ! 
 Vain to call-in universal-suffrage parliaments at that stage : 
 the universal-suffrage parliaments cannot give you any breath 
 of life, cannot find any wisdom for you ; by long impiety, you 
 have let the supply of noble human wisdom die out ; and the 
 wisdom that now courts your universal-suffrages is beggarly 
 human attorneyism or sham-wisdom, which is not an insight 
 into the Laws of God's Universe, but into the laws of hungry 
 Egoism and the Devil's Chicane, and can in the end profit no 
 community or man. 
 
 No ; the kind of heroes that come mounted on the should- 
 ers of the universal-suffrage, and instal themselves as Prime 
 Ministers and healing Statesmen by force of able editorship, 
 do not bid very fair to bring Nations back to the ways of God. 
 Eloquent high-lacquered pinchbeck specimens these, expert in 
 
114 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 the arts of Belial mainly ; fitter to be markers at some ex- 
 ceedingly expensive billiard-table than sacred chief-priests of 
 men I ' Greeks of the Lower Empire ;' with a varnish of par- 
 liamentary rhetoric ; and, I suppose, this other great gift, tough- 
 ness of character, proof that they have persevered in their 
 Master's service. Poor wretches, their industry is mob-wor- 
 ship, place-worship, parliamentary intrigue, and the multiplex 
 art of tongue-fence : flung into that bad element, there they 
 swim for decades long, throttling and wrestling one another 
 according to their strength, and the toughest or luckiest gets 
 to land, and becomes Premier. A more entirely unbeautiful 
 class of Premiers was never raked out of the ooze, and set on 
 high places, by any ingenuity of man. Dame Dubarry's petti- 
 coat was a better seine-net for fishing out Premiers than that. 
 Let all Nations whom necessity is driving towards that method, 
 take warning in time ! 
 
 Alas, there is, in a manner, but one Nation that can still 
 take warning ! In England alone of European Countries the 
 State yet survives ; and might help itself by better methods. 
 In England heroic wisdom is not yet dead, and quite replaced 
 by attorneyism : the honest beaver faculty yet abounds with 
 us, the heroic manful faculty shows itself also to the observant 
 eye, not dead but dangerously sleeping. I said there were many 
 kings in England : if these can yet be rallied into strenuous 
 activity, and set to govern England in Downing Street and else- 
 where, which their function always is, then England can be 
 saved from anarchies and universal-suffrages ; and that Apo- 
 theosis of Attorneyism, blackest of terrestrial curses, may be 
 spared us. If these cannot, the other issue, in such forms as 
 may be appropriate to us, is inevitable. What escape is there ? 
 England must conform to the eternal laws of life, or England 
 too must die ! 
 
 England with the largest mass of real living interests ever 
 intrusted to a Nation ; and with a mass of extinct imaginary 
 and quite dead interests piled upon it to the very Heavens, and 
 encumbering it from shore to shore, does reel and stagger 
 ominously in these years ; urged by the Divine Silences and 
 the Eternal Laws to take practical hold of its living interests 
 and manage them : and clutching blindly into its venerable ex- 
 tinct and imaginary interests, as if that were still the way to 
 do it England must contrive to manage its living interests, 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 115 
 
 and quit its dead ones and their methods, or else depart from 
 its place in this world. Surely England is called as no Nation 
 ever was, to summon-out its kings, and set them to that high 
 work ! Huge inorganic England, nigh choked under the exu- 
 viae of a thousand years, and blindly sprawling amid chartisms, 
 ballot-boxes, prevenient graces, and bishops' nightmares, must, 
 as the preliminary and commencement of organisation, learn 
 to breathe again, get ' lungs' for herself again, as we defined 
 it. That is imperative upon her : she too will die, otherwise, 
 and cough her last upon the streets some day ; how can she 
 continue living? To enfranchise whatsoever of Wisdom is born 
 in England, and set that to the sacred task of coercing and 
 amending what of Folly is born in England : Heaven's bless- 
 ing is purchasable by that ; by not that, only Heaven's curse 
 is purchasable. The reform contemplated, my liberal friends 
 perceive, is a truly radical one ; no ballot-box ever went so 
 deep into the roots : a radical, most painful, slow and difficult, 
 but most indispensable reform of reforms ! 
 
 How short and feeble an approximation to these high ul- 
 terior results, the best Reform of Downing Street, presided over 
 by the fittest Statesman one can imagine to exist at present, 
 would be, is too apparent to me. A long time yet till we get 
 our living interests put under due administration, till we get 
 our dead interests handsomely dismissed. A long time yet till, 
 by extensive change of habit and ways of thinking and acting, 
 we get living ' lungs' for ourselves ! Nevertheless, by Reform 
 of Downing Street, we do begin to breathe ; we do start in the 
 way towards that and all high results. Nor is there visible to 
 me any other way. Blessed enough were the way once entered 
 on ; could we, in our evil days, but see the noble enterprise 
 begun, and fairly in progress 1 
 
 What the 'New Downing Street* can grow to, and will and 
 must if England is to have a Downing Street beyond a few 
 years longer, it is far from me, in my remote watch-tower, to 
 say with precision. A Downing Street inhabited by the gifted 
 of the intellects of England ; directing all its energies upon the 
 real and living interests of England, and silently but incessantly, 
 in the alembics of the place, burning-up the extinct imaginary 
 interests of England, that we may see God's sky a little plainer 
 overhead, and have all of us a great accession of ' heroic wis- 
 
Il6 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 dom ' to dispose of : such a Downing Street to draw the plan 
 of it, will require architects ; many successive architects and 
 builders will be needed there. Let not editors, and remote un- 
 professional persons, interfere too much ! Change in the pre- 
 sent edifice, however, radical change, all men can discern to 
 be inevitable ; and even, if there shall not worse swiftly follow, 
 to be imminent. Outlines of the future edifice paint themselves 
 against the sky (to men that still have a sky, and are above 
 the miserable London fogs of the hour) ; noble elements of new 
 State Architecture, foreshadows of a new Downing Street for 
 the New Era that is to come. These with pious hope all men can 
 see ; and it is good that all men, with whatever faculty they 
 have, were earnestly looking thitherward ; trying to get above 
 the fogs, that they might look thitherward ! 
 
 Among practical men the idea prevails that Government 
 can do nothing but 'keep the peace.' They say all higher 
 tasks are unsafe for it, impossible for it, and in fine not ne- 
 cessary for it or for us. On this footing a very feeble Down- 
 ing Street might serve the turn ! I am well aware that Govern- 
 ment, for a long time past, has taken in hand no other public 
 task, and has professed to have no other, but that of keeping 
 the peace. This public task, and the private one of ascertain- 
 ing whether Dick or Jack was to do it, have amply filled the 
 capabilities of Government for several generations now. Hard 
 tasks both, it would appear. In accomplishing the first, for 
 example, have not heavenborn Chancellors of the Exchequer 
 had to shear us very bare ; and to leave an overplus of Debt, 
 or of fleeces shorn before they are grown, justly esteemed among 
 the wonders of the world? Not a first-rate keeping of the 
 peace, this, we begin to surmise ! At least it seems strange to us. 
 
 For we, and the overwhelming majority of all our acquaint- 
 ances, in this Parish and Nation and the adjacent Parishes and 
 Nations, are profoundly conscious to ourselves of being by na- 
 ture peaceable persons ; following our necessary industries : 
 without wish, interest or faintest intention to cut the skin of 
 any mortal, to break feloniously into his industrial premises, or 
 do any injustice to him at all. Because indeed, independent 
 of Government, there is a thing called conscience, and we dare 
 not. So that it cannot but appear to us, 'the peace,' under 
 dextrous management, might be very much more easily kept, 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 117 
 
 your Lordship ; nay, we almost think, if well let alone, it would 
 in a measure keep itself among such a set of persons ! And 
 how it happens that when a poor hardworking creature of us 
 has laboriously earned sixpence, the Government comes in, and 
 (as some compute) says, " I will thank you for threepence of 
 " that, as per account, for getting you peace to spend the other 
 " threepence," our amazement begins to be considerable, and 
 I think results will follow from it by and by. Not the most 
 dextrous keeping of the peace, your Lordship, unless it be more 
 difficult to do than appears ! 
 
 Our domestic peace, we cannot but perceive, as good as 
 keeps itself. Here and there a select Equitable person, ap- 
 pointed by the Public for that end, clad in ermine, and backed 
 by certain companies of blue Police, is amply adequate, with- 
 out immoderate outlay in money or otherwise, to keep-down the 
 few exceptional individuals of the scoundrel kind ; who, we ob- 
 serve, by the nature of them, are always weak and inconsider- 
 able. And as to foreign peace, really all Europe, now especially 
 with so many railroads, public journals, printed books, penny- 
 post, bills of exchange, and continual intercourse and mutual de- 
 pendence, is more and more becoming (so to speak) one Parish ; 
 the Parishioners of which being, as we ourselves are, in im- 
 mense majority peaceable hardworking people, could, if they 
 were moderately well guided, have almost no disposition to 
 quarrel. Their economic interests are one, ' To buy in the 
 cheapest market, and sell in the dearest ; ' their faith, any reli- 
 gious faith they have, is one, ' To annihilate shams by all me- 
 thods, street-barricades included.' Why should they quarrel ? 
 The Czar of Russia, in the Eastern parts of the Parish, may 
 have other notions ; but he knows too well he must keep them 
 to himself. He, if he meddled with the Western parts, and 
 attempted anywhere to crush or disturb that sacred Democratic 
 Faith of theirs, is aware there would rise from a hundred and 
 fifty million human throats such a Hymn of the Marseillese as 
 was never heard before ; and England, France, Germany, Poland, 
 Hungary, and the Nine Kingdoms, hurling themselves upon 
 him in never-imagined fire of vengeance, would swiftly reduce 
 his Russia and him to a strange situation ! Wherefore he for- 
 bears, and being a person of some sense, will loug forbear. 
 In spite of editorial prophecy, the Czar of Russia does not dis- 
 turb our night's rest. And with the other parts of the Parish 
 
Ii8 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 our dreams and our thoughts are of anything but of fighting, or 
 of the smallest need to fight. 
 
 For keeping of the peace, a thing highly desirable to us, 
 we strive to be grateful to your Lordship. Intelligible to us, 
 also, your Lordship's reluctance to get out of the old routine. 
 But we beg to say farther, that peace by itself has no feet to 
 stand upon, and would not suit us even if it had. Keeping of 
 the peace is the function of a policeman, and but a small frac- 
 tion of that of any Government, King or Chief of men. Are 
 not all men bound, and the Chief of men in the name of all, 
 to do properly this : To see, so far as human effort under pain 
 of eternal reprobation can, God's Kingdom incessantly advanc- 
 ing here below, and His will done on Earth as it is in Heaven? 
 On Sundays your Lordship knows this well ; forget it not on 
 weekdays. I assure you it is for evermore a fact. That is the 
 immense divine and never-ending task which is laid on every 
 man, and with unspeakable increase of emphasis on every Go- 
 vernment or Commonwealth of men. Your Lordship, that is 
 the basis upon which peace and all else depends ! That basis 
 once well lost, there is no peace capable of being kept, the 
 only peace that could then be kept is that of the churchyard. 
 Your Lordship may depend on it, whatever thing takes upon it 
 the name of Sovereign or Government in an English Nation such 
 as this will have to get out of that old routine ; and set about 
 keeping something very different from the peace, in these days ! 
 
 Truly it is high time that same beautiful notion of No- 
 Government should take itself away. The world is daily rush- 
 ing towards wreck, while that lasts. If your Government is 
 to be a Constituted Anarchy, what issue can it have ? Our 
 one interest in such Government is, that it would be kind 
 enough to cease and go its ways, before the inevitable arrive. 
 The question, Who is to float atop nowhither upon the popular 
 vortexes, and act that sorry character, ' carcass of the drowned 
 ass upon the mud-deluge' ? is by no means an important one 
 for almost anybody, hardly even for the drowned ass himself. 
 Such drowned ass ought to ask himself, If the function is a 
 sublime one ? For him too, though he looks sublime to the 
 vulgar and floats atop, a private situation, down out of sight in 
 his natural ooze, would be a luckier one. 
 
 Crabbe, speaking of constitutional philosophies, faith in the 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 119 
 
 ballot-box and suchlike, has this indignant passage: 'If any 
 4 voice of deliverance or resuscitation reach us, in this our low 
 4 and ail-but lost estate, sunk almost beyond plummet's sound- 
 4 ing in the mud of Lethe, and oblivious of all noble objects, 
 
 it will be an intimation that we must put away all this 
 4 abominable nonsense, and understand, once more, that Con- 
 4 stituted Anarchy, with however many ballot-boxes, caucuses, 
 4 and hustings-beerbarrels, is a continual offence to gods and 
 ' men. That to be governed by small men is not only a mis- 
 4 fortune, but it is a curse and a sin ; the effect, and alas the 
 1 cause also, of all manner of curses and sins. That to pro- 
 ' fess subjection to phantasms, and pretend to accept guidance 
 4 from fractional parts of tailors, is what Smelfungus in his 
 ' rude dialect calls it, 44 a.damned lie" and nothing other. A 
 4 lie which, by long use and wont, we have grown accustomed 
 4 to, and do not the least feel to be a lie, having spoken and 
 4 done it continually everywhere for such a long time past ; 
 4 but has Nature grown to accept it as a veracity, think you, 
 4 my friend? Have the Parcse fallen asleep, because you wanted 
 ' to make money in the City ? Nature at all moments knows 
 4 well that it is a lie ; and that, like all lies, it is cursed and 
 ' damned from the beginning. 
 
 4 Even so, ye indigent millionaires, and miserable bankrupt 
 ' populations rolling in gold, whose note-of-hand will go to 
 1 any length in Threadneedle Street, and to whom in Heaven's 
 4 Bank the stern answer is, " No effects !" Bankrupt, I say; 
 4 and Californias and Eldorados will not save us. And every 
 ' time we speak such lie, or do it or look it, as we have been 
 4 incessantly doing, and many of us with clear consciousness, 
 4 for about a hundred and fifty years now, Nature marks down 
 4 the exact penalty against us. 44 Debtor to so much lying : 
 
 forfeiture of existing stock of worth to such extent ; approach 
 4 to general damnation by so much." Till now, as we look 
 4 round us over a convulsed anarchic Europe, and at home 
 4 over an anarchy not yet convulsed, but only heaving towards 
 4 convulsion, and to judge by the Mosaic sweating-establish- 
 ' ments, cannibal Connaughts and other symptoms, not far 
 4 from convulsion now, we seem to have pretty much exhausted 
 4 our accumulated stock of worth ; and, unless money's " worth" 
 4 and bullion at the Bank will save us, to be rubbing very close 
 
 upon that ulterior bourne which I do not like to name again ! 
 
-120 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ' On behalf of nearly twenty-seven millions of my fellow- 
 ' countrymen, sunk deep in Lethean sleep, with mere owl- 
 ' dreams of Political Economy and mice-catching, in this pacific 
 ' thrice-infernal slush-element ; and also of certain select thou- 
 ' sands, and hundreds and units, awakened or beginning to 
 ' awaken from it, and with horror in their hearts perceiving 
 ' where they are, I beg to protest, and in the name of God to 
 ' say, with poor human ink, desirous much that I had divine 
 ' thunder to say it with, Awake, arise, before you sink to 
 ' death eternal ! Unnameable destruction, and banishment to 
 ' Houndsditch and Gehenna, lies in store for all Nations that, 
 ' in angry perversity or brutal torpor and owlish blindness, 
 ' neglect the eternal message of the gods, and vote for the 
 ' Worse while the Better is there. Like owls they say, " Ba- 
 ' rabbas will do ; any orthodox Hebrew of the Hebrews, and 
 ' peaceable believer in M'Croudy and the Faith of Leave-alone 
 ' will do : the Right Honourable Minimus is well enough ; he 
 ' shall be our Maximus, under him it will be handy to catch 
 ' mice, and Owldom shall continue a flourishing empire." ' 
 
 One thing is undeniable, and must be continually repeated 
 till it get to be understood again : Of all constitutions, forms 
 of government, and political methods among men, the question 
 to be asked is even this, What kind of man do you set over us ? 
 All questions are answered in the answer to this. Another thing 
 is worth attending to : No people or populace, with never such 
 ballot-boxes, can select such man for you ; only the man of 
 worth can recognize worth in men ; to the commonplace man 
 of no or of little worth, you, unless you wish to be misled, need 
 not apply on such an occasion. Those poor Tenpound Fran- 
 chisers of yours, they are not even in earnest ; the poor sniff- 
 ing sniggering Honourable Gentlemen they send to Parliament 
 are as little so. Tenpound Franchisers full of mere beer and 
 balderdash ; Honourable Gentlemen come to Parliament as to 
 an Almack's series of evening parties, or big cockmain (battle 
 of all the cocks) very amusing to witness and bet upon : what 
 can or could men in that predicament ever do for you ? Nay, 
 if they were in life-and-death earnest, what could it avail you 
 in such a case? I tell you, a million blockheads looking au- 
 thoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble 
 sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his quali- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 121 
 
 ties, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of 
 time. He understands them, sees what they are ; but that 
 they should understand him, and see with rounded outline 
 what his limits are, this, which would mean that they are 
 bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good un- 
 derstanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, 
 " We do not quite understand thee ; we perceive thee to be 
 " nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow 
 " thee." 
 
 The question therefore arises, Whether, since reform of 
 parliament and suchlike have done so little in that respect, 
 the problem might not be with some hope attacked in the di- 
 rect manner ? Suppose all our Institutions, and Public Methods 
 of Procedure, to continue for the present as they are ; and sup- 
 pose farther a Reform Premier, and the English Nation once 
 awakening under him to a due sense of the infinite importance, 
 nay the vital necessity there is of getting able and abler men : 
 might not some heroic wisdom, and actual 'ability' to do 
 what must be done, prove discoverable to said Premier ; and 
 so the indispensable Heaven's-blessing descend to us from 
 above, since none has yet sprung from below? From above 
 we shall have to try it ; the other is exhausted, a hopeless 
 method that ! The utmost passion of the house-inmates, ig- 
 norant of masonry and architecture, cannot avail to cure the 
 house of smoke : not if they vote and agitate forever, and be- 
 stir themselves to the length even of street-barricades, will the 
 smoke in the least abate : how can it ? Their passion exercised 
 in such ways, till Doomsday, will avail them nothing. Let 
 their passion rage steadily against the existing majordomos to 
 this effect, " Find us men skilled in house-building, acquainted 
 " with the laws of atmospheric suction, and capable to cure 
 " smoke ; " something might come of it ! In the lucky circum- 
 stance of having one man of real intellect and courage to put 
 at the head of the movement, much would come of it ; a New 
 Downing Street, fit for the British Nation and its bitter neces- 
 sities in this New Era, would come ; and from that, in answer 
 to continuous sacred fidelity and valiant toil, all good whatso- 
 ever would gradually come. 
 
 Of the Continental nuisance called ' Bureaucracy,' if this 
 should alarm any reader, I can see no risk or possibility in 
 England. Democracy is hot enough here, fierce enough ; it is 
 
122 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 perennial, universal, clearly invincible among us henceforth. 
 No danger it should let itself be flung in chains by sham-secre- 
 taries of the Pedant species, and accept their vile Age of Pinch- 
 beck for its Golden Age! Democracy clamours, with its News- 
 papers, its Parliaments, and all its Twenty-seven million throats, 
 continually in this Nation forevermore. I remark, too, that the 
 unconscious purport of all its clamours is even this, "Find us 
 men skilled," make a New Downing Street, fit for the New 
 Era! 
 
 Of the Foreign Office, in its reformed state, we have not 
 much to say. Abolition of imaginary work, and replacement 
 of it by real, is on all hands understood to be very urgent there. 
 Large needless expenditures of money, immeasurable ditto of 
 hypocrisy and grimace ; embassies, protocols, worlds of ex- 
 tinct traditions, empty pedantries, foul cobwebs : but we will 
 by no means apply the ' live coal' of our witty friend ; the 
 Foreign Office will repent, and not be driven to suicide ! A 
 truer time will come for the Continental Nations too : Autho- 
 rities based on truth, and on the silent or spoken Worship of 
 Human Nobleness, will again get themselves established there; 
 all Sham- Authorities, and consequent Real-Anarchies based 
 on universal-suffrage and the Gospel according to George 
 Sand, being put away; and noble action, heroic new-develop- 
 ments of human faculty and industry, and blessed fruit as of 
 Paradise getting itself conquered from the waste battle-field of 
 the chaotic elements, will once more, there as here, begin to 
 show themselves. 
 
 When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom 
 of their Augean Stable, and begun to have real enterprises 
 based on the eternal facts again, our Foreign Office may again 
 have extensive concerns with them. And at all times, and 
 even now, there will remain the question to be sincerely put 
 and wisely answered, What essential concern has the British 
 Nation with them and their enterprises ? Any concern at all, 
 except that of handsomely keeping apart from them ? If so, 
 what are the methods of best managing it ? At present, as 
 was said, while Red Republic but clashes with foul Bureau- 
 cracy; and Nations, sunk in blind ignavia, demand a univer- 
 sal-suffrage Parliament to heal their wretchedness ; and wild 
 Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle with Sham-Kingship 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 123 
 
 and extinct or galvanised Catholicism ; and in the Cave of 
 the Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled 
 against each other, our English interest in the controversy, 
 however huge said controversy grow, is quite trifling; we have 
 only in a handsome manner to say to it : " Tumble and rage 
 " along, ye rotten waifs and wrecks ; clash and collide as 
 " seems fittest to you; and smite each other into annihilation 
 " at your own good pleasure. In that huge conflict, dismal 
 " but unavoidable, we, thanks to our heroic ancestors, having 
 " got so far ahead of you, have now no interest at all. Our 
 " decided notion is, the dead ought to bury their dead in such 
 " a case: and so we have the honour to be, with distinguished 
 " consideration, your entirely devoted, FLIMNAP, SEC. FOR- 
 " EIGN DEPARTMENT." I really think Flimnap, till truer times 
 come, ought to treat much of his work in this way : cautious to 
 give offence to his neighbours ; resolute not to concern himself 
 in any of their self-annihilating operations whatsoever. 
 
 Foreign wars are sometimes unavoidable. We ourselves, 
 in the course of natural merchandising and laudable business, 
 have now and then got into ambiguous situations ; into quar- 
 rels which needed to be settled, and without fighting would not 
 settle. Sugar Islands, Spice Islands, Indias, Canadas, these, 
 by the real decree of Heaven, were ours ; and nobody would 
 or could believe it, till it was tried by cannon law, and so 
 proved. Such cases happen. In former times especially, owing 
 very much to want of intercourse and to the consequent mu- 
 tual ignorance, there did occur misunderstandings : and there- 
 from many foreign wars, some of them by no means unneces- 
 sary. With China, or some distant country, too unintelligent 
 of us and too unintelligible to us, there still sometimes rises 
 necessary occasion for a war. Nevertheless wars, misunder- 
 standings that get to the length of arguing themselves out by 
 sword and cannon, have, in these late generations of im- 
 proved intercourse, been palpably becoming less and less ne- 
 cessary ; have in a manner become superfluous, if we had a 
 little wisdom, and our Foreign Office on a good footing. 
 
 Of European wars I really hardly remember any, since 
 Oliver Cromwell's last Protestant or Liberation war with 
 Popish antichristian Spain some two hundred years ago, to 
 which I for my own part could have contributed my life with 
 
124 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 any heartiness, or in fact would have subscribed money itself 
 to any considerable amount. Dutch William, a man of some 
 heroism, did indeed get into troubles with Louis Fourteenth ; 
 and there rested till some shadow of Protestant Interest, and 
 question of National and individual Independence, over those 
 wide controversies ; a little money and human enthusiasm 
 was still due to Dutch William. Illustrious Chatham also, 
 not to speak of his Manilla ransoms and the like, did one 
 thing : assisted Fritz of Prussia, a brave man and king (al- 
 most the only sovereign King I have known since Cromwell's 
 time) like to be borne down by ignoble men and sham-kings ; 
 for this let illustrious Chatham too have a little money and 
 human enthusiasm, a little, by no means much. But what 
 am I to say of heavenborn Pitt the son of Chatham ? Eng- 
 land sent forth her fleets and armies ; her money into every 
 country; money as if .the heavenborn Chancellor had got a 
 Fortunatus' purse; as if this Island had become a volcanic 
 fountain of gold, or new terrestrial sun capable of radiating 
 mere guineas. The result of all which, what was it ? Elderly 
 men can remember the tar-barrels burnt for success and thrice- 
 immortal victory in the business ; and yet what result had we ? 
 The French Revolution, a Fact decreed in the Eternal Coun- 
 cils, could not be put down : the result was, that heavenborn 
 Pitt had actually been fighting (as the old Hebrews would have 
 said) against the Lord, that the Laws of Nature were stronger 
 than Pitt. Of whom therefore there remains chiefly his unac- 
 countable radiation of guineas, for the gratitude of posterity. 
 Thank you for nothing, for eight hundred millions less than 
 nothing ! 
 
 Our War Offices, Admiralties, and other Fighting Establish- 
 ments, are forcing themselves on everybody's attention at this 
 time. Bull grumbles audibly : " The money you have cost me 
 "these five-and-thirty years, during which you have stood 
 " elaborately ready to fight at any moment, without at any mo- 
 " ment being called to fight, is surely an astonishing sum. The 
 " National Debt itself might have been half paid by that money, 
 " which has all gone in pipeclay and blank cartridges ! " Yes, 
 Mr. Bull, the money can be counted in hundreds of millions, 
 which certainly is something : but the ' strenuously organised 
 idleness,' and what mischief that amounts to have you com- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 125 
 
 puted it ? A perpetual solecism, and blasphemy (of its sort), 
 set to march openly among us, dressed in scarlet ! Bull, with 
 a more and more sulky tone, demands that such solecism be 
 abated ; that these Fighting Establishments be as it were dis- 
 banded, and set to do some work in the Creation, since fighting 
 there is now none for them. This demand is irrefragably just, 
 is growing urgent too ; and yet this demand cannot be complied 
 with, not yet while the State grounds itself on unrealities, and 
 Downing Street continues what it is. 
 
 The old Romans made their soldiers work during intervals 
 of war. The New Downing Street too, we may predict, will 
 have less and less tolerance for idleness on the part of soldiers 
 or others. Nay the New Downing Street, I foresee, when once 
 it has got its 'Industrial Regiments' organised, will make these 
 mainly do its fighting, what fighting there is ; and so save im- 
 mense sums. Or indeed, all citizens of the Commonwealth, as 
 is the right and the interest of every free man in this world, 
 will have themselves trained to arms ; each citizen ready to 
 defend his country with his own body and soul, he is not 
 worthy to have a country otherwise. In a State grounded on 
 veracities, that would be the rule. Downing Street, if it cannot 
 bethink itself of returning to the veracities, will have to vanish 
 altogether ! 
 
 To fight with its neighbours never was, and is now less 
 than ever, the real trade of England. For far other objects 
 was the English People created into this world ; sent down 
 from the Eternities, to mark with its history certain spaces in 
 the current of sublunary Time ! Essential too that the English 
 People should discover what its real objects are ; and resolutely 
 follow these, resolutely refusing to follow other than these. The 
 State will have victory so far as it can do that ; so far as it 
 cannot, defeat. 
 
 In the New Downing Street, discerning what its real func- 
 tions are, and with sacred abhorrence putting away from it what 
 its functions are not, we can fancy changes enough in Foreign 
 Office, War Office, Colonial Office, Home Office! Our War- 
 soldiers Industrial, first of all; doing nobler than Roman works, 
 when fighting is not wanted of them. Seventy-fours not hang- 
 ing idly by their anchors in the Tagus, or off Sapienza (one of 
 the saddest sights under the sun), but busy, every Seventy-four 
 of them, carrying-over streams of British Industrials to the im- 
 
126 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 measurable Britain that lies beyond the sea in every zone of 
 the world. A State grounding itself on the veracities, not on 
 the semblances and the injustices : every citizen & soldier for 
 it. Here would be new real Secretaryships and Ministries, not 
 for foreign war and diplomacy, but for domestic peace and 
 utility. Minister of Works ; Minister of Justice, clearing his 
 Model-Prisons of their scoundrelism ; shipping his scoundrels 
 wholly abroad, under hard and just drill-sergeants (hundreds 
 of such stand wistfully ready for you, these thirty years, in 
 the Rag-and- Famish Club and elsewhere !) into fertile desert 
 countries ; to make railways, one big rjulway (says the Ma- 
 jor 1 ) quite across America; fit to employ all the able-bodied 
 Scoundrels and efficient Half-pay Officers \n Nature ! 
 
 Lastly, or rather firstly, and as the preliminary of all, 
 would there not be a Minister of Education? Minister charged 
 to get this English People taught a little, at his and our peril ! 
 Minister of Education ; no longer dolefully embayed amid the 
 wreck of moribund ' religions,' but clear ahead of all that ; 
 steering, free and piously fearless, towards his divine goal un- 
 der the eternal stars ! O Heaven, and are these things for- 
 ever impossible, then ? Not a whit. Tomorrow morning they 
 might all begin to be, and go on through blessed centuries 
 realising themselves, if it were not that alas, if it were not that 
 we are most of us insincere persons, sham talking-machines and 
 hollow windy fools ! Which it is not ' impossible* that we 
 should cease to be, I hope ? 
 
 Constitutions for the Colonies are now on the anvil ; the 
 discontented Colonies are all to be cured of their miseries by 
 Constitutions. Whether that will cure their miseries, or only 
 operate as a Godfrey' s-cordial to stop their whimpering, and in 
 the end worsen all their miseries, may be a sad doubt to us. 
 One thing strikes a remote spectator in these Colonial ques- 
 tions : the singular placidity with which the British Statesman 
 at this time, backed by M'Croudy and the British moneyed 
 classes, is prepared to surrender whatsoever interest Britain, as 
 foundress of those establishments, might pretend to have in the 
 decision. " If you want to go from us, go ; we by no means 
 " want you to stay : you cost us money yearly, which is scarce ; 
 
 1 Major Carmichael Smith : sec his Pamphlets on this subject. 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 127 
 
 " desperate quantities of trouble too : why not go, if you wish 
 " it ? " Such is the humour of the British Statesman, at this 
 time. Men clear for rebellion, 'annexation' as they call it, 
 walk openly abroad in our American Colonies ; found news- 
 papers, hold platform palaverings. From Canada there comes 
 duly by each mail a regular statistic of Annexationism : increas- 
 ing fast in this quarter, diminishing in that ; Majesty's Chief 
 Governor seeming to take it as a perfectly open question ; Ma- 
 jesty's Chief Governor in fact seldom appearing on the scene at 
 all, except to receive the impact of a few rotten eggs on occa- 
 sion, and then duck in again to his private contemplations. And 
 yet one would think the Majesty's Chief Governor ought to have 
 a kind of interest in the thing? Public liberty is carried to a 
 great length in some portions of her Majesty's dominions. But 
 the question, " Are we to continue subjects of her Majesty, or 
 "start rebelling against her? So many as are for rebelling, 
 " hold up your hands ! " Here is a public discussion of a very 
 extraordinary nature to be going on under the nose of a Go- 
 vernor of Canada. How the Governor of Canada, being a Brit- 
 ish piece of flesh and blood, and not a Canadian lumber-log of 
 mere pine and rosin, can stand it, is not very conceivable at 
 first view. He does it, seemingly, with the stoicism of a Zeno. 
 It is a constitutional sight like few. 
 
 And yet an instinct deeper than the Gospel of M'Croudy 
 teaches all men that Colonies are worth something to a country ! 
 That if, under the present Colonial Office, they are a vexation 
 to us and themselves, some other Colonial Office can and must 
 be contrived which shall render them a blessing ; and that the 
 remedy will be to contrive such a Colonial Office or method of 
 administration, and by no means to cut the Colonies loose. 
 Colonies are not to be picked off the street every day ; not a 
 Colony of them but has been bought dear, well purchased by 
 the toil and blood of those we have the honour to be sons of ; 
 and we cannot just afford to cut them away because M'Croudy 
 finds the present management of them cost money. The pre- 
 sent management will indeed require to be cut away ; but as 
 for the Colonies, we purpose through Heaven's blessing to re- 
 tain them a while yet ! Shame on us for unworthy sons of brave 
 fathers if we do not. Brave fathers, by valiant blood and sweat, 
 purchased for us, from the bounty of Heaven, rich possessions 
 in all zones ; and we, wretched imbeciles, cannot do the func- 
 
128 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 tion of administering them? And because the accounts do not 
 stand well in the ledger, our remedy is, not to take shame to 
 ourselves, and repent in sackcloth and ashes, and amend our 
 beggarly imbecilities and insincerities in that as in other de- 
 partments of our business, but to fling the business overboard, 
 and declare the business itself to be bad? We are a hope- 
 ful set of heirs to a big fortune ! It does not suit our Manton 
 gunneries, grouse -shootings, mousings in the City; and like 
 spirited young gentlemen we will give it up, and let the attor- 
 neys take it? 
 
 Is there no value, then, in human things, but what can write 
 itself down in the cash -ledger? All men know, and even 
 M'Croudy in his inarticulate heart knows, that to men and 
 Nations there are invaluable values which cannot be sold for 
 money at all. George Robins is great ; but he is not omnipo- 
 tent. George Robins cannot quite sell Heaven and Earth by 
 auction, excellent though he be -at the business. Nay, if 
 M'Croudy offered his own life for sale in Threadneedle Street, 
 would anybody buy it? Not I, for one. " Nobody bids: pass 
 on to the next lot," answers Robins. And yet to M'Croudy this 
 unsaleable lot is worth all the Universe : nay, I believe, to us 
 also it is worth something ; good monitions, as to several things, 
 do lie in this Professor of the dismal science ; and consider- 
 able sums even of money, not to speak of other benefit, will yet 
 come out of his life and him, for which nobody bids ! Robins 
 has his own field where he reigns triumphant; but to that we 
 will restrict him with iron limits ; and neither Colonies nor the 
 lives of Professors, nor other such invaluable objects shall come 
 under his hammer. 
 
 Bad state of the ledger will demonstrate that your way of 
 dealing with your Colonies is absurd, and urgently in want oi' 
 reform ; but to demonstrate that the Empire itself must be dis- 
 membered to bring the ledger straight? O never. Something 
 else than the ledger must intervene to do that. Why does not 
 England repudiate Ireland, and insist on the ' Repeal,' instead 
 of prohibiting it under death-penalties? Ireland has never been 
 a paying speculation yet, nor is it like soon to be ! Why does 
 not Middlesex repudiate Surrey, and Chelsea Kensington, and 
 each county and each parish, and in the end each individual 
 set up for himself and his cashbox, repudiating the other and 
 his, because their mutual interests have got into an irritating 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 129 
 
 course? They must change the course, seek till they discover 
 a soothing one ; that is the rem'edy, when limbs of the same 
 body come to irritate one another. Because the paltry tatter of 
 a garment, reticulated for you out of thrums and listings in 
 Downing Street, ties foot and hand together in an intolerable 
 manner, will you relieve yourself by cutting off the hand or the 
 foot? You will cut off the paltry tatter of a pretended bodycoat, 
 I think, and fling that to the nettles ; and imperatively require 
 one that fits your size better. 
 
 Miserabler theory than that of money on the ledger being 
 the primary rule for Empires, or for any higher entity than City 
 owls and their mice-catching, cannot well be propounded. And 
 I would by no means advise Felicissimus, ill at ease on his 
 high-trotting and now justly impatient Sleswicker, to let the 
 poor horse in its desperation go in that direction for a moment- 
 ary solace. If by lumber-log Governors, by Godfrey' s-cordial 
 Constitutions or otherwise, he contrive to cut off the Colonies 
 or any real right the big British Empire has in her Colonies, 
 both he and the British Empire will bitterly repent it one day I 
 The Sleswicker, relieved in ledger for a moment, will find that 
 it is wounded in heart and honour forever ; and the turning 
 of its wild forehoofs upon Felicissimus as he lies in the ditch 
 combed off, is not a thing I like to think of! Britain, whether 
 it be known to Felicissimus or not, has other tasks appointed her 
 in God's Universe than the making of money ; and woe will be- 
 tide her if she forget those other withal. Tasks, colonial and 
 domestic, which are of an eternally divine nature, and compared 
 with which all money, and all that is procurable by money, are 
 in strict arithmetic an imponderable quantity, have been as- 
 signed this Nation ; and they also at last are coming upon her 
 again, clamorous, abstruse, inevitable, much to her bewilder- 
 ment just now! 
 
 This poor Nation, painfully dark about said tasks and the 
 way of doing them, means to keeps its Colonies nevertheless, 
 as things which somehow or other must have a value, were it 
 better seen into. They are portions of the general Earth, where 
 the children of Britain now dwell ; where the gods have so far 
 sanctioned their endeavour, as to say that they have a right to 
 dwell. England will not readily admit that her own children 
 are worth nothing but to be flung out of doors ! England look- 
 ing on her Colonies can say: "Here are lands and seas, spice- 
 
 K 
 
1 30 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " lands, corn-lands, timber-lands, overarched by zodiacs and 
 14 stars, clasped by many -sounding seas; wide spaces of the 
 " Maker's building, fit for the cradle yet of mighty Nations and 
 " their Sciences and Heroisms. Fertile continents still inha- 
 " bited by wild beasts -are mine, into which all the distressed 
 " populations of Europe might pour themselves, and make at 
 " once an Old World and a New World human. By the eter- 
 " nal fiat of the gods, this must yet one day be; this, by all the 
 " Divine Silences that rule this Universe, silent to fools, elo- 
 " quent and awful to the hearts of the wise, is incessantly at 
 " this moment, and at all moments, commanded to begin to be. 
 " Unspeakable deliverance, and new destiny of thousandfold 
 " expanded manfulness for all men, dawns out of the Future 
 " here. To me has fallen the godlike task of initiating all that : 
 " of me and of my Colonies, the abstruse Future asks, Are you 
 " wise enough for so sublime a destiny? Are you too foolish?" 
 
 That you ask advice of whatever wisdom is to be had in 
 the Colony, and even take note of what #;/\visdom is in it, and 
 record that too as an existing fact, will certainly be very ad- 
 vantageous. But I suspect the kind of Parliament that will 
 suit a Colony is much of a secret just now! Mr. Wakefield, a 
 democratic man in all fibres of him, and acquainted with Co- 
 lonial Socialities as few are, judges that the franchise for your 
 Colonial Parliament should be decidedly select, and advises a 
 high money-qualification ; as there is in all Colonies a fluctu- 
 ating migratory mass, not destitute of money, but very much 
 so of loyalty, permanency, or civic availability ; whom it is 
 extremely advantageous not to consult on what you are about 
 attempting for the Colony or Mother Country. This I can well 
 believe; and also that a 'high money-qualification,' in the 
 present sad state of human affairs, might be some help to you 
 in selecting; though whether even that would quite certainly 
 bring 'wisdom,' the one thing indispensable, is much a ques- 
 tion with me. It might help, it might help ! And if by any 
 means you could (which you cannot) exclude the Fourth Estate, 
 and indicate decisively that Wise Advice was the thing wanted 
 here, and Parliamentary Eloquence was not the thing wanted 
 anywhere just now, there might really some light of experience 
 and human foresight, and a truly valuable benefit, be found for 
 you in such assemblies. 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 131 
 
 And there is one thing, too apt to be forgotten, which it 
 much behoves us to remember : In the Colonies, as everywhere 
 else in this world, the vital point is not who decides, but what 
 is decided on ! That measures tending really to the best advant- 
 age temporal and spiritual of the Colony be adopted, and strenu- 
 ously put in execution ; there lies the grand interest of every 
 good citizen British and Colonial. Such measures, whosoever 
 have originated and prescribed them, will gradually be sanc- 
 tioned by all men and gods; and clamours of every kind in 
 reference to them may safely to a great extent be neglected, as 
 clamorous merely, and sure to be transient. Colonial Governor, 
 Colonial Parliament, whoever or whatever does an injustice, or 
 resolves on an wisdom, he is the pernicious object, however 
 parliamentary he be ! 
 
 I have known things done, in this or the other Colony, in 
 the most parliamentary way before now, which carried written 
 on the brow of them sad symptoms of eternal reprobation; not 
 to be mistaken, had you painted an inch thick. In Montreal, 
 for example, at this moment, standing amid the ruins of the 
 ' Elgin Marbles' (as they call the burnt walls of the Parliament 
 House there), what rational British soul but is forced to insti- 
 tute the mournfulest constitutional reflections? Some years ago 
 the Canadas, probably not without materials for discontent, and 
 blown upon by skilful artists, blazed up into crackling of mus- 
 ketry, open flame of rebellion; a thing smacking of the gallows 
 in all countries that pretend to have any ' Government.' Which 
 flame of rebellion, had there been no loyal population to fling 
 themselves upon it at peril of their life, might have ended we 
 know not how. It ended speedily, in the good way; Canada 
 got a Godfrey' s-cordial Constitution ; and for the moment all 
 was varnished into some kind of feasibility again. A most poor 
 feasibility ; momentary, not lasting, nor like to be of profit to 
 Canada ! For this year, the Canadian most constitutional Par- 
 liament, such a congeries of persons as one can imagine, de- 
 cides that the aforesaid flame of rebellion shall not only be 
 forgotten as per bargain, but that the loyal population, who 
 flung their lives upon it and quenched it in the nick of time, 
 shall pay the rebels their damages ! Of this, I believe, on sadly 
 conclusive evidence, there is no doubt whatever. Such, when 
 you wash off the constitutional pigments, is the Death's-head 
 that discloses itself. I can only say, if all the Parliaments in 
 
132 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 the world were to vote that such a thing was just, I should feel 
 painfully constrained to answer, at my peril, "No, by the Eternal, 
 never 1" And I would recommend any British Governor who 
 might come across that Business, there or here, to overhaul it 
 again. What the meaning of a Governor, if he is not to over- 
 haul and control such things, may be, I cannot conjecture. A 
 Canadian Lumber-log may as well be made Governor. He 
 might have some cast-metal hand or shoulder-crank (a thing 
 easily contrivable in Birmingham) for signing his name to Acts 
 of the Colonial Parliament ; he would be a 'native of the country' 
 too, with popularity on that score if on no other ; he is your 
 man, if you really want a Log Governor ! 
 
 I perceive therefore that, besides choosing Parliaments 
 never so well, the New Colonial Office will have another thing 
 to do : Contrive to send out a new kind of Governors to the 
 Colonies. This will be the mainspring of the business; without 
 this the business will not go at all. An experienced, wise and 
 valiant British man, to represent the Imperial Interest; he, with 
 such a speaking or silent Collective Wisdom as he can gather 
 round him in the Colony, will evidently be the condition of all 
 good between the Mother Country and it. If you can find such 
 a man, your point is gained; if you cannot, lost. By him and 
 his Collective Wisdom all manner of true relations, mutual in- 
 terests and duties such as they do exist in fact between Mother 
 Country and Colony, can be gradually developed into practical 
 methods and results ; and all manner of true and noble suc- 
 cesses, and veracities in the way of governing, be won. Choose 
 well your Governor ; not from this or that poor section of the 
 Aristocracy, military, naval, or redtapist; wherever there are 
 born kings of men, you had better seek them out, and breed 
 them to this work. All sections of the British Population will 
 be open to you : and, on the whole, you must succeed in finding 
 a man./?/. And having found him, I would farther recommend 
 you to keep him some time ! It would be a great improvement 
 to end this present nomadism of Colonial Governors. Give your 
 Governor due power ; and let him know withal that he is wed- 
 ded to his enterprise, and having once well learned it, shall 
 continue with it; that it is not a Canadian Lumber-Log you 
 want there, to tumble upon the vortexes and sign its name by 
 a Birmingham shoulder-crank, but a Governor of Men ; who, 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 133 
 
 you mean, shall fairly gird himself to his enterprise, and fail 
 with it and conquer with it, and as it were live and die with it : 
 he will have much to learn ; and having once learned it, will 
 stay, and turn his knowledge to account. 
 
 From this kind of Governor, were you once in the way of 
 finding him with moderate certainty, from him and his Collec- 
 tive Wisdom, all good whatsoever might be anticipated. And 
 surely, were the Colonies once enfranchised from redtape, and 
 the poor Mother Country once enfranchised from it; were our 
 idle Seventy-fours all busy carrying-out streams of British In- 
 dustrials, and those Scoundrel Regiments all working, under 
 divine drill-sergeants, at the grand Atlantic and Pacific Junction 
 Railway, poor Britain and her poor Colonies might find that 
 they had true relations to each other: that the Imperial Mother 
 and her constitutionally obedient Daughters was not a redtape 
 fiction, provoking bitter mockery as at present, but a blessed 
 God's-Fact destined to fill half the world with its fruits one 
 day! 
 
 But undoubtedly our grand primary concern is the Home 
 Office, and its Irish Giant named of Despair. When the Home 
 Office begins dealing with this Irish Giant, which it is vitally 
 urgent for us the Home Office should straightway do, it will 
 find its duties enlarged to a most unexpected extent, and, as it 
 were, altered from top to bottom. A changed time now when 
 the question is, What to do with three millions of paupers (come 
 upon you for food, since you have no work for them) increasing 
 at a frightful rate per day ? Home Office, Parliament, King, Con- 
 stitution will find that they have now, if they will continue in 
 this world long, got a quite immense new question and continu- 
 ally-recurring set of questions. That huge question of the Irish 
 Giant, with his Scotch and English Giant-Progeny advancing 
 open-mouthed upon us, will, as I calculate, change from top to 
 bottom not the Home Office only but all manner of Offices and 
 Institutions whatsoever, and gradually the structure of Society 
 itself. I perceive, it will make us a new Society, if we are to 
 continue a Society at all. For the alternative is not, Stay where 
 we are, or change ? But Change, with new wise effort fit for the 
 new time, to true and wider nobler National Life ; or Change, 
 by indolent folding of the arms, as we are now doing, in hor- 
 rible anarchies and convulsions to Dissolution, to National 
 
134 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Death, or Suspended-animation ? Suspended-animation itself 
 is a frightful possibility for Britain : this Anarchy whither all 
 Europe has preceded us, where all Europe is now weltering, 
 would suit us as ill as any ! The question for the British Na- 
 tion is : Can we work our course pacifically, on firm land, into 
 the New Era ; or must it be, for us too, as for all the others, 
 through black abysses of Anarchy, hardly escaping, if we do 
 with all our struggles escape, the jaws of eternal Death ? 
 
 For Pauperism, though it now absorbs its high figure of mil- 
 lions annually, is by no means a question of money only, but 
 of infinitely higher and greater than all conceivable money. If 
 our Chancellor of the Exchequer had a Fortunatus' purse, and 
 miraculous sacks of Indian meal that would stand scooping from 
 forever, I say, iven on these terms Pauperism could not be 
 endured ; and it would vitally concern all British Citizens to 
 abate Pauperism, and never rest till they had ended it again. 
 Pauperism is the general leakage through every joint of the 
 ship that is rotten. Were all men doing their duty, or even 
 seriously trying to do it, there would be no Pauper. Were the 
 pretended Captains of the world at all in the habit of command- 
 ing ; were the pretended Teachers of the world at all in the 
 habit of teaching, of admonishing said Captains among others, 
 and with sacred zeal apprising them to what place such neglect 
 was leading, how could Pauperism exist ? Pauperism would 
 lie far over the horizon ; we should be lamenting and denounc- 
 ing quite inferior sins of men, which were only tending afar off 
 towards Pauperism. A true Captaincy ; a true Teachership, 
 either making all men and Captains know and devoutly recog- 
 nise the eternal law of things, or else breaking its own heart, 
 and going about with sackcloth round its loins, in testimony 
 of continual sorrow and protest, and prophecy of God's ven- 
 geance upon such a course of things : either of these divine 
 equipments would have saved us ; and it is because we have 
 neither of them that we are come to such a pass ! 
 
 We may depend upon it, where there is a Pauper, there is 
 a sin ; to make one Pauper there go many sins. Pauperism is 
 our Social Sin grown manifest ; developed from the state of a 
 spiritual ignobleness, a practical impropriety and base oblivion 
 of duty, to an affair of the ledger. Here is not now an unheeded 
 sin against God ; here is a concrete ugly hulk of Beggary de- 
 manding that you should buy Indian meal for it. Men of re- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 135 
 
 flection have long looked with a horror for which there was no 
 response in the idle public, upon Pauperism ; but the quantity 
 of meal it demands has now awakened men of no reflection to 
 consider it. Pauperism is the poisonous dripping from all the 
 sins, and putrid unveracities and godforgetting greedinesses 
 and devil-serving cants and Jesuitisms, that exist among us. Not 
 one idle Sham lounging about Creation upon false pretences, 
 upon means which he has not earned, upon theories which he 
 does not practise, but yields his share of Pauperism somewhere 
 or other. His sham-work oozes down ; finds at last its issue 
 as human Pauperism, in a human being that by those false 
 pretences cannot live. The Idle Workhouse, now about to burst 
 of overfilling, what is it but the scandalous poison-tank of drain- 
 age from the universal Stygian quagmire of our affairs ? Work- 
 house Paupers ; immortal sons of Adam rotted into that scan- 
 dalous condition, subter- slavish, demanding that you would 
 make slaves of them as an unattainable blessing ! My friends, 
 I perceive the quagmire must be drained, or we cannot live. 
 And farther, I perceive, this of Pauperism is the corner where 
 we must begin, the levels all pointing thitherward, the possi- 
 bilities lying all clearly there. On that Problem we shall find 
 that innumerable things, that all things whatsoever hang. By 
 courageous steadfast persistence in that, I can foresee Society 
 itself regenerated. In the course of long strenuous centuries, 
 I can see the State become what it is actually bound to be, the 
 keystone of a most real ' Organisation of Labour,' and on this 
 Earth a world of some veracity, and some heroism, once more 
 worth living in ! 
 
 The State in all European countries, and in England first 
 of all, as I hope, will discover that its functions are now, and 
 have long been, very wide of what the State in old pedant 
 Downing Streets has aimed at ; that the State is, for the pre- 
 sent, not a reality but in great part a dramatic speciosity, ex- 
 pending its strength in practices and objects fallen many of 
 them quite obsolete ; that it must come a little nearer the true 
 aim again, or it cannot continue in this world. The ' Cham- 
 pion of England' cased in iron or tin, and ' able to mount his 
 horse with little assistance,' this Champion and the thousand- 
 fold cousinry of Phantasms he has, nearly all dead now but 
 still walking as ghosts, must positively take himseh away : who 
 
136 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 can endure him, and his solemn trumpetings and obsolete gesti- 
 culations, in a Time that is full of deadly realities, coming open- 
 mouthed upon us ? At Drury Lane let him play his part, him 
 and his thousandfold cousinry ; fCnd welcome, so long as any 
 public will pay a shilling to see 'him : but on the solid earth, 
 under the extremely earnest .stars, we dare not palter with him, 
 or accept his tomfooleries any more. Ridiculous they seem to 
 some ; horrible they seem to me : all lies, if one look whence 
 they come and whither they go, are horrible. 
 
 Alas, it will be found, I doubt, that in England more than 
 in any country, our Public Life and our Private, our State and 
 our Religion, and all that we do and speak (and the most even 
 of what we think], is a tissue of half-truths and whole-lies ; of 
 hypocrisies, conventionalisms, worn-out traditionary rags and 
 cobwebs ; such a life-garment of beggarly incredible and un- 
 credited falsities as no honest souls of Adam's Posterity were 
 ever enveloped in before. And we walk about in it with a 
 stately gesture, as if it were some priestly stole or imperial 
 mantle; not the foulest beggar's-gabardine that ever was. ' No 
 ' Englishman dare believe the truth,' says one: 'he stands, for 
 ' these two -hundred years, enveloped in lies of every kind ; 
 ' from nadir to zenith an ocean of traditionary cant surrounds 
 1 him as his life-element. He really thinks the truth dangerous. 
 1 Poor wretch, you see him everywhe're endeavouring to temper 
 ' the truth by taking the falsity along with it, and welding them 
 ' together ; this he calls " safe course," " moderate course," 
 ' and other fine names ; there, balanced between God and the 
 ' Devil, he thinks he can serve two masters, and that things 
 ' will go well with him.' 
 
 In the cotton-spinning and similar departments our Eng- 
 lish friend knows well that truth or God will have nothing to 
 do with the Devil or falsehood, but will ravel all the web to 
 pieces if you introduce the Devil or Non-veracity in any form 
 into it : in this department, therefore, our English friend avoids 
 falsehood. But in the religious, political, social, moral, and all 
 other spiritual departments he freely introduces falsehood, no- 
 thing doubting ; and has long done so, with a profuseness not 
 elsewhere met with in the world. The unhappy creature, does 
 he not know, then, that every lie is accursed, and the parent 
 of mere curses ? That he must think the truth ; much more 
 speak it ? That, above all things, by the oldest law of Hea- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 137 
 
 ven and Earth which no man violates with impunity, he must 
 not and shall not wag the tongue of him except to utter his 
 thought ? That there is not a grin or beautiful acceptable grim- 
 ace he can execute upon his poor countenance, but is either 
 an express veracity, the image of what passes within him ; or 
 else is a bit of Devil-worship which he and the rest of us will 
 have to pay for yet ? Alas, the grins he executes upon his poor 
 mind (which is all tortured into St. Vitus dances, and ghastly 
 merry-andrewisms, by the practice) are the most extraordinary 
 this sun ever saw. 
 
 We have Puseyisms, black-and-white surplice controver- 
 sies: do not, officially and otherwise, the select of the longest 
 heads in England sit with intense application and iron gravity, 
 in open forum, judging of ' prevenient grace' ? Not a head of 
 them suspects that it can be improper so to sit, or of the nature 
 of treason against the Power who gave an Intellect to man ; 
 that it can be other than the duty of a good citizen to use his 
 godgiven intellect in investigating prevenient grace, superve- 
 nient moonshine, or the colour of the Bishop's nightmare, if 
 that happened to turn up. I .consider them far ahead of Cicero's 
 Roman Augurs with their chicken - bowels : " Behold these 
 divine chicken-bowels, O Senate and Roman People; the mid- 
 riff has fallen eastward !" ^olemnly intimates one Augur. " By 
 Proserpina and the triple Hecate!" exclaims the other, " I say 
 the midriff has fallen to the west !" And they look at one 
 another with the seriousness of men prepared to die in their 
 opinion, the authentic seriousness of men betting at Tatter- 
 sail's, or about to receive judgment in Chancery. There is in 
 the Englishman something great, beyond all Roman greatness, 
 in whatever line you meet him ; even as a Latter-Day Augur 
 he seeks his fellow ! Poor devil, I believe it is his intense 
 love of peace, and hatred of breeding discussions which lead 
 nowhither, that has led him into this sad practice of amalgam- 
 ating true and false. 
 
