For the rest, let not any Parliament, Aristocracy, Millocracy, or

Member of the Governing Class, condemn with much triumph this

small specimen of 'remedial measures;' or ask again, with the

least anger, of this Editor, What is to be done, How that

alarming problem of the Working Classes is to be managed?

Editors are not here, foremost of all, to say How. A certain

Editor thanks the gods that nobody pays him three hundred

thousand pounds a year, two hundred thousand, twenty thousand, or

any similar sum of cash for saying How;--that his wages are very

different, his work somewhat fitter for him. An Editor's

stipulated work is to apprise thee that it must be done. The

'way to do it,' is to try it, knowing that thou shalt die if it

be not done. There is the bare back, there is the web of cloth;

thou shalt cut me a coat to cover the bare back, thou whose trade

it is. 'Impossible?' Hapless Fraction, dost thou discern Fate

there, half unveiling herself in the gloom of the future, with

her gibbet-cords, her steel-whips, and very authentic Tailor's

Hell; waiting to see whether it is 'possible?' Out with thy

scissors, and cut that cloth or thy own windpipe!

Chapter IV

Captains of Industry

If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to continue

henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, I should

reckon it idle to solicit remedial measures from any Government,

the disease being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do

much, but it can in no wise do all. Government, as the most

conspicuous object in Society, is called upon to give signal of

what shall be done; and, in many ways, to preside over, further,

and command the doing of it. But the Government cannot do, by

all its signalling and commanding, what the Society is radically

indisposed to do.--In the long-run every Government is the exact

symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to

say, Like People like Government.--The main substance of this

immense Problem of Organising Labour, and first of all of

Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be

solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by

those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can

be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must

already lie potentially extant in those two Classes, who are to

obey such enactment. A Human Chaos in which there is no light,

you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it: order never

can arise there.

But it is my firm conviction that the 'Hell of England' will

_cease_ to be that of 'not making money;' that we shall get a

nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven! I anticipate light _in_ the

Human Chaos, glimmering, shining more and more; under manifold

true signals from without That light shall shine. Our deity no

longer being Mammon,--O Heavens, each man will then say to

himself: "Why such deadly haste to make money? I shall not go

to Hell, even if I do not make money! There is another Hell, I

am told!" Competition, at railway-speed, in all branches of

commerce and work will then abate:--good felt-hats for the head,

in every sense, instead of seven-feet lath-and-plaster hats on

wheels, will then be discoverable! Bubble-periods, with their

panics and commercial crises, will again become infrequent;

steady modest industry will take the place of gambling

speculation. To be a noble Master, among noble Workers, will

again be the first ambition with some few; to be a rich Master

only the second. How the Inventive Genius of England, with the

whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers shoved somewhat into the

backgrounds of the brain, will contrive and devise, not cheaper

produce exclusively, but fairer distribution of the produce at

its present cheapness! By degrees, we shall again have a Society

with something of Heroism in it, something of Heaven's Blessing

on it; we shall again have, as my German friend asserts,

'instead of Mammon-Feudalism with unsold cotton-shirts and

Preservation of the Game, noble just Industrialism and Government

by the Wisest!'

It is with the hope of awakening here and there a British man to

know himself for a man and divine soul, that a few words of

parting admonition, to all persons to whom the Heavenly Powers

have lent power of any kind in this land, may now be addressed.

And first to those same Master-Workers, Leaders of Industry; who

stand nearest, and in fact powerfulest, though not most

prominent, being as yet in too many senses a Virtuality rather

than an Actuality.

The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, are

virtually the Captains of the World; if there be no nobleness in

them, there will never be an Aristocracy more. But let the

Captains of Industry consider: once again, are they born of

other clay than the old Captains of Slaughter; doomed forever to

be no Chivalry, but a mere gold-plated _Doggery,_--what the

French well name _Canaille,_ 'Doggery' with more or less gold

carrion at its disposal? Captains of Industry are the true

Fighters, henceforth recognisable as the only true ones:

Fighters against Chaos, Necessity and the Devils and Jotuns; and