 He has been at it these two-hundred years ; and has now 
 carried it to a terrible length. He couldn't follow Oliver Crom- 
 well in the Puritan path heavenward, so steep was it, and beset 
 with thorns, and becoming uncertain withal. He much pre- 
 ferred, at that juncture, to go heavenward with his Charles 
 Second and merry Nell Gwynns, and old decent formularies 
 and good respectable aristocratic company, for escort ; sore 
 
138 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 he tried, by glorious restorations, glorious revolutions and so 
 forth, to perfect this desirable amalgam; hoped always it might 
 be possible ; is only just now, if even now, beginning to give 
 up the hope ; and to see with wide-eyed horror that it is not at 
 Heaven he is arriving, but at the Stygian marshes, with their 
 thirty-thousand Needlewomen, cannibal Connaughts, rivers of 
 lamentation, continual wail of infants, and the yellow-burning 
 gleam of a Hell-on-Earth ! Bull, my friend, you must strip 
 that astonishing pontiff-stole, imperial mantle, or whatever you 
 imagine it to be, which I discern to be a garment of curses, 
 and poisoned Nessus'-shirt now at last about to take fire upon 
 you ; you must strip that off your poor body, my friend ; and, 
 were it only in a soul's suit of Utilitarian buff, and such be- 
 lief as that a big loaf is better than a small one, come forth 
 into contact with your world, under true professions again, 
 and not false. You wretched man, you ought to weep for 
 half a century on discovering what lies you have believed, and 
 what every lie leads to and proceeds from. O my friend, no 
 honest fellow in this Planet was ever so served by his cooks 
 before ; or has eaten such quantities and qualities of dirt as 
 you have been made to do, for these two centuries past. Arise, 
 my horribly maltreated yet still beloved Bull ; steep yourself 
 in running water for a long while, my friend ; and begin forth- 
 with in every conceivable direction, physical and spiritual, the 
 long-expected Scavenger Age. 
 
 Many doctors have you had, my poor friend ; but I per- 
 ceive it is the Water-Cure alone that will help you : a complete 
 course of scavengerism is the thing you need ! A new and veri- 
 table heart-divorce of England from the Babylonish woman, 
 who is Jesuitism and Unveracity, and dwells not at Rome now, 
 but under your own nose and everywhere ; whom, and her foul 
 worship of Phantasms and Devils, poor England had once di- 
 vorced, with a divine heroism not forgotten yet, and well worth 
 remembering now : a clearing-out of Church and State from 
 the unblessed host of Phantasms which have too long nestled 
 thick there, under those astonishing 'Defenders of the Faith,' 
 Defenders of the Hypocrisies, the spiritual Vampires and 
 obscene Nightmares, under which England lies in syncope ; 
 this is what you need ; and if you cannot get it, you must die, 
 my poor friend ! 
 
 Like people, like priest. Priest, King, Home Office, all 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 139 
 
 manner of establishments and offices among a people bear a 
 striking resemblance to the people itself. It is because Bull 
 has been eating so much dirt that his Home Offices have got 
 into such a shockingly dirty condition, the old pavements of 
 them quite gone out of sight and out of memory, and nothing 
 but mountains of long-accumulated dung in which the poor 
 cattle are sprawling and tumbling. Had his own life been 
 pure, had his own daily conduct been grounding itself on the 
 clear pavements or actual beliefs and veracities, would he have 
 let his Home Offices come to such a pass ? Not in Downing 
 Street only, but in all other thoroughfares and arenas and spi- 
 ritual or physical departments of his existence, running water 
 and Herculean scavengerism have become indispensable, un- 
 less the poor man is to choke in his own exuviae, and die the 
 sorrowfulest death. 
 
 If the State could once get back to the real sight of its es- 
 sential function, and with religious resolution begin doing that, 
 and putting away its multifarious Imaginary functions, and indig- 
 nantly casting out these as mere dung and insalubrious horror 
 and abomination (which they are), what a promise of reform 
 were there ! The British Home Office, surely this and its kin- 
 dred Offices exist, if they will think of it, that life and work may 
 continue possible, and may not become impossible, for British 
 men. If honourable existence, or existence on human terms 
 at all, have become impossible for millions of British men, how 
 can the Home Office or any other Office long exist ? With 
 Thirty-thousand Needlewomen, a Connaught fallen into po- 
 tential cannibalism, and the Idle Workhouse everywhere burst- 
 ing, and declaring itself an /^humanity and stupid ruinous 
 brutality not much longer to be tolerated among rational hu- 
 man creatures, it is time the State were bethinking itself. 
 
 So soon as the State attacks that tremendous cloaca of Pau- 
 perism, which will choke the world if it be not attacked, the 
 State will find its real functions very different indeed from what 
 it had long supposed them ! The State is a reality, and not a 
 dramaturgy ; it exists here to render existence possible, exist- 
 ence desirable and noble, for the State's subjects. The State, 
 as it gets into the track of its real work, will find that same 
 expand into whole continents of new unexpected, most blessed 
 activity ; as its dramatic functions, declared superfluous, more 
 
140 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and more fall inert, and go rushing like huge torrents of extinct 
 exuviae, dung and rubbish, down to the Abyss forever. O Hea- 
 ven, to see a State that knew a little why it was there, and on 
 what ground, in this Year 1850, it could pretend to exist, in so 
 extremely earnest a world as ours is growing ! The British 
 State, if it will be the crown and keystone of our British Social 
 Existence, must get to recognise, with a veracity very long un- 
 known to it, what the real objects and indispensable necessities 
 of our Social Existence are. Good Heavens, it is not pre- 
 venient grace, or the colour of the Bishop's nightmare, that is 
 pinching us ; it is the impossibility to get along any farther 
 for mountains of accumulated dung and falsity and horror ; 
 the total closing-up of noble aims from every man, of any 
 aim at all, from many men, except that of rotting-out in Idle 
 Workhouses an existence below that of beasts ! 
 
 Suppose the State to have fairly started its ' Industrial Regi- 
 ments of the New Era,' which alas, are yet only beginning to 
 be talked of, what continents of new real work opened out, 
 for the Home and all other Public Offices among us ! Suppose 
 the Home Office looking out, as for life and salvation, for pro- 
 per men to command these ' Regiments.' Suppose the an- 
 nouncement were practically made to all British souls that the 
 want of wants, more indispensable than any jewel in the crown, 
 was that of men able to command men in ways of industrial 
 and moral welldoing ; that the State would give its very life 
 for such men ; that such men were the State ; that the quan- 
 tity of them to be found in England, lamentably small at pre- 
 sent, was the exact measure of England's worth, what a new 
 dawn of everlasting day for all British souls ! Noble British 
 soul, to whom the gods have given faculty and heroism, what 
 men call genius, here at last is a career for thee. It will not 
 be needful now to swear fealty to the Incredible, and traitor- 
 ously cramp thyself into a cowardly canting play-actor in God's 
 Universe ; or, solemnly forswearing that, into a mutinous rebel 
 and waste bandit in thy generation : here is an aim that is 
 clear and credible, a course fit for a man. No need to become 
 a tormenting and self-tormenting mutineer, banded with rebel- 
 lious souls, if thou wouldst live ; no need to rot in suicidal 
 idleness ; or take to platform preaching, and writing in Radi- 
 cal Newspapers, to pull asunder the great Falsity in which 
 thou and all of us are choking. The great Falsity, behold it 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 141 
 
 has become, in the very heart of it, a great Truth of Truths ; 
 and invites thee and all brave men to cooperate with it in 
 transforming all the body and the joints into the noble likeness 
 of that heart! Thrice-blessed change. The State aims, once 
 more, with a true aim ; and has loadstars in the eternal Hea- 
 ven. Struggle faithfully for it ; noble is this struggle ; thou 
 too, according to thy faculty, shall reap in due time, if thou 
 faint not. Thou shall have a wise command of men, thou shall 
 be wisely commanded by men, ihe summary of all blessedness 
 for a social creature here below. The sore struggle, never to 
 be relaxed, and not forgiven to any son of man, is once more 
 a noble one ; glory to the Highest, it is now once more a true 
 and noble one, wherein a man can afford to die ! Our path is 
 now again Heavenward. Forward, wilh sleady pace, wilh drawn 
 weapons, and unconquerable hearls, in the name of God that 
 made us all ! 
 
 Wise obedience and wise command, I foresee thai the 
 regimenting of Pauper Banditti into Soldiers of Induslry is but 
 the beginning of this blessed process, which will extend to the 
 topmost heighls of our Sociely ; and, in ihe course of genera- 
 lions, make us all once more a Governed Commonwealth, and 
 Civitas Dei, if it please God ! Waste-land Industrials succeed- 
 ing, other kinds of Industry, as clolh-making, shoe-making, 
 plough-making, spade-making, house-building, in ihe end, all 
 kinds of Induslry whalsoever, will be found capable of regi- 
 menling. Mill-operalives, all manner of free operalives, as yel 
 unregimenled, nomadic under privale maslers, ihey, seeing 
 such example and ils blessedness, will say : " Masters, you 
 " must regiment us a litlle ; make our inlerests with you per- 
 " manenl a lillle, inslead of lemporary and nomadic ; we will 
 " enlisl wilh the State otherwise !" This will go on, on ihe one 
 hand, while ihe Slale-operalion goes on, on ihe olher : ihus 
 will all Maslers of Workmen, privale Caplains of Induslry, be 
 forced to incessantly cooperate with the Slate and ils public 
 Captains ; they regimenting in iheir way, ihe Slale in ils way, 
 wilh ever-widening field ; lill iheir fields meet (so lo speak) and 
 coalesce, and ihere be no unregimenled worker, or such only 
 as are fil lo remain unregimenled, any more. O my friends, 
 I clearly perceive this horrible cloaca of Pauperism, wearing 
 nearly botlomless now, is ihe poinl where we musl begin. 
 Here, in this plainly unendurable porlion of Ihe general quag- 
 
142 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 mire, the lowest point of all, and hateful even to M'Croudy, 
 must our main drain begin : steadily prosecuting that, tearing 
 that along with Herculean labour and divine fidelity, we shall 
 gradually drain the entire Stygian swamp, and make it all once 
 more a fruitful field ! 
 
 For the State, I perceive, looking out with right sacred 
 earnestness for persons able to command, will straightway also 
 come upon the question : "What kind of schools and semin- 
 " aries, and teaching and also preaching establishments have 
 " I, for the training of young souls to take command and to 
 " yield obedience ? Wise command, wise obedience : the capa- 
 " bility of these two is the net measure of culture, and human 
 " virtue, in every man ; all good lies in the possession of these 
 " two capabilities ; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the 
 " want of these. He is a good man that can command and 
 " obey ; he that cannot is a bad. If my teachers and my 
 " preachers, with their seminaries, high schools and cathedrals, 
 " do train men to these gifts, the thing they are teaching and 
 " preaching must be true ; if they do not, not true !" 
 
 The State, once brought to its veracities by the thumbscrew 
 in this manner, what will it think of these same seminaries and 
 cathedrals ! I foresee that our Etons and Oxfords with their 
 nonsense-verses, college-logics, and broken crumbs of mere 
 speech, which is not even English or Teutonic speech, but old 
 Grecian and Italian speech, dead and buried and much lying 
 out of our way these two thousand years last past, will be found 
 a most astonishing seminary for the training of young English 
 souls to take command in human Industries, and act a valiant 
 part under the sun ! The State does not want vocables, but 
 manly wisdoms and virtues : the State, does it want parliament- 
 ary orators, first of all, and men capable of writing books ? 
 What a ragfair of extinct monkeries, high-piled here in the 
 very shrine of our existence, fit to smite the generations with 
 atrophy and beggarly paralysis, as we see it do ! The Minis- 
 ter of Education will not want for work, I think, in the New 
 Downing Street ! 
 
 How it will go with Souls'-Overseers, and what the new kind 
 will be, we do not prophesy just now. Clear it is, however, 
 that the last finish of the State's efforts, in this operation of 
 regimenting, will be to get the true Souls'-Overseers set over 
 men's souls, to regiment, as the consummate flower of all, an 4 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 143 
 
 constitute into some Sacred Corporation, bearing authority and 
 dignity in their generation, the Chosen of the Wise, of the 
 Spiritual and Devout-minded, the Reverent who deserve rever- 
 ence, who are as the Salt of the Earth ; that not till this is 
 done can the State consider its edifice to have reached the first 
 story, to be safe for a moment, to be other than an arch with- 
 out the keystones, and supported hitherto on mere wood. How 
 will this be done ? Ask not ; let the second or the third genera- 
 tion after this begin to ask ! Alas, wise men do exist, born 
 duly into the world in every current generation ; but the get- 
 ting of them regimented is the highest pitch of human Polity, 
 and the feat of all feats in political engineering : impossible 
 for us, in this poor age, as the building of St. Paul's would be 
 for Canadian Beavers, acquainted only with the architecture of 
 fish-dams, and with no trowel but their tail. 
 
 Literature, the strange entity so-called, that indeed is 
 here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated 
 spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Arch- 
 bishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may 
 be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, 
 into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spirit- 
 ual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and 
 street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence or for 
 guineas, there will be no hope in Literature. What if our next 
 >et of Souls'-Overseers were to be silent ones very mainly ? 
 Alas, alas, why gaze into the blessed continents and delect- 
 able mountains of a Future based on truth, while as yet we 
 struggle far down, nigh suffocated in a slough of lies, uncer- 
 tain whether or how we shall be able to climb at all ! 
 
 Who will begin the long steep journey with us ; who of liv- 
 ing statesmen will snatch the standard, and say, like a hero on 
 the forlorn-hope for his country, Forward ! Or is there none ; 
 no one that can and dare ? And our lot too, then, is Anarchy 
 by barricade or ballot-box, and Social Death ? We will not 
 think so. 
 
 Whether Sir Robert Peel will undertake the Reform of 
 Downing Street for us, or any Ministry or Reform farther, is 
 not known. He, they say, is getting old, does himself recoil 
 from it, and shudder at it ; which is possible enough. The 
 
144 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 clubs and coteries appear to have settled that he surely will 
 not ; that this melancholy wriggling seesaw of redtape Trojans 
 and Protectionist Greeks must continue its course till -what 
 can happen, my friends, if this go on continuing ? 
 
 And yet, perhaps, England has by no means so settled it. 
 Quit the clubs and coteries, you do not hear two rational men 
 speak long together upon politics, without pointing their inqui- 
 ries towards this man. A Minister that will attack the Augias 
 Stable of Downing Street, and begin producing a real Manage- 
 ment, no longer an imaginary one, of our affairs ; he, or else in 
 few years Chartist Parliament and the Deluge come : that 
 seems the alternative. As I read the omens, there was no man 
 in my time more authentically called to a post of difficulty, of 
 danger, and of honour than this man. The enterprise is ready 
 for him, if he is ready for it. He has but to lift his finger in 
 this enterprise, and whatsoever is wise and manful in England 
 will rally round him. If the faculty and heart for it be in him, 
 he, strangely and almost tragically if we look upon his history, 
 is to have leave to try it j he now, at the eleventh hour, has 
 the opportunity for such a feat in reform as has not, in these 
 late generations, been attempted by all our reformers put to- 
 gether. 
 
 As for Protectionist jargon, who in these earnest days would 
 occupy many moments of his time with that ? ' A Costermonger 
 ' in this street,' says Crabbe, ' finding lately that his rope of 
 1 onions, which he hoped would have brought a shilling, was 
 ' to go for only sevenpence henceforth, burst forth into lament- 
 ' ation, execration and the most pathetic tears. Throwing up 
 ' the window, I perceived the other costermongers preparing 
 ' impatiently to pack this one out of their company as a dis- 
 ' grace to it, if he would not hold his peace and take the mar- 
 
 ket rate for his onions. I looked better at this Costermonger. 
 ' To my astonished imagination, a star-and-garter dawned upon 
 
 the dim figure of the man ; and I perceived that here was no 
 ' Costermonger to be expelled with ignominy, but a sublime 
 ' goddess-born Ducal Individual, whom I forbear to name at 
 ' this moment ! What an omen ; nay to my astonished ima- 
 
 gination, there dawned still fataler omens. Surely, of all hu- 
 ' man trades ever heard of, the trade of Owning Land in Eng- 
 1 land ought not to bully us for drinkmoney just now !' 
 
 ' Hansard's Debates,' continues Crabbe farther on, ' pre- 
 
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 145 
 
 1 sent many inconsistencies of speech ; lamentable unveracities 
 ' uttered in Parliament, by one and indeed by all ; in which 
 ' sad list Sir Robert Peel stands for his share among others. 
 ' Unveracities not a few were spoken in Parliament ; in fact, 
 1 to one with a sense of what is called God's truth, it seemed 
 1 all one unveracity, a talking from the teeth outward, not as 
 ' the convictions but as the expediencies and inward astucities 
 ' directed ; and, in the sense oi God's truth, I have heard no 
 ' true word uttered in Parliament at all. Most lamentable 
 1 unveracities continually spoken in Parliament, by almost every 
 ' one that had to open his mouth there. But the largest vera- 
 ' city ever done in Parliament in our time, as we all know, was 
 ' of this man's doing ; and that, you will find, is a very con- 
 ' siderable item in the calculation !' 
 
 Yes, and I believe England in her dumb way remembers 
 that too. And ' the Traitor Peel' can very well afford to let in- 
 numerable Ducal Costermongers, parliamentary Adventurers, 
 and lineal representatives of the Impenitent Thier, say all their 
 say about him, and do all their do. With a virtual England 
 at his back, and an actual eternal sky above him, there is not 
 much in the total net-amount of that. When the master of the 
 horse rides abroad, many dogs in the village bark ; but he pur- 
 sues his journey all the same. 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 
 
 [ist May 1850.] 
 
 IT lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of edu 
 cational and other arrangements for several centuries back, 
 to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the 
 faculty of eloquent speech. Our earliest schoolmasters teach 
 us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and 
 pronouncing, the rules of correct speech ; rhetorics, logics fol- 
 low, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only 
 speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters 
 in the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, un- 
 der various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, 
 on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropri- 
 ately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen, this is the sublime 
 goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and 
 learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are con- 
 tinually urging and guiding us. Preceptor or professor, look- 
 ing over his miraculous seedplot, seminary as he well calls it, or 
 crop of young human souls, watches with attentive view one 
 organ of his delightful little seedlings growing to be men, the 
 tongue. He hopes we shall all get to speak yet, if it please 
 Heaven. " Some of you shall be book-writers, eloquent re- 
 " view-writers, and astonish mankind, my young friends : 
 " others in white neckcloths shall do sermons by Blair and 
 " Lindley Murray, nay by Jeremy Taylor and judicious 
 " Hooker, and be priests to guide men heavenward by skil- 
 " fully brandished handkerchief and the torch of rhetoric. 
 " For others there is Parliament and the election beerbarrel, 
 " and a course that leads men very high indeed ; these shall 
 " shake the senate-house, the Morning Newspapers, shake the 
 " very spheres, and by dextrous wagging of the tongue dis- 
 " enthral mankind, and lead our afflicted country and us on 
 " the way we are to go. The way it not where noble deeds 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 14? 
 
 " are done, yet where noble words are spoken, leading us 
 " if not to the real Home of the Gods, at least to something 
 " which shall more or less deceptively resemble it !" 
 
 So fares it with the son of Adam, in these bewildered 
 epochs ; so, from the first opening of his eyes in this world, 
 to his last closing of them, and departure hence. Speak, 
 speak, O speak ; if thou have any faculty, speak it, or thou 
 diest and it is no faculty! So in universities, and all manner 
 of dames' and other schools, of the very highest class as of 
 the very lowest ; and Society at large, when we enter there, 
 confirms with all its brilliant review-articles, successful publi- 
 cations, intellectual tea-circles, literary gazettes, parliamentary 
 eloquences, the grand lesson we had. Other lesson in fact we 
 have none, in these times. If there be a human talent, let it 
 get into the tongue, and make melody with that organ. The 
 talent that can say nothing for itself, what is it ? Nothing ; or 
 a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at best make money 
 by railways. 
 
 All this is deep-rooted in our habits, in our social, edu- 
 cational and other arrangements ; and all this, when we look 
 at it impartially, is astonishing. Directly in the teeth of all 
 this it may be asserted that speaking is by no means the chief 
 faculty a human being can attain to ; that his excellence therein 
 is by no means the best test of his general human excellence, 
 or availability in this world ; nay that, unless we look well, it 
 is liable to become the very worst test ever devised for said 
 availability. The matter extends very far, down to the very 
 roots of the world, whither the British reader cannot conveni- 
 ently follow me just now ; but I will venture to assert the three 
 following things, and invite him to consider well what truth he 
 can gradually find in them : 
 
 First, that excellent speech, even speech really excellent, 
 is not, and never was, the chief test of human faculty, or the 
 measure of a man's ability, for any true function whatsoever ; 
 on the contrary, that excellent silence needed always to accom- 
 pany excellent speech, and was and is a much rarer and more 
 difficult gift. 
 
 Secondly, that really excellent speech, which I, being pos- 
 sessed of the Hebrew Bible or Book, as well as of other books 
 in my own and foreign languages, and having occasionally 
 heard a wise man's word among the crowd of unwise, do al- 
 
148 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 most unspeakably esteem, as a human gift, is terribly apt to 
 get confounded with its counterfeit, sham-excellent speech ! 
 And furthermore, that if really excellent human speech is 
 among the best of human things, then sham-excellent ditto 
 deserves to be ranked with the very worst. False speech, 
 capable of becoming, as some one has said, the falsest and 
 basest of all human things : put the case, one were listening 
 to that as to the truest and noblest ! Which, little as we are 
 conscious of it, I take to be the sad lot of many excellent 
 souls among us just now. So many as admire parliamentary 
 eloquence, divine popular literature, and suchlike, are dread- 
 fully liable to it just now: and whole nations and generations 
 seem as if getting themselves asphyxiaed, constitutionally, into 
 their last sleep, by means of it just now ! 
 
 For alas, much as we worship speech on all hands, here is 
 a third assertion which a man may venture to make, and in- 
 vite considerate men to reflect upon : That in these times, and 
 for several generations back, there has been, strictly considered, 
 no really excellent speech at all, but sham-excellent merely; 
 that is to say, false or quasi-false speech getting itself admired 
 and worshipped, instead of detested and suppressed. A truly 
 alarming predicament; and not the less so if we find it a quite 
 pleasant one for the time being, and welcome the advent of 
 asphyxia, as we would that of comfortable natural sleep ; as, 
 in so many senses, we are doing ! Surly judges there have 
 been who did not much admire the ' Bible of Modern Litera- 
 ture,' or anything you could distil from it, in contrast with the 
 ancient Bibles ; and found that in the matter of speaking, our 
 far best excellence, where that could be obtained, was excel- 
 lent silence, which means endurance and exertion, and good 
 work with lips closed ; and that our tolerablest speech was of 
 the nature of honest commonplace introduced where indispens- 
 able, which only set-up for being brief and true, and could 
 not be mistaken for excellent. 
 
 These are hard sayings for many a British reader, uncon- 
 scious of any damage, nay joyfully conscious to himself of 
 much profit, from that side of his possessions. Surely on this 
 side, if on no other, matters stood not ill with him ? The in- 
 genuous arts had softened his manners ; the parliamentary 
 eloquences supplied him with a succedaneum for government, 
 the popular literatures with the finer sensibilities of the heart : 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 149 
 
 surely on this windward side of things the British reader was 
 not ill off? Unhappy British reader ! 
 
 In fact, the spiritual detriment we unconsciously suffer, in 
 every province of our affairs, from this our prostrate respect to 
 power of speech is incalculable. For indeed it is the natural 
 consummation of an epoch such as ours. Given a general in- 
 sincerity of mind for several generations, you will certainly find 
 the Talker established in the place of honour ; and the Doer, 
 hidden in the obscure crowd, with activity lamed, or working 
 sorrowfully forward on paths unworthy of him. All men are 
 devoutly prostrate, worshipping the eloquent talker; and no 
 man knows what a scandalous idol he is. Out of whom in the 
 mildest manner, like comfortable natural rest, comes mere as- 
 phyxia and death everlasting ! Probably there is not in Nature 
 a more distracted phantasm than your commonplace eloquent 
 speaker, as he is found on platforms, in parliaments, on Ken- 
 tucky stumps, at tavern-dinners, in windy, empty, insincere 
 times like ours. The ' excellent Stump-Orator,' as our admiring 
 Yankee friends define him, he who in any occurrent set of cir- 
 cumstances can start forth, mount upon his 'stump,' his ros- 
 trum, tribune, place in parliament, or other ready elevation, and 
 pour forth from him his appropriate 'excellent speech,' his in- 
 terpretation of the said circumstances, in such manner as poor 
 windy mortals round him shall cry bravo to, he is not an 
 artist I can much admire, as matters go ! Alas, he is in general 
 merely the windiest mortal of them all ; and is admired for be- 
 ing so, into the bargain. Not a windy blockhead there who 
 kept silent but is better off than this excellent stump-orator. 
 Better off, for a great many reasons ; for this reason, were there 
 no other: the silent one is not admired; the silent suspects, 
 perhaps partly admits, that he is a kind of blockhead, from 
 which salutary self-knowledge the excellent stump-orator is de- 
 barred. A mouthpiece of Chaos to poor benighted mortals that 
 lend ear to him as to a voice from Cosmos, this excellent stump- 
 orator fills me with amazement. Not empty these musical 
 wind-utterances of his ; they are big with prophecy ; they an- 
 nounce, too audibly to me, that the end of many things is draw- 
 ing nigh ! 
 
 Let the British reader consider it a little ; he too is not a 
 little interested in it. Nay he, and the European reader in 
 general, but he chiefly in these days, will require to consider 
 
j$6 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 it a great deal, and to take important steps in consequence 
 by and by, if I mistake not. And in the mean while, sunk as 
 he himself is in that bad element, and like a jaundiced man 
 struggling to discriminate yellow colours, he will have to medi- 
 tate long before he in any measure get the immense meanings 
 of the thing brought home to him; and discern, with astonish- 
 ment, alarm, and almost terror and despair, towards what fatal 
 issues, in our Collective Wisdom and elsewhere, this notion of 
 talent meaning eloquent speech, so obstinately entertained this 
 long while, has been leading us! Whosoever shall look well 
 into origins and issues, will find this of eloquence and the part 
 it now plays in our affairs, to be one of the gravest phenomena; 
 and the excellent stump-orator of these days to be not only a 
 ridiculous but still more a highly tragical personage. While the 
 many listen to him, the few are used to pass rapidly, with some 
 gust of scornful laughter, some growl of impatient malediction; 
 but he deserves from this latter class a much more serious at- 
 tention. 
 
 In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first 
 instituted, this function of the schoolmaster, to teach mere 
 speaking, was the natural one. In those healthy times, guided 
 by silent instincts and the monition of Nature, men had from 
 of old been used to teach themselves what it was essential to 
 learn, by the one sure method of learning anything, practical 
 apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for all classes ; as it 
 now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class. The Working 
 Man as yet sought only to know his craft ; and educated him- 
 self sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the con- 
 ditions given, and in fit relation to the persons given : a course 
 of education, then as now and ever, really opulent in manful cul- 
 ture and instruction to him ; teaching him many solid virtues, 
 and most indubitably useful knowledges; developing in him 
 valuable faculties not a few both to do and to endure, among 
 which the faculty of elaborate grammatical utterance, seeing he 
 had so little of extraordinary to utter, or to learn from spoken 
 or written utterances, was not bargained for; the grammar of 
 Nature, which he learned from his mother, being still amply 
 sufficient for him. This was, as it still is, the grand education 
 of the Working Man. * 
 
 As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 151 
 
 and speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times 
 that grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing need- 
 ful, or the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed 
 the one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him 
 the feeling and the practice of reverence to God and- to men; 
 that in his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray 
 of pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies ; 
 not so much that he should possess the art of speech, as that 
 he should have something to speak ! And for that latter requisite 
 the Priest also trained himself by apprenticeship, by actual at- 
 tempt to practise, by manifold long-continued trial, of a devout 
 and painful nature, such as his superiors prescribed to him. 
 This, when once judged satisfactory, procured him ordination ; 
 and his grammar-learning, in the good times of priesthood, was 
 very much of a parergon with him, as indeed in all times it is 
 intrinsically quite insignificant in comparison. 
 
 The young Noble again, for whom grammar schoolmasters 
 were first hired and high seminaries founded, he too without 
 these, or over and above these, had from immemorial time been 
 used to learn his business by apprenticeship. The young Noble, 
 before the schoolmaster as after him, went apprentice to some 
 elder noble ; entered himself as page with some distinguished 
 earl or duke; and here, serving upwards from step to step, 
 under wise monition, learned his chivalries, his practice of arms 
 and of courtesies, his baronial duties and manners, and what it 
 would beseem him to do and to be in the world, by practical 
 attempt of his own, and example of one whose life was a daily 
 concrete pattern for him. To such a one, already filled with 
 intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the 
 practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was an obvious im- 
 provement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on 
 occasion ; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible 
 on demand for what of ' gold-bullion' he had, not so negotiable 
 otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, with wis- 
 dom, insight and heroic worth already acquired for him, natur- 
 ally demanded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the 
 faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A valuable super- 
 addition 01" faculty : and yet we are to remember it was scarcely 
 a new faculty ; it was but the tangible sign of what other facul- 
 ties the man had in the silent state : and many a rugged inar- 
 ticulate chief of men, I can believe, was most enviably 'educated,' 
 
152 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 who had not a Book on his premises ; whose signature, a true 
 sign-manual, was the stamp of his iron hand duly inked and 
 clapt upon the parchment ;- and whose speech in Parliament, 
 like the growl of lions, did indeed convey his meaning, but 
 would have torn Lindley Murray's nerves to pieces! To such 
 a one the schoolmaster adjusted himself very naturally in that 
 manner; as a man wanted for teaching grammatical utterance; 
 the thing to utter being already there. The thing to utter, here 
 was the grand point ! And perhaps this is the reason why 
 among earnest nations, as among the Romans for example, the 
 craft of the schoolmaster was held in little regard ; for indeed 
 as mere teacher of grammar, of ciphering on the abacus and 
 suchlike, how did he differ much from the dancing-master or 
 fencing-master, or deserve much regard? Such was the rule 
 in the ancient healthy times. 
 
 Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human edu- 
 cation; that the human creature needs first of all to be educated 
 not that he may speak, but that he may have something weighty 
 and valuable to say ! If speech is the banknote for an inward 
 capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then 
 speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honoured. 
 But if there is no inward capital ; if speech represent no real 
 culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture ; no bullion, but 
 the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such ? Alas, alas, 
 said banknote is then a. forged one ; passing freely current in 
 the market ; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, 
 and to all the world, which are in sad truth infallible, and of 
 amount incalculable. Few think of it at present ; but the truth 
 remains forever so. In parliaments and other loud assemblages, 
 your eloquent talk, dfounited from Nature and her facts, is taken 
 as wisdom and the correct image of said facts : but Nature well 
 knows what it is, Nature will not have it as such, and will re- 
 ject your forged note one day, with huge costs. The foolish 
 traders in the market pass it freely, nothing doubting, and re- 
 joice in the dextrous execution of the piece : and so it circu- 
 lates from hand to hand, and from class to class ; gravitating 
 ever downwards towards the practical class ; till at last it 
 reaches some poor -working hand, who can pass it no farther, 
 but must take it to the bank to get bread with it, and there 
 the answer is, " Unhappy caitiff, this note is forged. It does 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 153 
 
 " not mean performance and reality, in parliaments and else- 
 " where, for thy behoof ; it means fallacious semblance of per- 
 " formance ; and thou, poor dupe, art thrown into the stocks 
 " on offering it here !" 
 
 Alas, alas, looking abroad over Irish difficulties, Mosaic 
 sweating-establishments, French barricades, and an anarchic 
 Europe, is it not as if all the populations of the world were 
 rising or had risen into incendiary madness ; unable longer to 
 endure such an avalanche of forgeries, and of penalties in con- 
 sequence, as had accumulated upon them ? The speaker is 
 ' excellent ;' the notes he does are beautiful ? Beautifully fit 
 for the market, yes ; he is an excellent artist in his business ; 
 and the more excellent he is, the more is my desire to lay 
 him by the heels, and fling him into the treadmill, that I might 
 save the poor sweating tailors, French Sansculottes, and Irish 
 Sanspotatoes from bearing the smart ! 
 
 For the smart must be borne ; some one must bear it, as 
 sure as God lives. Every word of man is either a note or a 
 forged-note : have these eternal skies forgotten to be in earn- 
 est, think you, because men go grinning like enchanted apes ? 
 Foolish souls, this now as of old is the unalterable law of your 
 existence. If you know the truth and do it, the Universe it- 
 self seconds you, bears you on to sure victory everywhere : 
 and, observe, to sure defeat everywhere if you do not do the 
 truth. And alas, if you know only the eloquent fallacious sem- 
 blance of the truth, what chance is there of your ever doing 
 it ? You will do something very different from it, I think ! 
 He who well considers, will find this same 'art of speech," as 
 we moderns have it, to be a truly astonishing product of the 
 Ages ; and the longer he considers it, the more astonishing 
 and alarming. I reckon it the saddest of all the curses that 
 now lie heavy on us. With horror and amazement, one per- 
 ceives that this much-celebrated ' art,' so diligently practised 
 in all corners of the world just now, is the chief destroyer of 
 whatever good is born to us (softly, swiftly shutting-up all 
 nascent good, as if under exhausted glass-receivers, there to 
 choke and die) ; and the grand parent-manufactory of evil to 
 us, as it were, the last finishing and varnishing workshop of 
 all the Devil's ware that circulates under the sun. No Devil's 
 sham is fit for the market till it have been polished and en- 
 amelled here ; this is the general assaying-house for such, where 
 
154 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 the artists examine and answer, " Fit for the market; not fit !" 
 Words will not express what mischiefs the misuse of words has 
 done, and is doing, in these heavyladen generations. 
 
 Do you want a man not to practise what he believes, then 
 encourage him to keep often speaking it in words. Every time 
 he speaks it, the tendency to do it will grow less. His empty 
 speech of what he believes, will be a weariness and an afflic- 
 tion to the wise man. But do you wish his empty speech of 
 what he believes, to become farther an insincere speech of 
 what he does not believe ? Celebrate to him his gift of speech ; 
 assure him that he shall rise in Parliament by means of it, 
 and achieve great things without any performance ; that elo- 
 quent speech, whether performed or not, is admirable. My 
 friends, eloquent unperformed speech, in Parliament or else- 
 where, is horrible ! The eloquent man that delivers, in Par- 
 liament or elsewhere, a beautiful speech, and will perform no- 
 thing of it, but leaves it as if already performed, what can 
 you make of that man ? He has enrolled himself among the 
 Ignes Fatui and Children of the Wind ; means to serve, as 
 beautifully illuminated Chinese Lantern, in that corps hence- 
 forth. I think, the serviceable thing you could do to that man, 
 if permissible, would be a severe one : To clip-off 'a bit of his 
 eloquent tongue by way of penance and warning ; another bit, 
 if he again spoke without performing ; and so again, till you 
 had clipt the whole tongue away from him, and were delivered, 
 you and he, from at least one miserable mockery : " There, 
 " eloquent friend, see now in silence if there be any redeeming 
 " deed in thee ; of blasphemous wind-eloquence, at least, we 
 " shall have no more !" How many pretty men have gone this 
 road, escorted by the beautifulest marching music from all the 
 ' public organs ;' and have found at last that it ended where ? 
 It is the broad road, that leads direct to Limbo and the King- 
 dom of the Inane. Gifted men, and once valiant nations, and 
 as it were the whole world with one accord, are marching thi- 
 ther, in melodious triumph, all the drums and hautboys giving 
 out their cheerfulest (^a-ira. It is the universal humour of the 
 world just now. My friends, I am very sure you will arrive, 
 unless you halt ! 
 
 Considered as the last finish of education, or of human cul- 
 ture, worth and acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 15$ 
 
 even divine ; it is like the kindling of a Heaven's light to show 
 us what a glorious world exists, and has perfected itself, in a 
 man. But if no world exist in the man ; if nothing but con- 
 tinents of empty vapour, of greedy self-conceits, commonplace 
 hearsays, and indistinct loomings of a sordid chaos exist in him, 
 what will be the use of ' light' to show us that ? Better a thou- 
 sand times that such a man do not speak ; but keep his empty 
 vapour and his sordid chaos to himself, hidden to the utmost 
 from all beholders. To look on that, can be good for no human 
 beholder ; to look away from that, must be good. And if, by 
 delusive semblances of rhetoric, logic, first-class degrees, and 
 the aid of elocution-masters and parliamentary reporters, the 
 poor proprietor of said chaos should be led to persuade him- 
 self, and get others persuaded, which it is the nature of his 
 sad task to do, and which, in certain eras of the world, it is 
 fatally possible to do, that this is a cosmos which he owns ; 
 that he, being so perfect in tongue-exercise and full of college- 
 honours, is an ' educated' man, and pearl of great price in his 
 generation ; that round him, and his parliament emulously 
 listening to him, as round some divine apple of gold set in a 
 picture of silver, all the world should gather to adore : what is 
 likely to become of him and the gathering world ? An apple 
 of Sodom set in the clusters of Gomorrah : that, little as he 
 suspects it, is the definition of the poor chaotically eloquent 
 man, with his emulous parliament and miserable adoring world ! 
 Considered as the whole of education, or human culture, 
 which it now is in our modern manners ; all apprenticeship 
 except to mere handicraft having fallen obsolete, and the ' edu- 
 cated man' being with us emphatically and exclusively the man 
 that can speak well with tongue or pen, and astonish men by the 
 quantities of speech he has heard ('tremendous reader,' 'walk- 
 ing encyclopaedia,' and suchlike), the Art of Speech is pro- 
 bably definable in that case as the short summary of all the 
 Black Arts put together. 
 
 But the Schoolmaster is secondary, an effect rather than a 
 cause in this matter : what the Schoolmaster with his univer- 
 sities shall manage or attempt to teach will be ruled by what 
 the Society with its practical industries is continually demand- 
 ing that men should learn. We spoke once of vital lungs lor 
 
156 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Society : and in fact this question always rises as the alpha 
 and omega of social questions, What methods the Society has 
 of summoning aloft into the high places, for its help and go- 
 vernance, the wisdom that is born to it in all places, and of 
 course is born chiefly in the more populous or lower places ? 
 For this, if you will consider it, expresses the ultimate avail- 
 able result, and net sum-total, of all the efforts, struggles and 
 confused activities that go on in the Society ; and determines 
 whether they are true and wise efforts, certain to be victorious, 
 or false and foolish, certain to be futile, and to fall captive and 
 caitiff. How do men rise in your Society ? In all Societies, 
 Turkey included, and I suppose Dahomey included, men do 
 rise ; but the question of questions always is, What kind of 
 men ? Men of noble gifts, or men of ignoble ? It is the one 
 or the other ; and a life-and-death inquiry which ! For in all 
 places and all times, little as you may heed it, Nature most 
 silently but most inexorably demands that it be the one and 
 not the other. And you need not try to palm an ignoble sham 
 upon her, and call it noble ; for she is a judge. And her penal- 
 ties, as quiet as she looks, are terrible ; amounting to world- 
 earthquakes, to anarchy and death everlasting ; and admit of 
 no appeal ! 
 
 Surely England still flatters herself that she has lungs; that 
 she can still breathe a little ? Or is it that the poor creature, 
 driven into mere blind industrialisms ; and as it were, gone 
 pearl-diving this long while many fathoms deep, and tearing-up 
 the oyster-beds so as never creature did before, hardly knows, 
 so busy in the belly of the oyster-chaos, where is no thought 
 of ' breathing,' whether she has lungs or not ? Nations of a 
 robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes take-in a deal 
 of breath before diving ; and live long, in the muddy deeps, 
 without new breath : but they too come to need it at last, and 
 will die if they cannot get it ! 
 
 To the gifted soul that is born in England, what is the ca- 
 reer, then, that will carry him, amid noble Olympic dust, up to 
 the immortal gods ? For his country's sake, that it may not 
 lose the service he was born capable of doing it ; for his own 
 sake, that his life be not choked and perverted, and his light 
 from Heaven be not changed into lightning from the Other 
 Place, it is essential that there be such a career. The coun- 
 try that can offer no career in that case, is a doomed country ; 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 157 
 
 nay it is already a dead country : it has secured the ban of 
 Heaven upon it ; will not have Heaven's light, will have the 
 Other Place's lightning ; and may consider itself as appointed 
 to expire, in frightful coughings of street musketry or otherwise, 
 on a set day, and to be in the eye of law dead. In no country 
 is there not some career, inviting to it either the noble Hero, 
 or the tough Greek of the Lower Empire : which of the two do 
 your careers invite ? There is no question more important. 
 The kind of careers you offer in countries still living, deter- 
 mines with perfect exactness the kind of the life that is in them, 
 whether it is natural blessed life, or galvanic accursed ditto, 
 and likewise what degree of strength is in the same. 
 
 Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is 
 the silent or unlearned career of the Industrialisms, which are 
 very many among us ; and there is the articulate or learned 
 career of the three professions, Medicine, Law (under which 
 we may include Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, 
 therefore, will first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold 
 his tongue or cannot ? True, all human talent, especially all 
 deep talent, is a talent to do, and is intrinsically of silent na- 
 ture ; inaudible, like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melo- 
 dies, of which it is an incarnated fraction. All real talent, I 
 fancy, would much rather, if it listened only to Nature's moni- 
 tions, express itself in rhythmic facts than in melodious words, 
 which latter at best, where they are good for anything, are only 
 a feeble echo and shadow or foreshadow of the former. But 
 talents differ much in this of power to be silent ; and circum- 
 stances, of position, opportunity and suchlike, modify them still 
 more; and Nature's monitions, oftenest quite drowned in 
 foreign hearsays, are by no means the only ones listened to in 
 deciding ! The Industrialisms are all of silent nature ; and 
 some of them are heroic and eminently human ; others, again, 
 we may call unheroic, not eminently human : beaverish rather, 
 but still honest ; some are even -vulpine, altogether inhuman 
 and dishonest. Your born genius must make his choice. 
 
 If a soul is born with divine intelligence, and has its lips 
 touched with hallowed fire, in consecration for high enterprises 
 under the sun, this young soul will find the question asked of 
 him by England every hour and moment : " Canst thou turn 
 " thy human intelligence into the beaver sort, and make hon- 
 " est contrivance, and accumulation of capital by it ? If so, 
 
158 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " do it ; and avoid the vulpine kind, which I don't recommend. 
 " Honest triumphs in engineering and machinery await thee ; 
 " scrip awaits thee, commercial successes, kingship in the 
 " counting-room, on the stock-exchange ; thou shalt be the 
 " envy of surrounding flunkies, and collect into a heap more gold 
 " than a dray-horse can draw." " Gold, so much gold ?" ans- 
 wers the ingenuous soul, with visions of the envy of surround- 
 ing flunkies dawning on him ; and in very many cases decides 
 that he will contract himself into beaverism, and with such a 
 horse-draught of gold, emblem of a never-imagined success in 
 beaver heroism, strike the surrounding flunkies yellow. 
 
 This is our common course ; this is in some sort open to 
 every creature, what we call the beaver career ; perhaps more 
 open in England, taking in America too, than it ever was in 
 any country before. And, truly, good consequences follow out 
 of it : who can be blind to them ? Half of a most excellent 
 and opulent result is realised to us in this way ; baleful only 
 when it sets-up (as too often now) for being the whole result. 
 A half-result which will be blessed and heavenly so soon as the 
 other half is had, namely wisdom to guide the first half. Let 
 us honour all honest human power of contrivance in its degree. 
 The beaver intellect, so long as it stedfastly refuses to be vul- 
 pine, and answers the tempter pointing out short routes to it 
 with an honest " No, no," is truly respectable to me ; and many 
 a highflying speaker and singer whom I have known, has ap- 
 peared to me much less of a developed man than certain oimy 
 mill-owning, agricultural, commercial, mechanical, or otherwise 
 industrial friends, who have held their peace all their days and 
 gone on in the silent state. If a man can keep his intellect 
 silent, and make it even into honest beaverism, several very 
 manful moralities, in danger of wreck on other courses, may 
 comport well with that, and give it a genuine and partly human 
 character ; and I will tell him, in these days he may do far 
 worse with himself and his intellect than change it into beaver- 
 ism, and make honest money with it. If indeed he could be- 
 come a heroic industrial, and have a life ' eminently human" ! 
 But that is not easy at present. Probably some ninety-nine out 
 of every hundred of our gifted souls, who have to seek a career 
 for themselves, go this beaver road. Whereby the first hali-re- 
 sult, national wealth namely, is plentifully realised ; and only the 
 second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadiully behindhand. 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 159 
 
 But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of 
 vivid, impatient, rapidly-productive nature, and aspire much to 
 give itself sensible utterance, I find that, in this case, the field 
 it has in England is narrow to an extreme ; is perhaps narrower 
 than ever offered itself, for the like object, in this world before. 
 Parliament, Church, Law : let the young vivid soul turn whither 
 he will for a career, he finds among variable conditions one con- 
 dition invariable, and extremely surprising, That the proof of 
 excellence is to be done by the tongue. For heroism that will 
 not speak, but only act, there is no account kept : The Eng- 
 lish Nation does not need that silent kind, then, but only the 
 talking kind ? Most astonishing. Of all the organs a man has, 
 there is none held in account, it would appear, but the tongue 
 he uses for talking. Premiership, woolsack, mitre, and quasi- 
 crown : all is attainable if you can talk with due ability. Every- 
 where your proof-shot is to be a well-fired volley of talk. Con- 
 trive to talk well, you will get to Heaven, the modern Heaven 
 of the English. Do not talk well, only work well, and heroic- 
 ally hold your peace, you have no chance whatever to get thi- 
 ther ; with your utmost industry you may get to Threadneedle 
 Street, and accumulate more gold than a drayhorse can draw. 
 Is not this a very wonderful arrangement ? 
 
 I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks ; of 
 human competitors, high aspirants, climbing heavenward on the 
 soaped pole ; seizing the soaped pig ; and clutching with deft fist, 
 at full gallop, the fated goose tied aloft by its foot ; which feats 
 do prove agility, toughness and other useful faculties in man : 
 but this of dextrous talk is probably as strange a competition 
 as any. And the question rises, Whether certain of these other 
 feats, or perhaps an alternation of all of them, relieved now and 
 then by a bout of grinning through the collar, might not be pro- 
 fitably substituted for the solitary proof-feat of talk, now getting 
 rather monotonous by its long continuance? Alas, Mr. Bull, 
 I do find it is all little other than a proof of toughness, which 
 is a quality I respect, with more or less expenditure of falsity 
 and astucity superadded, which I entirely condemn. Toughness 
 plus astucity: perhaps a simple wooden mast set up in Pa- 
 lace-Yard, well soaped and duly presided over, might be the 
 honester method? Such a method as this by trial of talk, for 
 filling your chief offices in Church and State, was perhaps never 
 heard of in the solar system before. You are quite used to it, 
 
160 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 my poor friend ; and nearly dead by the consequences of it : 
 but in the other Planets, as in other epochs of your own Planet 
 it would have dpne had you proposed it, the thing awakens in- 
 credulous amazement, world-wide Olympic laughter, which ends 
 in tempestuous hootings, in tears and horror! My friend, if 
 you can, as heretofore this good while, find nobody to take care 
 of your affairs but the expertest talker, it is all over with your 
 affairs and you. Talk never yet could guide any man's or 
 nation's affairs ; nor will it yours, except towards the Limbus 
 Patrum, where all talk, except a very select kind of it, lodges 
 at last. 
 
 Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and 
 frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous 
 souls from entering, is of the ^<7^-articulate professions, and 
 does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The in- 
 tellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and in- 
 deed should by all rules be, the profession of the Human 
 Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the 
 highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and 
 acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here 
 below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old 
 monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again ! 
 In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently hu- 
 man : but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too 
 become in good part beaverish; yielding a money-result alone. 
 And what of it is not beaverish, does not that too go mainly 
 to ingenious talking, publishing of yourself, ingratiating of your- 
 self ; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and alas a 
 partly vulpine ditto; making the once sacred 'largbf, or Hu- 
 man Healer more impossible for us than ever! 
 
 Angry basilisks watch at the gates of Law and Church just 
 now ; and strike a sad damp into the nobler of the young as- 
 pirants. Hard bonds are offered you to sign ; as it were, a so- 
 lemn engagement to constitute yourself an impostor, before 
 ever entering; to declare your belief in incredibilities, your 
 determination, in short, to take Chaos for Cosmos, and Satan 
 for the Lord of things, if he come with money in his pockets, 
 and horsehair and bombazeen decently wrapped about him. 
 Fatal preliminaries, which deter many an ingenuous young soul, 
 and send him back from the threshold, and I hope will deter 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 161 
 
 ever more. But if you do enter, the condition is well known : 
 " Talk; who can talk best here? His shall.be the mouth of 
 "gold, and the purse of gold; and with my pirga (once the 
 " head-dress of unfortunate-females, I am told) shall his sacred 
 " temples be begirt." 
 
 Ingenuous souls, unless forced to it, do now much shudder 
 at the threshold of both these careers, and not a few despe- 
 rately turn back into the wilderness rather, to front a very rude 
 fortune, and be devoured by wild-beasts as is likeliest. But as 
 to Parliament, again, and its eligibility if attainable, there is 
 yet no question anywhere ; the ingenuous soul, if possessed of 
 money-capital enough, is predestined by the parental and all 
 manner of monitors to that career of talk ; and accepts it with 
 alacrity and clearness of heart, doubtful only whether he shall 
 be able to make a speech. Courage, my brave young fellow. 
 If you can climb a soaped pole of any kind, you will certainly 
 be able to make a speech. All mortals have a tongue ; and carry 
 on some jumble, if not of thought, yet of stuff which they could 
 talk. The weakest of animals has got a cry in it, and can give 
 voice before dying. If you are tough enough, bent upon it 
 desperately enough, I engage you shall make a speech ; but 
 whether that will be the way to Heaven for you, I do not en- 
 gage. 
 
 These, then, are our two careers for genius : mute Indus- 
 trialism, which can seldom become very human, but remains 
 beaverish mainly : and the three Professions named learned, 
 that is to say, able to talk. For the heroic or higher kinds of 
 human intellect, in the silent state, there is not the smallest 
 inquiry anywhere ; apparently a thing not wanted in this coun- 
 try at present. What the supply may be, I cannot inform 
 M'Croudy; but the market-demand, he may himself see, is/7. 
 These are our three professions that require human intellect 
 in part or whole, not able to do with mere beaverish ; and such 
 a part does the gift of talk play in one and all of them. What- 
 soever is not beaverish seems to go forth in the shape of talk. 
 To such length is human intellect wasted or suppressed in 
 this world ! 
 
 If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, 
 and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on 
 Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intel- 
 lect to the beaverish condition, or satisiy himselt with the pro- 
 
 M 
 
162 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 spect of making money, what becomes of him in such case, 
 which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more ? 
 In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably 
 enough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of 
 trying to write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, 
 want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by 
 eloquent talking, let him try it by dextrous eloquent writing. 
 Here happily, having three fingers, and capital to buy a quire 
 of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mor- 
 tals : in this career there is happily no public impediment that 
 can turn him back ; nothing but private starvation, which is 
 itself ajlnis or kind of goal, can pretend to hinder a British 
 man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, and wring- 
 ing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee; No talent 
 is in thee." To the British subject who fancies genius may be 
 lodged in him, this liberty remains ; and truly it is, if well com- 
 puted, almost the only one he has. 
 
 A crowded portal this of Literature, accordingly! The 
 haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and alas also of expatriated 
 vanities and prurient imbecilities : here do the windy aspira- 
 tions, foiled activities, foolish ambitions, and frustrate human 
 energies reduced to the vocable condition, fly as to the one re- 
 fuge left ; and the Republic of Letters increases in population 
 at a faster rate than even the Republic of America. The 
 strangest regiment in her Majesty's service, this of the Soldiers 
 of Literature : would your Lordship much like to march through 
 Coventry with them ? The immortal gods are there (quite irre- 
 cognisable under these disguises), and also the lowest broken 
 valets ; an extremely miscellaneous regiment. In fact the regi- 
 ment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable motley 
 flood of discharged playactors, funambulists, false prophets, 
 drunken ballad-singers; and marches not as a regiment, but 
 as a boundless canaille, without drill, uniform, captaincy or 
 billet ; with huge 0zw-proportion of drummers ; you would say, 
 a regiment gone wholly to the drum, with hardly a good mus- 
 ket to be seen in it, more a canaille than a regiment. Ca- 
 naille of all the loud-sounding levities, and general winnowings 
 of Chaos, marching through the world in a most ominous man- 
 ner; proclaiming, audibly if you have ears: "Twelfth hour of 
 "the Night; ancient graves yawning; pale clammy Puseyisms 
 " screeching in their winding-sheets ; owls busy in the City 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 163 
 
 " regions ; many goblins abroad ! Awake, ye living ; dream no 
 " more ; arise to judgment ! Chaos and Gehenna are broken 
 " loose ; the Devil with his Bedlams must be flung in chains 
 " again, and the Last of the Days is about to dawn!" Such is 
 Literature to the reflective soul at this moment. 
 
 But what now concerns us most is the circumstance that 
 here too the demand is, Vocables, still vocables. In all ap- 
 pointed courses of activity and paved careers for human genius, 
 and in this unpaved, unappointed, broadest career of Litera- 
 ture, broad way that leadeth to destruction for so many, the 
 one duty laid upon you is still, Talk, talk. Talk well with pen 
 or tongue, and it shall be well with you ; do not talk well, it 
 shall be ill with you. To wag the tongue with dextrous ac- 
 ceptability, there is for human worth and faculty, in our Eng- 
 land of the Nineteenth Century, that one method of emergence 
 and no other. Silence, you would say, means annihilation for 
 the Englishman of the Nineteenth Century. The worth that 
 has not spoken itself, is not ; or is potentially only, and as if 
 it were not. Vox is the God of this Universe. If you have 
 human intellect, it' avails nothing unless you either make it 
 into beaverism, or talk with it. Make it into beaverism, and 
 gather money ; or else make talk with it, and gather what you 
 can. Such is everywhere the demand for talk among us ; to 
 which, of course, the supply is proportionate. 
 
 From dinners up to woolsacks and divine mitres, here in 
 England, much may be gathered by talk ; without talk, of the 
 human sort nothing. Is Society become wholly a bag of wind, 
 then, ballasted by guineas ? Are our interests in it as a sound- 
 ing brass and a tinkling cymbal ? In Army or Navy, when 
 unhappily we have war on hand, there is, almost against our 
 will, some kind of demand for certain of the silent talents. 
 But in peace, that too passes into mere demand of the osten- 
 tations, of the pipeclays and the blank cartridges ; and, ex- 
 cept that Naval men are occasionally, on long voyages, forced 
 to hold their tongue, and converse with the dumb elements, 
 and illimitable oceans, that moan and rave there without you 
 and within you, which is a great advantage to the Naval man, 
 our poor United Services have to make conversational wind- 
 bags and ostentational paper-lanterns of themselves, or do worse, 
 even as the others. 
 
164 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 My friends, must I assert, then, what surely all men know, 
 though all men seem to have forgotten it, That in the learned 
 professions as in the unlearned, and in human things through- 
 out, in every place and in every time, the true function of in- 
 tellect is not that of talking, but of understanding and discern- 
 ing with a view to performing ! An intellect may easily talk 
 too much, and perform too little. Gradually, if it get into the 
 noxious habit of talk, there will less and less performance come 
 of it, talk being so delightfully handy in comparison with work ; 
 and at last there will no work, or thought of work, be got from 
 it at all. Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth 
 almost nothing ; sometimes it is worth infinitely less than no- 
 thing ; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal 
 part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and 
 the chief of all the curses the Posterity of Adam are liable to 
 in this sublunary world ! Would you discover the Atropos of 
 Human Virtue ; the sure Destroyer, ' by painless extinction,' 
 of Human Veracities, Performances, and Capabilities to per- 
 form or to be veracious, it is this, you have it here. 
 
 Unwise talk is matchless in unwisdom. Unwise work, if 
 it but persist, is everywhere struggling towards correction, and 
 restoration to health ; for it is still in contact with Nature, and 
 all Nature incessantly contradicts it, and will heal it or anni- 
 hilate it : not so with unwise talk, which addresses itself, re- 
 gardless of veridical Nature, to the universal suffrages ; and 
 can if it be dextrous, find harbour there till all the suffrages 
 are bankrupt and gone to Houndsditch, Nature not interfering 
 with her protest till then. False speech, definable as the acme 
 of unwise speech, is capable, as we already said, of becoming 
 the falsest of all things. Falsest of all things : and whither 
 will the general deluge of that, in Parliament and Synagogue, 
 in Book and Broadside, carry you and your affairs, my friend, 
 when once they are embarked on it as now ? 
 
 Parliament, Parliamentum, is by express appointment the 
 Talking Apparatus ; yet not in Parliament either is the essen- 
 tial function, by any means, talk. Not to speak your opinion 
 well, but to have a good and just opinion worth speaking, 
 lor every Parliament, as for every man, this latter is the point. 
 Contrive to have a true opinion, you will g>?t it told in some 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 165 
 
 way, better or worse; and it will be a blessing to all creatures. 
 Have a false opinion, and tell it with the tongue of Angels, 
 what can that profit ? The better you tell it, the worse it will be ! 
 
 In Parliament and out of Parliament, and everywhere in 
 this Universe, your one salvation is, That you can discern with 
 just insight, and follow with noble valour, what the law of the 
 case before you is, what the appointment of the Maker in re- 
 gard to it has been. Get this out of one man, you are saved ; 
 fail to get this out of the most August Parliament wrapt in the 
 sheepskins of a thousand years, you are lost, your Parlia- 
 ment, and you, and all your sheepskins are lost. Beautiful talk 
 is by no means the most pressing want in Parliament ! We 
 have had some reasonable modicum of talk in Parliament ! 
 What talk has done for us in Parliament, and is now doing, 
 the dullest of us at length begins to see ! 
 
 Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to busi- 
 ness ; of the training an Official Man gets in this school of 
 argument and talk. He is here inured to patience, tolerance ; 
 sees what is what in the Nation and in the Nation's Govern- 
 ment ; attains official knowledge, official courtesy and manners ; 
 in short, is polished at all points into official articulation, and 
 here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to be a Governor 
 of men. So it is said. Doubtless, I think, he will see and 
 suffer much in Parliament, and inure himself to several things ; 
 he will, with what eyes he has, gradually see Parliament it- 
 self, for one thing; what a high-soaring, helplessly floundering, 
 ever babbling yet inarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly 
 one of the strangest under the sun just now) : which doubtless, 
 if he have in view to get measures voted there one day, will 
 be an important acquisition for him. But as to breeding him- 
 self for a Doer of Work, much more for a King, or Chief of 
 Doers, here in this element of talk ; as to that I confess the 
 fatalest doubts, or rather, alas, I have no doubt ! Alas, it is 
 our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urg- 
 ently requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain 
 to be a Statesman, or Chief of Wotkers, till he has first proved 
 himself a Chief of Talkers: which mode of trial for a Worker, 
 is it not precisely, ot all the trials you could set him upon, the 
 falsest and uniairest ? 
 
 Nay, I doubt much you are not likely ever to meet the 
 fittest material for a Statesman, or Chiei oi' Workers, in such 
 
166 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 an element as that. Your Potential Chief of Workers, will he 
 come there at all, to try whether he can talk ? Your poor ten- 
 pound franchisers and electoral world generally, in love with 
 eloquent talk, are they the likeliest to discern what man it is 
 that has worlds of silent work in him ? No. Or is such a man, 
 even if born in the due rank for it, the likeliest to present him- 
 self, and court their most sweet voices ? Again, no. 
 
 The Age that admires talk so much can have little dis- 
 cernment for inarticulate work, or for anything that is deep 
 and genuine. Nobody, or hardly anybody, having in himself 
 an earnest sense for truth, how can anybody recognise an in- 
 articulate Veracity, or Nature-fact of any kind; a Human Doer 
 especially, who is the most complex, profound, and inarticulate 
 of all Nature's Facts ? Nobody can recognise him : till once 
 he is patented, get some public stamp of authenticity, and has 
 been articulately proclaimed, and asserted to be a Doer. To 
 the worshipper of talk, such a one is a sealed book. An ex- 
 cellent human soul, direct from Heaven, how shall any excel- 
 lence of man become recognisable to this unfortunate ? Not 
 except by announcing and placarding itself as excellent, 
 which, I reckon, it above other things will probably be in no 
 great haste to do. 
 
 Wisdom, the divine message which every soul of man brings 
 into this world ; the divine prophecy of what the new man has 
 got the new and peculiar capability to do, is intrinsically of 
 silent nature. It cannot at once, or completely at all, be read- 
 off in words ; for it is written in abstruse facts, of endowment, 
 position, desire, opportunity, granted to the man ; interprets 
 itself in presentiments, vague struggles, passionate endeavours ; 
 and is only legible in whole when his work is done. Not by 
 the noble monitions of Nature, but by the ignoble, is a man 
 much tempted to publish the secret of his soul in words. Words, 
 if he have a secret, will be forever inadequate to it. Words do 
 but disturb the real answer of fact which could be given to it ; 
 disturb, obstruct, and will in the end abolish, and render im- 
 possible, said answer. No grand Doer in this world can be 
 a copious speaker about his doings. William the Silent spoke 
 himself best in a country liberated ; Oliver Cromwell did not 
 shine in rhetoric ; Goethe, when he had but a book in view, 
 found that he must say nothing even of that, if it was to suc- 
 ceed with him. 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 167 
 
 Then as to politeness, and breeding to business. An official 
 man must be bred to business ; of course he must : and not 
 for essence only, but even for the manners of office he requires 
 breeding. Besides his intrinsic faculty, whatever that may be, 
 he must be cautious, vigilant, discreet, above all things, he 
 must be reticent, patient, polite. Certain of these qualities are 
 by nature imposed upon men of station ; and they are trained 
 from birth to some exercise of them : this constitutes their one 
 intrinsic qualification for office ; this is their one advantage in 
 the New Downing Street projected for this New Era ; and it 
 will not go for much in that Institution. One advantage, or 
 temporary advantage ; against which there are so many coun- 
 terbalances. It is the indispensable preliminary for office, but 
 by no means the complete outfit, a miserable outfit where 
 there is nothing farther. 
 
 Will your Lordship give me leave to say that, practically, 
 the intrinsic qualities will presuppose these preliminaries too, 
 but by no means vice versa. That, on the whole, if you have 
 got the intrinsic qualities, you have got everything, and the 
 preliminaries will prove attainable ; but that if you have got 
 only the preliminaries, you have yet got nothing. A man of 
 real dignity will not find it impossible to bear himself in a dig- 
 nified manner ; a man of real understanding and insight will 
 get to know, as the fruit of his very first study, what the laws 
 of his situation are, and will conform to these. Rough old 
 Samuel Johnson, blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as 
 he often was, defined himself, justly withal, as a polite man : a 
 noble manful attitude of soul is his ; a clear, true and loyal 
 sense of what others are, and what he himself is, shines through 
 the rugged coating of him ; comes out as grave deep rhythmus 
 when his King honours him, and he will not 'bandy compli- 
 ments with his King ;' is traceable too in his indignant tramp- 
 ling-down of the Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made insolences, 
 and contradictions 01 sinners ; which may be called his revolu- 
 tionary movements, hard and peremptory by the law of them ; 
 these could not be soft like his constitutional ones, when men 
 and kings took him for somewhat like the thing he was. Given 
 a noble man, I think your Lordship may expect by and by a 
 polite man. No ' politer' man was to be iound in Britain than 
 the rustic Robert Burns : high duchesses were captivated with 
 the chivalrous ways of the man ; recognised that here was the 
 
168 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 true chivalry, and divine nobleness of bearing, as indeed they 
 well might, now when the Peasant God and Norse Thor had 
 come down among them again ! Chivalry this, if not as they 
 do chivalry in Drury Lane or West-End drawing-rooms, yet as 
 they do it in Valhalla and the General Assembly of the Gods. 
 
 For indeed, who invented chivalry, politeness, or anything 
 that is noble and melodious and beautiful among us, except 
 precisely the like of Johnson and of Burns ? The select few 
 who in the generations of this world were wise and valiant, they, 
 in spite of all the tremendous majority of blockheads and sloth- 
 ful belly-worshippers, and noisy ugly persons, have devised 
 whatsoever is noble in the manners of man to man. I expect 
 they will learn to be polite, your Lordship, when you give 
 them a chance ! Nor is it as a school of human culture, for 
 this or for any other grace or gift, that Parliament will be 
 found first-rate or indispensable. As experience in the river 
 is indispensable to the ferryman, so is knowledge of his Parlia- 
 ment to the British Peel or Chatham ; so was knowledge of 
 the CEil-de-Bceuf to the French Choiseul. Where and how said 
 river, whether Parliament with Wilkeses, or CEil-de-Bceuf with 
 Pompadours, can be waded, boated, swum ; how the miscel- 
 laneous cargoes, ' measures' so-called, can be got across it, ac- 
 cording to their kinds, and landed alive on the hither side as 
 facts : we have all of us our ferries in this world ; and must 
 know the river and its ways, or get drowned some day ! In 
 that sense, practice in Parliament is indispensable to the Brit- 
 ish Statesman ; but not in any other sense. 
 
 A school, too, of manners and of several other things, the 
 Parliament will doubtless be to the aspirant Statesman ; a 
 school better or worse; as the CEil-de-Bceuf likewise was, and 
 as all scenes where men work or live are sure to be. Especially 
 where many men work together, the very rubbing against one 
 another will grind and polish off their angularities into round- 
 ness, into ' politeness' after a sort ; and the official man, place 
 him how you may, will never want for schooling, of extremely 
 various kinds. A first-rate school one cannot call this Parlia- 
 ment for him ; I fear to say what rate at present ! In so far 
 as it teaches him vigilance, patience, courage, toughness of 
 lungs or of soul, and skill in any kind of swimming, it is a good 
 school. In so far as it forces him to speak where Nature 
 orders silence ; and even, lest all the world should learn his 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 169 
 
 secret (which often enough would kill his secret, and little 
 profit the world), forces him to speak falsities, vague ambigui- 
 ties, and the froth-dialect usual in Parliaments in these times, 
 it may be considered one of the worst schools ever devised by 
 man ; and, I think, may almost challenge the CEil-de-Bceuf to 
 match it in badness. 
 
 Parliament will train your men to the manners required of 
 a statesman ; but in a much less degree to the intrinsic func- 
 tions of one. To these latter, it is capable of mistraining as 
 nothing else can. Parliament will train you to talk ; and above 
 all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish 
 talk. To tell a good story for yourself, and to make it appear 
 that you have done your work : this, especially in constitutional 
 countries, is something ; and yet in all countries, constitu- 
 tional ones too, it is instrinsically nothing, probably even less. 
 For it is not the function of any mortal, in Downing Street or 
 elsewhere here below, to wag the tongue of him, and make it 
 appear that he has done work ; but to wag some quite other 
 organs of him, and to do work ; there is no danger of his 
 work's appearing by and by. Such an accomplishment, even 
 in constitutional countries, I grieve to say, may become much 
 less than nothing. Have you at all computed how much less ? 
 The human creature who has once given way to satisfying hinv 
 self with 'appearances,' to seeking his salvation in 'appear- 
 ances,' the moral life of such human creature is rapidly bleeding 
 out of him. Depend upon it, Beelzebub, Satan, or however you 
 may name the too authentic Genius of Eternal Death, has got 
 that human creature in his claws. By and by you will have 
 a dead parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled away 
 without return ! 
 
 Such parliamentary bagpipes I myself have heard play 
 tunes, much to the satisfaction of the people. Every tune lies 
 within their compass ; and their mind (for they still call it mind) 
 is ready as a hurdygurdy on turning of the handle : " My 
 
 Lords, this question now before the House" Ye Heavens, 
 
 O ye divine Silences, was there in the womb of Chaos, then, 
 such a product, liable to be evoked by human art, as that 
 same ? While the galleries were all applausive oi heart, and the 
 Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had 
 touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey, I have sat with 
 reflections too ghastly to be uttered. A poor human creature 
 
170 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and learned friend; once possessed of many fine gifts, possessed 
 of intellect, veracity, and manful conviction on a variety of 
 objects, has he now lost all that ; converted all that into a 
 glistering phosphorescence which can show itself on the out- 
 side ; while within, all is dead, chaotic, dark ; a painted se- 
 pulchre full of dead-men's bones ! Discernment, knowledge, in- 
 tellect, in the human sense of the words, this man has now none. 
 His opinion you do not ask on any matter : on the matter 
 he has no opinion, judgment, or insight ; only on what may be 
 said about the matter, how it may be argued of, what tune may 
 be played upon it to enlighten the eyes of the Fourth Estate. 
 
 Such a soul, though to the eye he still keeps tumbling 
 about in the Parliamentary element, and makes 'motions,' and 
 passes bills, for aught I know, are we to define him as a 
 living one, or as a dead? Partridge the Almanac-maker, whose 
 ' publications' still regularly appear, is known to be dead ! The 
 dog that was drowned last summer, and that floats up and 
 down the Thames with ebb and flood ever since, is it not 
 dead ? Alas, in the hot months, you meet here and there 
 such a floating dog ; and at length, if you often use the river 
 steamers, get to know him by sight. "There he is again, still 
 astir there in his quasi-stygian element !" you dejectedly ex- 
 claim (perhaps reading your Morning Newspaper at the mo- 
 ment); and reflect, with a painful oppression of nose and 
 imagination, on certain completed professors of parliamentary 
 eloquence in modern times. Dead long since, but not resting; 
 daily doing motions in that Westminster region still, daily 
 from Vauxhall to Blackfriars, and back again ; and cannot 
 get away at all! Daily (from Newspaper or river steamer) 
 you may see him at some point of his fated course, hovering 
 in the eddies, stranded in the ooze, or rapidly progressing 
 with flood or ebb ; and daily the odour of him is getting more 
 intolerable ; daily the condition of him appeals more tragically 
 to gods and men. 
 
 Nature admits no lie ; most men profess to be aware of 
 this, but few in any measure lay it to heart. Except in the 
 departments of mere material manipulation, it seems to be 
 taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite 
 flourish of rhetoric. What is a lie ? The question is worth ask- 
 ing, once and away, by the practical English mind. 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 171 
 
 A voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands, 
 as it has occurred and will proceed to develop itself : this 
 clearly, if adopted by any man, will so far forth mislead him 
 in all practical dealing with the fact ; till he cast that state- 
 ment out of him, and reject it as an unclean poisonous thing, 
 he can have no success in dealing with the fact. If such 
 spoken divergence from the truth be involuntary, we lament it 
 as a misfortune ; and are entitled, at least the speaker of it is, 
 to lament it extremely as the most palpable of all misfortunes, 
 as the indubitablest losing of his way, and turning aside from 
 the goal instead of pressing towards it, in the race set before 
 him. If the divergence is voluntary, there superadds itself 
 to our sorrow a just indignation : we call the voluntary spoken 
 divergence a lie, and justly abhor it as the essence of human 
 treason and baseness, the desertion of a man to the Enemy 
 of men against himself and his brethren. A lost deserter ; 
 who has gone over to the Enemy, called Satan ; and cannot 
 but be lost in the adventure! Such is every liar with the 
 tongue ; and such in all nations is he, at all epochs, con- 
 sidered. Men pull his nose, and kick him out of doors ; and 
 by peremptory expressive methods signify that they can and 
 will have no trade with him. Such is spoken divergence from 
 the fact ; so fares it with the practiser of that sad art. 
 
 But have we well considered a divergence in thought from 
 what is the fact ? Have we considered the man whose very 
 thought is a lie to him and to us ! He too is a frightful man ; 
 repeating about this Universe on every hand what is not, and 
 driven to repeat it ; the sure herald of ruin to all that follow 
 him, that know with his knowledge ! And would you learn 
 how to get a mendacious thought, there is no surer recipe than 
 carrying a loose tongue. The lying thought, you already 
 either have it, or will soon get it by that method. He who lies 
 with his very tongue, he clearly enough has long ceased to 
 think truly in his mind. Does he, in any sense, ' think' ? All 
 his thoughts and imaginations, if they extend beyond mere 
 beaverisms, astucities and sensualisms, are false, incomplete, 
 perverse, untrue even to himself. He has become a false 
 mirror of this Universe ; not a small mirror only, but a crooked, 
 bedimmed and utterly deranged one. But all loose tongues 
 too are akin to lying ones ; are insincere at the best, and go 
 rattling with little meaning ; the thought lying languid at a 
 
172 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 great distance behind them, if thought there be behind them 
 at all. Gradually there will be none or little! How can the 
 thought of such a man, what he calls thought, be other than 
 false ? 
 
 Alas, the palpable liar with his tongue does at least know 
 that he is lying, and has or might have some faint vestige of 
 remorse and chance of amendment ; but the impalpable liar, 
 whose tongue articulates mere accepted commonplaces, cants 
 and babblement, which means only, " Admire me, call me an 
 excellent stump-orator!" of him what hope is there? His 
 thought, what thought he had, lies dormant, inspired only to 
 invent vocables and plausibilities ; while the tongue goes so 
 glib, the thought is absent, gone a-woolgathering ; getting it- 
 self drugged with the applausive 'Hear, hear!' what will be- 
 come of such a man ? His idle thought has run all to seed, 
 and grown false and the giver of falsities ; the inner light of 
 his mind is gone out ; all his light is mere putridity and phos- 
 phorescence henceforth. Whosoever is in quest of ruin, let 
 him with assurance follow that man ; he or no one is on the 
 right road to it. 
 
 Good Heavens, from the wisest Thought of a man to the 
 actual truth of a Thing as it lies in Nature, there is, one would 
 suppose, a sufficient interval ! Consider it, and what other 
 intervals we introduce ! The faithfulest, most glowing word 
 of a man is but an imperfect image of the thought, such as it 
 is, that dwells within him ; his best word will never but with 
 error convey his thought to other minds : and then between 
 his poor thought and Nature's Fact, which is the Thought of 
 the Eternal, there may be supposed to lie some discrepancies, 
 some shortcomings! Speak your sincerest, think your wisest, 
 there is still a great gulf between you and the fact. And now, 
 do not speak your sincerest, and, what will inevitably follow 
 out of that, do not think your wisest, but think only your 
 plausiblest, your showiest for parliamentary purposes, where 
 will you land with that guidance? I invite the British Parlia- 
 ment, and all the Parliamentary and other Electors of Great 
 Britain, to reflect on this till they have well understood it ; 
 and then to ask, each oi himself, What probably the horo- 
 scopes oi the British Parliament, at this epoch of World-His- 
 tory, may be ? 
 
 Fail, by any sin or any misfortune, to discover what the 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 173 
 
 truth of the fact is, you are lost so far as that fact goes ! If 
 your thought do not image truly but do image falsely the fact, 
 you will vainly try to work upon the fact. The fact will not 
 obey you, the fact will silently resist you ; and ever, with silent 
 invincibility, will go on resisting you, till you do get to image 
 it truly instead of falsely. No help for you whatever, except in 
 attaining to a true image of the fact. Needless to vote a false 
 image true; vote it, revote it by overwhelming majorities, by 
 jubilant unanimities and universalities ; read it thrice or three 
 hundred times, pass acts of parliament upon it till the Statute- 
 book can hold no more, it helps not a whit : the thing is not 
 so, the thing is otherwise than so ; and Adam's whole Posterity, 
 voting daily on it till the world finish, will not alter it a jot. Can 
 the sublimest sanhedrim, constitutional parliament, or other Col- 
 lective Wisdom of the world, persuade fire not to burn, sulphuric 
 acid to be sweet milk, or the Moon to become green cheese? 
 The fact is much the reverse : and even the Constitutional 
 British Parliament abstains from such arduous attempts as these 
 latter in the voting line; and leaves the multiplication-table, 
 the chemical, mechanical and other qualities of material sub- 
 stances to take their own course ; being aware that voting and 
 perorating, and reporting in Hansard, will not in the least alter 
 any of these. Which is indisputably wise of the British Par- 
 liament. 
 
 Unfortunately the British Parliament does not, at present, 
 quite know that all manner of things and relations of things, 
 spiritual equally with material, all manner oi qualities, enti- 
 ties, existences whatsoever, in this strange visible and invisible 
 Universe, are equally inflexible of nature ; that they will, one 
 and all, with precisely the same obstinacy, continue to obey 
 their own law, not our law ; deaf as the adder to all charm of 
 parliamentary eloquence, and of voting never so often repeated; 
 silently, but inflexibly and forevermore, declining to change 
 themselves, even as sulphuric acid declines to become sweet 
 milk, though you vote so to the end of the world. This, it 
 sometimes seems to me, is not quite sufficiently laid hold of by 
 the British and other Parliaments just at present. Which surely 
 is a great misfortune to said Parliaments ! For, it would appear, 
 the grand point, after all constitutional improvements, and such 
 wagging of wigs in Westminster as there has been, is precisely 
 what it was betore any constitution was yet heard of, or the 
 
174 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 first official wig had budded out of nothing : namely, to ascer- 
 tain what the truth of your question, in Nature, really is ! 
 Verily so. In this time and place, as in all past and in all 
 future times and places. Today in St. Stephen's, where con- 
 stitutional, philanthropical, and other great things lie in the 
 mortarkit ; even as on the Plain of Shinar long ago, where a 
 certain Tower, likewise of a very philanthropic nature, indeed 
 one of the desirablest towers I ever heard of, was to be built, 
 but couldn't ! My friends, I do not laugh ; truly I am more 
 inclined to weep. 
 
 Get, by six-hundred and fifty-eight votes, or by no vote at 
 all, by the silent intimation of your own eyesight and under- 
 standing given you direct out of Heaven, and more sacred to 
 you than anything earthly, and than all things earthly, a cor- 
 rect image of the fact in question, as God and Nature have 
 made it : that is the one thing needful ; with that it shall be 
 well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact. 
 Get, by the sublimest constitutional methods, belauded by all 
 the world, an z'correct image of the fact : so shall it be other 
 than well with you; so shall you have laud from able-editors 
 and vociferous masses of mistaken human creatures ; and from 
 the Nature's Fact, continuing quite silently the same as it was, 
 contradiction, and that only. What else ? Will Nature change, 
 or sulphuric acid become sweet milk, for the noise of vociferous 
 blockheads ? Surely not. Nature, I assure you, has not the 
 smallest intention of doing so. 
 
 On the contrary, Nature keeps silently a most exact Savings- 
 bank, and official register, correct to the most evanescent item, 
 Debtor and Creditor, in respect to one and all of us ; silently 
 marks down, Creditor by such and such an unseen act of 
 veracity and heroism ; Debtor to such a loud blustery blun- 
 der, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all 
 acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that, 
 Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate 
 (for this is Fate that is writing) ; and at the end of the account 
 you will have it all to pay, my friend ; there is the rub ! Not 
 the infinitesimalist fraction of a farthing but will be found 
 marked there, for you and against you ; and with the due rate 
 of interest you will have to pay it, neatly, completely, as sure 
 as you are alive. You will have to pay it even in money if you 
 live: and, poor slave, do you think there is no payment but 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 175 
 
 in money ? There is a payment which Nature rigorously ex- 
 acts of men, and also of Nations, and this I think when her 
 wrath is sternest, in the shape of dooming you to possess money. 
 To possess it ; to have your bloated vanities fostered into mon- 
 strosity by it, your foul passions blown into explosion by it, 
 your heart and perhaps your very stomach ruined with intoxi- 
 cation by it ; your poor life and all its manful activities stunned 
 into frenzy and comatose sleep by it, in one word, as the old 
 Prophets said, your soul forever lost by it. Your soul ; so that, 
 through the Eternities, you shall have no soul, or manful trace 
 of ever having had a soul ; but only, for certain fleeting mo- 
 ments, shall have had a moneybag, and have given soul and 
 heart and (frightfuler still) stomach itself in fatal exchange for 
 the same. You wretched mortal, stumbling about in a God's 
 Temple, and thinking it a brutal Cookery-shop ! Nature, when 
 her scorn of a slave is divinest, and blazes like the blinding 
 lightning against his slavehood, often enough flings him a bag 
 of money, silently saying : "That! Away; thy doom is that!" 
 
 For no man, and for no body or biggest multitude of men, 
 has Nature favour, if they part company with her facts and 
 her. Excellent stump-orator ; eloquent parliamentary dead-dog, 
 making motions, passing bills ; reported in the Morning News- 
 papers, and reputed the ' best speaker going* ? From the Uni- 
 verse of Fact he has turned himself away; he is gone into 
 partnership with the Universe of Phantasm ; finds it profitablest 
 to deal in forged-notes, while the foolish shopkeepers will ac- 
 cept them. Nature for such a man, and for Nations that follow 
 such, has her patibulary forks, and prisons of death everlast- 
 ing : dost thou doubt it ? Unhappy mortal, Nature otherwise 
 were herself a Chaos and no Cosmos. Nature was not made 
 by an Impostor ; not she, I think, rife as they are ! In fact, by 
 money or otherwise, to the uttermost fraction of a calculable 
 and incalculable value, we have, each one of us, to settle the 
 exact balance in the abovesaid Savings-bank, or official register 
 kept by Nature : Creditor by the quantity of veracities we have 
 done, Debtor by the quantity of falsities and errors ; there is 
 not, by any conceivable device, the faintest hope of escape from 
 that issue for one of us, nor for all of us. 
 
 This used to be a well-known fact ; and daily still, in cer- 
 tain edifices, steeple -houses, joss-houses, temples sacred or 
 other, everywhere spread over the world, we hear some dim 
 
176 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 mumblement of an assertion that such is still, what it was al- 
 ways and will forever be, the fact : but meseems it has terribly 
 fallen out of memory nevertheless ; and, from Dan to Beer- 
 sheba, one in vain looks out for a man that really in his heart 
 believes it. In his heart he believes, as we perceive, that scrip 
 will yield dividends : but that Heaven too has an office of ac- 
 count, and unerringly marks down, against us or for us, what- 
 soever thing we do or say or think, and treasures up the same 
 in regard to every creature, this I do not so well perceive that 
 he believes. Poor blockhead, no : he reckons that all payment 
 is in money, or approximately representable by money ; finds 
 money go a strange course ; disbelieves the parson and his Day 
 of Judgment ; discerns not that there is any judgment except 
 in the small or big debt court ; and lives (for the present) on 
 that strange footing in this Universe. The unhappy mortal, 
 what is the use of his 'civilisations' and his ' useful knowledges,' 
 if he have forgotten that beginning of human knowledge ; the 
 earliest perception of the awakened human soul in this world ; 
 the first dictate of Heaven's inspiration to all men ? I cannot 
 account him a man any more ; but only a kind of human 
 beaver, who has acquired the art of ciphering. He lives with- 
 out rushing hourly towards suicide, because his soul, with all 
 its noble aspirations and imaginations, is sunk at the bottom 
 of his stomach, and lies torpid there, unaspiring, unimagining, 
 unconsidering, as if it were the vital principle of a mere four- 
 footed beaver. A soul of a man, appointed for spinning cot- 
 ton and making money, or, alas, for merely shooting grouse and 
 gathering rent ; to whom Eternity and Immortality, and all 
 human Noblenesses and divine Facts that did not tell upon the 
 stock-exchange, were meaningless fables, empty as the inarti- 
 culate wind. He will recover out of that persuasion one day, 
 or be ground to powder, I believe ! 
 
 To such a pass, by our beaverisms and our mammonisms ; 
 by canting of ' prevenient grace' everywhere, and so boarding 
 and lodging our poor souls upon supervenient moonshine every- 
 where, for centuries long ; by our sordid stupidities and our idle 
 babblings ; through faith in the divine Stump-Orator, and Con- 
 stitutional Palaver, or august Sanhedrim of Orators, have men 
 and Nations been reduced, in this sad epoch ! I cannot call 
 them happy Nations ; I must call them Nations like to perish ; 
 Nations that will either begin to recover, or else soon die. Re- 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 177 
 
 covery is to be hoped ; yes, since there is in Nature an Al- 
 mighty Beneficence, and His voice, divinely terrible, can be 
 heard in the world-whirlwind now, even as from of old andfor- 
 evermore. Recovery, or else destruction and annihilation, is 
 very certain ; and the crisis, too, comes rapidly on : but by 
 Stump-Orator and Constitutional Palaver, however perfected, 
 my hopes of recovery have long vanished. Not by them, I 
 should imagine, but by something far the reverse of them, shall 
 we return to truth and God ! 
 
 I tell you, the ignoble intellect cannot think the truth, even 
 within its own limits, and when it seriously tries ! And of the 
 ignoble intellect that does not seriously try, and has even reached 
 the ' ignobleness' of seriously trying the reverse, and of lying 
 with its very tongue, what are we to expect ? It is frightful to 
 consider. Sincere wise speech is but an imperfect corollary, 
 and insignificant outer manifestation, of sincere wise thought. 
 He whose very tongue utters falsities, what has his heart long 
 been doing ? The thought of his heart is not its wisest, not 
 even its wisest ; it is its foolishest ; and even of that we have 
 a false and foolish copy. And it is Nature's Fact, or the Thought 
 of the Eternal, which we want to arrive at in regard to the mat- 
 ter, which if we do not arrive at, we shall not save the matter, 
 we shall drive the matter into shipwreck ! 
 
 The practice of modern Parliaments, with reporters sitting 
 among them, and twenty-seven millions mostly fools listening 
 to them, fills me with amazement. In regard to no thing, or 
 fact as God and Nature have made it, can you get so much as 
 the real thought of any honourable head, even so far as it, the 
 said honourable head, still has capacity of thought. What the 
 honourable gentleman's wisest thought is or would have been, 
 had he led from birth a life of piety and earnest veracity and 
 heroic virtue, you, and he himself poor deep -sunk creature, 
 vainly conjecture as from immense dim distances far in the 
 rear of what he is led to say. And again, far in the rear of 
 what his thought is, surely long infinitudes beyond all he could 
 ever think, lies the Thought of God Almighty, the Image itself 
 of the Fact, the thing you are in quest of, and must find or do 
 worse I Even his, the honourable gentleman's, actual bewil- 
 dered, falsified, vague surmise or quasi-thought, even this is not 
 given you ; but only some falsified copy of this, such as he fan- 
 cies may suit the reporters and twenty-seven millions mostly 
 
 N 
 
178 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 fools. And upon that latter you are to act ; with what 
 
 success, do you expect ? That is the thought you are to take 
 for the Thought of the Eternal Mind, that double- distilled 
 falsity of a blockheadism from one who is false even as a block- 
 head ! 
 
 Do I make myself plain to Mr. Peter's understanding ? Per- 
 haps it will surprise him less that parliamentary eloquence ex- 
 cites more wonder than admiration in me ; that the fate of 
 countries governed by that sublime alchemy does not appear 
 the hopefulest just now. Not by that method, I should appre- 
 hend, will the Heavens be scaled and the Earth vanquished ; 
 not by that, but by another. 
 
 A benevolent man once proposed to me, but without point- 
 ing out the methods how, this plan of reform for our benighted 
 world : To cut from one generation, whether the current one 
 or the next, all the tongues away, prohibiting Literature too ; 
 and appoint at least one generation to pass its life in silence. 
 " There, thou one blessed generation, from the vain jargon of 
 " babble thou art beneficently freed. Whatsoever of truth, 
 " traditionary or original, thy own god-given intellect shall point- 
 " out to thee as true, that thou wilt go and do. In doing of 
 " it there will be a verdict for thee ; if a verdict of True, thou 
 " wilt hold by it, and ever again do it ; if of Untrue, thou wilt 
 " never try it more, but be eternally delivered from it. To do 
 " aught because the vain hearsays order thee, and the big 
 " clamours of the sanhedrim of fools, is not thy lot, what 
 " worlds of misery are spared thee ! Nature's voice heard in 
 " thy own inner being, and the sacred Commandment of thy 
 " Maker : these shall be thy guidances, thou happy tongueless 
 " generation. What is good and beautiful thou shalt know ; 
 " not merely what is said to be so. Not to talk of thy doings, 
 " and become the envy of surrounding flunkies, but to taste of 
 " the fruit of thy doings themselves, is thine. What the Eter- 
 " nal Laws will sanction for thee, do ; what the Froth Gospels 
 " and multitudinous long-eared Hearsays never so loudly bid, 
 " all this is already chaff for thee, drifting rapidly along, thou 
 " knowest whitherward, on the eternal winds." 
 
 Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the 
 chaff might be winnowed out of every man, and out ot all 
 human things ; and ninety-nine hundredths of our whole big 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 179 
 
 Universe, spiritual and practical, might blow itself away, as 
 mere torrents of chaff; whole trade-winds of chaff, many 
 miles deep, rushing continually with the voice of whirlwinds 
 towards a certain FIRE, which knows how to deal with it ! 
 Ninety-nine hundredths blown away ; all the lies blown away, 
 and some skeleton of a spiritual and practical Universe left 
 standing for us which were true : O Heavens, is it forever im- 
 possible, then ? By a generation that had no tongue it really 
 might be done ; but not so easily by one that had. Tongues, 
 platforms, parliaments, and fourth-estates ; unfettered presses, 
 periodical and stationary literatures : we are nearly all gone to 
 tongue, I think ; and our fate is very questionable ! 
 
 Truly, it is little known at present, and ought forthwith to 
 become better known, what ruin to all nobleness and fruitful- 
 ness and blessedness in the genius of a poor mortal you gene- 
 rally bring about, by ordering him to speak, to do all things 
 with a view to their being seen ! Few good and fruitful things 
 ever were done, or could be done, on those terms. Silence, 
 silence ; and be distant ye profane, with your jargonings and 
 superficial babblements, when a man has anything to do ! Eye- 
 service, dost thou know what that is, poor England ? eye- 
 service is all the man can do in these sad circumstances ; grows 
 to be all he has the idea of doing, of his or any other man's 
 ever doing, or ever having done, in any circumstances. Sad 
 enough. Alas, it is our saddest woe of all ; too sad for being 
 spoken of at present, while all or nearly all men consider it 
 an imaginary sorrow on my part ! 
 
 Let the young English soul, in whatever logic-shop and 
 nonsense-verse establishment of an Eton, Oxford, Edinburgh, 
 Halle, Salamanca, or other High Finishing-School, he may 
 be getting his young idea taught how to speak and spout, and 
 print sermons and review-articles, and thereby show himself 
 and fond patrons that it is an idea, lay this solemnly to heart ; 
 this is my deepest counsel to him ! The idea you have once 
 spoken, if it even were an idea, is no longer yours ; it is gone 
 from you, so much life and virtue is gone, and the vital circu- 
 lations of your self and your destiny and activity are hence- 
 forth deprived of it. If you could not get it spoken, if you 
 could still constrain it into silence, so much the richer are you. 
 Better keep your idea while you can : let it still circulate in 
 
I8o LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 your blood, and there fructify ; inarticulately inciting you to 
 good activities ; giving to your whole spiritual life a ruddier 
 health. When the time does come for speaking it, you will 
 speak it all the more concisely, the more expressively, appro- 
 priately ; and if such a time should never come, have you not 
 already acted it, and uttered it as no words can ? Think of 
 this, my young friend ; for there is nothing truer, nothing more 
 forgotten in these shabby gold-laced days. Incontinence is 
 half of all the sins of man. And among the many kinds of 
 that base vice, I know none baser, or at present half so fell and 
 fatal, as that same Incontinence of Tongue. ' Public speak- 
 ing,' ' parliamentary eloquence :' it is a Moloch, before whom 
 young souls are made to pass through the fire. They enter, 
 weeping or rejoicing, fond parents consecrating them to the 
 redhot Idol, as to the Highest God : and they come out spi- 
 ritually dead. Dead enough ; to live thenceforth a galvanic 
 life of mere Stump-Oratory ; screeching and gibbering, words 
 without wisdom, without veracity, without conviction more than 
 skin-deep. A divine gift, that ? It is a thing admired by the 
 vulgar, and rewarded with seats in the Cabinet and other pre- 
 ciosities ; but to the wise, it is a thing not admirable, not ador- 
 able ; unmelodious rather, and ghastly and bodeful, as the 
 speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight ! 
 
 Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British man, thou 
 that art now growing to be something : not a Stump-Orator, 
 if thou canst help it. Appeal not to the vulgar, with its long 
 ears and its seats in the Cabinet ; not by spoken words to the 
 vulgar ; hate the profane vulgar, and bid it begone. Appeal 
 by silent work, by silent suffering if there be no work, to the 
 gods, who have nobler than seats in the Cabinet for thee ! 
 Talent for Literature, thou hast such a talent ? Believe it not, 
 be slow to believe it ! To speak, or to write, Nature did not 
 peremptorily order thee ; but to work she did. And know this : 
 there never was a talent even for real Literature, not to speak 
 of talents lost and damned in doing sham Literature, but was 
 primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent 
 kind. Of Literature, in all ways, be shy rather than other- 
 wise, at present ! There where thou art, work, work ; what- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do, do it, with the hand of a man, 
 not of a phantasm ; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and ex- 
 
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 181 
 
 ceeding great reward. Thy words, let them be few, and well- 
 ordered. Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days, 
 when, for very speaking, the voice of man has fallen inarticu- 
 late to man ; and hearts, in this loud babbling, sit dark and 
 dumb towards one another. Witty, above all, O be not 
 witty : none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties ; to be 
 wise and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties ! 
 
 Brave young friend, dear to me, and known too in a sense, 
 though never seen, nor to be seen by me, you are, what I am 
 not, in the happy case to learn to be something and to do some- 
 thing, instead of eloquently talking about what has been and 
 was done and may be ! The old are what they are, and Will 
 not alter ; our hope is in you. England's hope, and the world's, 
 is that there may once more be millions such, instead of units 
 as now. Mactij i fausto pede. And may future generations, 
 acquainted again with the silences, and once more cognisant 
 of what is noble and faithful and divine, look back on us with 
 pity and incredulous astonishment ! 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 [ist June 1850.] 
 
 BY this time it is sufficiently apparent the present Editor is not 
 one of those who expect to see the Country saved by farther 
 ' reforming' the reformed Parliament we have got. On the con- 
 trary, he has the sad conviction that from such Parliament never 
 so ingeniously reformed, there can no salvation come, but only 
 a speedy finale far different from salvation. It is his effort and 
 desire to teach this and the other thinking British man that 
 said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot 
 be distant, now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued 
 and waxing daily, has got to such a height ; and that the one 
 method of staving-off that fatal consummation, and steering to- 
 wards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of 
 reforming Parliament, but of what he calls reforming Downing 
 Street ; a thing infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be strenu- 
 ously carried on. To find a Parliament more and more the ex- 
 press image of the People, could, unless the People chanced to 
 be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not 
 this at all ; but to find some sort of King, made in the image 
 of God, who could a little achieve for the People, if not their 
 spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they would at 
 last find to have been their instinctive will, which is a far 
 different matter usually, in this babbling world of ours. 
 
 Qualification movement, universal-suffrage movement, Re- 
 form Association, and suchlike, this Editor does not enjoin 
 upon his readers ; his readers whom (as every crow is known 
 to think her own eggs whitest) he considers to be a select class, 
 the true Aristocracy of England, capable of far better things 
 than these. Which better things, and not the worse, it is his 
 heart's wish to urge them upon doing. And yet, alas, how can 
 he forbid any reader of his, or of other people's, to join such 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 183 
 
 suffrage movement, or still more distracted Chartism of Six 
 Points, if it seem hopeful ? Where we are, is no continuing. 
 Men say: "The finale must come, ought to come; perhaps the 
 " sooner it comes, it will be the lighter to bear. If the foul 
 " universal boil is to go on ripening, under mere Leave-alone 
 " and Premiers of the Phantasm order, perhaps the sooner it 
 " bursts, and declares itself as universal gangrene and social 
 " death, the better !" Good Heavens, have men computed what 
 the bursting-out of virtual disguised Anarchy into open unde- 
 niable Anarchy, such as they have in the Continental countries 
 just now, amounts to in human affairs ; what a game that of 
 trying for cure in the Medea' s-cauldron of Revolution is! Must 
 we also front the Apotheosis of Attorneyism ; and know what 
 the blackest of terrestrial curses means ? 
 
 But if the captains of the ship are ot that scandalous class 
 who refuse to be warned except by iceberg counsellors nudging 
 them, what are the miserable crew to do ? Yes, the crew had 
 better consider of that ; they have greatly too little considered it 
 of late. They will find that in Nature there is no such alarming 
 creature as a Chief Governor of that humour, in getting round 
 a Cape Horn like this of ours ; that, if pity did not check our 
 rage, there is no such traitor in the ship as this unconscious 
 one ! Who, placidly assured, nothing doubting but he is the 
 friend of gods and men, can stand with imperturbable attitude, 
 quietly steering, by his old Whig and other charts of the Brit- 
 ish Channel (as if we were still there or thereabouts), into the 
 yawning mouth of Chaos, on the other side of the world ; and 
 call it passing the Forelands in rough weather, or getting into 
 Cowes, by constitutional methods, and ' remedial measures 
 suited to the occasion.' Our heart's prayer in those circum- 
 stances is : From such Chief Governors, good Lord deliver us t 
 And if masses of the desperate common men before the mast 
 do invoke Chartism rather, and invite the iceberg counsellors 
 to nudge him, cannot we too well understand it ? I hope, 
 in other quarters of the ship there are men who know wiser 
 courses, and instead of inviting the iceberg counsellors and 
 Six Points, will direct all their strength to fling the Phantasm 
 Captain under hatches. It is with the view of aiding and en- 
 couraging these latter that we now institute a few considera- 
 tions upon Parliaments generally. 
 
184 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Dryasdust in his lumber-masses, which he calls treatises 
 and histories, has not been explicit about Parliaments : but we 
 need not doubt, the English Parliament, as windy a palaver- 
 ing and imaginary entity as it has now grown to be, was at 
 one time a quite solid serious actuality, met for earnest dis- 
 patch of work which, on the King's part and the Common' 
 wealth's, needed absolutely to be done. Reading in Eadmerus 
 and the dim old Books, one finds gradually that the Parlia- 
 ment was at first a most simple Assemblage, quite cognate to 
 the situation ; that Red William, or whoever had taken on him 
 the terrible task of being King in England, was wont to invite, 
 oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate Kinglets, Barons 
 as he called them, to give him the pleasure of their company 
 for a week or two : there, in earnest conference all morning, in 
 freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal 
 Hall of Westminster, Winchester, or wherever it might be, with 
 log-fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking malmsey 
 and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the 
 arduous matters of the kingdom. "You Taillebois, what have 
 " you to propose in this arduous matter ? Frontdebceuf has 
 " another view ; thinks, in his southern counties, they will go 
 " with the Protectionist movement, and repeal the malt-tax, 
 " the African Squadron, and the window-duty itself. Potdevin, 
 " what is your opinion of the measure ; will it hold in your 
 " parts ? So, Fitzurse disagrees, then ! Tete-d'e'toupes, speak 
 " out. And first, the pleasure of a glass of wine, my infant ?" 
 Thus, for a fortnight's space, they carried on, after a human 
 manner, their grand National Consult or Parliamentum; in- 
 termingling Dinner with it (as is still the modern method) ; 
 debating everything, as Tacitus describes the Ancient Germans 
 to have done, two times : once sober, and once what he calls 
 drunk,' not dead-drunk, but jolly round their big table; 
 that so both sides of the matter might be seen ; and, midway 
 between rash hope and unreasonable apprehension, the true 
 decision of it might be hit. To this hour no public matter, 
 with whatever serious argument, can be settled in England till 
 it have been dined upon, perhaps repeatedly dined upon. 
 
 To King Rufus there could no more natural method pre- 
 sent itself, of getting his affairs of sovereignty transacted, than 
 this same. To assemble all his working Sub-kings about him ; 
 v\d gather in a human manner, by the aid of sad speech and 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 185 
 
 of cheerful, what their real notions, opinions and determina- 
 tions were. No way of making a law, or of getting one exe- 
 cuted when made, except by even such a General Consult in 
 one form or another. Naturally too, as in all places where 
 men meet, there established themselves modes of proceeding 
 in this Christmas Parliamentum : secretaries from the first were 
 needed there, strict record of the results arrived-at being indis- 
 pensable : and the methods of arriving, marginally noted or 
 otherwise, would not be forgotten : such methods, with trials of 
 ever new methods, accumulating, and in the course of continual 
 practice getting sifted, rejected, adopted, and committed to re- 
 cord, the vast elaboration, now called Law of Parliament, 
 Privilege, Practice of Parliament, and that huge sheepskin 
 quarry, in which Dryasdust bores and grovels as if the world's 
 or England's secret lay there, grew to be what we see. 
 
 So likewise in the time of the Edwards, when Parliament 
 gradually split itself into Two Houses; and Borough Members 
 and Knights of the Shire were summoned up to answer, Whe- 
 ther they could stand such and such an impost? and took upon 
 them to answer, "Yes, your Majesty ; but we have such and 
 such grievances greatly in need of redress first," nothing could 
 be more natural and human than such a Parliament still was. 
 And so, granting subsidies, stating grievances, and notably 
 widening its field in that latter direction, accumulating new 
 modes, and practices of Parliament greatly important in world- 
 history, the old Parliament continued an eminently human, ve- 
 racious, and indispensable entity, achieving real work in the 
 Centuries. Down, we may say, to the Century of Charles First, 
 when being constrained by unforeseen necessity to do so, it 
 took suddenly, like water at the boiling point, a quite immense 
 development of function; and performed that new function too, 
 to the world's and its own amazement, in an eminently human, 
 authentic and effectual manner, the ' supply' it granted his Ma- 
 jesty, this time (in front of Whitehall, as it ultimately proved), 
 being of a very unexpected yet by no means unessential nature ; 
 and the ' grievance' it now stated for redress being the tran- 
 scendent one of Compulsion towards Spiritual Nightmare, to- 
 wards Canting Idolatry, and Death Eternal, which I do not 
 wonder that they couldn't endure, and wouldn't ! Which tran- 
 scendent grievance, it is well known, they did get redressed, in 
 a most conspicuous manner, they, for the time being ; and 
 
1 86 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 so have since set all the world upon similar but far less hope- 
 ful attempts, by methods which appear the same, and are not 
 the same but different. 
 
 This Long Parliament which conquered its King, and even 
 extinguished him, since he would in no way be quiet when 
 conquered ; and which thus, the first of such Assemblages, 
 declared that it was Sovereign in the Nation, and more royal 
 than any King who could be there, has set a flaming pattern 
 to all the world, which now after centuries all the world is 
 fruitlessly bent to emulate. This ever-memorable Long Par- 
 liament is definable, both in regard to its destinies in History, 
 and to its intrinsic collective and individual worth among De- 
 liberative Assemblies, as the Acme of Parliaments ; the highest 
 that it lay in them to be, or to do, in human affairs. The con- 
 summation, this, and slow cactus-flowerage of the parliamentary 
 tree among mankind, which blossoms only in thousands of years, 
 and is seen only once by men : the Father, this, of all Con- 
 gresses, National Conventions and sublunary Parliaments that 
 have since been. 
 
 But what I had to remark of this Long Parliament, and 
 of its English predecessors generally from the times of Rufus 
 downwards, is their perfect veracity of purpose, their exact 
 adaptation to getting the business done that was in hand. 
 Supplies did, in some way, need to be granted ; grievances, 
 such as never fail, did in some way need to be stated and re- 
 dressed. The silent Peoples had their Parliamentum j and 
 spake by it to their Kings who governed them. In all human 
 Government, wherever a man will attempt to govern men, this 
 is a function necessary as the breath of life : and it must be 
 said the old European Populations, and the fortunate English 
 best of all, did this function well. The old Parliaments were 
 authentic entities ; came upon indispensable work ; and were 
 in earnest to their very finger-ends about getting it done. No 
 conclave of railway directors, met with closed doors upon the 
 sacred cause of scrip and dividends, could be more intent upon 
 the business necessary, or be more appropriate for it, than 
 those old Parliaments were. 
 
 In modern Parliaments, again, indeed ever down from the 
 Long Parliament, I note a sad gradual falling-off in this mat- 
 ter of ' veracity,' which, alas, means a falling-off in all real 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 187 
 
 use, or possible advantage, there can be to mankind in such 
 Institutions. The Parliament, if we examinewell, has irrevoc- 
 ably lost certain of its old functions, which it still pretends to 
 do ; and has got certain new functions, which it never can do, 
 and yet pretends to be doing : a doubly fatal predicament for 
 the Parliament. Its functions growing ever more confused in 
 this twofold way, the position of the Parliament has become a 
 false, and has gradually been becoming an impossible one, in 
 modern affairs. While on the other hand, the poor Parliament, 
 little conscious of all that, and long dimly struggling to remedy 
 all that, and exist amidst it ; or in later years, still more fatally 
 admitting all that, and quietly consenting to exist beside it 
 without remedy, has had to distort and pervert its poor ac- 
 tivity in all manner of ways ; and at length has diffused itself 
 into oceans of windy talk reported in Hansard ' j has grown, in 
 short, a National Palaver ; and is, as I said lately, one of the 
 strangest entities this sun ever looked down upon. For, I 
 think, a National Palaver recognised as Sovereign, a solemn 
 Convocation of all the Stump-Orators in the Nation to come 
 and govern us, was not seen in the earth till recently. I con- 
 sider it has been reserved for these our Latter Generations ; a 
 product long ripening for us from afar ; and would fain hope 
 that, like the Long Parliament, or acme and consummate 
 flower in any kind, it can only be a transient phenomenon ! 
 
 Some functions that are and continue real the Parliament 
 still has ; and these it becomes infinitely necessary to dissever, 
 and extricate alive, from the ocean of unreality in which they 
 swim. Unreality is death, to Parliaments and to all things. 
 The real functions whatsoever they are, these, most certainly, 
 are all the good we shall ever get of Parliament ; and the 
 question now is, Shall said good be drowned, or not be 
 drowned, in the immeasurable accompaniment of imaginary 
 functions which are evil and falsity, and that only ? 
 
 In the way of changed times I note two grand modern 
 facts, omitting many minor, which have, one of them irrevoc- 
 ably, and the other hopelessly for the present, altered from top 
 to bottom the function and position of all Parliaments ; and 
 which do now fatally vitiate their procedure everywhere, ren- 
 dering much of what they do a superfluity, a mere hypocrisy, 
 
1 88 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 or noxious grimace ; and thus infecting even what is real in 
 their function with a windy falsity, lamentable to behold and 
 greatly requiring to be altered : Factyfrj/, the existence of an 
 Unfettered Press, with its perennial ever-increasing torrent of 
 morning newspapers, pamphlets, books : fact second, that there 
 is now no King present in Parliament ; no King now there, 
 the King having vanished, in front of Whitehall, long since ! 
 Fact first I take to be unalterable. Complete alteration of fact 
 second I discern to be distant, but likewise to be indispensable 
 and inevitable ; and to require urgently here and now (by New 
 Downing Streets or otherwise) a strenuous beginning, from all 
 good citizens who would do any reform in their generation. 
 Both facts together have dislocated every joint of the old 
 arrangement, and made the modern Parliament a new creature ; 
 and whosoever means to work reform there, will either open his 
 eyes, and keep them open, to both these facts, or work only 
 mischief and ruin. 
 
 In countries that can stand a Free Press, which many 
 cannot, but which England, thanks to her long good training, 
 still can, it is evident the National Consult or real Parlia- 
 mentary Debate goes on of itself, everywhere, continually. Is 
 not the Times newspaper an open Forum, open as never Forum 
 was before, where all mortals vent their opinion, state their 
 grievance, all manner of grievances, from loss of your um- 
 brella in a railway, to loss of your honour and fortune by unjust 
 sovereign persons ? One grand branch of the Parliament's trade 
 is evidently dead forever ! And the beautiful Elective Parlia- 
 ment itself is nothing like so living as it used to be. If we 
 will consider it, the essential truth of the matter is, every Brit- 
 ish man can now elect himself to Parliament without consult- 
 ing the hustings at all. If there be any vote, idea or notion in 
 him, on any earthly or heavenly thing, cannot he take a pen, 
 and therewith autocratically pour forth the same into the ears 
 and hearts of all people, so far as it will go ? Precisely so far ; 
 and, what is a great advantage too, no farther. The discussion 
 of questions goes on, not in St. Stephen's now, but from Dan 
 to Beersheba by able-editors and articulate-speaking creatures 
 that can get others to listen to them. This is the fact ; and it 
 demands to be attended to as such, and will produce changes, 
 I think, by and by. 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 189 
 
 What is the good of men collected, with effort, to debate on 
 the benches of St. Stephen's, now when there is a Times News- 
 paper ? Not the discussion of questions ; only the ultimate vot- 
 ing of them (a very brief process, I should think !) requires to 
 go on, or can veritably go on, in St. Stephen's now. The hon- 
 ourable gentleman is oftenest very wearisome in St. Stephen's 
 now : his and his Constituency's Aye or No, is all we want of 
 the honourable gentleman there ; all we are ever like to get of 
 him there, could it but be had without admixtures ! If your 
 Lordship will reflect on it, you will find it an obsolete function, 
 this debating one of his ; useless in these new times, as a set of 
 riding postboys would be, along the line of the Great Western 
 Railway. Loving my life, and time which is the stuff of life, 
 I read no Parliamentary Debates, rarely any Parliamentary 
 Speech ; but I am told there is not, once in the seven years, 
 the smallest gleam of new intelligence thrown on any matter, 
 earthly or divine, by an honourable gentleman on his legs in 
 Parliament. Nothing offered you but wearisome, dreary, thrice- 
 boiled colewort ; a bad article at first, and served and again 
 served in Newspapers and Periodical and other Literatures, 
 till even the inferior animals would recoil from it. Honourable 
 gentlemen have complained to myself that under the sky there 
 was not such a bore. What is or can be the use of this, your 
 Lordship ? 
 
 Let an honourable gentleman who has colewort, or stump- 
 oratory of that kind, send it direct to the Times; perhaps they 
 will print it for him, and then all persons can read it there 
 who hope instruction from it. If the Times refuse to print it, 
 let the honourable gentleman, if still so minded, print it at his 
 own expense; let him advertise it at a penny the gross, dis- 
 tribute it gratis as handbill, or even offer a small reward per 
 head to any citizen that will read it: but if, after all, no body 
 of citizens will read it even for a reward, then let the honour- 
 able gentleman retire into himself, and consider what such 
 omens mean ! So much I take to be fair, or at least unavoid- 
 able in a free country : Let every creature try to get his opinion 
 listened to; and let honourable gentlemen who can print their 
 own stump-oratory, and offer the public a reward for using it, 
 by all means do so. But that, when no human being will in- 
 cline or even consent to have their said oratory, they can get 
 upon their legs in Parliament and pour it out still, to the bur- 
 
190 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 dening of many Newspapers, to the boring of their fellow-crea- 
 tures, and generally to the despair of all thinking citizens in 
 the community: this is and remains, I must crave to say, an 
 infatuation, and, whatever respectable old coat you put upon it, 
 is fast growing a nuisance which must be abated. 
 
 Still more important for a Parliament is the question : King 
 present there, or no King ? Certain it always is, and if forgot- 
 ten, it much requires to be brought to mind, that a Parliament 
 acting in the character of a body to be consulted by the sove- 
 reign ruler, or executive King of a Nation, differs immensely 
 from a Parliament which is itself to enact the sovereign ruler, 
 and to be supreme over all things ; not merely giving its ad- 
 vice, its remonstrance, dissent or assent, and leaving the ruler 
 still to decide with that new illumination ; but deciding of it- 
 self, and by its Yes or its No peremptorily ordering all things 
 to be or not to be. These, I say, are two extremely different 
 characters for a Parliament to enact ; and they necessitate all 
 manner of distinctions, of the most vital nature, in our idea ot 
 a Parliament ; so that what applies with full force to a Parlia- 
 ment acting the former character, will not apply at all to one 
 enacting the latter : nay what is of the highest benefit in the 
 former kind of Parliament, may not only in the latter kind be 
 of no benefit, but be even of the fatalest detriment, and bring 
 destruction to the poor Parliament itself and to all that de- 
 pends thereon. 
 
 It is first of all, therefore, to be inquired, Whether your 
 Parliament is actually in practice the Adviser of the Sovereign ; 
 or is the Sovereign itself? For the distinction is profound ; 
 goes down to the very roots of Parliament and of the Body 
 Politic: and if you confound the two kinds of Parliaments, and 
 apply to the one the psalmodyings and celebratings of consti- 
 tutional doctors (very rife through the eighteenth century), which 
 were meant for the other, and were partly true of the other, 
 but are altogether false of this, you will set forth in a radi- 
 cally wrong course, and will advance incessantly, with whatever 
 psalmodyings of your own or of the world's, to a goal you are 
 like to be much surprised at ! Under which 01 these two de- 
 scriptions the British Parliament of our time mils, no one can 
 need to be imormed. Apart from certain thin fictions, and con- 
 stitutional cobwebs which it is not expected any one should not 
 see through, our Parliament is the sovereign ruler and real 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 191 
 
 executive King of this Empire ; and constitutional men, who 
 for a century past have been singing praises to that sublime 
 Institution in its old character, are requested to look at it in 
 this new one, and see what praises it has earned for itself there. 
 Hitherto, in these last fifteen years since it has worked without 
 shackle in that new character, one does not find its praises 
 mount very high! The exercise of English Sovereignty, if that 
 mean governance of the Twenty-seven million British souls and 
 guidance of their temporal and eternal interests towards a good 
 issue, does not seem to stand on the very best footing just at 
 present ! Not as a Sovereign Ruler of the Twenty-seven million 
 British men, or heroic guide of their temporal or their eternal 
 interests, has the reformed Parliament distinguished itself as 
 yet, but otherwise only if at all. 
 
 In fact, there rises universally the complaint, and expres- 
 sion of surprise, That our reformed Parliament cannot get on 
 with any kind of work, except that of talking, which does not 
 serve much; and the Chief Minister has been heard lamenting, 
 in a pathetic manner, that the Business of the Nation (mean- 
 ing thereby the voting of the supplies) was dreadfully obstructed ; 
 and that it would be difficult for him to accomplish the Busi- 
 ness of the Nation (meaning thereby the voting of the supplies), 
 if honourable gentlemen would not please to hold their tongues 
 a little. It is really pathetic, after a sort ; and unless parlia- 
 mentary eloquence will suffice the British Nation, and its busi- 
 nesses and wants, one sees not what is to become of us in that 
 direction. For, in fine, the tragic experience is dimly but irre- 
 pressibly forcing itself on all the world, that our British Parlia- 
 ment does not shine as Sovereign Ruler of the British Nation; 
 that it was excellent only as Adviser of the Sovereign Ruler ; 
 and has not, somehow or other, the art of getting work done ; 
 but produces talk merely, not of the most instructive sort for 
 most part, and in vortexes of talk is not unlike to submerge it- 
 self and the whole of us, if help come not ! 
 
 My own private notion, which I invite all reformed British 
 citizens to reflect on, is and has for a long time been, That this 
 dim universal experience, which points towards very tragic facts, 
 will more and more rapidly become a clear universal experi- 
 ence, and disclose a tragic law of Nature little dreamt of by 
 constitutional men 01 these times. That a Parliament, especi- 
 ally a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established 
 
192 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but 
 can do talk only, which at times may be needed, and at other 
 times again may be very needless. Consider, in fact, a body 
 of Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to con- 
 sult about ' business' with Twenty-seven millions mostly fools 
 assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them : 
 was there ever since the world began, will there ever be till 
 the world end, any ' business' accomplished in these circum- 
 stances? The beginning of all business everywhere, as all prac- 
 tical persons testify, is decidedly this, That every man shut his 
 mouth, and do not open it again till his thinking and contriving 
 faculty have elaborated something worth articulating. Which 
 rule will much abridge the flow of speech in such assemblies ! 
 This, however, is the preliminary fundamental rule for busi- 
 ness ; and this, alas, is precisely the rule which cannot be at- 
 tended to in constitutional Parliaments. 
 
 Add now another most unfortunate condition, That your 
 Parliamentary Assembly is not very much in earnest, not at 
 all 'dreadfully in earnest,' to do even the best it can ; that in 
 general the Nation it represents is no longer an earnest Na- 
 tion, but a light, sceptical, epicurean one, which for a century 
 has gone along smirking, grimacing, cutting jokes about all 
 things, and has not been bent with dreadful earnestness on 
 anything at all, except on making money each member of it 
 for himself: here, certainly enough, is a Parliament that will 
 do no business except such as can be done in sport ; and un- 
 fortunately, it is well known, almost none can be done in that 
 way. To which Parliament, in the centre of such a Nation, 
 introduce now assiduous Newspaper Reporters, and six yards 
 of small type laid on all breakfast-tables every morning : alas, 
 are not the Six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous gentle- 
 men, who sit to do sovereign business in such circumstances, 
 verily a self-contradiction, a solecism in Nature, Nature 
 having appointed that business shall not be done in that way ? 
 Incapable they of doing business ; capable of speech only, and 
 this none of the best. Speech which, as we can too well see, 
 whether it be speech to the question and to the wise men near, 
 or 'speech to Buncombe' (as the Americans call it), to the dis- 
 tant constituencies and the twenty-seven millions mostly fools, 
 will yearly grow more worthless as speech, and threaten to fi- 
 nish by becoming burdensome to gods and men ! 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 193 
 
 So that the sad conclusion, which all experience, wherever 
 it has been tried, is fatally making good, appears to be, That 
 Parliaments, admirable as Advising Bodies, and likely to be 
 in future universally useful in that capacity, are, as Ruling and 
 Sovereign Bodies, not useful, but useless or worse. That a 
 Sovereign with nine-hundred or with six-hundred and fifty- 
 eight heads, all set to talk against each other in the presence 
 of thirty-four or twenty-seven or eighteen millions, cannot do 
 the work of sovereignty at all ; but is smitten with eternal in- 
 competence for that function by the law of Nature itself. Such, 
 alas, is the sad conclusion ; and in England, and wherever else 
 it is tried, a sad experience will rapidly make it good. 
 
 Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of coun- 
 tries can do without governing, every man being at least able 
 to live, and move-off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon 
 as it will, can such a form of so-called ' Government' con- 
 tinue, for any length of time, to torment men with the sem- 
 blance, when the indispensable substance is not there. For 
 America, as the citizens well know, is an "unparalleled coun- 
 try,'' with mud soil enough and fierce sun enough in the Mis- 
 sissippi Valley alone to grow Indian corn for all the extant Pos- 
 terity of Adam at this time; what other country ever stood in 
 such a case? 'Speeches to Buncombe,' and a constitutional bat- 
 tle of the Kilkenny cats, which in other countries are becoming 
 tragical and unendurable, may there still fall under the comical 
 category. If indeed America should ever experience a higher 
 call, as is likely, and begin to feel diviner wants than that of 
 Indian corn with abundant bacon and molasses, and unlimited 
 scope for all citizens to hunt dollars, America too will find that 
 caucuses, division-lists, stump-oratory and speeches to Buncombe 
 will not carry men to the immortal gods ; that the Washington 
 Congress, and constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is, there as 
 here, naught for such objects ; quite incompetent for such ; and, 
 in fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will re- 
 quire to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few expect 
 yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed ; torn asunder, 
 put together again ; not without heroic labour, and effort 
 quite other than that of the Stump-Orator and the Revival 
 Preacher, one day ! 
 
 Thus if the first grand branch of parliamentary business, 
 that of stating grievances, has fallen to the Unfettered Presses, 
 
 o 
 
194 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 and become quite dead for Parliaments, infecting them with 
 mere hypocrisy when they now try it, the second or new 
 grand branch of business intrusted to them, and passionately 
 expected and demanded of them, is one which they cannot 
 do ; the attempt and pretence to do which can only still far- 
 ther involve them in hypocrisy, in fatal cecity, stump-oratory, 
 futility, and the faster accelerate their doom, and ours if we 
 depend on them. 
 
 We may take it as a fact, and should lay it to heart every- 
 where, That no Sovereign Ruler with six-hundred and fifty- 
 eight heads, set to rule twenty-seven millions, by continually 
 talking in the hearing of them all, can for the life of it make 
 a good figure in that vocation ; but must by nature make a 
 bad figure, and ever a worse and worse, till, some good day, by 
 soft recession or by rude propulsion, as the Omnipotent Benefi- 
 cence may direct, it get relieved from said vocation. 
 
 In the whole course of History I have heard of only two 
 Parliaments of the sovereign sort, that did the work of sove- 
 reignty with some effect : the National Convention, in Paris, 
 during the French Revolution ; and the Long Parliament, here 
 at London, during our own. Not that the work, in either case, 
 was perfect ; far enough from that ; but with all imperfections 
 it was got done ; and neither of these two workers proved to be 
 quite futile, or a solecism in its place in the world. These two 
 Parliaments succeeded, and did not fail. The conditions, how- 
 ever, were peculiar; not likely to be soon seen again. 
 
 In the first place, of both these Parliaments it can be said 
 that they were ' dreadfully in earnest ;' in earnest as no Parlia- 
 ments before or since ever were. Nay indeed, in the end, it 
 had become a matter of life or death with them. But apart 
 from that latter consideration, in the Long Parliament especi- 
 ally, nothing so astonishes a modern man as the serious, so- 
 lemn, nay devout, religiously earnest spirit in which almost 
 every member had come up to his task. For the English was 
 yet a serious devout Nation, as in fact it intrinsically still is, 
 and ever tends and strives to be; this its poor modern levity, 
 sceptical knowingness, and sniffing grinning humour, being 
 forced on it, and sitting it very ill : ever a devout Nation, I 
 say; and the Divine Presence yet irradiated this poor Earth 
 and its business to most men; and to all Englishmen the Par- 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 195 
 
 liament, we can observe, was still what their Temple was to 
 the ancient Hebrews ; the most august of terrestrial objects, 
 into which when a man entered, he felt that he was standing 
 on holy ground. Literally so ; and much is the modern man 
 surprised at it ; and only after much reluctance can he admit 
 it to be credible, to be certain and visible among our old 
 fathers there. In which temper alone, is there not sure pro- 
 mise of work being done, under any circumstances whatsoever? 
 Given any lamest Talking Parliament, with its Chartisms or its 
 starving Irish, and a starving world getting all into pike-points 
 round it ; given the saddest natural solecism discoverable in 
 the Earth or under the Earth ; inform it with this noble spi- 
 rit, it will from the first hour become a less sad solecism ; it 
 will, if such divine spirit hold in it, and nerve its continual 
 efforts, cease at last to be a solecism, and by self-sacrifice or 
 otherwise become a veracity, and get itself adopted \ry Nature. 
 
 But secondly, what likewise is of immense significance, the 
 Long Parliament had no Reporters. Very far from that; no 
 Member himself durst so much as whisper to any extraneous 
 mortal, without leave given, what went on within those sacred 
 walls. Solemn reprimand from the Speaker, austere lodgment 
 in the Tower, if he did. If a patriot stranger, coming up on 
 express pilgrimage from the country, chance to gaze in from the 
 Lobby too curiously on the august Assemblage (as once or twice 
 happens), he is instantly seized by the fit usher ; led, pale as 
 his shirt, into the floor of the honourable House, Speaker Len- 
 thall's and four hundred other pairs of Olympian eyes trans- 
 fixing him, that it be there ascertained, Whether the Tower, the 
 Tarpeian rock, or what in Nature or out of it, shall be the doom 
 of such a man ! A silent place withal, though a talking one ; 
 hermetically sealed ; no whisper to be published of it, except 
 what the honourable House itself directs. Let a modern honour- 
 able member, with his reporters' gallery, his strangers' gallery, 
 his female ventilator, and twenty-seven millions mostly fools 
 listening to him at Buncombe, while all at hand are asleep, con- 
 sider what a fact is that old one ! 
 
 But thirdly, what also is a most important fact in this ques- 
 tion, the Long Parliament, after not many months of private 
 debating, split itself fairly into two parties ; and the Opposition 
 party fairly rode away, designing to debate in another mannei 
 thenceforth. What an abatement of parliamentary eloquence 
 
196 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 in that one fact by itself, is evident enough ! The Long Parlia- 
 ment, for all manner of reasons, for these three and for others 
 that could be given, was an unexampled Parliament properly 
 indeed, as I sometimes define it, the Father of all Parliaments 
 which have sat since in this world ! 
 
 The French Convention did its work, too ; and this under 
 circumstances intrinsically similar, much as they differed out- 
 wardly. No Parliament more 'in earnest' ever sat in any country 
 or time ; and indeed it was the Parliament of a Nation all in 
 deadly earnest ; gambling against the world for life or for death. 
 The Convention had indeed Reporters ; and encountered much 
 parliamentary eloquence at its starting, and underwent strange 
 handlings and destinies in consequence ; but we know how it 
 managed with its parliamentary eloquence, and got that reduced 
 to limits, when once business did behove to be done ! The Con- 
 vention, its Girondins and opposition parties once thrown out, 
 had its Committee of Salut Publique, consisting of Twelve, of 
 Nine, or even properly of Three ; in whose hands lay all sov- 
 ereign business, and the whole terrible task of ascertaining 
 what was to be done. Of which latter, the latter being itself so 
 immense, so swift and imperatively needful, all parliamentary 
 eloquence was to be the enforcement and publisher and recorder 
 merely. And whatever eloquent heads chose to obstruct this 
 sovereign Committee, the Convention had its guillotine, and 
 swiftly rid itself of these and of their eloquence. Whereby busi- 
 ness went on, without let on that side; and actually got itself 
 done! 
 
 These are the only instances I know, of Parliaments that 
 succeeded in the business of Government ; and these I think 
 are not inviting instances to the British reformer of this day. 
 Rather what we may call paroxysms of parliamentary life, than 
 instances of what could be continuously expected of any Par- 
 liament, or perhaps even transiently wished of any. They 
 were the appropriate, and as it proved, the effectual organism 
 for Periods of a quite transcendent character in National Life ; 
 such as it is not either likely or desirable that we should see, 
 except at very long intervals, in human affairs. 
 
 The fact is, Parliaments have had two great blows, in mo- 
 dern times ; and are now in a manner quite shorn of their real 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 197 
 
 strength, and what is still worse, invested with an imaginary. 
 Faust of Mentz, when he invented 'movable types,' inflicted 
 a terrible blow on Parliaments ; suddenly, though yet afar off, 
 reducing them to a mere scantling of their former self, and 
 taking all the best business out of their hands. Then again 
 John Bradshaw, when he ordered the hereditary King to vanish, 
 in front of Whitehall, and proclaimed that Parliament itself was 
 King, John, little conscious of it, inflicted a still more terrible 
 blow on Parliaments ; appointing them to do (especially with 
 Faust too, or the Morning Newspaper, gradually getting in) 
 what Nature and Fact had decided they could never do. In 
 which doubly fatal state, with Faust busier than ever among 
 them, they continue at this moment, working towards strange 
 issues, I do believe ! 
 
 Or, speaking in less figurative language, our conclusion is, 
 jftrst. That Parliaments, while they continued, as our English 
 ones long did, mere Advisers of the Sovereign Ruler, were in- 
 valuable institutions ; and did, especially in periods when there 
 was no Times Newspaper, or other general Forum free to every 
 citizen who had three fingers and a smattering of grammar, 
 deserve well of mankind, and achieve services for which we 
 should be always grateful. This is conclusion first. But then, 
 alas, equally irrefragable comes conclusion second, That Par- 
 liaments when they get to try, as our poor British one now 
 does, the art of governing by themselves as the Supreme Body 
 in the Nation, make no figure in that capacity, and can make 
 none, but by the very nature of the case are unable to do it. 
 Only two instances are on record of Parliaments having, in any 
 circumstances, succeeded as Governing Bodies ; and it is even 
 hoped, or ought to be, by men generally, that there may not for 
 another thousand years be a third ! 
 
 As not only our poor British Parliament of those years and 
 decades, but all the sudden European Parliaments at Paris, 
 Frankfort, Erfurt and elsewhere, are Parliaments which under- 
 take that second or impossible function of governing as Par- 
 liaments, and must either do it, or sink in black anarchy one 
 knows not whitherward, the horoscope of Parliaments is by 
 no means cheering at present ; and good citizens may justly 
 shudder, if their anticipations point that way, at the prospect 
 of a Chartist Parliament here. For your Chartist Parliament 
 is properly the consummation of that fatal tendency, towards 
 
198 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 the above-mentioned impossible function, on the part of Parlia- 
 ments. A tendency not yet consummated with us ; for we still 
 have other fragments of old Authority lodged elsewhere than in 
 the Parliament, which still struggle here and there to accom- 
 plish a little governing, though under strange conditions : and 
 to instal a Parliament of the Six Points would be precisely to 
 extinguish with the utmost rapidity all such fragments, and 
 solemnly by National Charter and Six Points to bid the Parlia- 
 ment, "Be supreme King over us, thou, in all respects; and 
 rule us, thou, since it is impossible for thee !" 
 
 These are serious considerations, sufficient to create alarm 
 and astonishment in any constitutional man. But really it 
 grows late in the day with constitutional men ; and it is time 
 for them to look up from their Delolme. If the constitutional 
 man will take the old Delolme-Bentham spectacles off his nose, 
 and look abroad into the Fact itself with such eyes as he may 
 have, I consider he will find that reform in matters social does 
 not now mean, as he has long sleepily fancied, reform in Par- 
 liament alone or chiefly or perhaps at all. My alarming mess- 
 age to him is, that the thing we vitally need is not a more 
 and more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a 
 Ruling Sovereign to preside over Parliament ; that we have 
 already got the former entity in some measure, but that we are 
 farther than ever from the road towards the latter ; and that if 
 the latter be missed and not got, there is no life possible for 
 us. A New Downing Street, an infinitely reformed Govern- 
 ing Apparatus ; there some hope might lie. A Parliament, any 
 conceivable Parliament, continuing to attempt the function of 
 Governor, can lead us only into No-Government which is called 
 Anarchy ; and the more ' reformed' or Democratic you make 
 it, the swifter will such consummation be. 
 
 Men's hopes from a Democratic or otherwise reformed 
 Parliament are various, and rather vague at present ; but 
 surely this, as the ultimate essence, lies and has always lain in 
 the heart of them all : That hereby we shall succeed better in 
 doing the commandment of Heaven, instead of everywhere vio- 
 lating or ignoring Heaven's commandment, and incurring Hea- 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 199 
 
 ven's curse, as now. To ascertain better and better what the 
 will of the Eternal was and is with us, what the Laws of the 
 Eternal are, all Parliaments, Ecumenic Councils, Congresses, 
 and other Collective Wisdoms, have had this for their object. 
 This or else nothing easily conceivable, except to merit damn- 
 ation for themselves, and to get it too ! Nevertheless, in the 
 inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an 
 idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone 
 idly abroad ; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, 
 poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is 
 that if we ' vote* this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. 
 " Who's to decide it ?" they all ask, as if the whole or chief ques- 
 tion lay there. " Who's to decide it ?" asks the irritated British 
 citizen, with a sneer in his tone. " Who's to decide it ?" asks 
 he, oftener than any other question of me. Decide it, O irritated 
 British citizen ? Why, thou, and I, and each man into whose 
 living soul the Almighty has breathed a gleam of understand- 
 ing ; we are all, and each of us for his own self, to decide it : 
 and woe will befall us, each and all, if we don't decide it aright; 
 according as the Almighty has already ' decided' it, as it has 
 been appointed to be and to continue, before all human decid- 
 ings and after them all ! 
 
 Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of 
 this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are de- 
 cided by voting ; that it is all a study of division-lists, and for 
 the Universe too, depends a little on the activity of the whip- 
 per-in. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of 
 which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they 
 should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the 
 everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or change- 
 able by voting ! Neither properly, we say, are the Laws of 
 England, or those of any other land never so republican or 
 red-republican, fixable or changeable by that poor foolish pro- 
 cess ; not at all, O constitutional Peter, much as it may as- 
 tonish you ! Voting is a method we have agreed upon for set- 
 tling temporary discrepancies of opinion as to what is law or 
 not law, in this small section of the Universe called England : 
 a good temporary method, possessing some advantages ; which 
 does settle the discrepancy for the moment. Nay, if the vot- 
 ings were sincere and loyal, we might have some chance withal 
 pf being right as to the question, and of settling it blessedly 
 
200 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 forever ; though again, if the votings are insincere, selfish, 
 almost professedly disloyal, and given under the influence of 
 beer and balderdash, we have the proportionate sad chance of 
 being wrong, and so settling it under curses, to be fearfully 
 unsettled again ! 
 
 For I must remark to you, and reiterate to you, that a con- 
 tinued series of votings transacted incessantly for sessions long, 
 with three-times-three readings, and royal assents as many as 
 you like, cannot make a law the thing which is no law. No, 
 that lies beyond them. They can make it a sheepskin Act of 
 Parliament ; and even hang men (though now with difficulty) for 
 not obeying it : and this they reckon enough ; the idle fools ! 
 I tell you and them, it is a miserable blunder, this self-styled 
 4 law' of theirs ; and I for one will study either to have no concern 
 with it, or else by all judicious methods to disobey said blun- 
 dering impious pretended ' law.' In which sad course of con- 
 duct, very unpleasant to my feelings, but needful at such times, 
 the gods and all good men, and virtually these idle fools them- 
 selves, will be on my side ; and so I shall succeed at length, 
 in spite of obstacles ; and the pretended ' law' will take down 
 its gibbet-ropes, and abrogate itself, and march, with the town- 
 drum beating in the rear of it, and beadles scourging the back 
 of it, and ignominious idle clamour escorting it, to Chaos, one 
 day ; and the Prince of Darkness, Father of Delusions, Devil, 
 or whatever his name be, who is and was always its true pro- 
 prietor, will again hold possession of it, much good may it 
 do him 1 
 
 My friend, do you think, had the united Posterity of Adam 
 voted, and since the Creation done nothing but vote, that three 
 and three were seven, would this have altered the laws of 
 arithmetic ; or put to the blush the solitary Cocker who con- 
 tinued to assert privately that three and three were six ? I con- 
 sider, not. And is arithmetic, think you, a thing more fixed 
 by the Eternal, than the laws of justice are, and what the right 
 is of man towards man ? The builder of this world was Wis- 
 dom and Divine Foresight, not Folly and Chaotic Accident. 
 Eternal Law is silently present, everywhere and everywhen. 
 By Law the Planets gyrate in their orbits ; by some approach 
 to Law the Street-Cabs ply in their thoroughfares. No pin's 
 point can you mark within the wide circle of the All where 
 God's Laws are not. Unknown to you, or known (you had 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 201 
 
 better try to know them a little !) inflexible, righteous, eter- 
 nal ; not to be questioned by the sons of men. Wretched 
 being, do you hope to prosper by assembling six-hundred and 
 fifty-eight poor creatures in a certain apartment, and getting 
 them, after debate, and " Divide, 'vide, Vide," and report in 
 the Times, to vote that what is not is ? You will carry it, you, 
 by your voting and your eloquencing and babbling ; and the 
 adamantine basis of the Universe shall bend to your third read- 
 ing, and paltry bit of engrossed sheepskin and dog-latin ? What 
 will become of you ? 
 
 Unless perhaps the Almighty Maker has forgotten this 
 miserable anthill of a Westminster, of an England; and has no 
 Laws in force here which are of moment to him ? Not here 
 and now; only in Judea, and distant countries at remote pe- 
 riods of time ? Confess it, Peter, you have some cowardly 
 notion to that effect, though ashamed to say so! Miserable 
 soul ! Don't you notice gravitation here, the law of birth and 
 of death, and other laws? Peter, do you know why the Age of 
 Miracles is past? Because you are become an enchanted hu- 
 man ass (I grieve to say it); and merely bray parliamentary 
 eloquence ; rejoice in chewed gorse, scrip coupons, or the like ; 
 and have no discernible ' Religion,' except a degraded species 
 of Phallus- Worship, whose liturgy is in the Circulating Libra- 
 ries! 
 
 In Parliaments, Constitutional Conclaves and Collective 
 Wisdoms, it is too fatally certain there have been many things 
 approved of, which it was found on trial Nature did not approve 
 but disapprove. Nature told the individual trying to lead his 
 life by such rule, No; the Nation of individuals, No. "Not 
 " this way, my children, though the wigs that prescribed it 
 " were of great size, and the bowowing they enforced it with 
 " was loud; not by this way is victory and blessedness attain- 
 " able; by other ways than this. Only stagnation, degrada- 
 " tion, choked sewers, want of potatoes, uncultivated heaths, 
 " overturned mud-cabins, and at length Chartism, street-barri- 
 " cades, Red Republic, and Chaos come again, will prove at- 
 " tainable by this !" 
 
 Here below there is but one thing needful ; one thing ; 
 and that one will in nowise consent to be dispensed with ! He 
 that can ascertain, in England or elsewhere, what the laws of 
 
202 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 the Eternal are and walk by them voted for or unvoted, with 
 him it will be well; with him that misses said laws, and only 
 gets himself voted for, not well. Voting, in fact, O Peter, is a 
 thing I value but little in anytime, and almost at zero in this. 
 Not a divine thing at all, my poor friend, but a human ; and 
 in the beer-and-balderdash case, whatever constitutional doc- 
 tors may say, almost a brutal. Voting, never a divine Apollo, 
 was once a human Bottom the Weaver; and, so long as he 
 continued in the sane and sincere state, was worth consulting 
 about several things. But alas, enveloped now in mere stump- 
 oratory, cecity, mutinous imbecility, and sin and misery, he is 
 now an enchanted Weaver, wooed by the fatuous Queen of 
 constitutional Faery, and feels his cheek hairy to the scratch. 
 Beer rules him, and the Infinite of Balderdash ; and except as 
 a horse might vote for tares or hard beans, he had better, till 
 he grow wise again, hardly vote at all. I will thank thee to 
 take him away, into his own place, which is very low down 
 indeed; and to put in the upper place something infinitely 
 worthier. You ask what thing ; in a triumphant manner, with 
 erect ear and curved tail, O hapless quadruped? How can I 
 tell you what thing? I myself know it, and every soul still 
 human knows it, or may know ; but to the soul that has fallen 
 asinine, and thinks the Laws of God are to be voted for, it is 
 unknowable. 
 
 ' If of ten men nine are recognisable as fools, which is a 
 ' common calculation/ says our Intermittent Friend, 'how, in 
 ' the name of wonder, will you ever get a ballot-box to grind 
 ' you out a wisdom from the votes of these ten men ? Never 
 ' by any conceivable ballot-box, nor by all the machinery in 
 ' Bromwicham or out of it, will you attain such a result. Not 
 1 by any method under Heaven, except by suppressing, and in 
 1 some good way reducing to zero, nine of those votes, can 
 ' wisdom ever issue from your ten. 
 
 1 Why men have got so universally into such a fond expec- 
 ' tation ? The reason might lead us far. The reason, alas, is, 
 ' men have, to a degree never before exampled, forgotten that 
 ' there is fixed eternal law in this Universe; that except by 
 ' coming upon the dictates of that, no success is possible for 
 ' any nation or creature. That we should have forgotten this, 
 ' alas, here is an abyss of vacuity in our much-admired opu- 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 203 
 
 lence, which the more it is looked at saddens the thinking 
 ' heart the more. 
 
 And yet,' continues he elsewhere, 'it is unavoidable and 
 ' indispensable at present. With voting and ballot-boxing who 
 ' can quarrel, as the matter stands ? I pass it without quarrel ; 
 ' nay say respectfully, " Good speed to you, poor friends : Hea- 
 ' ven send you not only a good voting-box, but something worth 
 ' voting for ! Sad function yours, giving plumpers or split-votes 
 ' for or against such a pair of human beings, and such a set of 
 ' human causes. Adieu 1'" 
 
 And yet surely, not in England only, where the Institution 
 is like a second nature to us, but in all countries where men 
 have attained any civilisation, it is good that there be a Par- 
 liament. Morning Newspapers, and other temporary or per- 
 manent changes of circumstances, may much change and almost 
 infinitely abridge its function, but they never can abolish it. 
 Under whatever reformed Downing Street, or indispensable 
 new King, of these New Eras, England be governed, its Par- 
 liament too will continue indispensable. And it is much to be 
 desired that all men saw clearly what the Parliament's real 
 function, in these changed times of newspaper reporters and 
 imaginary kings, had grown to be. We must set it to its real 
 function ; and, at our peril and its, restrict it to that ! Its real 
 function is the maximum of all we shall be able to get out of 
 it. Wrap it in never so many sheepskins, and venerabilities of 
 use-and-wont, you will not get it persuaded to do what its real 
 function is not. Endless derangement, spreading into futility 
 on every side, and ultimate ruin even to its real function, will 
 result to you from setting it to work against what Nature and 
 Fact have appointed for it. Your Dray-wagon, excellent for 
 carting beer along the streets, start not with it from the chim- 
 ney-tops, as Chariot of the Sun ; for it will not act in that ca- 
 pacity ! 
 
 As a ' Collective Wisdotri of Nations the talking Parlia- 
 ment, I discern too well, can never more serve. Wisdom 
 dwells not with stump-oratory; to the stump-orator Wisdom 
 has waved her sad and peremptory farewell. A Parliament, 
 speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the Twenty-seven 
 millions mostly fools, has properly given up that function; 
 
204 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 that is not now the function it attempts. But even as the Con- 
 densed Folly of Nations ; Folly bound up into articulate masses, 
 and able to say Yes and No for itself, it will much avail the 
 Governing Man ! To know at what pitch the widespread Folly 
 of the Nation now stands, what may safely be attempted with 
 said Folly, and what not safely : this too is very indispensable 
 for the Governing Man. Below this function, in the maddest 
 times and with Faust of Mentz reverberating every madness 
 adinfiniturn, no Parliament can fall. 
 
 Votes of men are worth collecting, if convenient. True, 
 their opinions are generally of little wisdom, and can on occa- 
 sion reach to all conceivable and inconceivable degrees of folly ; 
 but their instincts, where these can be deciphered, are wise and 
 human ; these, hidden under the noisy utterance of what they 
 call their opinions, are the unspoken sense of man's heart, and 
 well deserve attending to. Know well what the people inar- 
 ticulately feel, for the Law of Heaven itself is dimly written 
 there ; nay do not neglect, if you have opportunity, to ascer- 
 tain what they vote and say. One thing the stupidest multi- 
 tude at a hustings can do, provided only it be sincere : Inform 
 you how it likes this man or that, this proposed law or that. 
 " I do not like thee, Dr. Fell ; the reason why I cannot tell," 
 and perhaps indeed there is no reason ; nevertheless let the 
 Governor too be thankful to know the fact, ' full well ;' for it 
 may be useful to him. Nay the multitude, even when its non- 
 sense is not sincere, but produced in great part by beer and 
 stump-oratory, will yet by the very act of voting feel itself 
 bound in honour ; and so even in that case it apprises you, 
 " Such a man, such a law, will I accept, being persuaded 
 " thereto by beer and stump-oratory, and having polled at 
 " hustings for the same." 
 
 Beyond doubt it will be useful, will be indispensable, for 
 the King or Governor to know what the mass of men think 
 upon public questions legislative and administrative ; what 
 they will assent to willingly, what unwillingly ; what they will 
 resist with superficial discontents and remonstrances, what 
 with obstinate determination, with riot, perhaps with armed 
 rebellion. No Governor othenvise can go along with clear 
 illumination on his path, however plain the loadstar and ulte- 
 rior goal be to him ; but at every step he must be liable to fall 
 into the ditch ; to awaken he knows not what nests of hornets, 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 205 
 
 what sleeping dogkennels, better to be avoided. By all manner 
 of means let the Governor inform himself of all this. To which 
 end, Parliaments, Free Presses, and suchlike are excellent ; 
 they keep the Governor fully aware of what the People, wisely 
 or foolishly, think. Without in some way knowing it with 
 moderate exactitude, he has not a possibility to govern at all. 
 For example, the Chief Governor of Constantinople, having no 
 Parliament to tell it him, knows it only by the frequency of 
 incendiary fires in his capital, the frequency of bakers hanged 
 at their shop-lintels ; a most inferior ex-postfacto method ! 
 Profitable indisputably, essential in all cases where practicable, 
 to know clearly what and where the obstacles are. Marching 
 with noble aim, with the heavenly loadstars ever in your eye, 
 you will thus choose your path with the prudence which is also 
 noble, and reach your aim surely, if more slowly. 
 
 With the real or seeming slowness we do not quarrel. The 
 winding route, on uneven surfaces, may often be the swiftest ; 
 that is a point for your own prudences, practical sagacities, 
 and qualities as a King : the indispensable point, for both you 
 and us, is that you do always advance, unresting if unhasting, 
 and know in every fibre of you that arrive you must. Rigidly 
 straight routes find some admiration with the vulgar, and are 
 rather apt to please at hustings ; but we know well enough 
 they are no clear sign of strength of purpose. The Leming- 
 rat, I have been told, travelling in myriads seaward from the 
 hills of Norway, turns not to the right or the left : if these 
 rats meet a haystack, they eat their way through it ; if a stone 
 house, they try the same feat, and not being equal to eating 
 the house, climb the walls of it, pour over the roof of it, and 
 push forward on the old line, swimming or ferrying rivers, 
 scaling or rounding precipices ; most consistent Leming-rats. 
 And what is strange, too, their errand seaward is properly 
 none. They all perish, before reaching the sea, or of hunger 
 on the sand-beach ; their consistent rigidly straight journey 
 was a journey no-whither ! I do not ask your Lordship to 
 imitate the Leming-rat. 
 
 But as to universal suffrage, again, can it be proved that, 
 since the beginning of the world, there was ever given a uni- 
 versal vote in favour of the worthiest man or thing ? I have 
 always understood that true worth, in any department, waa 
 
206 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 difficult to recognise ; that the worthiest, if he appealed to 
 universal suffrage, would have but a poor chance. John Mil- 
 ton, inquiring of universal England what the worth of Paradise 
 Lost was, received for answer, Five Pounds Sterling. George 
 Hudson, inquiring in like manner what his services on the 
 railways might be worth, received for answer (prompt tempo- 
 rary answer), Fifteen Hundred Thousand ditto. Alas, Jesus 
 Christ asking the Jews what he deserved, was not the answer, 
 Death on the gallows ! Will your Lordship believe me, I feel 
 it almost a shame to insist on such truisms. Surely the doc- 
 trine of judgment by vote of hustings has sunk now, or should 
 be fast sinking, to the condition of obsolete with all but the 
 commonest of human intelligences. With me, I must own, it 
 has never had any existence. The mass of men consulted at 
 hustings, upon any high matter whatsoever, is as ugly an ex- 
 hibition of human stupidity as this world sees. 
 
 Universal suffrage assembled at hustings, I will consult 
 it about the quality of New-Orleans pork, or the coarser kinds 
 of Irish butter ; but as to the character of men, I will if pos- 
 sible ask it no question : or if the question be asked and the 
 answer given, I will generally consider, in cases of any import- 
 ance, that the said answer is likely to be wrong, that I have 
 to listen to the said answer and receive it as authentic, and for 
 my own share to go, and with whatever strength may lie in me, 
 do the reverse of the same. Even so, your Lordship ; for how 
 should I follow a multitude to do evil ? There are such things 
 as multitudes all full of beer and nonsense, even of insincere 
 factitious nonsense, who by hypothesis cannot but be wrong. Or 
 what safety will there be in a thousand or ten thousand brawl- 
 ing potwallopers, or blockheads of any rank whatever, if the 
 Fact, namely the whole Universe and the Eternal Destinies, 
 be against me ? These latter I for my share will try to follow, 
 even if alone in doing so. It will be better for me. 
 
 Your Lordship, there are fools, cowards, knaves, and glut- 
 tonous traitors true only to their own appetite, in immense 
 majority, in every rank of life ; and there is nothing frightfuler 
 than to see these voting and deciding ! " Not your way, my 
 " unhappy brothers, shall it be decided ; no, not while I, and 
 " ' a company of poor men' you may have heard of, live in this 
 " world. Vote it as you please," my friend Oliver was wont 
 to say or intimate ; " vote it so, if you like ; there is a com- 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 207 
 
 " pany of poor men that will spend all their blood before they 
 " see it settled so !" Who, in such sad moments, but has to 
 hate the profane vulgar, and feel that he must and will debar 
 it from him ! And alas, the vulgarest vulgar, I often find, are 
 not those in ragged coats at this day ; but those in fine, super- 
 fine, and superfinest ; the more is the pity ! Superfine coat 
 symbolically indicates, like official stamp and signature, Bank- 
 of-England Thousand-Pound Note; and blinkard owls, in city 
 and country, accept it cheerfully as such : but look closer, you 
 may find it mere Bank of Elegance s a flash-note travelling 
 towards the eternal Fire ; and will have nothing to do with 
 it, you, I hope I 
 
 Clearly enough, the King in constitutional countries would 
 wish to ascertain all men's votes, their opinions, volitions on all 
 manner of matters ; that so his whole scene of operations, to 
 the last cranny of it, might be illuminated for him, and he, 
 wherever he were working, might work with perfect knowledge 
 of the circumstances and materials. But the King, New Down- 
 ing Street, or whatever the Sovereign's name is, will be a very 
 poor King indeed if he admit all these votes into his system of 
 procedure, and transform them into acts ; indeed I think, in 
 that case, he will not be long for this world as a King ! No : 
 though immense acclamation attend him at the first outset in 
 that course, every volition and opinion finding itself admitted 
 into the poor King's procedure, yet unless the volitions and 
 opinions are wise and not foolish, not the smallest ultimate pro- 
 sperity can attend him ; and all the acclamations of the world 
 will not save him from the ignominious lot which Nature her- 
 self has appointed for all creatures that do not follow the Law 
 which Nature has laid down. 
 
 You ask this and the other man what is his opinion, his no- 
 tion, about varieties of things : and having ascertained what his 
 notion is, and carried it off as a piece of information, surely 
 you are bound, many times,* most times if you are a wise man, 
 to go directly in the teeth of it, and for his sake and for yours 
 to do directly the contrary of it. Any man's opinion one would 
 accept ; all men's opinion, could it be had absolutely without 
 trouble, might be worth accepting. Nay on certain points I 
 even ask my horse's opinion : as to whether beans will suit 
 him at this juncture, or a truss ot tares ; on this and the like 
 
208 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 points I carefully consult my horse ; gather, by such language 
 as he has, what my horse's candid opinion as to beans or the 
 trass of tares is, and unhesitatingly follow the same. As what 
 prudent rider would not? There is nofoolishest man but knows 
 one and the other thing more clearly than any the wisest man 
 does ; no glimmer of human or equine intelligence but can dis- 
 close something which even the intelligence of a Newton, not 
 present in that exact juncture of circumstances, would not other- 
 wise have ascertained. To such length you would gladly con- 
 sult all equine, and much more all human intelligences : to 
 such length ; and, strictly speaking, not any farther. 
 
 Of what use towards the general result of finding out what 
 it is wise to do, which is the one thing needful to all men and 
 nations, can the fool's vote be ? It is either coincident with 
 the wise man's vote, throwing no new light on the matter, and 
 therefore superfluous ; or else it is contradictory, and therefore 
 still more superfluous, throwing mere darkness on the matter, 
 and imperatively demanding to be annihilated, and returned to 
 the giver with protest. Woe to you if you leave that valid ! 
 There are expressions of volition too, as well as of opinion, 
 which you collect from foolish men, and even from inferior 
 creatures : these can do you no harm, these it may be very 
 beneficial for you to have and know ; but these also, surely it 
 is often imperative on you to contradict, and would be ruinous 
 and baleful for you to follow. You have to apprise the unwise 
 man, even as you do the unwiser horse : " On the truss of tares 
 " I took your vote, and have cheerfully fulfilled it ; but in re- 
 " gard to choice of roads and the like, I regret to say you have 
 " no competency whatever. No, my unwise friend, we are for 
 " Hammersmith and the West, not for Highgate and the North- 
 " ern parts, on this occasion : not by that left turn, by this turn 
 " to the right runs our road ; thither, for reasons too intricate 
 " to explain at this moment, it will behove thee and me to go : 
 " Along, therefore !" 
 
 " But how ?" your Lordship aSks, and all the world with 
 you : " Are not two men stronger than one ; must not two votes 
 " carry it over one ?" I answer : No, nor two thousand nor 
 two million. Many men vote ; but in the end, you will infal- 
 libly find, none counts except the few who were in the right. 
 Unit of that class, agatnst as many zeros as you like ! If the 
 King's thought is according to the will of God, or to the law 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 209 
 
 appointed for this Universe, I can assure your Lordship the 
 King will ultimately carry that, were he but one in it against 
 the whole world. 
 
 It is not by rude force, either of muscle or of will, that one 
 man can govern twenty men, much more twenty millions of men. 
 For the moment, if all the twenty are stark against his resolu- 
 tion never so wise, the twenty for the moment must have their 
 foolish way ; the wise resolution, for the moment, cannot be 
 carried. Let their votes be taken, or known (as is often pos- 
 sible) without taking ; and once well taken, let them be weighed, 
 which latter operation, also an essential one for the King or 
 Governor, is very difficult. If the weight be in favour of the 
 Governor, let him in general proceed ; cheerfully accepting ad- 
 verse account of heads, and dealing wisely with that according 
 to his means ; often enough, in pressing cases, flatly disre- 
 garding that, and walking through the heart of it ; for in gen- 
 eral it is but frothy folly and loud-blustering rant and wind. 
 
 I have known minorities, and even small ones by the ac- 
 count of heads, do grand national feats long memorable to all 
 the world, in these circumstances. Witness Cromwell and his 
 Puritans ; a minority at all times, by account of heads ; yet 
 the authors or saviours, as it ultimately proved, of whatsoever 
 is divinest in the things we can still reckon ours in England. 
 Minority by tale of heads ; but weighed in Heaven's balances, 
 a most clear majority : this ' company of poor men that will 
 spend their blood rather,' on occasion shown, it has now be- 
 come a noble army of heroes, whose conquests were appointed 
 to endure forever. Indeed it is on such terms that grand na- 
 tional and other feats, by the sons of Adam, are generally done. 
 Not without risk and labour to the doers of them ; no surely, 
 for it never was an easy matter to do the real will of a Nation, 
 much more the real will of this Universe in respect to a Nation. 
 No, that is difficult and heroic ; easy as it is to count the vot- 
 ing heads of a Nation at any time, and do the behests of their 
 beer and balderdash ; empty behests, very different from even 
 their ' will,' poor blockheads, to say nothing of the Nation's 
 will and the Universe's will ! Which two, especially which lat- 
 ter, are alone worth doing. 
 
 But if not only the number but the weight of votes prepon- 
 derate against your Governor, he, never so much in the right, 
 will find it wise to hold his hand ; to delay, for a time, this his 
 
 p 
 
2io LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 beneficent execution, which is ultimately inevitable and indis- 
 pensable, of Heaven's Decrees ; the Nation being still unpre- 
 pared. He will leave the bedarkened Nation yet a while alone. 
 What can he do for it, if not even a small minority will stand 
 by him ? Let him strive to enlighten the Nation ; let him pray, 
 and in all ways endeavour, that the Nation be enlightened, 
 that a small minority may open their eyes and hearts to the 
 message of Heaven, which he, heavy-laden man and governor, 
 has been commissioned to see done in this transitory earth, at 
 his peril ! Heaven's message, sure enough, if it be true ; and 
 Hell's if it be not, though voted for by innumerable two-legged 
 animals without feathers or with 1 
 
 On the whole, honour to small minorities, when they are 
 genuine ones. Severe is their battle sometimes, but it is vic- 
 torious always like that of gods. Tancred of Hauteville's sons, 
 some eight centuries ago, conquered all Italy ; bound it up into 
 organic masses, of vital order after a sort; founded thrones and 
 principalities upon the same, which have not yet entirely van- 
 ished, which, the last dying wrecks of which, still wait for 
 some worthier successor, it would appear. The Tancred Nor- 
 mans were some Four Thousand strong; the Italy they con- 
 quered in open fight, and bound up into masses at their ordering 
 will, might count Eight Millions, all as large of bone, as eupeptic 
 and black-whiskered as they. How came the small minority of 
 Normans to prevail in this so hopeless-looking debate? Intrin- 
 sically, doubt it not, because they were in the right ; because, 
 in a dim, instinctive, but most genuine manner, they were doing 
 the commandment of Heaven, and so Heaven had decided that 
 they were to prevail. But extrinsically also, I can see, it was be- 
 cause the Normans were not afraid to have their skin scratched ; 
 and were prepared to die in their quarrel where needful. One 
 man of that humour among a thousand of the other, consider 
 it ! Let the small minority, backed by the whole Universe, and 
 looked on by such a cloud of invisible witnesses, fall into no 
 despair. 
 
 What is to become of Parliament in the New Era, is less 
 a question with me than what is to become of Downing Street. 
 With a reformed Downing Street strenuously bent on real and 
 not imaginary management of our affairs, I could foresee all 
 manner of reform to England and its Parliament; and at length 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. an 
 
 in the gradual course of years, that highest acme of reform to 
 Parliament and to England, a New Governing Authority, a real 
 and not imaginary King set to preside there. With that, to my 
 view, comes all blessedness whatsoever; without that comes, 
 and can come, nothing but, with ever-accelerated pace, ANAR- 
 CHY ; or the declaration of the fact that we have no Governor, 
 and have long had none. 
 
 For the rest, Anarchy advances as with seven-league boots, 
 in these years. Either some New Downing Street and Incipiency 
 of a real Hero- Kingship again, or else Chartist Parliament, with 
 Apotheosis of Attorneyism, and Anarchy very undeniable to all 
 the world : one or else the other, it seems to me, we shall soon 
 have. Under a real Kingship the Parliament, we may rest 
 satisfied, would gradually, with whatever difficulty, get itself in- 
 ducted to its real function, and restricted to that, and moulded 
 to the form fittest for that. If there can be no reform of Down- 
 ing Street, I care not much for the reform of Parliament. Our 
 doom, I perceive, is the Apotheosis of Attorneyism ; into that 
 blackest of terrestrial curses we must plunge, and take our fate 
 there like the others. 
 
 For the sake both of the New Downing Street and of what- 
 ever its New Parliament may be, let us add here, what will 
 vitally concern both these Institutions, a few facts, much for- 
 gotten at present, on the general question of Enfranchisement; 
 and therewith end. Who is slave, and eternally appointed 
 to be governed; who free, and eternally appointed to govern? 
 It would much avail us all to settle this question. 
 
 Slave or free is settled in Heaven for a man; acts of par- 
 liament attempting to settle it on earth for him, sometimes 
 make sad work of it. Now and then they correctly copy Hea- 
 ven's settlement in regard to it ; proclaim audibly what is the 
 silent fact, " Here is a free man, let him be honoured !" and 
 so are of the nature of a God's Gospel to other men concerned. 
 Far oftenest they quite miscopy Heaven's settlement, and copy 
 merely the account of the Ledger, or some quite other settlement 
 in regard to it; proclaiming with an air of discovery, " Here is 
 " a Ten-pounder ; here is a Thousand-pounder ; Heavens, here 
 " is a Three-million pounder, is not he free?" Nay they are 
 wont, here in England for some time back, to proclaim in the 
 gross, as if it had become credible lately, all two-legged animals 
 
212 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 without feathers to be 'free.' " Here is a distressed Niggei," 
 they proclaim, " who much prefers idleness to work, should 
 " not he be free to choose which? Is not he a man and bro- 
 " ther? Clearly here are two legs and no feathers: let us vote 
 " him Twenty millions for enfranchisement, and so secure the 
 " blessing of the gods !" 
 
 My friends, I grieve to remind you, but it is eternally the 
 fact : Whom Heaven has made a slave, no parliament of men 
 nor power that exists on Earth can render free. No ; he is 
 chained by fetters which parliaments with their millions cannot 
 reach. You can label him free ; yes, and it is but labelling him 
 a solecism, bidding him be the parent of solecisms whereso- 
 ever he goes. You can give him pumpkins, houses of tenpound 
 rent, houses of ten-thousand pound: the bigger candle you light 
 within the slave-image of him, it will but show his slave-features 
 on the larger and more hideous scale. Heroism, manful wisdom 
 is not his : many things you can give him, but that thing never. 
 Him the Supreme Powers marked in the making of him, slave; 
 appointed him, at his and our peril, not to command but to 
 obey, in this world. Him you cannot enfranchise, not him ; to 
 proclaim this man free is not a God's Gospel to other men ; it 
 is an alarming Devil's Gospel to himself and to us all. Devil's 
 Gospel little feared in these days ; but brewing for the whole of 
 us its big oceans of destruction all the same. States are to be 
 called happy and noble in so far as they settle rightly who is 
 slave and who free ; unhappy, ignoble, and doomed to destruc- 
 tion, as they settle it wrong. 
 
 We may depend on it, Heaven in the most constitutional 
 countries knows well who is slave, who is not. And with regard 
 to voting, I lay it down as a rule, No real slave's vote is other 
 than a nuisance, whensoever or wheresoever or in what manner 
 soever it be given. That is a truth, No slave's vote ; and, alas, 
 here is another not quite so plain, though equally certain, That 
 as Nature and severe Destiny, not mere act of Parliament and 
 possession of money-capital, determine a man's slavehood, so, 
 by these latter, it has been, in innumerable instances, deter- 
 mined wrong just at present ! Instances evident to everybody, 
 and instances suspected by nobody but the more discerning : 
 the fact is, slaves are in a tremendous majority everywhere; 
 and the voting of them (not to be got rid of just yet) is a nuis- 
 ance in proportion. Nuisance of proportionally tremendous 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 213 
 
 magnitude, properly indeed the grand fountain of all other nuis- 
 ances whatsoever. 
 
 For it is evident, could you entirely exclude the slave's vote, 
 and admit only the heroic free man's vote, folly, knavery, 
 falsity, gluttonous imbecility, lowmindedness and cowardice 
 had, if not disappeared from the earth, reduced themselves to 
 a rigorous minimum in human affairs ; the ultimate New Era, 
 and best possible condition of human affairs, had actually come. 
 This is what I always pray for; rejoicing in everything that 
 furthers it, sorrowing for everything that furthers the reverse of 
 it. And though I know it is yet a great way off, I know also 
 either that it is inevitably coming, or that human society, and 
 the possibility of man's living on this earth, has ended. And 
 so for England too, nay I think for England most and soonest 
 of all, it will be behooveful that we attain some rectification, 
 innumerable rectifications, in regard to this essential matter; 
 and contrive to bid our Heaven's free men vote, and our Hea- 
 ven's slaves be silent, with infinitely more correctness than at 
 present. Either on the hither brink of that black sea of Anar- 
 chy, wherein other Nations at present lie drowning and plung- 
 ing, or after weltering through the same, if we can welter, it 
 will have to be attained. In some measure, in some manner, 
 attained : life depends on that, death on the missing of that. 
 
 New definitions of slavery are pressingly wanted just now. 
 The definition of a free man is difficult to find, so that all men 
 could distinguish slave from free ; found, it would be invalua- 
 ble! The free man once universally recognised, we should 
 know him who had the privilege to vote and assist in com- 
 manding, at least to go himself uncommanded. Men do not 
 know his definition well at present ; never knew it worse ; 
 hence these innumerable sorrows. 
 
 The free man is he who is loyal to the Laws of this Uni- 
 verse ; who in his heart sees and knows, across all contradic- 
 tions, that injustice cannot befall him here; that except by 
 sloth and cowardly falsity evil is not possible here. The first 
 symptom of such a man is not that he resists and rebels, but 
 that he obeys. As poor Henry Marten wrote in Chepstow 
 Castle long ago, 
 
 " Reader, if thou an oft-told tale wilt trust, 
 Thou'lt gladly do and suffer what thou must" 
 
214 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Gladly ; he that will go gladly to his labour and his suffering, 
 it is to him alone that the Upper Powers are favourable and 
 the Field of Time will yield fruit. ' An oft-told tale,' friend 
 Harry; all the noble of this world have known it, and in vari- 
 ous dialects have striven to let us know it! The essence of 
 all 'religion' that was and that will be, is to make men free. 
 Who is he that, in this Life-pilgrimage, will consecrate him- 
 self at all hazards to obey God and God's servants, and to 
 disobey the Devil and his ? With pious valour this free man 
 walks through the roaring tumults, invincibly the way whither 
 he is bound. To him in the waste Saharas, through the grim 
 solitudes peopled by galvanised corpses and doleful creatures, 
 there is a loadstar ; and his path, whatever those of others be, 
 is towards the Eternal. A man well worth consulting, and 
 taking the vote of, about matters temporal ; and properly the 
 only kind of man. Though always an exceptional, this was 
 once a well-known man. He has become one of the rarest 
 now; but is not yet entirely extinct ; and will become more 
 plentiful, if the Gods intend to keep this Planet habitable 
 long. 
 
 Him it were vain to try to find always without mistake; 
 alas, if he were in the majority, this world would be all 'a 
 school of virtue,' which it is far from being. Nevertheless to 
 him, and in all times to him alone, belongs the rule of this 
 world : that he be got to rule, that he be forbidden to rule 
 and not got, means salvation or destruction to the world. 
 Friend Peter, I am perfectly deliberate in calling this the 
 truest doctrine of the constitution you have ever heard. And 
 I recommend you to learn it gradually, and to lay it well to 
 heart ; for without it there is no salvation, and all other doc- 
 trines of the constitution are leather and prunella. Will any 
 mass of Chancery parchments, think you, of respectablest tra- 
 ditions and Delolme philosophies, save a man or People that 
 forgets this, from the eternal fire ? There does burn such a 
 fire everywhere under this green earth-rind of ours, and Lon- 
 .don pavements themselves (as Paris pavements have done) 
 can start up into sea-ridges, with a horrible 'trough of the 
 sea,' if the fire-flood urge ! 
 
 To this man, I say, belongs eternally the government of 
 the world. Where he reigns, all is blessed ; and the gods re- 
 joice, and only the wicked make wail. Where the contrary of 
 
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 215 
 
 him reigns, all is accursed ; and the gods lament, and will, 
 by terrible methods, rectify the matter by and by! Have you 
 forbidden this man to rule ? Obey he cannot where the Devil 
 and his servants rule ; how can he ? He must die thrice ruined, 
 damned by the gods, if he do. He will retire rather, into de- 
 serts and rocky inaccessibilities, companion to wild-beasts, to 
 the dumb granites and the eternal stars, far from you and 
 your affairs. You and your affairs, once well quit of him, go 
 by a swift and ever swifter road 1 
 
 I would recommend your Lordship to attack straightway, 
 by the Industrial Regiments or better otherwise, that huge 
 Irish and British P.auper Question, which is evidently the 
 father of questions for us, the lowest level in our ' universal 
 Stygian quagmire ;' and to try whether (without ballot-box) 
 there are no ' kings' discoverable in England who would rally 
 round you, in practical attempt towards draining said quag- 
 mire from that point. And to be swift about it; for the time 
 presses, and if your Lordship is not ready, I think the bal- 
 lot-boxes and the six points are fast getting ready I 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 
 
 [ist July 1850.] 
 
 AT St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, where Oliver Cromwell farmed 
 and resided for some years, the people have determined to at- 
 tempt some kind of memorial to that memorable character. 
 Other persons, in other quarters seem to be, more or less lan- 
 guidly, taking up the question ; in Country Papers I have read 
 emphatic leading-articles, recommending and urging that there 
 should be a ' People's Statue' of this great Oliver, Statue 
 furnished by universal contribution from the English People ; 
 and set up, if possible, in London, in Huntingdon, or failing 
 both these places, in St. Ives, or Naseby Field. Indeed a 
 considerable notion seems to exist in the English mind, that 
 some brass or stone acknowledgment is due to Cromwell, and 
 ought to be paid him. So that the vexed question, 'Shall 
 Cromwell have a Statue ?' appears to be resuscitating itself; 
 and the weary Public must prepare to agitate it again. 
 
 Poor English Public, they really are exceedingly bewildered 
 with Statues at present. They would fain do honour to some- 
 body, if they did but know whom or how. Unfortunately they 
 know neither whom nor how ; they are, at present, th.e farthest 
 in the world from knowing ! They have raised a set of the 
 ugliest Statues, and to the most extraordinary persons, ever 
 seen under the sun before. Being myself questioned, in re- 
 ference to the New Houses of Parliament some years ago, 
 " Shall Cromwell have a Statue ?" I had to answer, with sor- 
 rowful dubiety : "Cromwell? Side by side with a sacred Charles 
 " the Second, sacred George the Fourth, and the other sacred 
 " Charleses, Jameses, Georges, and Defenders of the Faith, 
 " I am afraid he wouldn't like it ! Let us decide provisionally, 
 " No." And now again as to St. Ives and the People's Statue, 
 is it not to be asked in like manner: " Who are the ' People' ? 
 " Are they a People worthy to build Statues to Cromwell ; or 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 217 
 
 " worthy only of doing it to Hudson ?" This latter is a con- 
 sideration that will lead us into far deeper and more momentous 
 than sculptural inquiries ; and I will request the reader's excel- 
 lent company into these for a little. 
 
 The truth is, dear Reader, nowhere, to an impartial ob- 
 servant person, does the deep-sunk condition of the English 
 mind, in these sad epochs ; and how, in all spiritual or moral 
 provinces, it has long quitted company with fact, and ceased 
 to have veracity of heart, and clearness or sincerity of purpose, 
 in regard to such matters, more signally manifest itself, than 
 in this affair of Public Statues. Whom doth the king delight to 
 honour? that is the question of questions concerning the king's 
 own honour. Show me the man you honour; I know by that 
 symptom, better than by any other, what kind of man you your- 
 self are. For you show me there what your ideal of manhood 
 is ; what kind of man you long inexpressibly to be, and would 
 thank the gods, with your whole soul, for being if you could. 
 
 In this point of view, it was always matter of regret with 
 me that Hudson's Statue, among the other wonders of the pre- 
 sent age, was not completed. The 25,ooo/. subscribed, or 
 offered as oblation, by the Hero-worshippers of England to 
 their Ideal of a Man, awoke many questions as to what out- 
 ward figure it could most profitably take, under the eternal 
 canopy ; questions never finally settled ; nor ever now to be 
 settled, now when the universal Hudson ragnarok, or ' twilight 
 of the gods,' has arrived, and it is too clear no statue or cast- 
 metal image of that Incarnation of the English Vishnu will 
 ever be molten now ! Why was it not set up ; that the whole 
 world might see it ; that our ' Religion' might be seen, mounted 
 on some figure of a Locomotive, garnished with Scrip-rolls 
 proper ; and raised aloft in some conspicuous place, for ex- 
 ample, on the other arch at Hyde-Park Corner ? By all oppor- 
 tunities, especially to all subscribers and pious sacrificers to 
 the Hudson Testimonial, I have earnestly -urged: Complete 
 your Sin-Offering ; buy, with the Five-and-twenty Thousand 
 Pounds, what utmost amount of brazen metal and reasonable 
 sculptural supervision it will cover, say ten tons of brass, 
 with a tolerable sculptor : model that, with what exactness Art 
 can, into the enduring Brass Portrait and Express Image of 
 King Hudson, as he receives the grandees of this country at his 
 levees or soirees and couchees ; mount him on the highest place 
 
21 8 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 you can discover in the most crowded thoroughfare, on what 
 you can consider the pinnacle of the English world : I assure 
 you he will have beneficial effects there. To all men who are 
 struggling for your approbation, and fretting their poor souls to 
 fiddlestrings because you will not sufficiently give it, I will say, 
 leading them to the foot of the Hudson mount of vision : "See, 
 " my worthy Mr. Rigmarole ; consider this surprising Copper 
 " Pyramid, in partly human form : did the celestial value of 
 " men's approbation ever strike you so forcibly before ? The 
 " new Apollo Belvidere this, or Ideal of the Scrip Ages. What 
 " do you think of it ? Allah Ilallah; there is still one God, 
 " you see, in England ; and this is his Prophet. Let it be a 
 " source of healing to you, my unhappy Mr. Rigmarole ; draw 
 " from it ' uses of terror,' as the old divines said; uses of amaze- 
 " ment, of new wisdom, of unutterable reflection upon the pre- 
 " sent epoch of the world 1" 
 
 For, in fact, there was more of real worship in the affair of 
 Hudson than is usual in such. The practical English mind 
 has its own notions as to the Supreme Excellence ; knows the 
 real from the spurious Avatar of Vishnu ; and does not worship 
 without its reasons. The practical English mind, contemplat* 
 ing its divine Hudson, says with what remainder of reverence 
 is in it : " Yes, you are something like the Ideal of a Man ; 
 " you are he I would give my right arm and leg, and accept a 
 " potbelly, with gout, and an appetite for strong- waters, to be 
 " like ! You out of nothing can make a world, or huge fortune 
 " of gold. A divine intellect is in you, which Earth and Hea- 
 " ven, and Capel Court itself acknowledge ; at the word of 
 " which are done miracles. You find a dying railway ; you 
 " say to it, Live, blossom anew with scrip ; and it lives, and 
 '* blossoms into umbrageous flowery scrip, to enrich with golden 
 "apples, surpassing those of the Hesperides, the hungry souls 
 " of men. Diviner miracle what god ever did ? Hudson, 
 " though I mumble about my thirty-nine articles, and the 
 "service of other divinities, Hudson is my god, and to him 
 " I will sacrifice this twenty-pound note : if perhaps he will be 
 "propitious to me?" 
 
 Object not that there was a mixed motive in this worship 
 of Hudson ; that perhaps it was not worship at all. Undoubt- 
 edly there were two motives mixed, but both of them sincere, 
 as often happens in worship. ' Transcendent admiration ' is 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. tig 
 
 defined as the origin of sacrifice ; but also the hope of profit 
 joins itself. If by sacrificing a goat, or the like trifle, to Supreme 
 Jove, you can get Supreme Jove's favour, will not that, for one, 
 be a good investment ? Jove is sacrificed to, and worshipped, 
 from transcendent admiration : but also, in part, men of prac- 
 tical nature worship him as pumps are primed, give him a 
 little water, that you may get from him a river. O god-like 
 Hudson, O god-recognising England, why was not the partly 
 anthropomorphous Pyramid of Copper cast, then, and set upon 
 the pinnacle of England, that all men might have seen it, and 
 the sooner got to understand these things ! The twenty-five- 
 thousand-pound oblation lay upon the altar at the Bank ; this 
 monstrous Copper Vishnu of the Scrip Ages might have been 
 revealed to men, and was not. Unexpected obstacles occurred. 
 In fact, there rose from the general English soul, lying dumb 
 and infinitely bewildered, but not yet altogether dead, poor 
 wretch, such a growl of inarticulate amazement, at this unex- 
 pected Hudson Apotheosis, as alarmed the pious worshippers ; 
 and their Copper Pyramid remains unrealised ; not to be real- 
 ised to all eternity now, or at least not till Chaos come again, 
 and the ancient mud-gods have dominion ! The Ne-plus-ultra 
 of Statue-building was within sight ; but it was not attained, it 
 was to be forever unattainable. 
 
 If the world were not properly anarchic, this question 'Who 
 shall have a Statue ?' would be one of the greatest and most 
 solemn for it. Who is to have a Statue? means, Whom shall 
 we consecrate and set apart as one of our sacred men ? Sacred ; 
 that all men may see him, be reminded of him, and, by new 
 example added to old perpetual precept, be taught what is real 
 worth in man. Whom do you wish us to resemble? Him you 
 set on a high column, that all men, looking on it, may be con- 
 tinually apprised of the duty you expect from them. What man 
 to set there, and what man to refuse forevermore the leave to 
 be set there : this, if a country were not anarchic as we say, 
 ruleless, given up to the rule of Chaos, in the primordial fibres 
 of its being, would be a great question for a country ! 
 
 And to the parties themselves, lightly as they set about it, 
 the question is rather great. Whom shall I honour, whom shall 
 I refuse to honour? If a man have any precious thing in him 
 at all, certainly the most precious of all the gifts he can offer 
 
220 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 is his approbation, his reverence to another man. This is his 
 very soul, this fealty which he swears to another : his person- 
 ality itself, with whatever it has of eternal and divine, he bends 
 here in reverence before another. Not lightly will a man give 
 this, if he is still a man. If he is no longer a man, but a 
 greedy blind two-footed animal, 'without soul, except what 
 ' saves him the expense of salt and keeps his body with its 
 ' appetites from putrefying ;' alas, if he is nothing now but a 
 human money-bag and meat-trough, it is different! In that 
 case his ' reverence' is worth so many pounds sterling ; and 
 these, like a gentleman, he will give willingly. Hence the Brit- 
 ish Statues, such a populace of them as we see. British Sta- 
 tues, and some other more important things ! Alas, of how 
 many unveracities, of what a world of z'nreverence, of sordid 
 debasement, and death in 'trespasses and sins,' is this light 
 unveracious bestowal of one's approbation the fatal outcome ! 
 Fatal in its origin; in its developments and thousandfold re- 
 sults so fatal. It is the poison of the universal Upas-tree, under 
 which all human interests, in these bad ages, lie writhing as 
 if in the last struggle of death. Street-barricades rise for that 
 reason, and counterfeit kings have to shave-off their whiskers, 
 and fly like coiners ; and it is a world gone mad in misery, by 
 bestowing its approbation wrong ! 
 
 Give every man the meed of honour he has merited, you 
 have the ideal world of poets ; a hierarchy of beneficences, your 
 noblest man at the summit of affairs, and in every place the due 
 gradation of the fittest for that place : a maximum of wisdom 
 works and administers, followed, as is inevitable, by a maximum 
 of success. It is a world such as the idle poets dream of, such 
 as the active poets, the heroic and the true of men, are inces- 
 santly toiling to achieve, and more and more realise. Achieved, 
 realised, it never can be ; striven after and approximated to, it 
 must forever be, woe to us if at any time it be not ! Other 
 aim in this Earth we have none. Renounce such aim as vain 
 and hopeless, reject it altogether, what more have you to re- 
 ject? You have renounced fealty to Nature and its Almighty 
 Maker; you have said practically, "We can flourish very well 
 " without minding Nature and her ordinances ; perhaps Na- 
 " ture and the Almighty what are they? A Phantasm of the 
 " brain of Priests, and of some chimerical persons that write 
 " Books?" "Hold!" shriek others wildly: "You incendiary 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 221 
 
 " infidels ; you should be quiet infidels, and believe ! Haven't 
 " we a Church? Don't we keep a Church, this Jong while ; 
 " best-behaved of Churches, which meddles with nobody, assi- 
 " duously grinding its organs, reading its liturgies, homiletics, 
 " and excellent old moral horn-books, so patiently as Church 
 " never did? Can't we doff our hat to it: even look in upon it 
 " occasionally, on a wet Sunday ; and so, at the trifling charge 
 " of a few millions annually, serve both God and the Devil? 
 " Fools, you should be -quiet infidels, and believe!" 
 
 To give our approval aright, alas, to do every one of us 
 what lies in him, that the honourable man everywhere, and he 
 only have honour, that the able man everywhere be put into 
 the place which is fit for him, which is his by eternal right : is 
 not this the sum of all spcial morality for every citizen of this 
 world ? This one duty perfectly done, what more could 'the world 
 have done for it? The world in all departments and aspects 
 of it were a perfect world ; everywhere administered by the best 
 wisdom discernible in it, every where enjoying the exact maximum 
 of success and felicity possible for it. Imperfectly, and not per- 
 fectly done, we know this duty must always be. Not done at 
 all ; no longer remembered as a thing which God and Nature 
 and the Eternal Voices do require to be done, alas, we see 
 too well what kind of a world that ultimately makes for us ! A 
 world no longer habitable for quiet persons ; a world which in 
 these sad days is bursting into street-barricades, and pretty ra- 
 pidly turning-out its ' Honoured Men,' as intrusive dogs are 
 turned out, with a kettle tied to their tail. To Kings, Kaisers, 
 Spiritual Papas and Holy Fathers, there is universal " Apage! 
 Depart thou ; go thou to the Father of thee !" in a huge world- 
 voice of mob-musketry and sooty execration, uglier than any 
 ever heard before. 
 
 Who's to have a Statue ? The English, at present, answer 
 this question in a very off-hand manner. So far as I can ascer- 
 tain the method they have, it is somewhat as follows. 
 
 Of course, among the many idle persons to whom an un- 
 fortunate world has given money and no work to do, there must 
 be, with or without wisdom (without, for most part), a most 
 brisk demand for work. Work to do is very desirable, for those 
 that have only money and not work. " Alas, one cannot buy 
 sleep in the market I" said the rich Farmer-general. Alas, one 
 
321 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 cannot buy work there ; work, which is still more indispensable. 
 One of these unfortunates with money and no work, whose 
 haunts lie in the dilettante line, among Artists' Studios, Pic- 
 ture-Sales, and the like regions, an inane kingdom much fre- 
 quented by the inane in these times, him it strikes, in some 
 inspired moment, that if a public subscription for a Statue to 
 somebody could be started, good results would follow. Perhaps 
 some Artist, to whom he is Maecenas, might be got to do the 
 Statue ; at all events there would be extensive work and stir 
 going on, whereby the inspired dilettante, for his own share, 
 might get upon committees, see himself named in the news- 
 papers ; might assist in innumerable consultations, open utter- 
 ances of speech and balderdash ; and, on the whole, be com- 
 fortably present, for years to come, at something of the nature 
 of ' a house on fire :' house innocuously, nay beneficently on fire : 
 a very Goshen to an idle man with money in his pocket. 
 
 This is the germ of the idea ; now make your idea an ac- 
 tion. Think of a proper Somebody. Almost anybody much 
 heard of in the newspapers, and never yet convicted of felony ; 
 a conspicuous commander-in-chief, duke no matter whether of 
 Wellington or of York ; successful stump-orator, political in- 
 triguer ; lawyer that has made two hundred thousand pounds ; 
 scrip-dealer that has made two thousand thousand : anybody 
 of a large class, we are not particular, he will be your proper 
 Somebody. You are then to get a brother idler or two to unite 
 his twenty-pound note to yours : the fire is kindled, smoke rises 
 through the editorial columns ; the fire, if you blow it, will 
 break into flame, and become a comfortable house on fire for 
 you ; solacing the general idle soul, for years to come ; and issu- 
 ing in a big hulk of Corinthian brass, and a notable instance 
 of hero-worship, by and by. 
 
 Such I take to be the origin of that extraordinary popula- 
 tion of Brazen and other Images which at present dominate the 
 market-places of towns, and solicit worship from the English 
 people. The ugliest images, and to the strangest class of per- 
 sons, ever set-up in this world. Do you call these demigods ? 
 England must be dreadfully off for demigods 1 My friend, I 
 will not do the smallest stroke of worship to them. One in the 
 thousand I will snatch out of bad company, if I ever can ; the 
 other nine hundred and ninety-nine I will with pious joy, in 
 the like case, reduce to the state of broken metal again, and 
 
No. VII, HUDSON'S STATUE. 223 
 
 veil forever from all men. As warming-pans, as cheap brass- 
 candlesticks, men will get good of this metal ; as devotionary 
 Images in such form, evil only. These are not heroes, gods, 
 or demigods ; and it is a horrible idolatry, if you knew it, to 
 set them up as such 1 
 
 Are these your Pattern Men ? Great Men ? They are your 
 lucky (or unlucky) Gamblers swollen big. Paltry Adventurers 
 for most part ; worthy of no worship ; and incapable forever 
 of getting any, except from the soul consecrated to flunkyism. 
 Will a man's soul worship that, think you ? Never ; if you 
 fashioned him of solid gold, big as Benlomond, no heart of a 
 man would ever look upon him except with sorrow and despair. 
 To the flunky heart alone is he, was he or can he at any time 
 be, a thing to look upon with upturned eyes of ' transcendent 
 admiration,' worship or worthship so-called. He, you unfor- 
 tunate fools, he is not the one we want to be kept in mind of ; 
 not he at all by any means ! To him and his memory, if you 
 had not been unfortunate and blockheads, you would have 
 sunk a coalshaft rather than raised a column. Deep coalshaft, 
 there to bury him and his memory, that men might never speak 
 or hear of him more ; not a high column to admonish all men 
 that they should try to resemble him 1 
 
 Of the sculptural talent manifest in these Brazen Images I 
 say nothing, though much were to be said. For indeed, if 
 there is no talent displayed in them but a perverse one, are not 
 we to consider it a happiness, in that strange case ? This big 
 swollen Gambler, and gluttonous hapless 'spiritual Daniel 
 Lambert,' deserved a coalshaft from his brother mortals: let at 
 least his column be ugly ! Nevertheless ugly columns and 
 images are, in themselves, a real evil. They too preach ugli- 
 ness after their sort ; and have a certain effect, the whole of 
 which is bad. They sanction and consecrate artistic botching, 
 pretentious futility, and the horrible doctrine that this Universe 
 is a Cockney Nightmare, which no creature ought for a mo- 
 ment to believe, or listen to 1 In brief, they encourage an al- 
 ready-ugly Population to become in a thousand ways uglier. 
 They too, for their ugliness, did not the infinitely deeper ugli- 
 ness of the thing they commemorate absorb all consideration 
 of that, would deserve, and do in fact incessantly solicit, 
 abolition from the sight of men. 
 
224 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 What good in the aesthetic, the moral, social or any human 
 point of view, we are ever to get of these Brazen Images now 
 peopling our chief cities and their market-places, it is impos- 
 sible to specify. Evil enough we, consciously or unconsciously, 
 get of them ; no soul looks upon them approvingly or even in- 
 differently without damage, all the deadlier the less he knows 
 of it. Simple souls they corrupt in the sources of their spiritual 
 being : wise souls, obliged to look on them, look with some 
 feeling of anger and just abhorrence ; which is itself a mis- 
 chief to a peaceable man. Good will never be got of these 
 Brazen Images in their present form. Of what use, till once 
 broken-up and melted into warming-pans, they can ever be to 
 gods or men, I own I cannot see. Gods and men demand that 
 this, which is their sure ultimate destiny, should so soon as 
 possible be realised. 
 
 It is tragically evident to me, our first want, which includes 
 all wants, is that of a new real Aristocracy of fact, instead of 
 the extinct imaginary one of title, which the anarchic world is 
 everywhere rebelling against : but if it is from Popular Suf- 
 frage that we are to look for such a blessing, is not this extra- 
 ordinary populace of British Statues, which now dominates our 
 market-places, one of the saddest omens that ever was ? Suf- 
 frage announces to us, nothing doubting : " Here are your real 
 " demigods and heroic men, ye famous British People ; here 
 " are Brazen and other Images worthy once more of some 
 " worship ; this is the New Aristocracy I have chosen, and 
 " would choose, for you !" That is Suffrage's opinion. To me 
 this populace of British Statues rises aloft over the Chaos of 
 our affairs like the living symbol and consummate flower of 
 said Chaos, and silently speaks the mournfulest prophecy. 
 Perhaps as strange a Pantheon of brass gods as was ever got 
 together in this world. They stand there, poor wretches, grad- 
 ually rusting in the sooty rain ; black and dismal, when one 
 thinks of them in some haggard mood of the imagination, 
 like a set of grisly undertakers come to bury the dead spi- 
 ritualisms of mankind. There stand they, in all weathers, in- 
 dicating to the British Population such a Heaven and such an 
 Earth as probably no Population ever had before. In the 
 social, political, religious, artistic, and other provinces of our 
 affairs, they point towards depths of prostrate abasement which 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 225 
 
 no man's thought has yet sounded. Let us timidly glance 
 thitherward a little ; gaze, for moments, into those abysses of 
 spiritual death, which, if we cannot one day sound them, and 
 subdue them, will engulf us all ! And first as to this recipe of 
 Popular Election. 
 
 Hudson the railway king, if Popular Election be the rule, 
 seems to me by far the most authentic king extant in this 
 world. Hudson has beerr ' elected by the people' so as almost 
 none other is or was. Hudson solicited no vote ; his votes 
 were silent voluntary ones, not liable to be false : he did a 
 thing which men found, in their inarticulate hearts, to be 
 worthy of paying money for ; and they paid it. What the de- 
 sire of every heart was, Hudson had or seemed to have pro- 
 duced: Scrip out of which profit could be made. They 'voted* 
 for him by purchasing his scrip with a profit to him. Every 
 vote was the spontaneous product of those men's deepest in- 
 sights and most practical convictions, about Hudson and them- 
 selves and this Universe : I say, it was not a spoken vote, but 
 a silently-acted one ; a vote for once incapable of being insin- 
 cere. What their appetites, intelligences, stupidities, and pruri- 
 ences had taught these men, they authentically told you there. 
 I beg you to mark that well. Not by all the ballot-boxes in 
 Nature could you have hoped to get, with such exactness, from 
 these men, what the deepest inarticulate voice of the gods and 
 of the demons in them was, as by this their spontaneous pur- 
 chase of scrip. It is the ultimate rectified quintessence of these 
 men's ' votes :' the distillation of their very souls ; the sincerest 
 sincerity that was in them. Without gratitude to Hudson, or 
 even without thought of him, they raised Hudson to his bad 
 eminence, not by their voice given once at some hustings un- 
 der the influence of balderdash and beer, but by the thought 
 of their heart, by the inarticulate, indisputable dictate of their 
 whole being. Hudson inquired of England : " What precious 
 " thing can I do for you, O enlightened Countrymen ; what 
 " may be the value to you, by popular election, of this stroke 
 " of work that lies in me?" Popular election, with universal, 
 with household and other suffrage, free as air, deep as life and 
 death, free and deep as spoken suffrage never was or could be, 
 has answered : " Pounds sterling to such and such amount ; 
 " that is the apparent value of thy stroke of work to us, 
 
 Q 
 
226 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " blockheads as we are." Real value differs from apparent to 
 a frightful extent in this world, try it by what suffrage you will ! 
 
 Hudson's value as a demigod being what it was, his value 
 as a maker of railways shall hardly concern us here. What 
 Hudson's real worth to mankind in the matter of railways 
 might be I cannot pretend to say. Fact knows it to the utter- 
 most fraction, and will pay it him yet ; but men differ widely 
 in opinion, and in general do not in the least know. From 
 my own private observation and conjecture, I should say, Tri- 
 fling if any worth. 
 
 Much as we love railways, there is one thing undeniable : 
 Railways are shifting all Towns of Britain into new places ; no 
 Town will stand where it did, and nobody can tell for a long 
 while yet where it will stand. This is an unexpected, and in- 
 deed most disastrous result. I perceive, railways have set all 
 the Towns of Britain a-dancing. Reading is coming up to 
 London, Basingstoke is going down to Gosport or Southamp- 
 ton, Dumfries to Liverpool and Glasgow ; while at Crewe, and 
 other points, I see new ganglions of human population estab- 
 lishing themselves, and the prophecy of metallurgic cities which 
 were not heard of before. Reading, Basingstoke and the rest, 
 the unfortunate Towns, subscribed money to get railways ; 
 and it proves to be for cutting their own throats. Their busi- 
 ness has gone elsewhither ; and they cannot stay behind their 
 business ! They are set a-dancing, as I said ; confusedly 
 waltzing, in a state of progressive dissolution, towards the 
 four winds ; and know not where the end of the death-dance 
 will be for them, in what point of space they will be allowed 
 to rebuild themselves. That is their sad case. 
 
 And what an affair it is in each of the shops and houses 
 of those Towns, thus silently bleeding to death, or what we 
 call dancing away to other points of the British territory : how 
 Joplin of Reading, who had anchored himself in that pleasant 
 place, and fondly hoping to live by upholstery and paperhang- 
 ing, had wedded, and made friends there, awakens some 
 morning, and finds that his trade has flitted away ! Here it 
 is not any longer ; it is gone to London, to Bristol : whither 
 has it gone ? Joplin knows not whither ; knows and sees only 
 that gone it is ; and that he by preternatural sagacity must 
 scent it out again, follow it over the world, and catch it again, 
 or else die. Sad news for Joplin : indeed I fear, should his 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 227 
 
 sagacity be too inconsiderable, he is not unlikely to break his 
 heart, or take to drinking, in these inextricable circumstances I 
 And it is the history, more or less, in every town, house, shop 
 and industrial dwelling-place of the British Empire at this 
 moment ; and the cipher of afflicted Joplins ; and the amount 
 of private distress, uncertainty, discontent ; and withal of ' re- 
 volutionary movement,' created hereby, is tragical to think of. 
 This is ' revolutionary movement' with a witness ; revolution 
 brought home to everybody's hearth and moneysafe and heart 
 and stomach. Which miserable result, with so many others 
 from the same source, what method was there of avoiding or 
 indefinitely mitigating ? This surely, as the beginning of all : 
 that you had made your railways not in haste ; that, at least, 
 you had spread the huge process, sure to alter all men's mu- 
 tual position and relations, over a reasonable breadth of time ! 
 
 For all manner of reasons, how much could one have 
 wished that the making of our British railways had gone on 
 with deliberation ; that these great works had made them- 
 selves not in five years but in fifty-and-five ! Hudson's ' worth' 
 to railways, I think, will mainly resolve itself into this, That 
 he carried them to completion within the former short limit of 
 time ; that he got them made, in extremely improper direc- 
 tions I am told, and surely with endless confusion to the in- 
 numerable passive Joplins, and likewise to the numerous active 
 scrip-holders, a wide-spread class, once rich, now coinless, 
 hastily in five years, not deliberately in fifty-five. His worth 
 to railways ? His worth, I take it, to English railways, much 
 more to English men, will turn out to be extremely inconsi- 
 derable ; to be incalculable damage rather ! Foolish railway 
 people gave him two millions, and thought it not enough with- 
 out a Statue to boot. But Fact thought, and is now audibly 
 saying, far otherwise ! Rhadamanthus, had you been able to 
 consult him, would in nowise have given this man twenty-five 
 thousand pounds for a Statue. What if Rhadamanthus doomed 
 him rather, let us say, to ride in Express-trains, nowhither, for 
 twenty-five aeons, or to hang in Heaven as a Locomotive Con- 
 stellation, and be a sign forever 1 
 
 Fact and Suffrage : what a discrepancy ! Fact decided 
 for some coalshaft such as we describe. Suffrage decides for 
 such a column. Suffrage having money in its pocket, carries 
 it hollow, for the moment. And so there is Rayless Majesty 
 
228 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 .exalted far above the chimney-pots, with a potential Copper 
 Likeness, twenty-five thousand pounds worth of copper over 
 and above ; and a King properly belonging only to this epoch. 
 That there are greedy blockheads in huge majority, in all 
 epochs, is certain ; but that any sane mortal should think of 
 counting their heads to ascertain who or what is to be King, 
 this is a little peculiar. All Democratic men, and members 
 of the Suffrage Movement, it appears to me, are called upon 
 to think seriously, with a seriousness approaching to despair, 
 of these things. 
 
 Jefferson Brick, the American Editor, twitted me with the 
 multifarious patented anomalies of overgrown worthless Dukes, 
 Bishops of Durham &c., which poor English Society at present 
 labours under, and is made a solecism by. To which what 
 answer could I make, except, that surely our patented anoma- 
 lies were some of them extremely ugly, and yet, alas, that they 
 were not the ugliest ! I said : " Have not you also overgrown 
 " anomalous Dukes after a sort, appointed not by patent ? 
 " Overgrown Monsters of Wealth, namely ; who have made 
 " money by dealing in cotton, dealing in bacon, jobbing scrip, 
 " digging metal in California ; who are become glittering man- 
 " mountains filled with gold and preciosities ; revered by the 
 " surrounding flunkies ; invested with the real powers of sove- 
 " reignty ; and placidly admitted by all men, as if Nature and 
 " Heaven had so appointed it, to be in a sense godlike, to be 
 " royal, and fit to shine in the firmament, though their real 
 " worth is what ? Brick, do you know where human crea- 
 " tures reach the supreme of ugliness in Idols ? It were hard to 
 " know ! We can say only, All Idols have to tumble, and the 
 " hugest of them with the heaviest fall : that is our chief com- 
 " fort, in America as here. 
 
 " The Idol of Somnauth, a mere mass of coarse crockery 
 " not worth five shillings of anybody's money, sat like a great 
 " staring god, with two diamonds for eyes ; worshipped by the 
 " neighbouring black populations ; a terror and divine mystery 
 " to all mortals, till its day came. Till at last, victorious in 
 " the name of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, riding 
 " up with grim battle-axe and heart full of Moslem fire, took 
 " the liberty to smite once, with right force and rage, said ugly 
 " mass of idolatrous crockery ; which thereupon shivered. 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 229 
 
 ' with unmelodious crash and jingle, into a heap of ugly pot- 
 " sherds, yielding from its belly half a wagon-load of gold 
 " coins. You can read it in Gibbon, probably, too, in Lord 
 " Ellenborough. The gold coins, the diamond eyes, and other 
 " valuable extrinsic parts were carefully picked-up by the 
 " Faithful ; confused jingle of intrinsic potsherds was lefc 
 " lying ; and the Idol of Somnauth once showing what it 
 " was, had suddenly come to a conclusion ! Thus end all 
 " Idols, and intrinsically worthless man-mountains never so 
 " illuminated with diamonds, and filled with precious metals, 
 " and tremulously worshipped by the neighbouring flunky 
 " populations black or white ; even thus, sooner or later, 
 " without fail ; and are shot hastily, as a heap of potsherds, 
 " into the highway, to be crunched under wagon-wheels, and 
 " do Macadam a little service, being clearly abolished as gods, 
 " and hidden from man's recognition, in that or other capa- 
 " cities, forever and a day 1 
 
 " You do not sufficiently bethink you, my republican friend. 
 " Our ugliest anomalies are done by universal suffrage, not by 
 " patent. The express nonsense of old Feudalism, even now, 
 " in its dotage, is as nothing to the involuntary nonsense of 
 " modern Anarchy called ' Freedom,' ' Republicanism,' and 
 " other fine names, which expresses itself by supply and de- 
 " mand ! Consider it a little. 
 
 " The Bishop of our Diocese is to me an incredible man ; 
 " and has, I will grant you, very much more money than you 
 " or I would now give him for his work. One does not even 
 " read those Charges of his ; much preferring speech which is 
 " articulate. In fact, being intent on a quiet life, you gener- 
 " ally keep on the other side of the hedge from him, and strictly 
 " leave him to his own fate. Not a credible man ; perhaps 
 " not quite a safe man to be concerned with ? But what think 
 " you of the ' Bobus of Houndsditch' of our parts ? He, Saus- 
 " age-maker on the great scale, knows the art of cutting fat 
 " bacon, and exposing it seasoned with gray pepper to advant- 
 " age. Better than any other man he knows this art ; and I 
 " take the liberty to say it is a poor one. Well, the Bishop has 
 " an income of five thousand pounds appointed him for his 
 " work ; and Bobus, to such a length has he now pushed the 
 " trade in sausages, gains from the universal suffrage of men's 
 " souls and stomachs ten thousand a year by it. 
 
230 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 " A poor art, this of Bobus's, I say ; and worth no such re- 
 " compense. For it is not even good sausages he makes, but 
 " only extremely vendible ones ; the cunning dog ! Judges 
 " pronounce his sausages bad, and at the cheap price even 
 " dear ; and finer palates, it is whispered, have detected alarm- 
 " ing symptoms of horseflesh, or worse, under this cunningly- 
 " devised gray -pepper spice of his ; so that for the world I 
 " would not eat one of his sausages, nor would you. You per- 
 " ceive he is not an excellent honest sausage-maker, but a dis- 
 " honest cunning and scandalous sausage-maker ; worth, if he 
 " could get his deserts, who shall say what ? Probably certain 
 " shillings a week, say forty ; possibly (one shudders to think) 
 " a long round in the treadmill, and stripes instead of shillings! 
 " And yet what he gets, I tell you, from universal suffrage and 
 " the unshackled ne-plus-ultra republican justice of mankind, 
 " is twice the income of that anomalous Bishop you were talk- 
 " ing of I 
 
 " The Bishop I, for my part, do much prefer to'Bobus. The 
 " Bishop has human sense and breeding of various kinds ; con- 
 " siderable knowledge of Greek, if you should ever want the 
 " like of that ; knowledge of many things ; and speaks the Eng- 
 " lish language in a grammatical manner. He is bred to cour- 
 " tesy, to dignified composure, as to a second nature ; a gen- 
 " tleman every fibre of him ; which of itself is something very 
 " considerable. The Bishop does really diffuse round him an 
 " influence of decorum, courteous patience, solid adherence to 
 " what is settled ; teaches practically the necessity of 'burning 
 " one's own smoke ;' and does practically in his own case burn 
 " said smoke, making lambent flame and mild illumination out 
 " of it, for the good of men in several particulars. While Bobus, 
 " for twice the annual money, brings sausages, possibly of 
 " horseflesh, cheaper to market than another ! Brick, if you 
 " will reflect, it is not ' aristocratic England," it is the united 
 " Posterity of Adam who are grown, in some essential respects, 
 " stupider than barbers' blocks. Barbers' blocks would at least 
 " say nothing, and not elevate, by their universal suffrages, an 
 " unfortunate Bobus to that bad height I" 
 
 Alas, if such, not in their loose tongues, but in their heart 
 of hearts, is men's way of judging about social worth, what 
 kind of ' new Aristocracy' will the inconceivablest perfection 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 231 
 
 of spoken Suffrage ever yield us ? Suffrage, I perceive well, 
 has quite other things in store for us ; we need not torment 
 poor Suffrage for this thing ! Our Intermittent Friend says 
 once: 
 
 ' Men do not seem to be aware that this their universal oust- 
 ' ing of unjust, incapable and in fact imaginary Governors, is 
 4 to issue in the attainment of Governors who have a right and 
 4 a capacity to govern. Far different from that is the issue men 
 4 contemplate in their present revolutionary operations. Their 
 1 universal notion now is, that we shall henceforth do without 
 ' Governors ; that we have got to a new epoch in human pro- 
 1 gress, in which Governing is entirely a superfluity, and the 
 1 attempt at doing it is an offence, think several. By that ad- 
 4 mirable invention of the Constitutional Parliament, first struck- 
 1 out in England, and now at length hotly striven-for and zeal- 
 ' ously imitated in all European countries, the task of Govern- 
 1 ment, any task there may still be, is done to our hand. Perfect 
 ' your Parliament, cry all men : apply the Ballot-box and Uni- 
 4 versal Suffrage ! the admirablest method ever imagined of 
 4 counting heads and gathering indubitable votes : you will thus 
 4 gather the vote, -vox or voice, of all the two-legged animals 
 4 without feathers in your dominion ; what they think is what 
 4 the gods think, is it not ? and this you shall go and do. 
 
 4 Whereby, beyond dispute, your Governor's task is im- 
 4 mensely simplified ; and indeed the chief thing you can now 
 4 require of your Governor is that he carefully preserve his good 
 4 humour, and do in a handsome manner nothing, or some plea- 
 4 sant fugle-motions only. Is not this a " machine ;" marking 
 ' new epochs in the progress of discovery ? Machine for doing 
 4 Government too, as we now do all things by " machinery." 
 4 Only keep your free-presses, ballot-boxes, upright-shafts and 
 4 cogwork in an oiled unobstructed condition ; motive-power of 
 4 popular wind will do the rest. Here verily is a mill that beats 
 4 Birmingham hollow; and marks "new epochs" with a wit- 
 1 ness. What a hopper this ! Reap from all fields whatsoever 
 ' you find standing, thistledowns, dockseed, hemlockseed, wheat, 
 4 rye ; tumble all into the hopper, see, in soft blissful, con- 
 4 tinuous stream, meal shall daily issue for you, and the bread 
 of life to mankind be sure !' 
 
 The aim of all reformers, parliamentary and other, is still 
 defined by them as ' just legislation,' just laws ; with which de- 
 
232 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 finition who can quarrel ? They will not have ' class legisla- 
 tion,' which is a dreadfully bad thing ; but ' all-classes legisla- 
 tion,' I suppose, which is the right thing. Sure enough, just 
 laws are an excellent attainment, the first condition of all pro- 
 sperity for human creatures ; but few reflect how extremely dif- 
 ficult such attainment is ! Alas, could we once get laws which 
 were just, that is to say, which were the clear transcript of the 
 Divine Laws of the Universe itself ; so that each man were in- 
 cessantly admonished, under strict penalties, by all men, to 
 walk as the Eternal Maker had prescribed ; and he alone re- 
 ceived honour whom the Maker had made honourable, and 
 whom the Maker had made disgraceful, disgrace : alas, were 
 not here the very 'Aristocracy' we seek? A new veritable Hier- 
 archy of Heaven, approximately such in very truth, bring- 
 ing Earth nearer and nearer to the blessed Law of Heaven. 
 Heroic men, the Sent of Heaven, once more bore rule : and on 
 the throne of kings there sat splendent, not King Hudson, or 
 King Popinjay, but the Bravest of existing Men ; and on the 
 gibbet there swung as a tragic pendulum, admonitory to Earth 
 in the name of Heaven, not some insignificant, abject, neces- 
 sitous outcast, who had violently, in his extreme misery and dark- 
 ness, stolen a leg of mutton, but veritably the Supreme Scoun- 
 drel of the Commonwealth, who in his insatiable greed and 
 bottomless atrocity had long, hoodwinking the poor world, gone 
 himself, and led multitudes to go, in the ways of gilded human 
 baseness ; seeking temporary profit (scrip, first-class claret, so- 
 cial honour, and the like small ware), where only eternal loss 
 was possible ; and who now, stripped of all his gildings and 
 cunningly-devised speciosities, swung there an ignominious de- 
 tected scoundrel ; testifying aloud to all the earth : "Be not 
 " scoundrels, not even gilt scoundrels, any one of you ; for God, 
 " and not the Devil, is verily king, and this is where it ends, 
 " if even this be the end of it !" 
 
 O Heaven, O Earth, what an ' attainment' were here, could 
 we but hope to see it ! Reformed Parliament, People's League, 
 Hume-Cobden agitation, tremendous cheers, new Battles of 
 Naseby, French Revolution, and Horrors of French Revolution, 
 all things were cheap and light to the attainment of this. 
 For this were in fact the millennium ; and indeed nothing less 
 than this can be it. 
 
 But I say it is dreadfully difficult to attain ! And though 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 233 
 
 ' class legislation' is not it, yet, alas, neither is ' all-classes legis- 
 lation' in the least certain to be it. All classes, if they happen 
 not to be wise, heroic classes, how, by the cunningest jum- 
 bling of them together, will you ever get a wisdom or heroism 
 out of them ? Once more let me remind you, it is impossible for- 
 ever. Unwisdom, contradiction to the gods : how, from the 
 mere vamping-together of hostile voracities and opacities, never 
 so dextrously or copiously combined, can or could you expect 
 anything else? Can any man bring a clean thing out of an un- 
 clean? No man. Voracities and opacities, blended together 
 in never such cunningly-devised proportions, will not yield noble- 
 nesses and illuminations; they cannot do it. Parliamentary 
 reform, extension of the suffrage? Good Heavens, how by the 
 mere enlargement of your circle of ingredients, by the mere 
 flinging-in of new opacities and voracities, will you have a bet- 
 ter chance to distil a wisdom from that foul cauldron, which is 
 merely bigger, not by hypothesis better? You will have a better 
 chance to distil zero from it ; evil elements from all sides, now 
 more completely extinguishing one another, so that mutual de- 
 struction, like that of the Kilkenny cats, a Parliament which 
 produces parliamentary eloquence only, and no social guidance 
 either bad or good will be the issue, as we now in these years 
 sorrowfully see. 
 
 Universal suffrage : what a scheme to substitute for the re- 
 velation of God's eternal Law, the official declaration of the 
 account of heads! It is as if men had abdicated their right to 
 attempt following the abovesaid Law, and with melancholy re- 
 signation had agreed to give it up, and take temporary peace 
 and good agreement as a substitute. In all departments of our 
 affairs it is so, literary, moral, political, social; and in all of 
 them it is and remains eternally wrong. In every department, 
 literary, moral, political, social, the man that pretends to have 
 what is angrily called a choice of his own, which will mean at 
 least some remnant of a feeling in him that Nature and Fact 
 do still claim a choice of their own, and are like to make it good 
 yet, such man is felt as a kind of interloper and dissocial 
 person, who obstructs the harmony of affairs, and is out of keep- 
 ing with the universal-suffrage arrangement that has been en- 
 tered upon. Why not decide it by dice? Universal suffrage for 
 your oracle is equivalent to flat despair of answer. Set up such 
 
234 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 oracle, you proclaim to all men : " Friends, there is in Nature 
 11 no answer to your question ; and you don't believe in dice. 
 " Try to esteem this oracle a divine one, and be thankful that 
 " you can thereby keep the peace, and go with an answer from 
 " the shrine of chaotic Chance." 
 
 Peace is good; but woe to the cowardly caitiff of a man, or 
 collection of cowardly caitiffs styling themselves Nation, that 
 will have ' peace' on these terms ! They will save their ignoble 
 skin at the expense of their eternal loyalty to the highest God. 
 Peace ? Better war to the knife, war till we all die, than such 
 a ' peace.' Reject it, my friend, I advise thee ; silently swear 
 by God above, that, on earth below, thou for thy part never 
 wilt accept it. Be /'/ forever far from us, my poor scattered 
 friends. Let us fly to the rocks rather ; and silently appealing 
 to the Eternal Heaven, await an hour which is full surely com- 
 ing, when we too shall have grown to a respectable ' company 
 of poor men,' authorised to rally, and with celestial lightning, 
 and with terrestrial steel and such good weapons as there may 
 be, spend all our blood upon it ! 
 
 After all, why was not the Hudson Testimonial completed ? 
 As Moses lifted up the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness, why 
 was not Hudson's Statue lifted up? Once more I say, it might 
 have done us good. Thither too, in a sense, poor poison-stricken 
 mortals might have looked, and found some healing ! For many 
 reasons, this alarming populace of British Statues wanted to 
 have its chief. The liveliest type of Choice by Suffrage ever 
 given. The consummate flower of universal Anarchy in the 
 Commonwealth, and in the hearts of men : was not this Statue 
 such a flower; or do we look for one more perfect and con- 
 summate? 
 
 Of social Hierarchies, and Religions the parent of these, 
 why speak, in presence of social Anarchy such as is here sym- 
 bolised? The Apotheosis of Hudson beckons to still deeper 
 gulfs on the religious side of our affairs ; into which one shud- 
 ders to look down. For the eye rests only on the blackness 
 of darkness ; and, shrunk to hissing whispers, inaudible except 
 to the finer ear, come meanings of the everlasting tempest, and 
 tones of alti guai. Nor is a certain vertigo quite absent from 
 the strongest heads ; a mad impulse to take the leap, then, 
 and dwell with Eternal Death, since it seems to be the rule 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 23$ 
 
 at present ! One hurried glance or two, holding well by what 
 parapets there still are; and then let us hasten to begone. 
 
 Worship, what we call human religion, has undergone vari- 
 ous phases in the history of mankind. To the primitive man 
 all Forces of Nature were divine : either for propitiation or for 
 admiration, many things, and in a sense all things, demanded 
 worship from him. But especially the Noble Human Soul was 
 divine to him ; and announced, as it ever does, with direct im- 
 pressiveness, the Inspiration of the Highest; demanding wor- 
 ship from the primitive man. Whereby, as has been explained 
 elsewhere, this latter form of worship, Hero-worship as we call 
 it, did, among the ancient peoples, attract and subdue to itself 
 all other forms of human worship; irradiating them all with its 
 own perennial worth, which indeed is all the worth they had, or 
 that any worship can have. Human worship everywhere, so 
 far as there lay any worth in it, was of the nature of a Hero- 
 worship ; this Universe wholly, this temporary Flame-image of 
 the Eternal, was one beautiful and terrible Energy of Heroisms, 
 presided over by a Divine Nobleness or Infinite Hero. Divine 
 Nobleness forever friendly to the noble, forever hostile to the 
 ignoble : all manner of ' moral rules,' and well ' sanctioned* too, 
 flowed naturally out of this primeval Intuition into Nature; 
 which, I believe, is still the true fountain of moral rules, though 
 a much-forgotten one at present ; and indeed it seems to be the 
 one unchangeable, eternally z#dubitable ' Intuition into Nature' 
 we have yet heard of in these parts. 
 
 To the primitive man, whether he looked at moral rule, or 
 even at physical fact, there was nothing not divine. Flame 
 was the God Loki, &c. ; this visible Universe was wholly the 
 vesture of an Invisible Infinite ; every event that occurred in 
 it a symbol of the immediate presence of God. Which it in- 
 trinsically is, and forever will be, let poor stupid mortals re- 
 member or forget it ! The difference is, not that God has with- 
 drawn ; but that men's minds have fallen hebetated, stupid, 
 that their hearts are dead, awakening only to some life about 
 meal-time and cookery-time ; and their eyes are grown dim, 
 blinkard, a kind of horn-eyes like those of owls, available 
 chiefly for catching mice. 
 
 Most excellent Fitzsmithytrough, it is a long time since I 
 have stopped short in admiring your stupendous railway mir- 
 
236 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 acles. I was obliged to strike work, and cease admiring in that 
 direction. Very stupendous indeed ; considerable improvement 
 in old roadways andwheel-and-axle carriages ; velocity unexpect- 
 edly great, distances attainable ditto ditto : all this is undeniable. 
 But, alas, all this is still small deer for me, my excellent Fitz- 
 smithytrough ; truly nothing more than an unexpected take of 
 mice for the owlish part of you and me. Distances, you un- 
 fortunate Fitz ? The distances of London to Aberdeen, to 
 Ostend, to Vienna, are still infinitely inadequate to me ! Will 
 you teach me the winged flight through Immensity, up to the 
 Throne dark with excess of bright ? You unfortunate, you grin 
 as an ape would at such a question ; you do not know that un- 
 less you can reach thither in some effectual, most veritable 
 sense, you are a lost Fitzsmithy trough, doomed to Hela's death- 
 realm and the Abyss where mere brutes are buried. I do not 
 want cheaper cotton, swifter railways ; I want what Novalis 
 calls ' God, Freedom, Immortality :' will swift railways, and 
 sacrifices to Hudson, help me towards that ? 
 
 As propitiation or as admiration, ' worship' still continues 
 among men, will always continue ; and the phase it has in any 
 given epoch may be taken as the ruling phenomenon which 
 determines all others in that epoch. If Odin, who ' invented 
 runes,' or literatures, and rhythmic logical speech, and taught 
 men to despise death, is worshipped in one epoch ; and if 
 Hudson, who conquered railway directors, and taught men to 
 become suddenly rich by scrip, is worshipped in another, the 
 characters of these two epochs must differ a good deal ! Nay, 
 the worst of some epochs is, they have along with their real 
 worship an imaginary, and are conscious only of the latter as 
 worship. They keep a set of gods or fetishes, reckoned re- 
 spectable, to which they rnumble prayers, asking themselves 
 and others triumphantly, "Are not .these respectable gods?" 
 and all the while their real worship, or heart's love and admir- 
 ation, which alone is worship, concentrates itself on quite other 
 gods and fetishes, on Hudsons and scrips, for instance. Thus 
 is the miserable epoch rendered twice and tenfold miserable, 
 and in a manner lost beyond redemption ; having superadded 
 to its stupid Idolatries, and brutish forgettings of the true God, 
 which are leading it down daily towards ruin, an immense 
 Hypocrisy, which is the quintessence of all idolatries and mis- 
 beliefs and unbeliefs, and taken refuge under that, as under a 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 237 
 
 thing safe ! Europe generally has lain there a long time ; Eng- 
 land I think for about two hundred years, spinning certain 
 cottons notably the while, and thinking it all right, which it 
 was very far from being. But the time of accounts, slowly ad- 
 vancing, has arrived at last for Europe, and is knocking at the 
 door of England too ; and it will be seen whether universal 
 make-believe can be the rule in English or human things ; 
 whether respectable Hebrew and other fetishes, combined with 
 real worship of Yorkshire and other scrip, will answer the pur- 
 pose here below or not ! 
 
 It is certain, whatever gods or fetishes a man may have 
 about him, and pay tithes to, and mumble prayers to, the real 
 ' religion' that is in him is his practical Hero-worship. Whom 
 or what do you in your very soul admire, and strive to imitate 
 and emulate ; is it God's servant or the Devil's ? Clearly this 
 is the whole question. There is no other religion in the man 
 which can be of the slightest consequence in comparison. 
 Theologies, doxologies, orthodoxies, heterodoxies, are not of 
 moment except as subsidiary towards a good issue in this ; if 
 they help well in it, they are good ; if not well or at all, they 
 are nothing or bad. 
 
 This also is certain, Nations that do their Hero-worship 
 well are blessed and victorious ; Nations that do it ill are ac- 
 cursed, and in all fibres of their business grow daily more so, 
 till their miserable afflictive and offensive situation becomes at 
 last unendurable to Heaven and to Earth, and the so-called 
 Nation, now an unhappy Populace of Misbelievers (miscreants 
 was the old name), bursts into revolutionary tumult, and either 
 reforms or else annihilates itself. How otherwise ? Know 
 whom to honour and emulate and follow ; know whom to dis- 
 honour and avoid, and coerce under hatches, as a foul rebellious 
 thing : this is all the Law and all the Prophets. All conceivable 
 evangels, bibles, homiletics, liturgies and litanies, and temporal 
 and spiritual lawbooks for a man or a people, issue practically 
 there. Be right in that, essentially you are not wrong in any- 
 thing ; you read this Universe tolerably aright, and are in the 
 way to interpret well what the will of its Maker is. Be wrong 
 in that, had you liturgies the recommendablest in Nature, and 
 bodies-of-divinity as big as an Indiaman, it helps you not a 
 whit ; you are wrong in all things. 
 
238 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 How in anything can you be right ? You read this Uni- 
 verse in the inmost meaning of it wrong : gross idolatrous 
 Misbelief is what I have to recognise in you ; and, super- 
 added, such a faith in the saving virtue of that deadliest of 
 vices, Hypocrisy, as no People ever had before ! Beautiful 
 recommendable liturgies ? Your liturgies, the recommend- 
 ablest in Nature, are to me alarming and distressing ; a turn- 
 ing of the Calmuck Prayer-mill, not my way of praying. 
 This immense asthmatic spiritual Hurdygurdy, issuing prac- 
 tically in a set of demigods like Hudson, what is the good of 
 it ; why will you keep grinding it under poor men's windows ? 
 Sinee Hudson is Vishnu, let th,e Shasters and Vedas be con- 
 formable to him. Why chant divine psalms which belonged 
 to a different Dispensation, and are now become idle and far 
 worse ? Not melodious to me, such a chant, in such a time ! 
 The sound of it, if you are not yet quite dead to spiritual 
 sounds, is frightful and bodeful. I say, this litany of yours, 
 were the wretched populace and population never so unani- 
 mous and loud in it, is a thing no God can hear ; your miser- 
 able ' religion,' as you call it, is an idolatry of the nature of 
 Mumbojumbo, and I would advise you to discontinue it rather. 
 You are Infidels, persons without faith ; not believing what is 
 true but what is untrue ; Miscreants, as the old fathers well 
 called you, appointed too inevitably, unless you can repent 
 and alter soon (of which I see no symptoms), to a fearful 
 doom! 
 
 " It was always so," you indolently say ? No, Friend 
 Heavyside, it was not always so, and even till lately was never 
 so ; and I would much recommend you to sweep that foolish 
 notion, which you often fling at me, and always keep about 
 you as one of your main consolations, quite out of your head. 
 Once the notion was my own too ; I know the notion very 
 well ! And I will invite you to ask yourself in all ways, Whe- 
 ther it is not possibly a rather torpid and poisonous, and like- 
 wise an altogether incorrect and delusive notion ? Capable, 
 I assure you, of being quite swept out of a man's head ; and 
 greatly needing to be so, if the man would do any ' reform,' 
 or other useful work, in this his day I 
 
 Till such notion go about its business, there cannot even 
 be the attempt towards reform. Not so much as the pulling 
 down, and melting into warming-pans, oi those poor Brazen 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 239 
 
 Representatives of Anarchy can be accomplished ; but they 
 will stand there prophesying as now, " Here is the ' New 
 " Aristocracy* you want ; down on your knees, ye Christian 
 " souls 1" O my friend, and after Hudson and the other Idols 
 have quite gone to warming-pans, have you computed what 
 agonistic centuries await us, before any ' New Aristocracy' 
 worth calling by the name of ' real,' can by likelihood prove 
 attainable ? From the stormful trampling-down of Sham Hu- 
 man Worth, and casting it with wrath and scorn into the 
 meltingpot, onward to the silent sad repentant recognition of 
 Real Human Worth, and the capability of again doing that 
 some pious reverence, some reverence which were not practi- 
 cally worse than none : have you measured what an interval 
 is there ? Centuries of desperate wrestle against Earth and 
 Hell, on the part of all the brave men that are born. Too 
 true this, though figuratively spoken ! Perilous tempestuous 
 struggle and pilgrimage, continual marching battle with the 
 mud-serpents of this Earth and the demons of the Pit centu- 
 ries of such a marching fight (continually along the edge of 
 Red Republic too, and the Abyss) as brave men were not 
 often called to in History before ! And the brave men will 
 not yet so much as gird-on their harness ? They sit indolently 
 saying, " It is already all as it can be, as it was wont to be ; 
 " and universal suffrage and tremendous cheers will manage 
 " it !" 
 
 Collins's old Peerage-Book, a dreadfully dull production, 
 fills one with unspeakable reflections. Beyond doubt a most 
 dull production, one of the darkest in the book kind ever real- 
 ised by Chaos and man's brain ; and it is properly all we Eng- 
 lish have for a Biographical Dictionary ; nay, if you think 
 farther of it, for a National Bible. Friend Heavyside is much 
 astonished ; but I see what I mean here, and have long seen. 
 Clear away the dust from your eyes, and you will ask this 
 question, What is the Bible of a Nation, the practically-credited 
 God's-Message to a Nation ? Is it not, beyond all else, the 
 authentic Biography of its Heroic Souls ? This is the real 
 record of the Appearances of God in the History of a Nation ; 
 this, which all men to the very marrow of their bones can 
 believe, and which teaches all men what the nature of the 
 Universe, when you go to work in it, really is. What the 
 
240 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Universe was thought to be in Judea and other places, this 
 too may be very interesting to know : but what it is in Eng- 
 land here where we live and have our work to do, that is 
 the interesting point. "The Universe?" M'Croudy answers. 
 " It is a huge dull Cattle-stall and St. Catherine's Wharf; 
 " with a few pleasant apartments upstairs for those that can 
 " make money. Make money ; and don't bother about the 
 " Universe !" That is M'Croudy's notion ; reckoned a quiet, 
 innocent and rather wholesome notion just now ; yet clearly 
 fitter for a reflective pig than for a man ; working continual 
 damnation therefore, however quiet it be ; and indeed I per- 
 ceive it is one of the damnablest notions that ever came into 
 the head of any two-legged animal without feathers in this 
 world. That is M'Croudy's Bible ; his Apology, poor fellow, 
 for the Want of a Bible. 
 
 But how, among so many Shakspeares, and thinkers, and 
 heroic singers, our National Bible should be in such a state ; 
 and how a poor dull Bookseller should have been left, not to 
 write in rhythmic coherency, worthy of a Poet and of all our 
 Poets, but to shovel together, or indicate, in huge rubbish 
 mountains incondite as Chaos, the materials for writing such 
 a Book of Books for England : this is abundantly amazing 
 to me, and I wish much it could duly amaze us all. Litera- 
 ture has no nobler task ; in fact it has that one task, and 
 except it be idle rope-dancing, no other. ' The highest pro- 
 blem of Literature,' says Novalis, very justly, ' is the Writing 
 1 of a Bible.' 
 
 Nevertheless, among these dust-mountains, with their an- 
 tiquarian excerpts and sepulchral brasses, it is astonishing what 
 strange fragments you do turn up, miraculous talismans to a 
 reader that will think, windows through which an old sunk 
 world, as yet all built upon veracity, and full of rugged noble- 
 ness, becomes visible ; to the mute wonder of the modern 
 mind. It struck me much, that of these ancient peerages a 
 very great majority had visibly had authentic ' heroes' for their 
 founders ; noble men, of whose worth no clearsighted King 
 could be in doubt ; and that, in their descendants too, there 
 did not cease a strain of heroism for some time, the peership 
 generally dying out, and disappearing, not long after that 
 ceased. What a world, that old sunk one ; Real Governors 
 governing in it ; Shams not yet anywhere recognised as toler- 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 241 
 
 able in it I A world whose practical president was not Chaos 
 with ballot-boxes, whose outcome was not Anarchy plus a 
 street-constable. In how high and true a sense, the Almighty 
 with continual enforcement of his Laws still presided there ; 
 and in all things as yet there was some degree of blessedness 
 and nobleness there ! 
 
 One's heart is sore to think how far, how very far all this 
 has vanished from us ; how the very tradition of it has dis- 
 appeared ; and it has ceased to be credible, to seem desirable. 
 Till the like of it return, yes, my constitutional friend, such 
 is the sad fact, till the like of it, in new form, adapted to the 
 new times, be again achieved by us ; we are not properly a 
 society at ail ; we are a lost gregarious horde, with Kings of 
 Scrip on this hand, and Famishing Connaughts and Distressed 
 Needlewomen on that presided over by the Anarch Old. A 
 lost horde, who, in bitter feeling of the intolerable injustice 
 that presses upon all men, will not long be able to continue 
 even gregarious ; but will have to split into street-barricades, 
 and internecine battle with one another ; and to fight, if wis- 
 dom for some new real Peerage be not granted us, till we all 
 die, mutually butchered, and so rest, so if not otherwise ! 
 
 Till the time of James the First, I find that real heroic merit 
 more or less was actually the origin of peerages ; never, till 
 towards the end of that bad reign, were peerages bargained for, 
 or bestowed on men palpably of no worth except their money 
 or connexion. But the evil practice, once begun, spread ra- 
 pidly ; and now the Peerage-Book is what we see ; a thing 
 miraculous in the other extreme. A kind of Proteus' flock, 
 very curious to meet upon the lofty mountains, so many of them 
 being natives of the deep ! Our menagerie of live Peers in Par- 
 liament is like that of our Brazen Statues in the market-place ; 
 the selection seemingly is made much in the same way, and 
 with the same degree of felicity, and successful accuracy in 
 choice. Our one steady regulated supply is the class definable 
 as Supreme Stump-Orators in the Lawyer department ; the class 
 called Chancellors flows by something like fixed conduits to- 
 wards the Peerage ; the rest, like our Brazen Statues, come 
 by popular rule-of-thumb. 
 
 Stump-Orators, supreme or other, are not beautiful to me 
 in these days : but the immense power of Lawyers among us 
 is sufficiently intelligible. I perceive, it proceeds from two 
 
 R 
 
242 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 causes. First, they preside over the management and security 
 of ' Property,' which is our God at present ; they are thus pro- 
 perly our Pontiffs, the highest Priests we have. Then further- 
 more they possess the talent most valued, that of the Tongue ; 
 and seem to us the most gifted of our intelligences, thereby pro- 
 voking a spontaneous loyalty and worship. 
 
 What think you of a country whose kings go by genealogy, 
 and are the descendants of successful Lawyers ? A poor wea- 
 ther-worn, tanned, curried, wind-dried human creature, called 
 a Chancellor, all or almost all gone to horsehair and officiality ; 
 the whole existence of him tanned, by long maceration, public 
 exposure, tugging and manipulation, to the toughness of York- 
 shire leather, meseems I have seen a beautifuler man ! Not 
 a leather man would I by preference appoint to beget my kings. 
 Not lovely to me is the leather species of men ; to whose tanned 
 soul God's Universe has become a jangling logic-cockpit and 
 little other. If indeed it have not become far less and worse : 
 for the wretched tanned Chancellor, I am told, is usually ac- 
 quainted with the art of lying too, considerable part of his 
 trade, as I have been informed, is the talent of lying in a way 
 that cannot be laid hold of ; a dreadful trick to learn ! Out of 
 such a man there cannot be expected much ' revelation of the 
 Beautiful,' I should say. O Bull, were I in your place, I would 
 try either to get other Peers, or else to abolish the concern, 
 which latter indeed, by your acquiescence in such nominations, 
 and by many other symptoms, I judge to be unconsciously your 
 fixed intention. 
 
 You have seen many Chancellors made Peers in these late 
 generations, Mr. Bull. And now tell me, which was the Chan- 
 cellor you did really love or honour, to any remarkable degree ? 
 Alas, you never within authentic memory loved any of them ; 
 you couldn't, no man could ! You lazily stared with some sem- 
 blance of admiration at the big wig, huge purse, reputation for 
 divine talent, and sublime proficiency in the art of tongue-fence : 
 but to love him, that, Mr. Bull, was, once for all, a thing you 
 could not manage. Who of the seed of Adam could ? From 
 the time of Chancellor Bacon downwards (and beyond that your 
 Chancellors are dark to you as the Muftis of Constantinople), 
 I challenge you to show me one Chancellor for whom, had the 
 wigs, purses, reputations &c. been peeled off him, who would 
 have given his weight in Smithfield beef sinking offal. You 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 243 
 
 unhappy Bull, governed by Kings you have not the smallest 
 regard for ; wandering in an extinct world of wearisome, op- 
 pressive and expensive shadows, nothing real in it but the 
 Smithfield beef, nothing preternatural in it but the Chartisms 
 and threatened street-barricades, and this not celestial but in- 
 fernal 1 
 
 Sure enough, I find, O Heavyside, England once was a 
 Hierarchy ; as every Human Society, not either dead or else 
 hastening towards death, always is : but it has long ceased to 
 be so to any tolerable degree of perfection ; and is now, by its 
 Hudson and other Testimonials, testifying in a silent way to 
 the thoughtful, what otherwise, by its thousandfold anarchic de- 
 pravities, miseries, god-forgettings and open devil-worships, it 
 has long loudly taught them to expect, that we are now wend- 
 ing towards the culmination in this particular. That to the 
 modern English populations, Supreme Hero and Supreme Scoun- 
 drel are, perhaps as nearly as is possible to human creatures, 
 indistinguishable. That it is totally uncertain, perhaps even 
 the odds against you, whether the figure whom said population 
 mount to the place of honour, is not in Nature and Fact dis- 
 honourable ; whether the man to whom they raise a column 
 does not deserve a coalshaft. And in fine, poor devils, that 
 their universal suffrage, as spoken, as acted, meditated, and 
 imagined ; universal suffrage, I do not say ballot-boxed and 
 cunningly constitutionalised, but boiled, distilled, digested, quin- 
 tessenced, till you get into the very heart's heart of it, is, to 
 the rational soul, except for stock-exchange, and the like very 
 humble practical purposes, worth express zero, or nearly so. I 
 think probably as near zero as the unassisted human faculties 
 and destinies ever came, or are like to come. 
 
 Hierarchy ? O Heaven ! If Chaos himself sat umpire, what 
 better could he do? Here are a set of human demigods, as if 
 chosen to his hand. Hierarchy with a vengeance ! if instead 
 of God, a vulpine beggarly Beelzebub or swollen Mammon were 
 our Supreme Hieros or Holy, this would be a Hierarchy 1 I 
 say, if you want Chaos for your master, adopt this ; if you 
 don't, I beg you make haste to adopt some other ; for this is 
 the broad way to him ! The Eternal Anarch, with his old wag- 
 gling addlehead full of mere windy rumour, and his old insati- 
 able paunch full of mere hunger and indigestion tragically 
 
244 LATTER-DAY- PAMPHLETS. 
 
 blended, and the hissing discord of all the Four Elements per- 
 suasively pleading to him, he, set to choose, would be very 
 apt to vote for such a set of demigods to you. 
 
 As to the Statues, I know they are but symptoms of An- 
 archy ; it is not they, it is the Anarchy, that one is anxious to 
 see abated. Remedy for the Statues will be possible ; and, as 
 a small help, undoubtedly it too, in the mean time, is desirable. 
 Every symptom you drive-in being a curtailment of the malady, 
 by all means cure this Statue-building if you can ! It will be 
 one folly and misery less. 
 
 Government is loath to interfere with the pursuits of any 
 class of citizens ; and oftenest looks on in silence while follies 
 are committed. But Government does interfere to prevent af- 
 flictive accumulations on the streets, malodorous or other un- 
 sanitary public procedures of an extensive sort ; regulates gully- 
 drains, cesspools ; prohibits the piling-up of dungheaps ; and 
 is especially strict on the matter of indecent exposures. Wher- 
 ever the health of the citizens is concerned, much more where 
 their souls' health, and as it were their very salvation, is con- 
 cerned, all Governments that are not chimerical make haste to 
 interfere. 
 
 Now if dungheaps laid on the streets, afflictive to the mere 
 nostrils, are a subject for interference, what, we ask, are high 
 columns, raised by prurient stupidity and public delusion, to 
 blockheads whose memory does in eternal fact deserve the sink- 
 ing of a coal shaft rather? Give to every one what he deserves, 
 what really is his : in all scenes and situations thou shall do 
 that, or in very truth woe will betide thee, as sure as thou art 
 living, and as thy Maker lives. Blockhead, this big Gambler 
 swollen to the edge of bursting, he is not ' great' and honour- 
 able ; he is huge and abominable ! Thou shalt honour the right 
 man, and not honour the wrong, under penalties of an alarming 
 nature. Honour Barabbas the Robber, thou shalt sell old-clothes 
 through the cities of the world ; shalt accumulate sordid moneys, 
 with a curse on every coin of them, and be spit upon for eigh- 
 teen hundred years. Raise statues to the swollen Gambler as 
 if he were great, sacrifice oblations to the King of Scrip, un- 
 fortunate mortals, you will dearly pay for it yet. Quiet as Na- 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 245 
 
 ture's countinghouse and scrip-ledgers are, no faintest item is 
 ever blotted out from them, for or against ; and to the last doit 
 that account too will have to be settled. Rigorous as Destiny ; 
 she is Destiny. Chancery or Fetter-Lane is soft to her, when 
 the day of settlement comes. With her, in the way of abate- 
 ment, of oblivion, neither gods nor man prevail. "Abatement? 
 11 That is not our way of doing business; the time has run out, 
 " the debt it appears is due." Will the law of gravitation 
 ' abate' for you ? Gravitation acts at the rate of sixteen feet 
 per second, in spite of all prayers. Were it the crash of a 
 Solar System, or the fall of a Yarmouth Herring, all one to 
 gravitation. 
 
 Is the fall of a stone certain; and the fruit of an unwisdom 
 doubtful ? You unfortunate beings ! Have you forgotten it ; 
 in this immense improvement of machinery, cheapening of cot- 
 ton, and general astonishing progress of the species lately ? 
 With such extension of journals, human cultures, universities, 
 periodic and other literatures, mechanics' institutes, reform of 
 prison-discipline, abolition of capital punishment, enfranchise- 
 ment by ballot, report of parliamentary speeches, and singing 
 for the million ? You did not know that the Universe had laws 
 of right and wrong ; you fancied the Universe was an oblivious 
 greedy blockhead, like one of yourselves ; attentive to scrip 
 mainly ; and willing, where there was no practical scrip, to for- 
 get and forgive ? And so, amid such universal blossoming-forth 
 of useful knowledges, miraculous to the thinking editor every- 
 where, the soul of all 'knowledge,' not knowing which a man 
 is dark and reduced to the condition of a beaver, has been 
 omitted by you? You have omitted it, and you should have 
 included it ! The thinking editor never missed it, so busy 
 wondering and worshipping elsewhere ; but it is not here. 
 
 And alas, apart from editors, are there not men appointed 
 specially to keep you in mind of it ; solemnly set apart for that 
 object, thousands of years ago ? Crabbe, descanting ' on the 
 so-called Christian Clerus? has this wild passage : ' Legions of 
 ' them, in their black or other gowns, I still meet in every coun- 
 ' try ; masquerading, in strange costume of body, and still 
 ' stranger of soul ; mumming, primming, grimacing, poor 
 1 devils, shamming, and endeavouring not to sham : that is the 
 ' sad fact. Brave men many of them, after their sort ; and in 
 ' a position which we may admit to be wonderful and dreadful ! 
 
246 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS, 
 
 ' On the outside of their heads some singular headgear, tulip- 
 ' mitre, felt coalscuttle, purple hat ; and in the inside, I must 
 ' say, such a Theory of God Almighty's Universe as I, for my 
 ' share, am right thankful to have no concern with at all I I 
 ' think, on the whole, as broken-winged, self-strangled, mon- 
 strous a mass of incoherent incredibilities, as ever dwelt in 
 ' the human brain before. O God, giver of Light, hater of 
 ' Darkness, of Hypocrisy and Cowardice, how long, how long ! 
 ' For two centuries now it lasts. The men whom God has 
 1 made, whole nations and generations of them, are steeped in 
 ' Hypocrisy from their birth upwards ; taught that external 
 ' varnish is the chief duty of man, that the vice which is the 
 ' deepest in Gehenna is the virtue highest in Heaven. Out of 
 ' which, do you ask what follows ? Look round on a world all 
 ' bristling with insurrectionary pikes ; Kings and Papas flying 
 ' like detected coiners ; and in their stead Icaria, Red Republic, 
 ' new religion of the Anti-Virgin, Literature of Desperation 
 ' curiously conjoined with Phallus-Worship, too clearly herald- 
 ' ing centuries of bottomless Anarchy : hitherto one in the 
 ' million looking with mournful recognition on it, silently with 
 1 sad thoughts too unutterable ; and to help in healing it not 
 1 one anywhere hitherto.' 
 
 But as to Statues, I really think the Woods-and-Forests 
 ought to interfere. When a company of persons have determined 
 to set-up a Brazen Image, there decidedly arises, besides the 
 question of their own five-pound subscriptions, which men of 
 spirit and money-capital without employment, and with the 
 prospect of seeing their names in the Newspapers at the cheap 
 price of five pounds, are very prompt with, another question, 
 not nearly so easy of solution. Namely, this quite preliminary 
 question: Will it permanently profit mankind to have such a 
 Hero as this of yours set-up for their admiration, for their im- 
 itation and emulation ; or will it, so far as they do not reject 
 and with success disregard it altogether, unspeakably tend to 
 damage and disprofit them ? In a word, does this Hero's me- 
 mory deserve a high column ; are you sure it does not deserve 
 a deep coalshaft rather ? This is an entirely fundamental ques- 
 tion ! Till this question be answered well in the affirmative, 
 there ought to be a total stop of progress ; the misguided citi- 
 zens ought to be admonished, and even gently constrained, to 
 
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 247 
 
 take back their five-pound notes ; to desist from their rash de- 
 leterious enterprise, and retire to their affairs, a repentant body 
 of misguided citizens. 
 
 But farther still, and supposing the first question perfectly 
 disposed of, there comes a second, grave too, though much less 
 peremptory : Is this Statue of yours a worthy commemoration 
 of a sacred man ? Is it so excellent in point of Art that we can, 
 with credit, set it up in our market-places as a respectable ap- 
 proach to the Ideal ? Or, alas, is it not such an amorphous 
 brazen sooterkin, bred of prurient heat and. darkness, as falls, 
 if well seen into, far below the Real ? The Real, if you will 
 stand by it, is respectable. The coarsest hob-nailed pair of 
 shoes, if honestly made according to the laws of fact and 
 leather, are not ugly ; they are honest, and fit for their object ; 
 the highest eye may look on them without displeasure, nay with 
 a kind of satisfaction. This rude packing-case, it is faithfully 
 made ; square to the rule, and formed with rough-and-ready 
 strength against injury ; fit for its use ; not a pretentious hypo- 
 crisy, but a modest serviceable fact; whoever pleases to look 
 upon it, will find the image of a humble manfulness in it, and 
 will pass on with some infinitesimal impulse to thank the gods. 
 
 But this your ' Ideal," my misguided fellow-citizens? Good 
 Heavens, are you in the least aware what damage, in the very 
 sources of their existence, men get from Cockney Sooterkins 
 saluting them publicly as models of Beauty? I charitably feel 
 you have not the smallest notion of it, or you would shriek at 
 the proposal ! Can you, my misguided friends, think it humane 
 to set-up, in its present uncomfortable form, this blotch of mis- 
 molten copper and zinc, out of which good warming-pans might 
 be made ? That all men should see this ; innocent young crea- 
 tures, still in arms, be taught to think this beautiful; and 
 perhaps women in an interesting situation look up to it as they 
 pass ? I put it to your religious feeling, to your principles as 
 men and fathers of families ! 
 
 These questions the Woods -and -Forests, or some other 
 Public Tribunal constituted for the purpose, really ought to 
 ask, in a deliberate speaking manner, on the part of the speech- 
 less suffering Populations: it is the preliminary of all useful 
 Statue-building. Till both these questions are well answered, 
 the Woods-and-Forests should refuse permission; advise the 
 misguided citizens to go home and repent. Really, if this 
 
248 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Statue-humour go on, and grow as it has lately done, there 
 will be such a Public-Statue Board requisite ; or the Woods- 
 and-Forests will have to interfere, with such imperfect law as 
 now is. 
 
 The Woods-and-Forests, or if not they, then the Commis- 
 sioners of Sewers, Sanitary Board, Scavenger Board, Cleansing 
 Committee, or whoever holds or can usurp a little of the aedile 
 authority, cannot some of them, in the name of sense and com- 
 mon decency, interfere at least thus far? Namely, to admonish 
 the misguided citizens, subscribers to the next Brazen Monster, 
 or sad sculptural solecism, the emblem of far sadder moral 
 ones ; and exhort them, three successive times, to make warm- 
 ing-pans of it and repent ; or failing that, rinding them obsti- 
 nate, to say with authority: "Well then, persist ; set-up your 
 " Brazen Calf, ye misguided citizens, and worship it, you, since 
 " you will and can. But observe, let it be done in secret : not 
 " in public; we say, in secret, at your peril! You have pleased 
 " to create a new Monster into this world ; but to make him 
 " patent to public view, we, for our part, beg not to please. 
 " Observe, therefore. Build a high-enough brick case or joss- 
 " house for your Brazen Calf; with undiaphanous walls, and 
 " lighted by sky-windows only: put your Monster into that, and 
 " keep him there. Thither go at your pleasure, there assemble 
 " yourselves, and worship your bellyful, you absurd idolaters; 
 " ruin your own souls only, and leave the poor Population 
 " alone ; the poor speechless unconscious Population, whom we 
 " are bound to protect, and will !" To this extent, I think the 
 Woods-and-Forests might reasonably interfere. 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 
 
 [ist August 1850.] 
 
 As in the history of human things, which needs above all to 
 abridge itself, it happens usually that the chief actors in great 
 events and great epochs give their name to the series, and are 
 loosely reputed the causers and authors of them ; as a German 
 Reformation is called of Luther, and a French Reign of Terror 
 passes for the work of Robespierre, and from the ^Eneid and 
 earlier this has been the wont : so it may be said these current, 
 and now happily moribund, times of ours are worthy to be called, 
 in loose language, the Age of Jesuitism, an epoch whose Pali- 
 nurus is the wretched mortal known among men as Ignatius 
 Loyola. For some two centuries the genius of mankind has 
 been dominated by the gospel of Ignatius, perhaps the strangest 
 and certainly among the fatalest ever preached hitherto under 
 the sun. Some acquaintance, out of Bartoli and others, I have 
 made with that individual, and from old years have studied the 
 workings of him ; and to me he seems historically definable, he 
 more than another, as the poison-fountain from which these 
 rivers of bitterness that now submerge the world have flowed. 
 
 Counting from the ' ever-blessed Restoration,' or the advent 
 of that singular new Defender of the Faith called Charles Se- 
 cond, it is about two hundred years since we ourselves com- 
 menced that bad course ; and deeply detesting the name of St. 
 Ignatius, did nevertheless gradually adopt his gospel as the real 
 revelation of God's will, and the solid rule of living in this 
 world ; rule long since grown perfectly accredited, complete in 
 all its parts, and reigning supreme among us in all spiritual and 
 social matters whatsoever. The singular gospel, or revelation 
 of God's will ! That to please the supreme Fountain of Truth 
 your readiest method, now and then, was to persist in believing 
 what your whole soul found to be doubtful or incredible. That 
 poor human symbols were higher than the God Almighty's facts 
 
250 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 they symbolised ; that formulas, with or without the facts sym- 
 bolised by them, were sacred and salutary ; that formulas, well 
 persisted in, could still save us when the facts were all fled ! A 
 new revelation to mankind ; not heard of in human experience, 
 till Ignatius revealed it to us. That, in substance, was the con- 
 tribution of Ignatius to the wellbeing of mankind. Under that 
 thrice-stygian gospel we have all of us, Papist and at length 
 Protestant too, this long while sat; a 'doctrine of devils,' I 
 do think, if there ever was one ; and are now, ever since 1789, 
 with endless misery and astonishment, confusedly awakening 
 out of the same, uncertain whether towards swift agony of social 
 death, or towards slow martyrdom of recovery into spiritual and 
 social life. 
 
 Not that poor Loyola did all the feat himself, any more 
 than Luther, Robespierre, and other such did in the parallel 
 cases. By no means. Not in his poor person shall the wretched 
 Loyola bear the guilt of poisoning the world : the world was, 
 as it were, in quest of poison ; in the sure course of being 
 poisoned ; and would have got it done by some one : Loyola 
 is the historical symbol to us of its being done. The most con- 
 spicuous and ostentatious of the world's poisoners ; who, so- 
 lemnly consecrating all the rest in the name of holiness or 
 spiritual Health, has got the work of poisoning to go on with 
 never-imagined completeness and acceleration in all quarters ; 
 and is worthy to have it called after him a Jesuitism, and be 
 blamed by men (how judged by God, we know not) for doing 
 it. That it is done, there is the sad fact for us ; which infinitely 
 concerns every living soul of us ; what Ignatius got or is to get 
 for doing it, this shall not concern us at all. 
 
 And so, before dismissing busy English readers to their 
 autumnal grouse-shooting, the ramadhan, sacred fast, or month 
 of meditative solitude and devout prayer, now in use among the 
 English, I have one sad thing to do : lead them a little to the 
 survey of Ignatius and our universal Jesuitism ; and ask them, in 
 Heaven's name, if they will answer such a question, What they 
 think of it, and of their share in it ? For this is the central and 
 parent phenomenon ; the great Tartarean Deep, this, whence 
 all our miseries, fatuities, futilities spring ; the accursed Hela's 
 realm, tenanted by foul creatures, ministers of Death Eternal, 
 out of which poor mortals, each for himself, are called to escape 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 251 
 
 if they can ! Who is there that can escape ; that can become 
 alive to the terrible necessity of escaping ? By way of finish 
 to this offensive and alarming set of Pamphlets, I have still one 
 crowning offence and alarm to try if I can give. The message, 
 namely, That under all those Cannibal Connaughts, Distressed 
 Needlewomen, and other woes nigh grown intolerable, there lies 
 a still deeper Infinite of woe and guilt, chargeable on every one 
 of us ; and that till this abate, essentially those never will or can. 
 That our English solitaries, any noticeable number of them, 
 in their grouse ramadhan, or elsewhere, will accept the mess- 
 age, and see this thing for my poor showing, is more than I 
 expect. Not willingly or joyfully do men become conscious 
 that they are afloat, they and their affairs, upon the Pool of 
 Erebus, now nameless in polite speech ; and that all their mise- 
 ries, social and private, are fountains springing out of that, and 
 like to spring perennially with ever more copiousness, till once 
 
 you get away from that ! And yet who knows ? Here and 
 
 there a thinking English soul, the reflection, the devotion, not 
 yet quite deafened out of him by perpetual noise and babble ; 
 such a soul, left silent in the solitude of some Highland corry, 
 waiting perhaps till the gillies drive his deer up to him, may 
 catch a glimpse of it, take a thought of it ; may prosecute his 
 thought ; fling down, with terror, his Joe-Manton and percus- 
 sion-caps, and fly to a better kind of ramadhan, towards an- 
 other kind of life ! Sure enough, if one in the thousand see at 
 all, in this sad matter, what I see and have long seen in it, his 
 life either suddenly or gradually will alter in several particulars ; 
 and his sorrow, apprehension and amazement will probably 
 grow upon him, the longer he considers this affair ; and his 
 life, I think, will alter ever farther ; and he, this one in a thou- 
 sand, will forgive me, and be thankful to the Heavens and me, 
 while he continues in this world or in any world 1 
 
 The Spiritual, it is still often said, but is not now sufficiently 
 considered, is the parent and first-cause of the Practical. The 
 Spiritual everywhere originates the Practical, models it, makes 
 it : so that the saddest external condition of affairs, among men, 
 is but evidence of a still sadder internal one. For as thought 
 is the life-fountain and motive-soul of action, so, in all regions 
 of this human world, whatever outwarl thing offers itself to the 
 eye, is merely the garment or body of a thing which already 
 
252 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 existed invisibly within ; which, striving to give itself expres- 
 sion, has found, in the given circumstances, that it could and 
 would express itself so. This is everywhere true ; and in these 
 times when men's attention is directed outward rather, this de- 
 serves far more attention than it will receive. 
 
 Do you ask why misery abounds among us ? I bid you 
 look into the notion we have formed for ourselves of this Uni- 
 verse, and of our duties and destinies there. If it is a true no- 
 tion, we shall strenuously reduce it to practice, for who dare 
 or can contradict his faith, whatever it may be, in the Eternal 
 Fact that is around him ? and thereby blessings and success 
 will attend us in said Universe, or Eternal Fact we live amidst : 
 of that surely there is no doubt. All revelations and intima- 
 tions, heavenly and earthly, assure us of that ; only a Philo- 
 sophy of Bedlam could throw a doubt on that ! Blessings and 
 success, most surely, if our notion of this Universe, and our 
 battle in it be a true one ; not curses and futilities, except it 
 be not true. For battle, in any case, I think we shall not 
 want ; harsh wounds, and the heat of the day, we shall have to 
 stand : but it will be a noble godlike and human battle, not an 
 ignoble devil-like and brutal one ; and our wounds, and sore 
 toils (what we in our impatience call ' miseries'), will themselves 
 be blessed to us. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, it were a false notion which we 
 believed ; alas, if it were even a false notion which we only 
 pretended to believe ? What battle can there be, in that latter 
 fatal case ! Our faith, or notion of this Universe, is not false 
 only, but it is the father of falsity ; a thing that destroys itself, 
 and is equivalent to the death of all notion, all belief or motive 
 to action, except what the appetites and the astucities may 
 yield. We have then the thrice-baleful Universe of Cant, pro- 
 phesied for these Latter Days ; and no 'battle,' but a kind of 
 bigger Donnybrook one, is possible for hapless mortals till 
 that alter. Faith, Fact, Performance, in all high and gradu- 
 ally in all low departments, go about their business ; Inanity 
 well tailored and upholstered, mild-spoken Ambiguity, decorous 
 Hypocrisy which is astonished you should think it hypocritical, 
 taking their room and drawing their wages : from zenith to 
 nadir, you have Cant, Cant, a Universe of Incredibilities 
 which are not even credited, which each man at best only tries 
 to persuade himself that he credits. Do you expect a divine 
 
No.^VIII. JESUITISM. 253 
 
 battle, with noble victories, out of this ? I expect a Hudson's 
 Statue from it, brisk trade in scrip, with Distressed Needle- 
 women, Cannibal Connaughts, and other the like phenomena, 
 such as we now everywhere see ! 
 
 Indisputably enough, what notion each forms of the Uni- 
 verse is the all-regulating fact with regard to him. The Uni- 
 verse makes no immediate objection to be conceived in any 
 way ; pictures itself as plainly in the seeing faculty of Newton's 
 Dog Diamond, as of Newton ; and yields to each a result ac- 
 curately corresponding. To the Dog Diamond dogs'-meat, 
 with its adjuncts, better or worse ; to Newton discovery of the 
 System of the Stars. Not the Universe's affair at all ; but the 
 seeing party's affair very much, for the results to each corre- 
 spond, with exact proportion, to his notion of it. 
 
 The saddest condition of human affairs, what ancient 
 Prophets denounced as 'the Throne of Iniquity," where men 
 ' decree injustice by a law :' all this, with its thousandfold outer 
 miseries, is still but a symptom ; all this points to a far sadder 
 disease which lies invisible within ! In new dialect, whatever 
 modified interpretation we may put upon it, the same must be 
 said as in old : ' God's judgments are abroad in the world ;' 
 and it would much behove many of us to know well that the 
 essential fact lies there and not elsewhere. If we ' sin against 
 God,' it is most certain ' God's judgments' will overtake us ; 
 and whether we recognise them as God's message like men, or 
 merely rage and writhe under them like dogs, and in our blind 
 agony, each imputing it to his neighbour, tear one another in 
 pieces under them, it is certain they will continue upon us, till we 
 either cease 'sinning,' or are all torn in pieces and annihilated. 
 
 Wide-spread suffering, mutiny and delirium ; the hot rage 
 of sansculottic Insurrections, the cold rage of resuscitated Ty- 
 rannies ; the brutal degradation of the millions, the pampered 
 frivolity of the units ; that awful unheeded spectacle, ' the 
 Throne of Iniquity decreeing injustice by a law,' as the just 
 eye can see it everywhere doing : certainly something must 
 be wrong in the inner man of the world, since its outer man 
 is so terribly out of square ! The deliverer of the world, there- 
 fore, were not he who headed sansculottic insurrections never 
 so successful, but he who pointed out to the world what night- 
 mares were resting over its soul. Ignatius Loyola, and the 
 innumerable company, Papist, Protestant, Sham-christian, Anti- 
 
254 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Christian, that have believed his revelation ; universal preval- 
 ence, from pole to pole, of such a ' doctrine of devils ;' reverent 
 or quasi-reverent faith in the dead human formulas, and som- 
 nolent contempt of the divine ever-living facts, such as reigns 
 now, consecrated and supreme, in all commonwealths and 
 countries, and hearts of men ; the Human Species, as it were, 
 unconsciously or consciously, gone all to one Sodality of Jesu- 
 itism : who will deliver us from the body of this death 1 It is 
 in truth like death-in-life ; a living-criminal (as in the old Ro- 
 man days) with a corpse lashed fast to him. What wretch 
 could have deserved such a doom ? 
 
 As to this Ignatius, I am aware he is admired, and even 
 transcendently admired, or what we call worshipped, by multi- 
 tudes of human creatures, who to this day expect, or endea- 
 vour to expect, some kind of salvation from him ; whom it is 
 so painful to enrage against me, if I could avoid it ! Undoubt- 
 edly Ignatius, centuries ago, gave satisfaction to the Devil's 
 Advocate, the Pope and other parties interested ; was canonised, 
 named Saint, and raised duly into Heaven officially so-called ; 
 whereupon, with many, he passes, ever since, for a kind of 
 God, or person who has much influence with the gods. Alas, 
 the admiration, and transcendent admiration, of mankind, 
 goes a strange road in these times ! Hudson too had his can- 
 onisation : and by Vox Populi, if not by Pope and Devil's Ad- 
 vocate, was raised to a kind of brass Olympus by mankind ; 
 and rode there for a year or two ; though he is already 
 gone to warming-pans again. A poor man, in our day, has 
 many gods foisted on him ; and big voices bid him, " Worship, 
 
 or be 1" in a menacing and confusing manner. What 
 
 shall he do ? By far the greater part of said gods, current in 
 the public, whether canonised by Pope or Populus, are mere 
 dumb Apises and beatified Prize-oxen; nay some of them, who 
 have articulate faculty, are devils instead of gods. A poor 
 man that would save his soul alive is reduced to the sad ne- 
 cessity of sharply trying his gods whether they are divine or 
 not ; which is a terrible pass for mankind, and lays an awful 
 problem upon each man. The man must do it, however. At 
 his own peril he will have to do this problem too, which is one 
 of the awfulest ; and his neighbours, all but a most select por- 
 tion of them, portion generally not clad in official tiaras, can 
 
No.'Vill. JESUITISM. 255 
 
 be of next to no help to him in it, nay rather will infinitely 
 hinder him in it, as matters go. If Ignatius, worshipped by 
 millions as a kind of god, is, in eternal fact, a kind of devil, or 
 enemy of whatsoever is godlike in man's existence, surely it is 
 pressingly expedient that men were made aware of it ; that 
 men, with whatever earnestness is yet in them, laid it awfully 
 to heart I 
 
 Prim friend with the black serge gown, with the rosary, 
 scapulary, and I know not what other spiritual block -and- 
 tackle, scowl not on me. If in thy poor heart, under its 
 rosaries, there dwell any human piety, awestruck reverence to- 
 wards the Supreme Maker, devout compassion towards this poor 
 Earth and her sons, scowl not anathema on me, listen to me ; 
 for I swear thou art my brother, in spite of rosaries and scapu- 
 laries ; and I recognise thee, though thou canst not me ; and 
 with love and pity know thee for a brother, though enchanted 
 into the condition of a spiritual mummy. Hapless creature, 
 curse me not ; listen to me, and consider ; perhaps even thou 
 wilt escape from mummyhood, and become once more a living 
 soul ! 
 
 Of Ignatius, then, I must take leave to say, there can this 
 be recorded, that probably he has done more mischief in the 
 Earth than any man born since. A scandalous mortal, O 
 brethren of mankind who live by truth and not by falsity, I 
 must call this man. Altogether, here where I stand, looking 
 on millions of poor pious brothers reduced to spiritual mummy- 
 hood, who curse me because I try to speak the truth to them, 
 and on a whole world canting and grimacing from birth to 
 death, and finding in their life two serious indubitabilities, 
 Cookery and Scrip, how, if he is the representative and chief 
 fountain of all this, can I call him other than the superlative 
 of scandals ? A bad man, I think ; not good by nature ; and 
 by destiny swollen into a very Ahriman of badness. Not good 
 by nature, I perceive. A man born greedy ; whose greatness 
 in the beginning, and even in the end if we will look well, is 
 indicated chiefly by the depth of his appetite : not the recom- 
 mendable kind of man ! A man full of prurient elements from 
 the first ; which at the last, through his long course, have de- 
 veloped themselves over the family of mankind into an expres- 
 sion altogether tremendous. 
 
256 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 A young Spanish soldier and hidalgo with hot Biscayan 
 blood, distinguished, as I understand, by his fierce appetites 
 chiefly, by his audacities and sensualities, and loud unreason- 
 able decision, That this Universe, in spite of rumours to the 
 contrary, was a Cookery-shop and Bordel, wherein garlic, Ja- 
 maica-pepper, unfortunate-females and other spicery and gar- 
 nishing awaited the bold human appetite, and the rest of it 
 was mere rumour and moonshine : with this life-theory and 
 practice had Ignatius lived some thirty years, a hot human 
 Papin's-digester and little other ; when, on the walls of Pam- 
 peluna, the destined cannon-shot shattered both his legs, 
 leaving his head, hitting only his legs, so the Destinies would 
 have it, and he fell at once totally prostrate, a wrecked Papin's- 
 digester ; lay many weeks horizontal, and had in that tedious 
 posture to commence a new series of reflections. He began to 
 perceive now that ' the rest of it' was not mere rumour and 
 moonshine ; that the rest was, in fact, the whole secret of the 
 matter. That the Cookery-shop and Bordel was a magical de- 
 lusion, a sleight-of-hand of Satan, to lead Ignatius down, by 
 garlic and finer temporal spiceries, to eternal Hell ; and that 
 in short he, Ignatius, had lived hitherto as a degraded ferocious 
 Human Pig, one of the most perfect scoundrels ; and was, at 
 that date, no other than a blot on Creation, and a scandal to 
 mankind. 
 
 With which set of reflections who could quarrel ? The re- 
 flections were true, were salutary; nay there was something of 
 sacred in them, as in the repentance of man, in the discovery 
 by erring man that wrong is not right, that wrong differs from 
 right as deep Hell from high Heaven, there ever is. Ignatius's 
 soul was in convulsions, in agonies of new birth ; for which I 
 honour Ignatius. Human sincerity could not but have told 
 him : " Yes, in several respects, thou art a detestable Human 
 " Pig, and disgrace to the family of man; for which it behoves 
 " thee to be in nameless remorse, till thy life either mend or 
 " end. Consider, there as thou liest with thy two legs smashed, 
 " the peccant element that is in thee ; discover it, rigorously 
 " tear it out ; reflect what farther thou wilt do. A life yet re- 
 " mains ; to be led, clearly, in some new manner : how wilt 
 " thou lead it ? Sit silent for the rest of thy days ? In some 
 " most modest seclusion, hide thyself from a humankind which 
 " has been dishonoured by thee ? Thy sin being pruriency of 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 257 
 
 44 appetite, give that at least no farther scope under any old 
 " or new form ?" 
 
 I admit, the question was not easy. Think, in this his 
 wrecked horizontal position, what could or should the poor in- 
 dividual called Inigo, Ignatius, or whatever the first name of 
 him was, have done ? Truly for Ignatius the question was very 
 complicated. But, had he asked from Nature and the Eternal 
 Oracles a remedy for wrecked sensualism, here surely was one 
 thing that would have suggested itself : To annihilate his pru- 
 riency. To cower, silent and ashamed, into some dim corner; 
 and resolve to make henceforth as little noise as possible. 
 That would have been modest, salutary ; that might have led 
 to many other virtues, and gradually to all. That, I think, is 
 what the small still voices would have told Ignatius, could he 
 have heard them amid the loud bullyings and liturgyings ; but 
 he couldn't, perhaps he never tried ; and that, accordingly, 
 was not what Ignatius resolved upon. 
 
 In fact, Christian doctrine, backed by all the human wis- 
 dom I could ever hear of, inclines me to think that Ignatius, 
 had he been a good and brave man, should have consented, at 
 this point, to be damned, as was clear to him that he de- 
 served to be. Here would have been a healing solace to his 
 conscience ; one transcendent act of virtue jvhich it still lay 
 with him, the worst of sinners, to do. " To die forever, as I 
 " have deserved ; let Eternal Justice triumph so, by means 
 " of me and my foul scandals, since otherwise it may not !" 
 Selbsttodtung, Annihilation of Self, justly reckoned the begin- 
 ning of all virtue : here is the highest form of it, still possible 
 to the lowest man. The voice of Nature this, to a repentant 
 outcast sinner turning again towards the realms of manhood ; 
 and I understand it is the precept of all right Christianity 
 too. But no, Ignatius could not, in his lowest abasement, con- 
 sent to have justice done on him, not on him, ah no ; and 
 there lay his crime and his misfortune, which has brought such 
 penalty on him and us. 
 
 The truth is, it was not of Eternal Nature and her Oracles 
 that Ignatius inquired, poor man ; it was of Temporary Art 
 and hers, and these sang not of self-annihilation, or Ignatius 
 would not hear that part of their song. Not so did Ignatius 
 read the omens. " My pruriency being terribly forbidden on 
 " one side, let it," thought Ignatius, deeply unconscious of such 
 
 s 
 
258 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 a thought, " have terrible course on another. Garlic-cookery 
 " and suchlike excitations are accursed to me forever; but can- 
 " not I achieve something that shall still assert my Ego I in 
 " a highly gratifying manner ?" Alas, human sincerity, hard 
 as his scourging had been, was not quite attainable by him. 
 In his frantic just agonies, he flung himself before the shrine 
 of Virgin Marys, Saints of the Romish Calendar, three-hatted 
 Holy Fathers, and uncertain Thaumaturgic Entities ; praying 
 that he might be healed by miracle, not by course of nature ; 
 and that, for one most fatal item, his pruriency of appetite 
 might, under new inverse forms, continue with him. Which 
 prayer, we may say, was granted. 
 
 In the depths of his despair, all Nature glooming veritable 
 reprobation on him, and Eternal Justice whispering, "Accept 
 what thou hast merited," there rose this altogether turbid semi- 
 artificial glare of hope upon Ignatius, " The Virgin will save 
 me, the Virgin has saved me :" Well and good, I say ; then 
 be quiet, and let us see some temperance and modesty in you. 
 Far otherwise did Ignatius resolve : temperance and true 
 modesty were not among the gifts of this precious individual 
 the Virgin had been at the pains to save. Many plans Ignatius 
 tried to make his Ego I still available on Earth, and still keep 
 Heaven open for him. His pilgrimings and battlings, his silent 
 sufferings and wrestlings for that object, are enormous, and 
 reach the highest pitch of the prurient-heroic. At length, after 
 various failures and unsatisfactory half-successes, it struck him : 
 " Has not there lately been a sort of revolt against the Virgin, 
 " and the Holy Father who takes care of her ? Certain infernal 
 " Heresiarchs in Germany and elsewhere, I am told, have 
 " risen up against the Holy Father, arguing with terrible 
 " plausibility that he is an Unholy Phantasm : he ; and if so, 
 " what am I and my outlooks ! A new light, presumably of 
 " Hell, has risen to that effect ; which new light why cannot 
 " I vow here, and consecrate myself, to battle against, and 
 " with my whole strength endeavour to extinguish ?" That was 
 the task Ignatius fixed upon as his ; and at that he has been 
 busy, he and an immense and ever-increasing sodality of mortals, 
 these three hundred years ; and, through various fortune, they 
 have brought it thus far. Truly to one of the most singular 
 predicaments the affairs of mankind ever stood in before. 
 
 If the new light is of Hell, O Ignatius, right : but if of 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 259 
 
 Heaven, there is not, that I know of, any equally damnable sin 
 as thine I No ; thy late Pighood itself is trivial in comparison. 
 Frantic mortal, wilt thou, at the bidding of any Papa, war 
 against Almighty God ? Is there no ' inspiration,' then, but an 
 ancient Jewish, Greekish, Romish one, with big revenues, loud 
 liturgies and red stockings ? The Pope is old ; but Eternity, 
 thou shalt observe, is older. High-treason against all the 
 Universe is dangerous to do. Quench not among us, I advise 
 thee, the monitions of that thrice-sacred gospel, holier than all 
 gospels, which dwells in each man direct from the Maker of 
 him 1 Frightfully will it be avenged on thee, and on all that 
 follow thee ; to the sixth generation and farther, all men shall 
 lie under this gigantic Upas-tree thou hast been planting ; ter- 
 ribly will the gods avenge it on thee, and on all thy Father 
 Adam's house ! 
 
 Ignatius's black militia, armed with this precious message 
 of salvation, have now been campaigning over all the world 
 for about three hundred years ; and openly or secretly have 
 done a mighty work over all the world. Who can count what 
 a work ! Where you meet a man believing in the salutary na- 
 ture of falsehoods, or the divine authority of things doubtful, 
 and fancying that to serve the Good Cause he must call the 
 Devil to his aid, there is a follower of Unsaint Ignatius ; not 
 till the last of these men has vanished from the Earth will our 
 account with Ignatius be quite settled, and his black militia have 
 got their mittimus to Chaos again. They have given a new 
 substantive to modern languages. The word 'Jesuitism' now, 
 in all countries, expresses an idea for which there was in Na- 
 ture no prototype before. Not till these late centuries had the 
 human soul generated that abomination, or needed to name it. 
 Truly they have achieved great things in the world ; and a 
 general result which we may call stupendous. Not victory 
 for Ignatius and the black militia, no, till the Universe itself 
 become a cunningly devised Fable, and God the Maker abdi- 
 cate in favour of Beelzebub, I do not see how ' victory' can fall 
 on that side ! But they have done such deadly execution on 
 the general soul of man ; and have wrought such havoc on the 
 terrestrial and supernal interests of this world, as insure to 
 Jesuitism a long memory in human annals. 
 
 How many three-hatted Papas, and scandalous Consecrated 
 
260 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Phantasms, cleric and laic, convicted or not yet suspected to 
 be Phantasms and servants of the Devil and not of God, does 
 it still retain in existence in all corners of this afflicted world ! 
 Germany had its War of Thirty Years, among other wars, on 
 this subject ; and had there not been elsewhere a nobler loyalty 
 to God's Cause than was to be found in Germany at that date, 
 Ignatius with his rosaries and gibbet-ropes, with his honey- 
 mouthed Fathers Lammerlein in black serge, and heavyfisted 
 Fathers Wallenstein in chain armour, must have carried it ; 
 and that alarming Lutheran new-light would have been got ex- 
 tinguished again. The Continent once well quenched out, it 
 was calculated England might soon be made to follow, and 
 then the whole world were blessed with orthodoxy. So it had 
 been computed. But Gustavus, a man prepared to die if need- 
 ful, Gustavus with his Swedes appeared upon the scene ; nay 
 shortly Oliver Cromwell with his Puritans appeared upon it ; 
 and the computation quite broke down. Beyond seas and 
 within seas, the Wallensteins and Lammerleins, the Hyacinths 
 and Andreas Habernfelds, the Lauds and Charleses, in fine, 
 Ignatius and all that held of him, had to cower into their holes 
 again, and try it by new methods. Many were their methods, 
 their fortune various ; and ever and anon, to the hope or the 
 terror of this and the other man of weak judgment, it has 
 seemed that victory was just about to crown Ignatius. True, 
 too true, the execution done upon the soul of mankind has 
 been enormous and tremendous ; but victory to Ignatius there 
 has been none, and will and can be none. 
 
 Nay at last, ever since 1789 and '93, the figure of the 
 quarrel has much altered ; and the hope for Ignatius (except 
 to here and there a man of weak judgment) has become a flat 
 impossibility. For Luther and Protestantism Proper having, 
 so to speak, withdrawn from the battle-field, as entities whose 
 work was done, there then appeared on it Jean Jacques and 
 French Sansculottism ; to which all creatures have gradually 
 joined themselves. Whereby now we have Protestantism Im- 
 proper, a Protestantism universal and illimitable on the part 
 of ah" men ; the whole world risen into anarchic mutiny, with 
 pike and paving-stone ; swearing by Heaven above and also by 
 Hell beneath, by the Eternal Yea and the Eternal No, that 
 Ignatius and Imposture shall not rule them any more, neither 
 in soul nor in body nor in breeches-pocket any more ; but that 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 261 
 
 they will go unruled rather, as they hope it will be possible 
 for them to do. This is Ignatius's ' destruction' of Protest- 
 antism : he has destroyed it into Sansculottism, such a form of 
 all-embracing Protestantism as was never dreamt of by the 
 human soul before. So that now, at last, there is hope of final 
 death and rest to Ignatius and his labours. Ignatius, I per- 
 ceive, is now sure to die, and be abolished before long ; nay is 
 already dead, and will not even galvanise much farther ; but, 
 in fine, is hourly sinking towards the Abyss, dragging much 
 along with him thither. Whole worlds along with him : such 
 continents of things, once living and beautiful, now dead and 
 horrible ; things once sacred, now not even commonly profane : 
 fearful and wonderful, to every thinking heart and seeing 
 eye, in these days ! That is the answer, slowly enunciated, but 
 irrevocable and indubitable, which Ignatius gets in Heaven's 
 High Court, when he appeals there, asking, " Am I a Sanctus 
 " or not, as the Papa and his Devil's-Advocate told me I was ?" 
 
 The ' vivaciousness* of Jesuitism is much spoken of, as a 
 thing creditable. And truly it is remarkable, though I think 
 in the way of wonder even more than of admiration, what a 
 quantity of killing it does require. To say nothing of the Crom- 
 wells and Gustavuses, and what they did, they and theirs, it 
 is near a century now since Pombal and Aranda, secular and 
 not divine men, yet useful antiseptic products of their genera- 
 tion, felt called, if not consciously by Heaven, then by Earth 
 which is unconsciously a bit of Heaven, to cut-down this scan- 
 dal from the world, and make the earth rid of Jesuitism for one 
 thing. What a wide-sweeping shear they gave it, as with the 
 sudden scythe of universal death, is well known ; and how, 
 mown down from side to side of the world in one day, it had 
 to lie sorrowfully slain and withering under the sun. After all 
 which, nay after 1793 itself, does not Jesuitism still pretend to 
 be alive, and in this year 1850, still (by dint of steady galvan- 
 ism) shows some quivering in its fingers and toes ? Vivacious, 
 sure enough ; and I suppose there must be reasons for it, which 
 it is well to note withal. But what if such vivaciousness were, 
 in good part, like that of evil weeds ; if the 'strength' of Jesuit- 
 ism were like that of typhus-fever, not a recommendable kind 
 of strength ! 
 
 I hear much also of obedience,' how that and the kindred 
 
262 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 virtues are prescribed and exemplified by Jesuitism ; the truth 
 of which, and the merit of which, far be it from me to deny. 
 Obedience, a virtue universally forgotten in these days, will 
 have to become universally known again. Obedience is good, 
 and indispensable : but if it be obedience to what is wrong 
 and false, good Heavens, there is no name for such a depth 
 of human cowardice and calamity ; spurned everlastingly by 
 the gods. Loyalty ? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub ? Will 
 you 'make a covenant with Death and Hell'? I will not be 
 loyal to Beelzebub ; I will become a nomadic Chactaw rather, 
 a barricading Sansculotte, a Conciliation-Hall repealer ; any- 
 thing and everything is venial to that. 
 
 The virtues of Jesuitism, seasoned with that fatal condiment, 
 are other than quite virtuous ! To cherish pious thoughts, and 
 assiduously keep your eye directed to a Heaven that is not real : 
 will that yield divine life to you, or hideous galvanic life-in- 
 death ? To cherish many quasi-human virtues, really many 
 possibilities of virtue ; and wed them all to the principle that 
 God can be served by believing what is not true : to put-out 
 the sacred lamp of Intellect within you ; to decide on maiming 
 yourself of that higher godlike gift, which God himself has given 
 you with a silent but awful charge in regard to it ; to be bullied 
 and bowowed out of your loyalty to the God of Light by big 
 Phantasms and three-hatted Chimeras : can I call that by the 
 name of nobleness or human courage ? " Could not help it," 
 say you ? If ' a man cannot help it,' a man must allow me to 
 say he has unfortunately given the most conspicuous proof of 
 caitiffhood that lay within his human possibility, and he must 
 cease to brag to me about his 'virtues,' in that sad case ! 
 
 But, in fact, the character of the poor creature named Ig- 
 natius, whether it be good or bad and worst, concerns us little ; 
 not even that of the specific Jesuit Body concerns us much. 
 The Jesuits proper have long since got their final mittimus from 
 England. Nor, in the seventeenth century, with an ubiquit- 
 ous alarming Toby Mathews, Andreas Habernfeld and Com- 
 pany ; with there a Father Hyacinth, and here a William Laud 
 and Charles First, was this by any means so light a business 
 as we now fancy. But it has been got accomplished. Long 
 now have the English People understood that Jesuits proper, 
 in so far as they are not Nothing (which is the commonest case), 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 263 
 
 are servants of the Prince of Darkness : by Puritan Cromwel- 
 liads on the great scale, and on the small by diligent hunting, 
 confinement in the Clink Prison, and judicial tribulation, let 
 us say, by earnest pious thought and fight, and the labours of 
 the valiant born to us, this country has been tolerably cleared 
 of Jesuits proper ; nor is there danger of their ever coming to 
 a head here again. But, alas, the expulsion of the Jesuit Body 
 avails us little, when the JesuitSouthas so nestled itself in the 
 life of mankind everywhere. What we have to complain of is, 
 that all men are become Jesuits ! That no man speaks the 
 truth to you or to himself, but that every man lies, with blas- 
 phemous audacity, and does not know that he is lying, before 
 God and man, in regard to almost all manner of things. This 
 is the fell heritage bequeathed us by Ignatius ; to this sad stage 
 has our battle with him come. 
 
 Consider it, good reader ; and yet alas, if thou be not one 
 of a thousand, what is the use of bidding thee consider it I The 
 deadliest essence of the curse we now labour under is that the 
 light of our inner eyesight is gone out ; that such things are 
 not discernible by considering. ' Cant and even sincere Cant :' 
 O Heaven, when a man doing his sincerest is still but canting ! 
 For this is the sad condition of the insincere man : he is doomed 
 all his days to deal with insincerities ; to live, move, and have 
 his being in traditions and conventionalities. If the traditions 
 have grown old, the conventionalities will be mostly false ; true 
 in no sense can they be for him : never shall he behold the 
 truth of any matter ; formulas, theologic, economic and other, 
 certain superficial readings of truth, required in the market- 
 place, these he will take with him, these he will apply dex- 
 trously, and with these he will have to satisfy himself. Sin- 
 cerity shall not exist for him ; he shall think that he has found 
 it, while it is yet far away. The deep, awful and indeed divine 
 quality of truth that lies in every object, and in virtue of which 
 the object exists, from his poor eyes this is forever hidden. 
 Not with austere divine realities which belong to the Universe 
 and to Eternity, but with paltry ambiguous phantasms, com- 
 fortable and uncomfortable, which belong to his own parish, 
 and to the current week or generation, shall he pass his days. 
 
 There had been liars in the world ; alas, never since the 
 Old Serpent tempted Eve, had the world been free of liars, nei- 
 ther will it be : but there was in this of Jesuit Ignatius an apo- 
 
264 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 theosis of falsity, a kind of subtle quintessence and deadly virus 
 of lying, the like of which had never been seen before. Measure 
 it, if you can ; prussic-acid and chloroform are poor to it ! Men 
 had served the Devil, and men had very imperfectly served 
 God ; but to think that God could be served more perfectly by 
 taking the Devil into partnership, this was a novelty of St. 
 Ignatius. And this is now no novelty ; to such extent has the 
 Jesuit chloroform stupefied us all. This is the universal faith 
 and practice, for several generations past, of the class called 
 good men in this world. They are in general mutineers, sans- 
 culottes, angry disorderly persons, and a class rather worthy 
 to be called bad, who hitherto assert the contrary of this. " Be 
 " careful how you believe truth," cries the good man every- 
 where : " Composure and a whole skin are very valuable. Truth, 
 " who knows ? many things are not true ; most things are 
 " uncertainties, very prosperous things are even open falsities 
 " that have been agreed upon. There is little certain truth 
 " going. If it isn't orthodox truth, it will play the very devil 
 " with you !" 
 
 Did the Human Species ever lie in such a soak of horrors, 
 sunk like steeping flax under the wide-spread fetid Hell- 
 waters, in all spiritual respects dead, dead ; voiceless towards 
 Heaven for centuries back ; merely sending up, in the form 
 of mute prayer, such an odour as the angels never smelt be- 
 fore ! It has to lie there, till the worthless part has been rotted 
 out ; till much has been rotted out, I do perceive ; and per- 
 haps the time has come when the precious lint fibre itself is in 
 danger ; and men, if they are not delivered, will cease to be 
 men, or to be at all ! O Heavens, with divine Hudson on this 
 hand, and divine Ignatius on that, and the Gorham Contro- 
 versy going on, and the Irish Tenant Agitation (which will 
 soon become a Scotch and an English ditto) just about begin- 
 ning, is not the hour now nearly come ? Words fail us when 
 we would speak of what Ignatius has done for men. Probably 
 the most virulent form of sin which the Old Serpent has yet 
 rejoiced in on our poor Earth. For me it is the deadliest 
 high treason against God our Maker which the soul of man 
 could commit. 
 
 And this, then, is the horrible conclusion we have arrived 
 at, in England as in all countries ; and with less protest against 
 it hitherto, and not with more, in England than in other coun- 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 265 
 
 tries ? That the great body of orderly considerate men ; men 
 affecting the name of good and pious, and who, in fact, ex- . 
 eluding certain silent exceptionary individuals one to the mil- 
 lion, such as the Almighty Beneficence never quite withholds, 
 are accounted our best men, have unconsciously abnegated 
 the sacred privilege and duty of acting or speaking the truth ; 
 and fancy that it is not truth that is to be acted, but that an 
 amalgam of truth and falsity is the safe thing. In parliament 
 and pulpit, in book and speech, in whatever spiritual thing 
 men have to commune of, or to do together, this is the rule 
 they have lapsed into, this is the pass they have arrived at. 
 We have to report that Human Speech is not true ! That it 
 is false to a degree never witnessed in this world till lately. 
 Such a subtle virus of falsity in the very essence of it, as far 
 excels all open lying, or prior kinds of falsity ; false with con- 
 sciousness of being sincere ! The heart of the world is cor- 
 rupted to the core ; a detestable devil's-poison circulates in the 
 life-blood of mankind ; taints with abominable deadly malady 
 all that mankind do. Such a curse never fell on men before. 
 
 For the falsity of speech rests on a far deeper falsity. 
 False speech, as is inevitable when men long practise it, falsi- 
 fies all things ; the very thoughts, or fountains of speech and 
 action become false. Ere long, by the appointed curse of 
 Heaven, a man's intellect ceases to be capable of distinguish- 
 ing truth, when he permits himself to deal in speaking or acting 
 what is false. Watch well the tongue, for out of it are the 
 issues of life ! O, the foul leprosy that heaps itself in mon- 
 strous accumulation over Human Life, and obliterates all the 
 divine features of it into one hideous mountain of purulent 
 disease, when Human Life parts company with truth ; and 
 fancies, taught by Ignatius or another, that lies will be the 
 salvation of it ! We of these late centuries have suffered as 
 the sons of Adam never did before ; hebetated, sunk under 
 mountains of torpid leprosy ; and studying to persuade our- 
 selves that this is health. 
 
 And if we have awakened from the sleep of death into the 
 Sorcerer's Sabbath of Anarchy, is it not the chief of blessings 
 that we are awake at all ? Thanks to Transcendent Sanscu- 
 lottism and the long-memorable French Revolution, the one 
 veritable and tremendous Gospel of these bad ages, divine Gos- 
 pel such as we deserved, and merciful too, though preached 
 
266 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 in thunder and terror ! Napoleon Campaignings, September 
 Massacres, Reigns of Terror, Anacharsis Clootz and Pontiff 
 Robespierre, and still more beggarly tragicalities that we have 
 since seen, and are still to see : what frightful thing were not 
 a little less frightful than the th>ng we had ? Peremptory was 
 our necessity of putting Jesuitism away, of awakening to the 
 consciousness of Jesuitism. 'Horrible,' yes : how could it be 
 other than horrible ? Like the valley of Jehosaphat, it lies 
 round us, one nightmare wilderness, and wreck of dead-men's 
 bones, this false modern world ; and no rapt Ezechiel in pro- 
 phetic vision imaged to himself things sadder, more horrible 
 and terrible, than the eyes of men, if they are awake, may now 
 deliberately see. Many yet sleep ; but the sleep of all, as we 
 judge by their maundering and jargoning, their Gorham Con- 
 troversies, street-barricadings, and uneasy tossings and som- 
 nambulisms, is not far from ending. Novalis says, ' We are 
 near awakening when we dream that we are dreaming? 
 
 A man's ' religion' consists not of the many things he is in 
 doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, 
 and has no need of effort for believing. His religion, what- 
 ever it may be, is a discerned fact, and coherent system of 
 discerned facts to him ; he stands fronting the worlds and the 
 eternities upon it : to doubt of it is not permissible at all ! He 
 must verify or expel his doubts, convert them into certainty 
 of Yes or No ; or they will be the death of his religion. But, 
 on the other hand, convert them into certainty of Yes and No ; 
 or even of Yes though No, as the Ignatian method is, what 
 will become of your religion ? Let us glance a little at this 
 strange aspect of our affairs. 
 
 What a man's or nation's available religion at any time is, 
 may sometimes, especially if he abound in Bishops, Gorham 
 Controversies, and richly endowed Churches and Church-prac- 
 tices, be difficult to say. For a Nation which, under very 
 peculiar circumstances, closed its Bible about two hundred 
 years ago, hanged the dead body of its Cromwell, and accepted 
 one Charles Second for Defender of its Faith so-called ; for 
 such a Nation, which has closed its Bible, and decided that 
 the sufficient and much handier practice would be to kiss the 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 267 
 
 outside of said Bible, and in all senses swear zealously by the 
 same without opening it again, the question what its ' reli- 
 gion' is, may naturally be involved in obscurities f Such dra- 
 maturgic fugle-worship going on everywhere, and kissing of 
 the closed Bible, what real worship, religion, or recognition of 
 a Divine Necessity in Nature and Life, there may be Or, in 
 fact, is there any left at all ? Very little, I should say. 
 
 The religion of a man in these strange circumstances, what 
 living conviction he has about his Destiny in this Universe, 
 falls into a most strange condition; and, in truth, I have 
 observed, is apt to take refuge in the stomach mainly. The 
 man goes through his prescribed fugle-motions at church and 
 elsewhere, keeping his conscience and sense of decency at 
 ease thereby ; and in some empty part of his brain, if he have 
 fancy left, or brain other than a beaver's, there goes on occa- 
 sionally some dance of dreamy hypotheses, sentimental echoes, 
 shadows, and other inane make-believes, which I think are 
 quite the contrary of a possession to him ; leading to no clear 
 Faith, or divine life-and-death Certainty of any kind ; but to 
 a torpid species of delirium somnians and delirium stertens 
 rather. In his head or in his heart this man has of available 
 religion none. But descend into his stomach, purse and the 
 adjacent regions, you then do awaken, even in the very last 
 extremity, a set of divine beliefs, were it only belief in the mul- 
 tiplication-table, and certain coarser outward forms of meum 
 and tuum. He believes in the inalienable nature of purchased 
 beef, in the duty of the British citizen to fight for himself when 
 injured, and other similar faiths : an actual ' religion' of its 
 sort, or revelation of what the Almighty Maker means with 
 him in this Earth, and has irrefragably, as by direct inspira- 
 tion, charged him to do. This is the man's religion ; this poor 
 scantling of ' divine convictions' which you find lying, mostly 
 inarticulate, in deep sleep at the bottom of his stomach, and 
 have such difficulty in raising into any kind of elocution or 
 conscious wakefulness. 
 
 Alas, so much of him, his soul almost wholly, is not only 
 asleep there, but gone drowned and dead. The ' religion' you 
 awaken in him is often of a very singular quality ; enough to 
 make the observer pause in silence. Such a religion, issuing 
 practically in Hudson Statues, and, alas, also in Distressed 
 Needlewomen, Cannibal Connaughts, and ' remedial measures 
 
268 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 suited to the occasion,' was never seen among Adam's Pos- 
 terity before. But it is this modern man's religion ; all the 
 religion you will get of him. And if you can winnow-out the 
 fugle-motions, fantasies, sentimentalisms, make-believes, and 
 other multitudinous chaff, so that his religion stands before 
 you in its net condition, you may contemplate it with scientific 
 astonishment, with innumerable reflections, and may perhaps 
 draw wise inferences from it. 
 
 A singular piece of scribble, in Sauerteig's hand, bearing 
 marks of haste and almost of rage (for the words, abbreviated 
 to the bone, tumble about as if in battle on the paper), occurs 
 to me at this moment, entitled Schtvein'sche Weltansicht j and 
 I will try to decipher and translate it. 
 
 Pig Philosophy. 
 
 ' If the inestimable talent of Literature should, in these 
 ' swift days of progress, be extended to the brute creation, 
 ' having fairly taken-in all the human, so that swine and oxen 
 ' could communicate to us on paper what they thought of the 
 
 Universe, there might curious results, not uninstructive to 
 4 some of us, ensue. Supposing swine (I mean fourfooted swine), 
 
 of sensibility and superior logical parts, had attained such 
 ' culture ; and could, after survey and reflection, jot-down for 
 ' us their notion of the Universe, and of their interests and 
 ' duties there, might it not well interest a discerning public, 
 ' perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a stimulus to the lan- 
 ' guishing book-trade ? The votes of all creatures, it is under- 
 ' stood at present, ought to be had; that you may "legislate" 
 ' for them with better insight. " How can you govern a thing," 
 ' say many, " without first asking its vote ?" Unless, indeed, 
 1 you already chance to know its vote, and even something 
 ' more, namely, what you are to think of its vote; what //wants 
 ' by its vote; and still more important, what Nature wants, 
 
 which latter, at the end of the account, is the only thing that 
 
 ' will be got ! Pig Propositions, in a rough form, are some- 
 
 ' what as follows : 
 
 1 1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an 
 
 immeasurable Swine's-trough, consisting of solid and liquid, 
 and of other contrasts and kinds ; especially consisting of 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 269 
 
 ' attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater 
 ' quantities for most pigs. 
 
 ' 2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pig's-wash ; moral good, 
 ' attainability of ditto. 
 
 '3. " What is Paradise, or the State of Innocence ?" Para- 
 ' disc, called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other 
 ' names, -was (according to Pigs of weak judgment) unlimited 
 ' attainability of Pig's-wash ; perfect fulfilment of one's wishes, 
 ' so that the Pig's imagination could not outrun reality : a fable 
 ' and an impossibility, as Pigs of sense now see. 
 
 4. "Define the Whole Duty of Pigs." It is the mission 
 ' of universal Pighood, and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to 
 ' diminish the quantity of unattainable and increase that of 
 ' attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be 
 ' directed thither and thither only ; Pig Science, Pig Enthusiasm 
 ' and Devotion have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of 
 
 Pigs. 
 
 ' 5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of universal recognition of 
 ' the excellence of Pig's-wash and ground barley, and the felicity 
 ' of Pigs whose trough is in order, and who have had enough : 
 ' Hrumph ! 
 
 ' 6. The Pig knows the weather ; he ought to look out what 
 ' kind of weather it will be. 
 
 7. " Who made the Pig?" Unknown ; perhaps the Pork- 
 ' butcher ? 
 
 1 8. " Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom ?" Pigs of ob- 
 ' servation have discerned that there is, or was once supposed 
 ' to be, a thing called justice. Undeniably at least there is a 
 
 sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge, &c., which, 
 ' if one Pig provoke another, comes out in a more or less de- 
 ' structive manner : hence laws are necessary, amazing quan- 
 ' tities of laws. For quarrelling is attended with loss of blood, 
 ' of life, at any rate with frightful effusion of the general stock 
 ' of Hog's-wash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of 
 ' the universal Swine's-trough : wherefore let justice be observed, 
 ' that so quarrelling be avoided. 
 
 9. "What is justice?" Your own share of the general 
 ' Swine's-trough, not any portion of my share. 
 
 ' 10. "But what is 'my' share?" Ah! there in fact lies 
 ' the grand difficulty; upon which Pig science, meditating this 
 ' long while, can settle absolutely nothing. My share hrumph ! 
 
270 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive to get 
 ' without being hanged or sent to the hulks. For there are gib- 
 ' bets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which Lawyers 
 ' have prescribed. 
 
 'ii. "Who are Lawyers?" Servants of God, appointed 
 ' revealers of the oracles of God, who read-off to us from day 
 ' to day what is the eternal Commandment of God in reference 
 ' to the mutual claims of his creatures in this world. 
 
 1 12. "Where do they find that written?" In Coke upon 
 Lyttelton. 
 
 '13. " Who made Coke ?" Unknown : the maker of Coke's 
 wig is discoverable. "What became of Coke?" Died. 
 
 ' "And then ?" Went to the undertaker; went to the' But 
 
 we must pull up : Sauerteig's fierce humour, confounding ever 
 farther in his haste the fourfooted with the twofooted animal, 
 rushes into wilder and wilder forms of satirical torch-dancing, 
 and threatens to end in a universal Rape of the Wigs, which in 
 a person of his character looks ominous and dangerous. Here, 
 for example, is his fifty-first ' Proposition,' as he calls it : 
 
 51. " What are Bishops ?" Overseers of souls. " What 
 ' is a soul ?" The thing that keeps the body alive. " How do 
 ' they oversee that ?" They tie on a kind of aprons, publish 
 ' charges ; I believe they pray dreadfully ; macerate themselves 
 ' nearly dead with continual grief that they cannot in the least 
 ' oversee it. "And are much honoured?" By the wise very 
 ' much. 
 
 52. "Define the Church." I had rather not. "Do you 
 believe in a Future state?" Yes, surely. "What is it?" 
 ' Heaven, so-called. " To everybody ?" I understand so ; hope 
 so! "What is it thought to be?" Hrumphl "No Hell 
 1 then, at all ?" Hrumph 1* 
 
 The Fine Arts are by some thought to be a kind of religion ; 
 the chief religion this poor Europe is to have in time coming : 
 and undoubtedly it is in Literature, Poetry and the other kin- 
 dred Arts, where at least a certain manliness of temper, and 
 liberty to follow truth, prevails or might prevail, that the world's 
 chosen souls do now chiefly take refuge, and attempt what 
 ' Worship of the Beautiful' may still be possible for them. The 
 Poet in the Fine Arts, especially the Poet in Speech, what 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 271 
 
 Fichte calls the 'Scholar* or the ' Literary Man,' is defined by 
 Fichte as the ' Priest' of these Modern Epochs, all the Priest 
 they have. And indeed Nature herself will teach us that the 
 man born with what we call 'genius,' which will mean, born 
 with better and larger understanding than others ; the man in 
 whom 'the inspiration of the Almighty,' given to all men, has 
 a higher potentiality; that he, and properly he only, is the 
 perpetual Priest of Men ; ordained to the office by God himself, 
 whether men can be so lucky as to get him ordained to it or 
 not : nay, he does the office, too, after a sort, in this and in all 
 epochs. Ever must the Fine Arts be if not religion, yet indis- 
 solubly united to it, dependent on it, vitally blended with it as 
 body is with soul. 
 
 Why should I say, Ignatius Loyola ruined our Fine Arts ? 
 Ignatius thought not of the Fine Arts ; nor is the guilt all his. 
 Ignatius, intent on the heart of the matter, did but consecrate 
 in the name of Heaven, and religiously welcome as life in God, 
 the universal death in the Devil which of itself was preparing 
 to come, on the Fine Arts as on all things. The Fine Arts 
 are not what I most regret in the catastrophe so frightfully ac- 
 celerated and consummated by him ! If men's practical faith 
 have become a Pig Philosophy, and their divine worship have 
 become a Mumbojumboism, soliciting in dumb agony either 
 change to the very heart or else extinction and abolition, it 
 matters little what their fine or other arts may be. All arts, 
 industries and pursuits they have, are tainted to the heart with 
 foul poison ; carry not in them the inspiration of God, but 
 (frightful to think of !) that of the Devil calling and thinking 
 himself God ; and are smitten with a curse forevermore. What 
 judgment the Academy of Cognoscenti may pronounce on them, 
 is unimportant to me; what splendour of upholstery and French 
 cookery, and temporary bullion at the Bank, may be realised 
 from them, is important to M'Croudy, not to me. 
 
 Such bullion, I perceive well, can but be temporary ; and 
 if it were to be eternal, would bullion reconcile me to them ? 
 No, M'Croudy, never. Bullion, temporary bullion itself, awakens 
 the hallelujah of flunkies ; but even eternal bullion ought to 
 make small impression upon men. To men I count it a hu- 
 man blessedness, and stern benignity of Heaven, that when 
 their course is false and ignoble, their bullion begins to leave 
 them ; that ultimate bankruptcy, and flat universal ruin, pub- 
 
272 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 lished in the gazette, and palpable even to flunkies, follows 
 step by step, at a longer or shorter interval, all solecisms under 
 this sun. Certain as shadow follows substance ; it is the oldest 
 law of Fate : and one good day, open ruin, bankruptcy and 
 foul destruction, does overtake them all. Let us bless God for 
 it. Were it otherwise, what end could there be of solecisms ? 
 The temporary paradise of quacks and flunkies were now an 
 eternal paradise ; how could the noble soul find harbour or 
 patience in this world at all ? This world were the inherit- 
 ance of the ignoble ; a very Bedlam, as some sceptics have 
 fancied it ; made by malignant gods in their sport. 
 
 But as to Jesuitism in the Fine Arts, and how its unsus- 
 pected thrice-unblessed presence here too smites the genius of 
 mankind with paralysis, there were much to be said. Sorrow- 
 ful reflections lie in that, far beyond what a discerning public 
 fancies in these days ; reflections which cannot be entered 
 upon, which can hardly be indicated afar off, at present. Here 
 too, as elsewhere, the consummate flower of Consecrated Un- 
 veracity reigns supreme ; and here as elsewhere peaceably pre- 
 sides over an enormous Life-in-Death ! 
 
 " May the Devil fly away with the Fine Arts !" exclaimed 
 confidentially once, in my hearing, one of our most distin- 
 guished public men ; a sentiment that often recurs to me. I 
 perceive too well how true it is, in our case. A public man, 
 intent on any real business, does, I suppose, find the Fine Arts 
 rather imaginary. The Fine Arts, wherever they turn-up as 
 business, whatever Committee sit upon them, are sure to be 
 the parent of much empty talk, laborious hypocrisy, dilettant- 
 ism, futility ; involving huge trouble and expense and babble, 
 which end in no result, if not in worse than none. The prac- 
 tical man, in his moments of sincerity, feels them to be a pre- 
 tentious nothingness ; a confused superfluity and nuisance, pur- 
 chased with cost, what he in brief language denominates a 
 bore. It is truly so, in these degraded days : and the Fine 
 Arts, among other fine interests of ours, are really called to 
 recognise it, and see what they will do in it. For they are 
 become the Throne of Hypocrisy, I think the highest of her 
 many thrones, these said Arts ; which is very sad to consider ! 
 Nowhere, not even on a gala-day in the Pope's Church of St. 
 Peter, is there such an explosion of intolerable hypocrisy, on 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 273 
 
 the part of poor mankind, as when you admit them into their 
 Royal Picture-gallery, Glyptothek, Museum, or other divine 
 Temple of the Fine Arts. Hypocrisy doubly intolerable ; be- 
 cause it is not here, as in St. Peter's and some other Churches, 
 an obliged hypocrisy but a voluntary one. Nothing but your 
 own vanity prompts you here to pretend worshipping ; you are 
 not bound to worship, and twaddle pretended raptures, cri- 
 ticisms and poetic recognitions, unless you like it ; and you 
 do not the least know what a damnable practice it is, or you 
 wouldn't ! I make a rule, these many years back, to speak 
 almost nothing, and encourage no speech in Picture-galleries ; 
 to avoid company, even that of familiar friends, in such situa- 
 tions ; and perambulate the place in silence. You can thus 
 worship or not worship, precisely as the gods bid you ; and are 
 at least under no obligation to do hypocrisies, if you cannot 
 conveniently worship. 
 
 The fact is, though men are not in the least aware of it, 
 the Fine Arts, divorced entirely from Truth this long while, 
 and wedded almost professedly to Falsehood, Fiction and such- 
 like, are got into what we must call an insane condition : they 
 walk abroad without keepers, nobody suspecting their sad state, 
 and do fantastic tricks equal to any in Bedlam, especially 
 when admitted to work 'regardless of expense,' as we some- 
 times see them 1 What earnest soul passes that new St. Ste- 
 phen's, and its wilderness of stone pepperboxes with their tin 
 flags atop, worth two millions I am told, without mentally ex- 
 claiming Apage, and cutting some pious cross in the air ! If 
 that be ' ideal beauty,' except for sugarwork, and the more 
 elaborate kinds of gingerbread, what is real ugliness ? To say 
 merely (with an architectonic trumpet-blast that cost two-mil- 
 lions), " Good Christians, you observe well I am regardless of 
 expense, and also of veracity, in every form ?" Too truly these 
 poor Fine Arts have fallen mad ! 
 
 The Fine Arts once divorcing themselves from truth, are 
 quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die, and get flown 
 away with by the Devil, which latter is only the second-worst 
 result for us. Truth,, fact, is the life of all things ; falsity, 
 ' fiction* or whatever it may call itself, is certain to be death, 
 and is already insanity, to whatever thing takes up with it. 
 Fiction, even to the Fine Arts, is not a quite permissible thing. 
 Sparingly permissible, within iron limits ; or if you will reckon 
 
 T 
 
274 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 strictly, not permissible at all ! The Fine Arts too, like the 
 coarse and every art of Man's god-given Faculty, are to under- 
 stand that they are sent hither not to fib and dance, but to 
 speak and work ; and, on the whole, that God Almighty's 
 Facts, such as given us, are the one pabulum which will yield 
 them any nourishment in this world. O Heavens, had they 
 always well remembered that, what a world were it now t 
 
 This seems strange doctrine : but it is to me, this long 
 while, too sorrowfully certain ; and I invite all my artist friends, 
 of the painting, sculpturing, speaking, writing, especially of the 
 singing and rhyming department, to meditate upon it, till, with 
 amazement, remorse, and determination to amend, they get to 
 see what lies in it ! Homer's Iliad, if you examine, is no Fic- 
 tion but a Ballad History j the heart of it burning with enthu- 
 siastic ill-informed belief. It ' sings' itself, because its rude 
 heart, rapt into transcendency of zeal and admiration, is too 
 full for speaking. The ' valour of Tydides,' ' wrath of the divine 
 Achilles :' in old Greece, in Phthiotis and -^Etolia, to earnest 
 souls that could believe them, these things were likely to be 
 interesting ! Human speech was once wholly true ; as tran- 
 scendent human speech still is. The Hebrew Bible, is it not, 
 before all things, true, as no other Book ever was or will be ? 
 All great Poems, all great Books, if you search the first founda- 
 tion of their greatness, have been veridical, the truest they could 
 get to be. Never will there be a great Poem more that is not 
 veridical, that does not ground itself on the Interpreting of 
 Fact ; to the rigorous exclusion of all falsity, fiction, idle dross 
 of every kind : never can a Poem truly interest human souls, 
 except by, in the first place, taking with it the belief 'of said 
 souls. Their belief; that is the whole basis, essence, and prac- 
 tical outcome, of human souls : leave that behind you, as ' Poets' 
 everywhere have for a long time done, what is there left the 
 Poets and you ! 
 
 The early Nations of the world, all Nations so long as they 
 continued simple and in earnest, knew without teaching that 
 their History was an Epic and Bible, the clouded struggling 
 Image of a God's Presence, the action of heroes and god-in- 
 spired men. The noble intellect that could disenthral such 
 divine image, and present it to them clear, unclouded, in visible 
 coherency comprehensible to human thought, was felt to be a 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 275 
 
 Vates and the chief of intellects. No need to bid him sing it, 
 make a Poem of it. Nature herself compelled him ; except in 
 Song or in Psalm, such an insight by human eyes into the di- 
 vine was not utterable. These are the Bibles of Nations ; to 
 each its Believed History is its Bible. Not in Judea alone, 
 or Hellas and Latium alone ; but in all lands and all times. 
 Nor, deeply as the fact is now forgotten, has it essentially in 
 the smallest degree ceased to be the fact, nor will it cease. 
 With every Nation it is so, and with every man ; for every 
 Nation, I suppose, was made by God, and every man too ? 
 Only there are some Nations, like some men, who know it ; 
 and some who do not. The great Nations are they that have 
 known it well ; the small and contemptible, both of men and 
 Nations, are they that have either never known it, or soon for- 
 gotten it and never laid it to heart. Of these comes nothing. 
 The measure of a Nation's greatness, of its worth under this 
 sky to God and to men, is not the quantity of cotton it can 
 spin, the quantity of bullion it has realised ; but the quantity 
 of heroisms it has achieved, of noble pieties and valiant wis- 
 doms that were in it, that still are in it. 
 
 Beyond doubt the Almighty Maker made this England too ; 
 and has been and forever is miraculously present here. The 
 more is the pity for us if our eyes are grown owlish, and can- 
 not see this fact of facts when it is before us ! Once it was 
 known that the Highest did of a surety dwell in this Nation, 
 divinely avenging, and divinely saving and rewarding ; lead- 
 ing, by steep and flaming paths, by heroisms, pieties and noble 
 acts and thoughts, this Nation heavenward, if it would and 
 dared. Known or not, this (or else the terrible inverse of this) 
 is forevermore the fact ! The History of England too, had the 
 Fine or other Arts taught us to read it right, is the record of 
 the Divine Appearances among us ; of the brightnesses out of 
 Heaven that have irradiated our terrestrial struggle ; and 
 spanned our wild deluges, and weltering seas of trouble, as 
 with celestial rainbows, and symbols of eternal covenants. It is 
 the Bible of the Nation : what part of it they have laid to heart, 
 and do practically know for truth, is the available Bible they have. 
 
 Ask yourselves, What are the eternal covenants which you 
 can believe, and dare not for your life's sake but go and ob- 
 serve ? These are your Bible, your God's Word such as it may 
 be : these you will continually struggle to obey ; other than 
 
276 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 these, not continually, or authentically at all. Did the Maker 
 of this Universe reveal himself, to your believing Intellect, in 
 scrip mainly, in Cotton Trades, and profitable industries and 
 gamblings ? Here too you will see 'miracles:' tubular bridges, 
 gutta-percha telegraphs ; not to speak of sudden Hudson cor- 
 nucopias, scrip manna-showers, and pillar-of-cloud for all the 
 flunkies, miracles after a sort. Your Bible will be a Political 
 Economy ; your psalmist and evangelist will be M'Croudy ; your 
 practical worship the insatiable desire, and continual sacred 
 effort, to make money. Bible, of one or the other sort, bible, 
 evangelist, and worship you infallibly will have : and some 
 are God-worships, fruitful in human heroisms, in blessed arts, 
 and deeds long-memorable, shining with a sacred splendour of 
 the empyrean across all earthly darknesses and contradictions : 
 and some again are, to a terrible extent, Devil-worships, fruit- 
 ful in temporary bullion, in upholstery, gluttony and universal 
 varnish and gold-leaf; and issuing, alas, at length in street- 
 barricades, and a confused return of them to the Devil whose 
 they are ! My friend, I have to speak in crude language, the 
 wretched times being dumb and deaf: and if thou find no truth 
 under this but the phantom of an extinct Hebrew one, I at 
 present cannot help it. 
 
 Hengst Invasions, Norman Conquests, Battles of Brunan- 
 burg, Battles of Evesham, Towton ; Plantagenets, Wars of 
 Roses, Wars of Roundheads : does the fool in his heart believe 
 that all this was a Donnybrook Bedlam, originating nowhere, 
 proceeding nowhither ? His beautifully cultivated intellect has 
 given him such interpretation, and no better, of the Universe 
 we live'in? He discerns it to be an enormous sooty Weaving- 
 shop, and turbid Manufactory of eatables and drinkables and 
 wearables ; sparingly supplied with provender by the indus- 
 trious individuals, and much infested by the mad and idle. 
 And he can consent to live here ; he does not continually think 
 of suicide as a remedy ? The unhappy mortal : if a soul ever 
 awaken in him again, his first thought will be of prussic-acid, 
 I should say ! 
 
 All History, whether M'Croudy and his Fine Arts know the 
 fact or not, is an inarticulate Bible ; and in a dim intricate 
 manner reveals the Divine Appearances in this lower world. 
 For God did make this world, and does forever govern it ; the 
 loud-roaring Loom of Time, with all its French revolutions, 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 277 
 
 Jewish revelations, 'weaves the vesture thou seest Him by.' 
 There is no Biography of a man, much less any History, or 
 Biography of a Nation, but wraps in it a message out of Heaven, 
 addressed to the hearing ear or to the not hearing. What this 
 Universe is, what the Laws of God are, the Life of every man 
 will a little teach it you ; the Life of All Men and of All Things, 
 only this could wholly teach it you, and you are to be open 
 to learn. 
 
 Who are they, gifted from above, that will convert volu- 
 minous Dryasdust into an Epic and even a Bible ? Who will 
 smelt, in the all-victorious fire of his soul, these scandalous be- 
 wildering rubbish-mountains of sleepy Dryasdust, till they give- 
 up the golden ingot that lies imprisoned in them ? The veritable 
 ' revelation,' this, of the ways of God to England ; how the 
 Almighty Power, and his mysterious Providences, dealt here- 
 tofore with England ; more and more what the Almighty's 
 judgments with us, his chastisements and his beneficences, were ; 
 what the Supreme Will, since ushering this English People on 
 the stage of things, has guided them to do and to become. 
 Fine Arts, Literatures, Poetries ? If they are Human Arts at 
 all, where have they been wool-gathering, these centuries long ; 
 wandering literally like creatures fallen mad ! 
 
 It awakens graver thoughts than were in Marlborough, that 
 saying of his, That he knew no English History but what he 
 had learned from Shakspeare. In Shakspeare's grand intelli- 
 gence the History of England, cursory as was his study of it, 
 does model itself, for the first time, into something of rhythmic 
 and poetic ; there are scattered traits and tones of a National 
 Epos in those Historical Plays of his. In Shakspeare, more 
 than in another, lay that high vates talent of interpreting con- 
 fused human Actualities, and unfolding what divine melodious 
 Ideals, or Thoughts of the Supreme, were embodied in them : 
 he, more than any other, might have done somewhat towards 
 making History a Bible. But, alas, it was not in the Temple 
 of the Nations, with all intelligences ministering to him and 
 cooperating with him, that his workshop was laid ; it was in 
 the Bankside Playhouse that Shakspeare was set to work, and 
 the sovereign populace had ware for their sixpence from him 
 there ! 
 
 After all, I do not blame the poor Fine Arts for taking into 
 
278 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 fiction, and into all the deeper kinds of falsity which grow from 
 that. Ignatius, and a world too ready to follow him, had dis- 
 covered the divine virtues of fiction in far higher provinces; 
 the road to fiction lay wide-open for all things ! But Nature's 
 eternal voice, inaudible at present or faintly audible, proclaims 
 the contrary nevertheless ; and will make it known again one 
 day. Fiction, I think, or idle falsity of any kind, was never 
 tolerable, except in a world which did itself abound in practical 
 lies and solemn shams ; and which had gradually impressed on 
 its inhabitants the inane form of character tolerant of that kind 
 of ware. A serious soul, can it wish, even in hours of relaxa- 
 tion, that you should fiddle empty nonsense to it ? A serious 
 soul would desire to be entertained, either with absolute silence, 
 or with what was truth, and had fruit in it, and was made by 
 the Maker of us all. With the idle soul I can fancy it far 
 otherwise ; but only with the idle. 
 
 Given an idle potentate, monster of opulence, gluttonous 
 bloated Nawaub, of black colour or of white, naturally he will 
 have prating story-tellers to amuse his half-sleepy hours of ru- 
 mination ; if from his deep gross stomach, sinking overloaded 
 as if towards its last torpor, they can elicit any transient glow 
 of interest, tragic or comic, especially any wrinkle of moment- 
 ary laughter, however idle, great shall be their reward. Wits, 
 story-tellers, ballad-singers, especially dancing-girls who un- 
 derstand their trade, are in much request with such gluttonous 
 half-sleeping, black or white Monster of Opulence. A bevy of 
 supple dancing-girls who with the due mixture (mixture settled 
 by custom), and with not more than the due mixture, of lasci- 
 vious fire, will represent to him, brandishing their daggers, and 
 rhythmically chanting and posturing, the Loves of Vishnu, 
 Loves of Adonis, Death of Psyche, Barber of Seville, or what- 
 ever nonsense there may be, according to time or country : 
 these are the kind of artists fit for such unfortunate stuffed 
 stupefied Nawaub, in his hours of rumination ; upon these his 
 hot heavy-laden eye may rest without abhorrence ; if with per- 
 ceptible momentary satisfaction emerging from his bottomless 
 ennui, then victory and gold -purses to the artist; be such 
 artist crowned with laurel or with parsley, and declared divine 
 in presence of all men. 
 
 Luxurious Europe, in its reading publics, dilettanti, cog- 
 noscenti and other publics, is wholly one big ugly Nawaub of 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 279 
 
 that kind ; who has converted all the Fine Arts into after-din- 
 ner amusements ; slave adjuncts to his cookeries, upholsteries, 
 tailories, and other palpably Coarse Arts. The brutish mon- 
 ster has turned all the Nine Muses, who by birth are sacred 
 Priestesses of Heaven, into scandalous Bayaderes ; and they 
 dance with supple motions, to enlighten the vile darkness of 
 his ennui for him. Too truly mad, these poor Fine Arts ! The 
 Coarse Arts too, if he had not an authentic stomach and skin, 
 which always bring him a little right again in those depart- 
 ments, would go mad. 
 
 How all things hang together ! Universal Jesuitism hav- 
 ing once lodged itself in the heart, you will see it in the very 
 finger-nails by and by. Calculate how far it is from Sophocles 
 and ^Eschylus to Knowles and Scribe ; how Homer has gra- 
 dually changed into Sir Harris Nicolas ; or what roads the 
 human species must have travelled before a Psalm of David 
 could become an Opera at the Haymarket, and men, with 
 their divine gift of Music, instead of solemnly celebrating the 
 highest fact, or ' singing to the praise of God,' consented to 
 celebrate the lowest nonsense, and sing to the praise of Jenny 
 Lind and the Gazza Ladra, perhaps the step from Oliver 
 Cromwell to Lord John Russell will not seem so unconscion- 
 able ! I find it within, and not without, the order of Nature ; 
 and that all things, like all men, are blood-relations to one 
 another. 
 
 This accursed nightmare, which we name Jesuitism, will 
 have to vanish ; our comfort is, that life itself is not much 
 longer possible otherwise. But I say, have you computed what 
 a distance forwards it may be towards some new Psalm of 
 David done with our new appliances, and much improved 
 wind-instruments, grammatical and other ? That is the dist- 
 ance of the new Golden Age, my friend ; not less than that, I 
 lament to say ! And the centuries that intervene are a foul 
 agonistic welter through the Stygian seas of mud : a long Sca- 
 venger Age, inevitable where the Mother of Abominations has 
 long dwelt. 
 
 It is to be hoped one is not blind withal to the celebrated 
 virtues that are in Jesuitism ; to its missionary zeal, its con- 
 tempt of danger, its scientific, heroic and other prowesses, of 
 
280 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 which there is such celebrating. I do not doubt that there 
 are virtues in it ; that we and it, along with this immeasurable 
 sea of miseries which it has brought upon us, shall ultimately 
 get the benefit of its virtues too. Peruvian bark, of use in 
 'human agues; tidings from the fabulous East by D'Herbelot, 
 Du Halcje, and others ; examples of what human energy and 
 faculty are equal to, even under the inspiration of Ignatius : 
 nothing of this small residue of pearls from such a continent 
 of putrid shellfish, shall be lost to the world. Nay, I see, 
 across this black deluge of Consecrated Falsity, the world 
 ripening towards glorious new developments, unimagined 
 hitherto, of which this abominable mud-deluge itself, threat- 
 ening to submerge us all, was the inevitable precursor, and 
 the means decreed by the Eternal. If it please Heaven, we 
 shall all yet make our Exodus from Houndsditch, and bid the 
 sordid continents, of once rich apparel now grown poisonous 
 Ou'-clo', a mild farewell ! Exodus into wider horizons, into 
 God's daylight once more ; where eternal skies, measuring 
 more than three ells, shall again overarch us ; and men, im- 
 measurably richer for having dwelt among the Hebrews, shall 
 pursue their human pilgrimage, St. Ignatius and much other 
 saintship, and superstitious terror and lumber, lying safe be- 
 hind us, like the nightmares of a sleep that is past ! 
 
 I said the virtue of obedience was not to be found except 
 among the Jesuits : how, in fact, among the ^4//-Jesuits, still 
 in a revolutionary posture in this world, can you expect it ? 
 Sansculottism is a rebel ; has its birth, and being, in open 
 mutiny ; and cannot give you examples of obedience. It is so 
 with several other virtues and cardinal virtues ; they seem to 
 have vanished from the world ; and I often say to myself, 
 Jesuitism and other Superstitious Scandals cannot go, till we 
 have read and appropriated from them the tradition of these 
 lost noblenesses, and once more under the new conditions 
 made them ours. Jesuitism, the Papa with his three hats, and 
 whole continents of chimerical lumber will then go ; their er- 
 rand being wholly done. We cannot make our Exodus from 
 Houndsditch till we have got our own along with us ! The 
 Jew old-clothes having now grown fairly pestilential, a poison- 
 ous incumbrance in the path of men, burn them up with revo- 
 lutionary fire, as you like and can : even so, but you shall 
 not quit the place till you have gathered from their ashes what 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 281 
 
 of gold or other enduring metal was sewed upon them, or 
 woven in the tissue of them. That is the appointed course of 
 human things. 
 
 Here are two excerpts from the celebrated Gathercoal, a 
 Yankee friend of mine ; which flash strangely a kind of torch- 
 gleam into the hidden depths ; and indicate to us the grave 
 and womb of Jesuitism, and of several other things : 
 
 ' Moses and the Jews did not make God's Laws," exclaims 
 he ; ' no, by no means ; they did not even read them in a way 
 ' that has been final, or is satisfactory to me ! In several im- 
 4 portant respects I find said reading decidedly bad ; and will 
 ' not, in any wise, think of adopting it. How dare I, think 
 1 you ? And yet, alas, if we forget to read these Laws at all ; 
 ' if we go along as if they were not there ! 
 
 ' My enlightened friends of this present supreme age, what 
 ' shall I say to you ? That Time does rest on Eternity ; that 
 1 he who has no vision of Eternity will never get a true hold of 
 ' Time, or its affairs. Time is so constructed ; that is \hefact 
 ' of the construction of this world. And no class of mortals 
 ' who have not, through Nazareth or otherwise, come to get 
 ' heartily acquainted with such fact, perpetually familiar with 
 
 it in all the outs and ins of their existence, have ever found 
 1 this Universe habitable long. Alas, no ; their fraternities, 
 ' equalities, free-trade philosophies, greatest-happiness prin- 
 
 ciples, soon came to a conclusion ; and the poor creatures had 
 4 to go, to the Devil, I fear ! Generations such as ours play 
 ' a curious part in World-History. 
 
 4 They sit as Apes do round a fire in the woods, but know 
 4 not how to feed it with fresh sticks. They have to quit it 
 4 soon, and march into Chaos, as I conjecture ; into that land 
 
 of which Bedlam is the Mount Zion. The world turns out 
 4 not to be made of mere eatables and drinkables, of news- 
 4 paper puffs, gilt carriages, conspicuous flunkies ; no, but of 
 4 something other than these ! Old Suetonius Romans, cor- 
 4 rupt babbling Greeks of the Lower Empire, examples more 
 4 than one : consider them ; be taught by them, add not to 
 4 the number of them. Heroism, not the apery and traditions 
 ' of Heroism ; the feeling, spoken or silent, that in man's life 
 4 there did lie a Godlike, and that his Time-history was verily 
 4 but an emblem of some Eternal: without this there had been 
 4 no Rome either ; it was this that had made old Rome, old 
 
282 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 1 Greece, and old Judea. Apes, with their wretched blinking 
 ' eyes, squatted round a fire which they cannot feed with new 
 ' wood ; which they say will last forever without new wood, or, 
 ' alas, which they say is going out forever : it is a sad sight !' 
 
 Elsewhere my eccentric friend, as some call him, whose 
 centre, however, I think I have got into, has this passage : 
 
 ' Church, do you say ? Look eighteen hundred years ago, 
 ' in the stable at Bethlehem : an infant laid in a manger ! 
 ' Look, thou ass, and behold it ; it is a fact, the most indu- 
 
 bitable of facts : thou wilt thereby learn innumerable things. 
 ' Jesus of Nazareth and the life he led, and the death he died, 
 1 does it teach thee nothing ? Through this, as through a 
 ' miraculous window, the heaven of Martyr Heroism, the " di- 
 ' vine depths of Sorrow," of noble Labour, and the unspeak- 
 ' able silent expanses of Eternity, first in man's history dis- 
 ' close themselves. The admiration of all nobleness, divine 
 ' worship of godlike nobleness, how universal it is in the his- 
 ' tory of man 1 
 
 ' But mankind, that singular entity mankind, is like the 
 1 fertilest, fluidest, most wondrous element, an element in which 
 ' the strangest things crystallise themselves, and spread out in 
 ' the most astounding growths. The event at Bethlehem was 
 ' of the Year One ; but all years since that, eighteen hundred 
 ' of them now, have been contributing new growth to it, and 
 ' see, there it stands : the Church ! Touching the earth with 
 ' one small point ; springing out of one small seedgrain, rising 
 ' out therefrom, ever higher, ever broader, high as the Heaven 
 ' itself, broad till it overshadow the whole visible Heaven and 
 ' Earth, and no star can be seen but through //. From such 
 ' a seedgrain so has it grown ; planted in the reverences and 
 1 sacred opulences of the soul of mankind ; fed continually by 
 ' all the noblenesses of some forty generations of men. The 
 ' world-tree of the Nations for so long ! 
 
 ' Alas, if its roots are now dead, and it have lost hold of 
 ' the firm earth, or clear belief of mankind, what, great as 
 ' it is, can by possibility become of it ? Shaken to and fro, 
 ' in Jesuitisms, Gorham Controversies, and the storms of in- 
 
 evitable Fate, it must sway hither and thither ; nod ever 
 ' farther from the perpendicular ; nod at last too far ; and, 
 ' sweeping the Eternal Heavens clear of its old brown foliage 
 1 and multitudinous rooks'-nests, come to the ground with 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 283 
 
 much confused crashing, and disclose the diurnal and noc- 
 ' turnal Upper Lights again ! The dead world-tree will have 
 ' declared itself dead. It will lie there an imbroglio of torn 
 ' boughs and ruined fragments, of bewildered splittings and 
 ' wide-spread shivers : out of which the poor inhabitants must 
 
 make what they can 1' Enough now of Gathercoal and his 
 torch-gleams. 
 
 Simple souls still clamour occasionally for what they call 
 ' a new religion.' My friends, you will not get this new reli- 
 gion of yours ; I perceive, you already have it, have always 
 had it ! All that is true is your ' religion,' is it not ? Com- 
 manded by the Eternal God to be performed, I should think, 
 if it is true ! Do you not already, in your dim heads, know 
 truths by the thousand ; and yet, in your dead hearts, will 
 you perform them by the ten, by the unit ? New religion ! 
 One last word with you on this rather contemptible subject. 
 
 You say, The old ages had a noble belief about the world, 
 and therefore were capable of a noble activity in the world. 
 My friends, it is partly true : your Scepticism and Jesuitism, 
 your ignoble no-belief, except what belief a beaver or judicious 
 pig were capable of, is too undeniable : observe, however, that 
 in this your fatal misery, there is action and reaction ; and do 
 not confound the one with the other. Put the thing in its 
 right posture ; cart not before horse, if you would make an 
 effort to stir from this fatal spot ! It is your own falsity that 
 makes the Universe incredible. I affirm to you, this Universe, 
 in all times, and in your own poor time as well, is the express 
 image and direct counterpart of the human souls, and their 
 thoughts and activities, who dwell there. It is a true adage, 
 ' As the fool thinks, the bell clinks.' ' This mad Universe,' 
 says Novalis, ' is the waste picture of your own dream.' Be 
 noble of mind, all Nature gives response to your heroic struggle 
 for recognition by her ; with her awful eternal voices answers 
 to every mind, " Yea, I am divine ; be thou." From the cloud- 
 whirlwind speaks a God yet, my friend, to every man who has 
 a human soul. To the inhuman brute-soul, indeed, she ans- 
 wers, " Yea, I am brutal ; a big cattle-stall, rag-fair and St. 
 " Catherine's wharf: enter thou, and fat victual, if thou be 
 " faithful, shall not fail." 
 
 Not because Heaven existed, did men know Good from 
 
284 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 Evil ; the ' because,' I invite you to consider, lay quite the 
 other way. It was because men, having hearts as well as 
 stomachs, felt there, and knew through all their being, the 
 difference between Good and Evil, that Heaven and Hell first 
 came to exist. That is the sequence ; that and not the con- 
 trary. If you have now no Heaven to look to ; if you now 
 sprawl, lamed and lost, sunk to the chin in the pathless sloughs 
 of this lower world without guidance from above, know that 
 the fault is not Heaven's at all ; but your own ! Our poor 
 friends 'the Apes by the Dead Sea' have now no Heaven 
 either ; they look into this Universe now, and find it tragically 
 grown to be the Humbug they insisted on its being. Moses 
 went his ways, and this enchantment fell upon them ! Such 
 ' enchantments' rhadamanthine Nature does yet daily execute 
 on the rebellious ; he that has eyes may still daily see them, 
 fearful and wonderful ever as of old. 
 
 How can you believe in a Heaven, the like of you ? What 
 struggle in your mean existence ever pointed thitherward ? 
 None. The first heroic soul sent down into this world, he, 
 looking up into the sea of stars, around into the moaning 
 forests and big oceans, into life and death, love and hate, and 
 joy and sorrow, and the illimitable loud-thundering Loom of 
 Time, was struck dumb by it (as the thought of every earnest 
 soul still is) ; and fell on his face, and with his heart cried for 
 salvation in the world-whirlpool : to him the ' open secret of 
 this Universe' was no longer quite a secret, but he had caught 
 a glimpse of it, much hidden from the like of us in these 
 times : " Do nobly, thou shalt resemble the Maker of all this ; 
 do ignobly, the Enemy of the Maker." This is the 'divine 
 sense of Right and Wrong in man ;' true reading of his posi- 
 tion in this Universe forevermore ; the indisputable God's- 
 message still legible in every created heart, though speedily 
 erased and painted over, under 'articles,' and cants and empty 
 ceremonials, in so many hearts ; making the ' open secret' a very 
 shut one indeed ! 
 
 My friends, across these fogs of murky twaddle and phil- 
 anthropism, in spite of sad decadent ' world-trees,' with their 
 rookeries of foul creatures, the silent stars, and all the eternal 
 luminaries of the world, shine even now to him that has an eye. 
 In this day as in all days, around and in every man, are voices 
 from the gods, imperative to all, if obeyed by even none, which 
 
No. VIII. JESUITISM. 285 
 
 say audibly, " Arise, thou son of Adam, son of Time ; make 
 " this thing more divine, and that thing, and thyself, of all 
 " things ; and work, and sleep not ; for the Night cometh, 
 " wherein no man can work !" He that has an ear may still 
 hear. 
 
 Surely, surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical torpor, 
 indifference to all that does not bear on Mammon and his in- 
 terests is not the natural state of human creatures ; and is not 
 doomed to be their final one ! Other states once were, or there 
 had never been a Society, or any noble thing, among us at all. 
 Under this brutal stagnancy there lies painfully imprisoned 
 some tendency which could become heroic. 
 
 The restless gnawing ennui which, like a dark dim ocean- 
 flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian deeps, 
 begirdles every human life so guided, is it not the painful 
 cry even of that imprisoned heroism ? Imprisoned it will 
 never rest ; set forth at present, on these sad terms, it can- 
 not be. You unfortunates, what is the use of your money- 
 bags, of your territories, funded properties, your mountains 
 of possessions, equipments and mechanic inventions, which 
 the flunky pauses over, awestruck, and almost rises into epos 
 and prophecy at sight of? No use, or less than none. Your 
 skin is covered, and your digestive and other bodily appara- 
 tus is supplied ; and you have but to wish in these respects, 
 and more is ready ; and the Devils, I think, are quizzing you. 
 You ask for 'happiness,' "O give me happiness!" and they 
 hand you ever new varieties of covering for the skin, ever new 
 kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus, new and ever new, 
 worse or not a whit better than the old ; and and this is 
 your 'happiness* ? As if you were sick children ; as if you were 
 not men, but a kind of apes ! 
 
 I rather say, be thankful for your ennui ; it is your last 
 mark of manhood ; this at least is a perpetual admonition, and 
 true sermon preached to you. From the chair of verity this, 
 whatever chairs be chairs of cantity. Happiness is not come, 
 nor like to come ; ennui, with its great waste ocean-voice, 
 moans answer, Never, never. That ocean-voice, I tell you, is 
 a great fact, it comes from Phlegethon and the gates of the 
 Abyss ; its bodeful never-resting inexorable moan is the voice 
 of primeval Fate, and of the eternal necessity of things. Will 
 
a86 LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 you shake away your nightmare and arise ; or must you lie 
 writhing under it, till death relieve you ? Unfortunate crea- 
 tures 1 You are fed, clothed, lodged as men never were before ; 
 every day in new variety of magnificence are you equipped and 
 attended to ; such wealth of material means as is now yours 
 was never dreamed of by man before : and to do any noble 
 thing, with all this mountain of implements, is forever denied 
 you. Only ignoble, expensive and unfruitful things can you 
 now do; nobleness has vanished from the sphere where you 
 live. The way of it is lost, lost ; the possibility of it has be- 
 come incredible. We must try to do without it, I am told. 
 Well ; rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries, then, if so be 
 they will make you ' happy.' Let the varieties of them be con- 
 tinual and innumerable. In all things let perpetual change, if 
 that is a perpetual blessing to you, be your portion instead of 
 mine ; incur that Prophet's curse, and in all things in this sub- 
 lunary world ' make yourselves like unto a wheel.' Mount into 
 your railways ; whirl from place to place, at the rate of fifty, 
 or if you like of five hundred miles an hour : you cannot escape 
 from that inexorable all-encircling ocean-moan of ennui. No : 
 if you would mount to the stars, and do yacht-voyages under 
 the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the ring of Saturn, it would 
 still begirdle you. You cannot escape from it, you can but 
 change your place in it, without solacement except one mo- 
 ment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue 
 with you, till you wisely interpret it and do it, or else till the 
 Crack of Doom swallow it and you. Adieu; Au revoir. 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 No. I. THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 THE Present ever a ' New Era' to the thinking man : To know it, and what 
 it bids us do, the sum of knowledge for us all. Judicial blindness. Our own 
 days: If not days of endless hope too, then are they days of utter despair, 
 (p. i.) A Reforming Pope, and the huge awreformable Popedom. The 
 Sicilians first to follow the poor Pope's example. French exasperation and 
 emulation. European explosion, boundless, uncontrollable : All Kings con- 
 scious they are but Playactors. A weltering mob, presided over by M. de 
 Lamartine. A changed time since the word Senior was first devised to signify 
 Superior. (2.) Universal Democracy, an inevitable fact of the days we live 
 in : Whence comes it ? whither goes it ? What is the meaning of it ? High 
 shouts of exultation from the universal foolish human throat ; drowning for 
 the moment all reflection whatsoever. Bankruptcy of Imposture : At all costs, 
 it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Heavyside, and his quiet 
 blasphemy. Democracy not a Government ; nor Parliament a practical sub- 
 stitute for a King. Unanimity of ' voting' will do nothing for us, if the voting 
 happen to be wrong. A divine message, or eternal regulation of the Uni- 
 verse, there verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure of man. Uni- 
 versal Suffrage, and the Ballot-box. (7. ) The ancient Republics, now pretty 
 well admitted to be nothing to our purpose. One modern instance of De- 
 mocracy, 'nearly perfect:' The Republic of the United States. America too 
 will have to strain her energies, in quite other fashion than this : America's 
 Battle is yet to fight. Mere Democracy forever impossible: The Universe 
 itself a Monarchy and Hierarchy. God Almighty's Noble in the supreme 
 place, under penalties. Everlasting privilege oi the Foolish, to be governed 
 and guided by the Wise : Intrinsically, the harshest duty a wise man, if he 
 be indeed wise, has laid to his hand. (16.) The new Sacrament of Divorce, 
 called 'enfranchisement,' 'emancipation. 1 West-Indian Blacks and Irish 
 Whites : Horses and /ia^brothers : The fate of all emancipated Helpless- 
 ness, sooner or later, tragically inevitable. British industrial existence fast 
 becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence: Thirty-thousand 
 outcast, ungoverned, unguided Needlewomen. Constituted Anarchy : ' Brit- 
 ish Liberty,' and what it is doing for us. (21.) England and her Constitu- 
 tion, the model of the world : At once unattainable by the world, and not 
 worth attaining. Called a ' second time' to show the Nations how to live. 
 England's one hope: Many Kings, not needing 'election' to command: 
 Poor England never so needed them as now. The true ' commander' and 
 King: Not quite discoverable by riddling of the popular clamour. The 
 fateful Hebrew Prophecy, sounding daily through our streets. In regard to 
 choice of men, next to no capability on the part of universal suffrage. The 
 few Wise will have, by one method or another, to take, and to keep, coin- 
 
288 SUMMARY. 
 
 mandofthe innumerable. Foolish. (26.) Captains of Industry: Organisa- 
 tion of Labour, the new strange task which no Government can much longer 
 escape. Speech of the British Prime Minister to his Pauper Populations 
 and the Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science. Alas, there are things 
 that should be done, not spoken ; that till the doing of them is begun, can- 
 not be spoken. (30.) 
 
 No. II. MODEL PRISONS. 
 
 The deranged condition of our affairs : Two ways of proceeding in re- 
 gard to them: Selfish indifference, and self- lauding philanthropy. Indis- 
 criminate mashing-up of Right and Wrong, ending in a Fraternity like 
 Cain's, (p. 41.) A London Prison of the exemplary or model kind. Certain 
 Chartist Notabilities undergoing their term. The Captain of the place, a 
 true aristos and commander of men. His problem, to drill twelve-hundred 
 scoundrels to do nothing, by 'the method of kindness.' Happy Devil's 
 regiments of the line, what soldier to any earthly or celestial Power has such 
 lodging and attendance as you here ! Certainly it should not be the Devil's 
 regiments of the line, that a servant of God would first of all concentrate his 
 attention on. Precisely the worst investment for Benevolence that human 
 ingenuity could select. The highest and best investment : Solemn Shams 
 and Supreme Quacks, riding prosperously in every thoroughfare. (44.) 
 Howard the Philanthropist, a sort of beatified individual : A dull practical 
 solid man, full of English accuracy and veracity. Not the only benefactor 
 that has worked without money for us: The Destinies opulent. Milton, 
 Kepler, Dante. Cholera Doctors ; Soldiers : Human virtue, if we went down 
 to the roots of it, not so rare. Woe to us, it is so seldom elaborated, and 
 built into a result! The Benevolent-Platform Fever, and general morbid 
 sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for scoundrels. Brotherhood ? Be the 
 thought far from me. Beautiful Black Peasantry, fallen idle : Interesting 
 White Felonry, not idle. What a reflection, that we cannot bestow on an 
 unworthy man any particle of our 'benevolence,' without withdrawing it 
 from one to whom it of right belongs ! One thing needful for the world ; but 
 that one indispensable : Give us Justice, and we live ; give us only counter- 
 feits or succedanea, and we die. Modern ghastly Phantasm of Christianity, 
 which they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. Poor old Genius 
 of Reform, and his Program of a new Era. (53.) Christian Religion, and 
 its healthy hatred of Scoundrels : From the Christianity of Oliver Cromwell 
 to that of Mr. Hesperus Fiddlestring, what a road have we travelled! Gospel 
 according to the Platform ; Exeat Fiddlestring. Poor creatures, making ind 
 unmaking 'Laws,' in whose souls is no image or thought of Heaven's Law : 
 Human Statute-books, growing horrible to think of. (59.) What to do with 
 our criminals? An official Law-dignitary's bland perplexity, and placid 
 discomfiture. Wonderful to hear what account we give of the punishment 
 of our criminals: No 'revenge;' O Heavens, no! Cant moral, Cant religi- 
 ous, Cant political. Hunger-stricken asphyxied hearts, calling themselves 
 ' Christian.' Woe to the People that no longer venerate, as the emblem of 
 God himself, the aspect of Human Worth ! The true ground on which to 
 deliberately slay a disarmed fellow-man : 'Revenge,' and the ineradicable 
 tendency to revancher oneself on the wrong-doer, to pay him what he has 
 merited. How it shall be done? a vast question, involving immense con- 
 siderations. Terrible penalties of neglecting to treat hero as hero, and 
 scoundrel as scoundrel : Dim oblivion of Right and Wrong : World-wide 
 maddening Misery: New astonishing Phallus- Worship, and universal Sa- 
 crament of Divorce. (61.) The Ancient Germans, and their grim public 
 executions. Scoundrel is scoundrel ; and no soft blubbering and litanying 
 
SUMMARY. 289 
 
 over him can make him a friend of this Universe. A ' didactic sermon,' as 
 no spoken sermon could be. Except upon a basis of just rigour, sorrowful, 
 silent, inexorable, no true Pity possible. (70.) A worst man in England, 
 curious to think of, whom it would be inexpressibly advantageous to lay 
 hold of, and hang, first of all : Alas, our supreme scoundrel, alike with our 
 supreme hero, very far from being known. Parliament, in its lawmakings, 
 must really try to obtain some vision again. Let us to the wellheads, to the 
 Chief Fountains of these waters of bitterness ; and there strike home and 
 dig! (71.) 
 
 No. III. DOWNING STREET. 
 
 Ineffectuality of our Redtape Establishments. The Colonial Office, a 
 world-wide jungle, inhabited by doleful creatures, deaf or nearly so to hu- 
 man reason and entreaty. Foreign Office and Home Office perhaps even 
 more impracticable: Hercules -Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the 
 World's Busybody, these not the parts this Nation has" a turn for. Proposed 
 curtailments, rectifications and reformations, (p. 74.) England's forlorn 
 hope in Sir Robert Peel : The one likely or possible man. A Reformed 
 Executive in Downing Street : Not a better Talking-Apparatus, but an in- 
 finitely better Acting-Apparatus the thing wanted. The Irish Giant advanc- 
 ing unheeded upon London itself. (78.) Two kinds of fundamental error 
 in our Government Offices : The work ill-done ; and, what is still fataler, 
 the wrong kind of work. For such elaborated Idleness a stupid subaltern 
 better than a gifted one. O for an eye that culd see in those hideous mazes, 
 and a heart that could dare and do ! (80.) What the British Nation at this 
 time really wants. If our Government is to be a No-Government, what 
 matter who administers it ? The real Nimrod of this era the rat-catcher. 
 The mighty question, Who is to be our Premier, and take in hand the 
 ' spigot of taxation'? Right Honourable Zero, on his Sleswick thunder-horse. 
 Who made those Downing-Street Offices ? No edifice of State that stands 
 long, but has had the wise and brave contributing their lives to it. William 
 Conqueror's Home Office. An English Seventy-four, and the old Seakings 
 and Saxon Pirates. (84.) ' Human Stupidity' the accursed parent of all our 
 sorrows. Practical reverence for Human Worth the outcome and essence 
 of all true ' religions' whatsoever. Human Intellect, the exact summary of 
 Human Worth. Abler Men in Downing Street ; that, sure enough, would 
 gradually remedy whatsoever has gone wrong amongst us. The divinest, 
 most Herculean Ten Men to be found among the English Twenty-seven 
 Millions. Courage ; let us strive all thitherward as towards a door of hope ! 
 One Intellect still really human, not to be dispensed with anywhere in the 
 affairs of men : Only Wisdom, that can recognise wisdom, and attract it, 
 as with divine magnetism, from the modest corners where it lies hid. (89.) 
 To increase the supply of human Intellect in Downing Street, what 
 ' method' alas ! One small Project of Improvement : Government Servants 
 to be selected without reference to their power of getting into Parliament : 
 The Crown to have power to elect a few members. Beneficent germs, which 
 one truly wise man as Chief Minister might ripen into living practices, in- 
 valuable to us all A population counting by Millions from which to choose, 
 were a seat in Parliament not primary : Robert Burns. All true ' Democracy' 
 in this, that the able man be chosen, in whatever rank he be found: A 
 truer and truer 'Aristocracy,' or Government of the Best. (96.) One true 
 Reforming Statesman ; he the preliminary of all good. A strange feeling, 
 to be at the apex of English affairs. This world, solid as it looks, made all 
 of aerial and even of spiritual stuff. This and the other Premier seems to 
 take it with perfect coolness : Reflections, sufficient to annihilate any man, 
 
 U 
 
290 SUMMARY. 
 
 almost before starting ! Ask well, who is your Chief Governor, for around 
 him men like to him will infallibly gather. Time was when an incompetent 
 Governor could not be permitted among men. (103.) 
 
 No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET. 
 
 How the European Governments came to wreck for want of Intellect. 
 No evil, or solecism against Nature, ever yet wrought its own cure. In- 
 tellect has to govern, and will do it ; if not in alliance, then in hostility : 
 Every Government absolves or convicts itself, before God and man, accord- 
 ing as it determines which, (p. 108.) The old Catholic Church, in its terres- 
 trial relations to the State : Everywhere a road upwards for human nobleness 
 lay wide open to all men. Over Europe generally the State has died ; in- 
 capable in these years of any but galvanic life. The kind of heroes that 
 come mounted on the shoulders of universal suffrage. England called as 
 no Nation ever was, to summon out its Kings, and set them to their work : 
 A New Downing Street, inhabited by the gifted ; directing all its energies 
 upon real and living interests, (m.) The notion that Government can do 
 nothing but ' keep the peace." To be governed by small men, profess sub- 
 jection to phantasms, not only a misfortune, but a curse and sin. Indigent 
 Millionaires, and their owl-dreams of Political Economy. Only the man 
 of worth can recognise worth in men. How a New Downing Street might 
 gradually come. (116.) The Foreign Office, in its reformed state: Insigni- 
 ficance of recent European Wars. Our War -soldiers Industrial; doing 
 nobler than Roman works, when fighting is not wanted of them. Ministers 
 of Works, of Justice, of Education: Tomorrow morning they might all be- 
 gin to be! (122.) Constitutions for the Colonies, now on the anvil: 'So 
 many as are for rebelling, hold up your hands !' Our brave fathers, by valiant 
 blood and sweat, gained for us rich possessions in all zones ; and we, wretched 
 imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering them. Miserabler theory 
 than that of money on the ledger for the primary rule of Empires, cannot 
 well be propounded : England will not readily admit that her own children 
 are worth nothing but to be flung out of doors. Canadian Parliaments, and 
 Lumber-log Governors. Choose well your Governor ; and having found him, 
 keep him. (126.) The Home Office, undoubtedly our grand primary con- 
 cern. Were all men doing their duty, or even seriously trying to do it, there 
 would be no Pauper: Pauperism, our Social Sin grown manifest. Our Public 
 Life and our Private, our State and our Religion, a tissue of half-truths and 
 whole-lies : Cicero's Roman Augurs and their divine chicken-bowels : Des- 
 picable amalgam of true and false. A complete course of scavengerism, the 
 thing needed. The State, as it gets into the track of its real work, will find 
 it expand into whole continents of new activity : The want of wants, more 
 indispensable than any jewel in the crown, that of men able to command 
 men in the ways of welldoing. (133.) Waste-land Industrials succeeding, 
 other kinds of Industry will be found capable of regimenting. He is a good 
 man that can command and obey ; he that cannot is a bad. Etons and 
 Oxfords, with their broken crumbs of mere speech: Our next set of Souls' 
 Overseers, perhaps silent very mainly. Who of living statesmen will begin 
 the long steep journey of Reform? Sir Robert Peel at his ' eleventh hour.' 
 Still fataler omens. (141.) 
 
 No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. 
 
 Our deep-rooted habit of considering human talent as best of all evincing 
 itself in eloquent speech : Such a test liable to become the very worst ever 
 devised. Hard sayings for many a British reader : The talker established in 
 
SUMMARY. 291 
 
 the place of honour ; and the Doer lost and lamed in the obscure crowd. 
 Eloquence, and the part it now plays in our affairs, one of the gravest phe- 
 nomena, (p. 146.) Universities and Schools in the old healthy Ages: The 
 Working Man ; Priest ; young Noble : The one sure method of learning 
 anything, practical apprenticeship to it. Not that he may speak, but that 
 he may have something to speak of, the first need of a man. Every word, 
 either a note or a forged-note. Do you want a man not to practise what he 
 believes, then encourage him to speak it often in words : The serviceable 
 thing, to clip-off a. bit of his eloquent tongue. What the art of speech 
 sAoutdbe, and should not be. (150.) Vital lungs of Society: Methods by 
 which men rise ; and the kind of men. The country that can offer no career, 
 a doomed country; nay already dead. Our English careers to born genius 
 twofold : Silent or unlearned career of Industrialisms : Articulate or learned 
 career of the three Professions. To the gifted soul, not of taciturn, beaver 
 nature, the field in England narrow and surprising to an extreme : The soli- 
 tary proof-feat of talk, getting rather monotonous. Medicine, and its fright- 
 ful medusa-heads of quackery : The profession of Human Healer radically 
 a sacred one. Law and Church : Ingenuous souls just now shudder at the 
 threshold of both these careers. Parliament, and its unquestioned eligibility, 
 if attainable. Crowded portal of Literature : Haven of expatriated spiritual- 
 isms, vanities and prurient imbecilities. Talk with tongue or pen ; there is 
 in our England of the Nineteenth Century, that one method of emergence 
 and no other. (155.) Not even in Parliament should the essential function 
 by any means be talk. Wisdom intrinsically of silent nature. Politeness, 
 and breeding to business : How politeness was invented: Johnson, Burns. 
 Parliament, as a school of manners : Seeking salvation in ' appearances.' A 
 parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled away without return. (164.) 
 Nature admits no lie: Most men profess to be aware of this, but few in 
 any manner lay it to heart. Diagnosis of a Lie, and Liar. Fail, by any sin 
 or misfortune, to discover what the truth of a fact is, you are lost so far as 
 that fact goes : Unfortunate British Parliament. Nature's silent exact Sa- 
 vings'-bank, and official register, correct to the most evanescent item : Cre- 
 ditor, by the quantity of veracities we have done ; Debtor, by the quantity of 
 falsities and errors. The practice of modern Parliaments, with Reporters 
 sitting among them. (170.) A benevolent plan of reform for our benighted 
 world : At least one generation to pass its life in silence. Good Heavens, if 
 such a plan were practicable, how the chaff might be winnowed-out of every 
 man and thing ! Eye-service, our saddest woe of all. ' Public-speaking,' 
 ' parliamentary eloquence,' a Moloch before whom young souls are made to 
 pass through the fire, to come out spiritually dead. Be not a Public Orator, 
 thou brave young British man ; not a Stump-Orator, if thou canst help it : 
 To speak, or to write, Nature did not peremptorily order thee ; but to work 
 she did. (178.) 
 
 No. VI. PARLIAMENTS. 
 
 The present Editor not one of those who expect to see the Country saved 
 by farther ' reforming' the reformed Parliament we have got. If the captains 
 of the ship are of that scandalous class who refuse to be warned, what are 
 the miserable crew to do? (p. 182.) The English Parliament, windy and 
 empty as it has grown to be, at one time a quite solid serious actuality: 
 King Rufus and his Barons : The time of the Edwards, when Parliament 
 gradually split itself into Two Houses. The Long Parliament the first that 
 declared itself Sovereign in the Nation. A sad gradual falling-off in modern 
 Parliaments : A solemn Convocation of all the Stump-Orators in the Nation, 
 to come and govern us, not seen in the earth until recently. (184.) Two 
 
292 SUMMARY. 
 
 grand modern facts, which have altered from top to bottom the function and 
 position of all Parliaments. An Unfettered Press : Not the discussion of 
 questions, only the ultimate voting of them, requires to go on, or can verit- 
 ably go on, in St. Stephen's now. Still more important the question, King 
 present there, or no King? Not as a Sovereign Ruler of the Twenty-seven 
 million British souls has the reformed Parliament distinguished itself as yet. 
 Another most unfortunate condition, that your Parliamentary Assembly is 
 not much in earnest to do even the best it can. Parliaments, admirable only 
 as Advising Bodies. United States. Only Two Parliaments of any actual 
 Sovereignty : The English Long Parliament, and the French Convention. 
 The horoscope of Parliaments by no means cheering at present : The thing 
 we vitally need, not a more and more perfectly elected Parliament, but some 
 reality of a Ruling Sovereign to presiae over Parliament. (187. ) Poor human 
 beings, whose practical belief is, that if we ' vote' this or that, so this or that 
 will thenceforth be. Blundering, impious, pretended ' laws :' Is arithmetic a 
 thing more fixed by the Eternal than the laws of justice are ? Eternal Law, 
 silently present everywhere and everywhen. ' Voting' a thing of little value 
 at any time: If often men, nine are recognisable as fools, how will you ever 
 get a ballot-box to grind-out a wisdom from their 'votes'? (199.) Under 
 whatever Reformed Downing Street England be governed, its Parliament 
 too will continue indispensable : We must set it to its real function ; and, at 
 our peril and its, restrict it to that. Necessary to the King or Governor to 
 know what the mass of men think upon public questions : He may thus 
 choose his path with prudence ; and reach his aim surely, if more slowly. 
 The Leming-rat, and its rigidly straight course nowhither. The mass of men 
 consulted at the hustings upon any high matter, as ugly an exhibition of 
 human stupidity as this world sees. The vulgarest vulgar, not those in ragged 
 coats at this day; the more the pity. Of what use towards the finding-out 
 what it is wise to do can the ' fool's vote' be ? You have to apprise the un- 
 wise man of his road, even as you do the unwiser horse. Memorable minori- 
 ties, and even small ones: Cromwell and his Puritans: Tancred of Haute- 
 ville's sons. Unit of that class, against as many zeros as you like. (203.) 
 What is to become of Parliament, less a question than what is to become of 
 Downing Street. Who is slave, and eternally appointed to be governed ; who 
 free, and eternally appointed to govern. Could we entirely exclude the slave's 
 vote, and admit only the heroic free man's vote, the ultimate New Era, and 
 best possible condition of human affairs, had actually come. New definitions 
 of slavery, and of freedom. To the Free Man belongs eternally the govern- 
 ment of the world. (210.) 
 
 No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE. 
 
 The question ' Shall Cromwell have a Statue ?' A People worthy to build 
 Statues to Cromwell ; or worthy only of doing it to Hudson. Show the man 
 you honour; and you show what your Ideal of Manhood is, what kind of man 
 you long inexpressibly to be. Pity Hudson's Statue was not completed and 
 set up, so that all the world might see it : The practical English mind has 
 its own notions of the Supreme Excellence ; and in this of Hudson there was 
 more of real worship than is usual, (p. 216.) If the world were not properly 
 anarchic, this question of a Statue would be one of the greatest and most 
 solemn for it : Not lightly will a man give his ' reverence, ' if he be still a man. 
 A Hierarchy of Beneficences ; the noblest man at the summit of affairs, and 
 in every place the due gradation of the fittest for the place : All hangs upon 
 giving our approval aright. How Statues are now got up. (219.) Dismal, 
 symbolic population of British Statues : The kind of Aristocracy Popular 
 Suffrage would choose for us. Hudson a King, ' elected by the people,' as 
 
SUMMARY. 293 
 
 none other is or was : His value as a demigod ; as a maker of railways. Ans- 
 wer to Jefferson Brick, the American Editor, touching overgrown worthless 
 Dukes, and undergrown incredible Bishops : Our ugliest anomalies, done by 
 universal suffrage, not by patent : Bobus of Houndsditch. This universal oust- 
 ing of imaginary Governors, to issue in the attainment of Governors who 
 have a right and a capacity to govern. Ballot-box and suffrage ' machine.' 
 Alas, could we once get Laws which were just: The Bravest of existing Men 
 on the throne ; and on the gibbet the veritable Supreme Scoundrel of the 
 Commonwealth. Universal suffrage, equivalent to abject helplessness and 
 flat despair. Peace ? Better war to the knife, war till we all die, than such 
 a 'peace'! (224.) Hero-worship: This Universe wholly, this temporary 
 Flame-image of the Eternal, one beautiful and terrible Energy of Heroisms ; 
 presided over by a Divine Nobleness, or Infinite Hero. Hypocritical Idola- 
 tries : Sets of gods or fetishes, to which prayers are mumbled ; while the real 
 worship, or heart's love and admiration, is elsewhere. Whom do you in 
 your very soul admire, and strive to imitate and emulate ; is it God's servant, 
 or the Devil's ? There is no other ' religion' in the man, of the slightest 
 moment compared with this : Immense asthmatic spiritual Hurdygurdy. It 
 was not ' always so,' and even till lately was never so. (235.) Collins's dull 
 old Peerage-Book, properly all we English have for a National Bible : Of 
 these ancient peerages, a very great majority visibly had authentic ' heroes' 
 for their founders. One's heart is sore to think how far, how very far all this 
 has vanished from us. Our one steady regulated supply, the class definable 
 as Supreme Stump-Orators in the Lawyer department. England once a 
 Hierarchy : To the English modern populations, Supreme Hero and Supreme 
 Scoundrel, perhaps as nearly as is possible to human creatures, indistinguish- 
 able. (239.) High columns, raised by prurient stupidity and public delusion 
 to gamblers and blockheads. The so-called Christian Citrus: Brave men 
 many of them, after their sort ; and in a position which we may admit to be 
 wonderful and dreadful. But as to Statues, and the mischief they are doing, 
 the Woods-and-Forests really ought to interfere. (244.) 
 
 NO. VIII. JESUITISM. 
 
 For some two centuries past, the genius of mankind dominated by the 
 gospel of Ignatius. What the English reader may think of it, and of his share 
 in it. The Spiritual, the parent and first-cause of the Practical. Thrice- 
 baleful Universe of Cant, prophesied for these Latter Days : The Universe 
 makes no immediate objection to be conceived in any way, The saddest 
 condition of human affairs, where men ' decree injustice by a law.' (p. 249.) 
 A poor man, in our days, has many gods foisted on him : If Ignatius, 
 worshipped by millions as a kind of god, is in eternal fact a kind of devil, 
 surely it is pressingly expedient that men laid it awfully to heart. Ignatius 
 Loyola, a man born greedy ; full of prurient elements from the first. On the 
 walls of Pampeluna : A wrecked Papin's-digester. Reflections, true, salu- 
 tary, and even somewhat of sacred : Agonies of newbirth. The true remedy 
 for wrecked sensualism, to annihilate one's pruriency. Let Eternal Justice 
 triumph on me, since it cannot triumph by me : The voice of Nature to a re- 
 pentant outcast sinner turning again towards the realms of manhood ; and 
 the precept of all right Christianity too. Not so did Ignatius read the omens : 
 The Task he fixed upon as his. Wilt thou then, at the bidding of any Pope, 
 war against Almighty God? Frantic mortal, thy late Pighood itself is trivial 
 in comparison ! (254 ) Precious message of salvation : Salutary nature of 
 falsehoods, and divine authority of things doubtful. Not ' victory' for Igna- 
 tius and his black militia. Luther and Protestantism Proper : Jean Jacques 
 
294 SUMMARY. 
 
 and Protestantism 7*proper. ' Vivaciousness' of Jesuitism. Obedience good 
 and indispensable: Loyalty to Beelzebub; most conspicuous proof of caitiff- 
 hood within a man's possibility. This country tolerably cleared of Jesuits: 
 Expulsion of the Jesuit Body of little avail, with the Jesuit Sou! so nestled in 
 the life of mankind everywhere. ' Cant, and even sincere Cant :' O Heaven, 
 when a man doing his sincerest is still but canting ! The coward solacement 
 of composure and a whole skin. Deadly virus of lying ; and such an odour 
 as the angels never smelt before. Awakening from the sleep of death into 
 the Sorcerer's Sabbath of Anarchy. (259.) A man's ' religion,' not the many 
 things he tries to believe, but the few things he cannot doubt. The modem 
 man's ' religion ;' what poor scantling of ' divine convictions' he has. A sin- 
 gular piece of scribble, in Sauerteig's hand, on Pig Philosophy : Pigs of sen- 
 sibility and superior logical parts : Their ' religion,' notion of the Universe, 
 and of their interests and duties there. (266. ) The Fine Arts, by some 
 thought to be a kind of religion : Here too the consummate flower of Con- 
 secrated Unveracity reigns supreme. The new St. Stephen's, with it? wilder- 
 ness of stone pepperboxes. The Fine Arts, like the coarse and every art of 
 Man's god-given Faculty, sent hither not to fib and dance, but to speak and 
 work. Homer's Iliad, no Fiction but a Ballad History: The Hebrew Bible, 
 before all things, true, as no other Book ever was or will be. The History 
 of every Nation an Epic and Bible, the clouded struggling image of a God's 
 Presence. Beyond doubt the Almighty Maker made this England too ; and 
 has been and forever is miraculously present here. What are the eternal co- 
 venants we can believe, and dare not for our life's sake but go and observe? 
 These are our Bible, our God's Word, such as it may be. ' Miracles, ' ' wor- 
 ships,' after their kind. No rhythmic History of England, but what we find 
 in Shakspeare. Luxurious Europe ; with its wits, story-tellers, ballad-singers, 
 dancing-girls : All the Fine Arts converted into after-dinner Amusements. 
 How all things hang together ! Universal Jesuitism once lodged in the heart, 
 you will see it in the very finger-nails by and by. (272.) Our Exodus from 
 Houndsditch: Yankee Gathercoal, and his strange-flashing torch-gleams. 
 How simple souls clamour occasionally for what they call 'a new religion.' 
 This Universe, in all times, the express image of the human souls, and their 
 thoughts and activities, who dwell there. The 'open secret,' in these dark 
 days a very shut one indeed. Surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical 
 torpor, is not doomed to be our final condition : Under this brutal stagnancy 
 there does lie painfully imprisoned some tendency which could become 
 heroic. (279.) 
 
INDEX TO LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. 
 
 ABLE Man, the born soldier of Truth and 
 Order, 91 ; appointed by ' divine right' 
 to govern, no ; methods of summoning 
 aloft, 156. See Wisest Man. 
 
 Administrative Reform, 78, 103. See 
 Downing Street. 
 
 American Cousins, our, no Model Com- 
 monwealth, 17 ; their noblest Battle yet 
 to fight, 18, 193. 
 
 Anarchy or open ' Kinglessness,' 5 ; Con- 
 stituted Anarchy, 25, 182, 211 ; Sorcer- 
 er's Sabbath of, 265. 
 
 Approval, rightly or wrongly given, 221, 
 231. 
 
 Aristocracy, a true, or Government by 
 the Best, 102 ; ' Aristocracy' of Popular 
 Suffrage, 224, 239 ; veritable Hierarchy 
 of Heaven, 232. See Peerage, Hier- 
 archy. 
 
 Arts, the Fine, a ' Worship of the Beau- 
 tiful,' 270 ; intolerable hypocrisy of, 272 ; 
 taking into fiction, 277. 
 
 Astonishment, different quantities of, 104. 
 
 Ballot-box delusion, 202. 
 
 Bankruptcy of Imposture, 10, 119, 271. 
 
 Benevolence, 51 ; Benevolent - Platform 
 Fever, 56, 61. 
 
 Bible, Hebrew, 147, 274 ; the Bible of a 
 Nation, the authentic Biography of its 
 Heroic Souls, 239, 274 ; our 'closed 
 Bible,' 267. 
 
 Biography, no, but wraps in it a message 
 out of Heaven, 277. 
 
 Bishops, our, and what comes of them, 
 25, 137, 270 ; not our ugliest anomalies, 
 228 ; our new Souls'-Overseers, 142. 
 
 Bobus of Houndsditch, 229. 
 
 British Nation, the, a new set of lessons 
 to learn, 76, 134, 140, 148; no real con- 
 cern with the Continental Anarchies, 
 122. See England. 
 
 Brotherhood with the base and foolish, 
 56. 
 
 Bureaucracy, lax. 
 
 Burns, Robert, like Apollo taken for a 
 Neatherd, 101 ; bis chivalrous ways, 
 167. 
 
 Canada rebellion, 127, 131. 
 
 Cant, thrice-baleful universe of, 63, 952 ; 
 sincere Cant, 263. 
 
 Capital punishment, 62, 65, 67. 
 
 Catholic Church, the old, in its terrestrial 
 relations, HI. See Pope. 
 
 Chancellors, and their beaten road to the 
 Peerage, 241. 
 
 Charles I.. 185. 
 
 Charles II., 137, 24(7. 
 
 Chartist Notabilities undergoing their 
 term, 45 ; Chartist Parliament, 197. 
 
 Chatham and his son Pitt, 124. 
 
 Christianity, ghastly Phantasm of, 58, 
 63 ; Christian hatred of Scoundrels, 
 59 ; so-called Christian Clerus, 245, 
 253 ; Christian Repentance, 257 ; Ga- 
 thercoal's account of the Christian 
 Church, 281. 
 
 Churches, our best-behaved of, 221. See 
 Law. 
 
 Collins' s Peerage-Book, 239. 
 
 Colonial Office, sad experiences in the, 
 74 ; Constitutions for the Colonies on 
 the anvil, 126, 129 ; our Colonies worth 
 something to the Country, 127 ; new 
 kind of Governors needed, 132. 
 
 Command and obedience, 142. See Obe- 
 dience. 
 
 Constitutions, the true model of, 19. 
 
 Cowardice, 234, 262, 264. 
 
 Crabbe, on British Liberty, 25 ; our fatal 
 Oblivion of Right and Wrong, 68 ; Ad- 
 ministrative Reform, 79 ; Constituted 
 Anarchy, 118; Ducal Costermongers, 
 144 ; Ballot-box, 202 ; Machine for do- 
 ing Government, 232 ; so-called Chris- 
 tian Clerus, 245. 
 
 Criminals, what to do with our, 62, 231. 
 
 Cromwell, Christianity of, 60, 63, 137 ; 
 his Protestant war, 123; his notion of 
 ' voting,' 206, 209 ; Cromwell's Statue, 
 216. 
 
 ' Crucify him,' a considerable feat in the 
 suppression of minorities, 29, 206. See 
 " Ou' do'." 
 
 Dante, 55. 
 
296 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Democracy, an Inevitable fact of the days 
 we live in, 7 ; not a ' Kind of Govern- 
 ment,' 12; no Nation that could ever 
 subsist upon, 16 ; the essence of what- 
 ever truth is in it, that the able man be 
 promoted in whatever rank he is found, 
 
 102, XTO. 
 
 Devil's Elect in England, 49. 
 
 Dinners, English public, 184. 
 
 Dismal Science, the Professors of, 37, 128. 
 
 Divorce, new Sacrament of, 22. 
 
 Dogs, dead, floating in the Westminster 
 region, 170. 
 
 Downing Street, 74-107 ; reform in, 77, 
 80 ; two kinds of fundamental error, 81 ; 
 bier Men in, 91, no, 121 ; one such in- 
 dispensable, 94, 102, 198 ; a small Pro- 
 ject of Improvement, 96. 
 
 Downing Street, the New, 108-145 what 
 it might grow to, hard to say, 115; work 
 enough before it, 125, 140. 
 
 Duke, no one in England so well lodged 
 and tended as our prisoner-scoundrels, 
 48 ; Ducal Costermongers, 144. 
 
 Dupes, a kind of inverse cheats, 10. 
 
 Education, Minister of, 126, 142 ; modem 
 education all gone to tongue, 146 ; how 
 it was in the old healthy times, 150. 
 
 Electing and electioneering, the meaning 
 of, 92, 199. 
 
 Eloquence, unperformed, a cure for, 154. 
 
 Enfranchisement, and what it has led to, 
 21, 36. See Free Men. 
 
 England, and her unattainable 'Model 
 Constitution,' 26 ; called a second time 
 * to show the Nations how to live,' 27 ; 
 still contains many Kings, 27, 114; how 
 the Devil provides for his own in Eng- 
 land, 49 ; English veracity, fidelity, 53 ; 
 what England wants, 79, 92, 125 ; and 
 does not want, 84, 138 ; a strange feel- 
 ing, to be at the apex of English affairs, 
 104 ; England with the largest mass of 
 real living interests ever intrusted to a 
 Nation, 114; means to keep her Colo- 
 nies a while yet, 127, 129 ; Englishmen 
 dare not believe the truth, 136 ; English 
 careers to born genius, 157 ; England's 
 hope in her younger sons, 181 ; no longer 
 an earnest Nation, 192, 194 ; time of ac- 
 counts fast arriving, 237 ; English Peer- 
 ages once authentically real, 240; the 
 English ramadhtin, 250 ; poor scantling 
 of ' divine convictions, 267 ; the History 
 of England, the record of the Divine 
 Appearances among us, 275 ; our rest- 
 less gnawing ennui, the painful cry of 
 an imprisoned heroism, not always to 
 lie imprisoned, 285. See British Na- 
 tion. 
 
 Ennui, 285. 
 
 Etons and Oxfords, with their broken 
 crumbs of mere speech, 142, 179. 
 
 European explosions of '1848,' 5; wars 
 
 since Cromwell, 123 ; modern luxurious 
 
 Europe, 278. 
 
 Evil, no, ever wrought its own cure, no. 
 Exeter-Hall twaddle, 58, 60. 
 Eye-service, 179. 
 
 Fetishes, reckoned respectable, 237, 254. 
 Fiction, idle, intolerable to a serious soul, 
 
 278. 
 
 Fiddlestring, Mr. Hesperus, 60. 
 Foolish, privilege of the, to be governed 
 
 by the Wise, 20, 30. 
 Foreign Office, our, astonishing condition 
 
 of, 75 ; reformed, 122. 
 Fraternity and Equality, 21, 44, 69. 
 Free Men, the Nobles of the World, 35, 
 
 213. 
 
 Fr<e Press, 188. 
 French People, the, a kind of Messiah 
 
 People, very glorious indeed, 4; bitterag- 
 
 gravations, 4 ; French Convention, 196. 
 Fntz of Prussia, 124. 
 
 Gathercoal's, Yankee, torch-gleams, 281. 
 
 Government Offices, who made our, 87; 
 beautiful notion of No - Government, 
 118; Phantasm Governors, 183. 
 
 Happy. See Unhappy. 
 
 Hatred of scoundrels, the backbone of all 
 religion, 59 ; Divine Hatred, 65. 
 
 Heavyside, the solid Englishman, 12, 
 238. 
 
 Hercules-Harlequin in the Foreign Of- 
 fice, not pleasant to think of, 75. 
 
 Hero-worship, 235 ; a man's ' religion,' 
 the practical Hero-worship that is in 
 him, 237, 284. See Religion. 
 
 Hierarchy of Beneficences, 220, 232 ; Re- 
 ligion the parent of social Hierarchies, 
 234 ; England once a Hierarchy, 243, 
 275. See Aristocracy. 
 
 History of England in a strange condition, 
 
 2 39 2 75- 
 
 Home Office, William Conqueror's, 88 ; 
 the Home Office our grand primary con- 
 cern, 133, 139. 
 
 Homer's Iliad a Ballad History, 274. 
 
 Horses, Farmer Hodge's, all emancipated, 
 22 ; the horse's ' vote,' 207. 
 
 Howard, the beatified Philanthropist, 53. 
 
 Hudson's Statue, 216-248 ; what the Hud- 
 son worshippers ought to have done, 
 while they were about it, 217 ; Hud- 
 son's Popular Election, 225 ; his value 
 as a railway-maker, 226. See Statues. 
 
 Idleness, lying in wait round all labour- 
 offices, 82 ; organised idleness, 124. 
 
 Idols, all, have to fall, 228. 
 
 Imposture. See Bankruptcy. 
 
 Incontinence, the half of all our sins, 180. 
 
 Individual responsibility, 199. 
 
 Industry, Captains of, 30, 37 ; Industry 
 or death, 40 ; Industrial Regiments, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 297 
 
 iaS, 140 ; English career of Industrial- 
 ism, 157. 
 
 Intellect, tragic consequences of insuffi- 
 cient, 81, 93, 95, 106, 108, 156 ; human 
 Intellect the exact summary of human 
 Worth, 91 ; how to increase the supply, 
 96 ; English beaver intellect, 157. 
 
 Irish and British Pauperism, 31 ; the Irish 
 Giant, seeking whom he may devour, 
 8, '33- 
 
 James the First's bad reign, 241. 
 
 Jefferson Brick, answer to, 228. 
 
 Jesuitism, 249-286 ; Age and Gospel of, 
 249 ; stupendous achievements, 259 ; 
 how the computation quite broke down, 
 260; ' vivaciousness' of Jesuitism, 261; 
 the Jesuit Soul nestled amongst us, 263 ; 
 necessity of putting it away, 266 ; Je- 
 suitism in the Fine Arts, 271, 278 ; cele- 
 brated ' virtues,' 279. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the most indubitable 
 of facts, 282. See Crucify. 
 
 Johnson's politeness, 168. 
 ustice, the one indispensable thing, 58, 
 62 ; unspeakably difficult of attainment, 
 232 ; voice of Justice to a repentant sin- 
 ner, 258 ; pig-justice, 269. 
 
 Kepler, 54. 
 
 Kings everywhere, in sudden horror, 
 conscious of being Playactors, 5 ; the 
 true king and commander of men, 28, 30, 
 47 ; not to be dispensed with anywhere, 
 94, 182; true function of a king, 118, 
 204, 209; no King in Parliament, 188, 
 190, 197 ; Parliament an ' impossible 
 King,' 198. See Able Man, Wisest 
 Man, Premier. 
 
 Labour, true Organisation of, 31. See 
 Industry, Work. 
 
 Lamartine, M. de, at the H6tel-de-Ville, 
 6. 
 
 Law and Church, angry basilisks of, 160 ; 
 injustice decreed by a ' law,' 253 ; Law- 
 yers, 241, 270. 
 
 Laws and regulations of the Universe, how 
 decipher the, 15, 66 ; such laws do verily 
 exist, silent, but inflexibly sure, 173 ; 
 not to be decided by our paltry 'votings,' 
 200; in the way of abatement, of obli- 
 vion, neither gods nor men prevail, 245. 
 See Universe. 
 
 Iieming-rat, the, 205. 
 
 Liberty, British, 25. See Enfranchise- 
 ment. 
 
 Lies, 'damned,' 119; every lie accursed, 
 and the parent of curses, 136 ; diagnosis 
 of a lie, and a liar, 170 ; benevelent plan 
 of reform, 178 ; subtle quintessence of 
 lying, 263. 
 
 Light or lightning; a choice, 107, 157. 
 
 Literature, true and sham, 143, 180 ; our 
 
 crowded portal of, 162 ; highest problem 
 
 of, 240, 270. 
 
 Liturgies, such as no God can hear, 238. 
 Louis- Philippism, the scorn of the world. 
 
 Love, method of, to command Scoundrels, 
 
 Loyalty to Beelzebub, 262. 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, 249 ; a man not good by 
 nature, 255 ; on the walls of Pampeluna, 
 agonies of new-birth, 256 ; highest pitch 
 of_the prurient-heroic, war against Al- 
 mighty God, 258. See Jesuitism. 
 
 Majorities, blockhead, 212, 228. 
 Manning, Mrs., ' dying game,' 55. 
 Marten, Henry, 213. 
 Medicine, profession of, 160. 
 Minorities, down to minority of one, 209. 
 Model Prisons, 41-73 ; a London prison of 
 
 the model kind, 44. 
 Moloch, our modern, 180. 
 Money, doomed to possess, 175. 
 
 Nawaub, Europe one big ugly, 278. 
 
 Needlewomen, Distressed, 24. 
 
 Negro population, our, need to be ' eman. 
 
 cipated from their indolence, 57. See 
 
 Slavery. 
 
 Nessus'-shirt, our poisoned, 138. 
 New Era, our heavy-laden long-eared, 9, 
 
 40, 41. 
 
 Nineteenth Century, intellect of the, 108. 
 Nobility, Ig-, 177, 284. 
 Noble, young, true education of the, 151. 
 
 See Aristocracy. 
 Nomadism uglier than slavery, 36. 
 
 Obedience, 142 ; true and false, 262, 280. 
 
 Old age, reverence for, 7. 
 
 Opera, 279. 
 
 " Ou' clo'," the fateful Hebrew Prophecy, 
 
 29, 64, 68, 280. 
 Oxford. See Eton. 
 
 Paradise to all-and-sundry, 56, 68. 
 
 Parliament, modern recipe of, 13; the 
 English Parliament once a Council of 
 actual Rulers, 26, 184, 194 ; now an enor- 
 mous National Palaver, 85, 165, 187 ; 
 what it has done for us, 104 ; kind of 
 men sent there, 120, 192 ; Parliament- 
 ary career, 161; Parliamentary bagpipes, 
 169, 177; Parliaments, 182-215; origin 
 of our English Parliaments, 184; the 
 Long Parliament, 186, 194; position of 
 Parliament become false and impossible, 
 187 ; with a Free Press, the real func- 
 tion of Parliament goes on everywhere, 
 continually, 188 ; Adviser of the Sove- 
 reign, or Sovereign itself, 190; 197 ; 
 Newspaper Reporters, in a Parliament 
 and Nation no longer in earnest, 191 ; 
 the French Convention all in deadly 
 earnest, 196 ; Chartist Parliament. 197 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 a Parliament indispensable, 203 ; Con- 
 densed Folly of Nations, 204. 
 
 Paupers, our Irish and British, 31 : ad- 
 dress to, 33 ; Pauperism, our Social Sin 
 grown manifest, 134, 140. 
 
 Peace, keeping the, the function of a po- 
 liceman, 116; something more sacred 
 than ' peace,' 234. 
 
 Pedant, the, 83. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, the one likely or pos- 
 sible Reformer of Downing Street, 78 ; 
 his ' eleventh hour,' 144. 
 
 Peerage, the English, past and present, 
 240. See Aristocracy. 
 
 Philanthropy, indiscriminate, 43 ; threat- 
 ening to drown human society as in de- 
 luges, 56. 
 
 Pig- Philosophy, 268. 
 
 Poet, what the, should be, 270, 274. 
 
 Politeness, who invented, 168. 
 
 Political Economy, and its small ' law of 
 God,' 39. See Dismal Science. 
 
 Pope, a Reforming, and his huge wre- 
 formable Popedom, a. 
 
 Premier, mad methods of choosing a, 84, 
 159; a moreunbeautiful class never raked 
 out of the ooze, 114; one wise Premier 
 the beginning of all good, 121. See 
 King. 
 
 Present Time, the, 1-40. 
 
 Protestantism, proper and zwproper, 260. 
 
 Puseyisms, 137, 162. 
 
 Railways, how, are shifting all towns of 
 Britain into new places, 226 ; stupendous 
 railway miracles, 255. 
 
 Ramadhan, the English, 230. 
 
 Real, the, always respectable, 247. 
 
 Reform, poor old Genius of, 59. See Ad- 
 ministrative Reform, Downing Street. 
 
 Religion, not the many things a man tries 
 to believe, but the few he cannot doubt, 
 266 ; foolish clamour for a ' new religion,' 
 283. See Worship. 
 
 Repentance, sacredness of, 256. 
 
 Republics, ancient and modern, 16. 
 
 Revenge, mournful twaddle about, 62 ; 
 sacred duty of, 67. 
 
 Reverence, our want of, 220. 
 
 Reward and punishment, 64, 68. 
 
 Right and Wrong, silent awful sense of, 
 43, 284 ; dim oblivion of, 69. 
 
 Roman Augurs, Cicero's, 137. 
 
 Sauerteig on Pig-Philosophy, 268. 
 
 Schoolmasters, when useful, 151. 
 
 Scoundrel ir scoundrel, 47, 51; not to be 
 commanded by mere 'love,'47; Supreme 
 Scoundrel, 71 ; Hero and Scoundrel, now 
 almost indistinguishable, 243. 
 
 Sea-kings, the old, and Saxon Pirates, 88. 
 
 Self-annihilation, 257. 
 
 Seventy-four, an English, and its inar- 
 ticulate traditions, 89. 
 
 Shakspeare's scattered tones of a National 
 Epos, 377. 
 
 Shams, utter damnability ofj 1 1, 19. 
 
 Sicilian Insurrection, 3. 
 
 Silence, excellent, or good work with lips 
 closed, 148 ; what silence means in the 
 Nineteenth Century, 163 ; a life in si- 
 lence, 178; silent work, and silent suf- 
 fering, 1 80. 
 
 Sincerity, deep awful divine quality of, 
 263. 
 
 Slaves, authentic, to be treated as such, 
 36, 211. See Mastership, Negro. 
 
 Sleswick thunder-horse, badly ridden, 86, 
 129. 
 
 Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection So- 
 ciety, yj. 
 
 Society, vital lungs of, 113, 155; no So- 
 ciety, but a lost horde, 241. 
 
 Somnauth, Idol of, 228. 
 
 Souls'-Overseers. See Bishops. 
 
 Sparrowbill and M'Pastehorn, 57. 
 
 Spartan humanity, 35. 
 
 Speak, ability to, no evidence of ability 
 to ivork, 98, 147, 165 ; speech and sham- 
 speech, 148, 152, 164 ; eloquent unper- 
 fortned speech, horrible, 154; Human 
 Speech no longer true, 265. See Stump- 
 Orator. 
 
 Spiritual, the, the parent and first-cause 
 of the practical, 251. 
 
 Statues, our Public, symbolic of our spi- 
 ritual condition, 217, 219, 224, 244, 247 ; 
 how they are got up, 221 ; sculptural 
 talent manifest in them, 223 ; how they 
 ought to be put down, 246. 
 
 St. Stephen's, the new, 273. 
 
 Stump-Orator, 146-181 ; a mouthpiece of 
 Chaos, 149, 169, 175; Supreme Stump- 
 Orators in the Lawyer department, 241. 
 
 Stupidity, our one enemy, 83, 90, 96. 
 
 Suffrage, Universal, 29, 205 ; recipe of 
 Popular Election, 224 ; answer to Jef- 
 ferson Brick, 228; universal -suffrage 
 equivalent to flat despair, 234. 
 
 Supply-and-demand, brought to bear on 
 the Black ' labour-market,' 23. 
 
 Times Newspaper, 188. 
 Tongue, human talent all gone to, 146, 
 159, 163 ; how to cure the evil, 154, 178. 
 
 Unhappy sugary brethren, 56 ; happiness 
 not come, 285. 
 
 Universe, the, a Monarchy and Hier- 
 archy, 19 ; the vesture of an Invisible 
 Infinite, 235, 252; M'Croudy's notion 
 of, 240 ; all things to all men, 283 ; ' open 
 secret' -of, 284. See Laws. 
 
 Virtue, human, raw materials of, 55. 
 
 Voting, foolish unanimity of, 14 ; large 
 liberty of ' voting' in God's Universe, 
 but under conditions inexorable, 19, 
 J 73> X 99> 2O2 > 2 33> what to do with the 
 ' fool's vote,' 202, 206, 268 ; the ' votes' 
 of all men worth knowing, 204 ; the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 299 
 
 horse's 'vote,' 207; the slave's, 212; 
 the man worth taking the vote of, 214. 
 
 William Conqueror's Home Office, 88. 
 William, Dutch, 124. 
 William Rufus and his Parliaments, 184. 
 Wisdom alone can recognise wisdom, 95, 
 
 loo, 120 ; intrinsically of silent nature, 
 
 1 66. 
 Wisest man, the, at the top of society, 
 
 330 ; he and not a counterfeit, under 
 
 penalties, 19, 168. 
 
 Work for all men, 37, 39 ; a Human Doer 
 the most complex and inarticulate of 
 Nature's Facts, 166 ; desirability ol 
 work, 221. See Labour. 
 
 Working man, true education of the, 150. 
 
 Worship, practical, 218; many phases of 
 worship, 235, 254, 276. 
 
 Worth, human, practical reverence for, 
 64 ; the essence of all true ' religions,' 
 90, 96. See Intellect. 
 
 Zero, the Right Honourable, 85. 
 
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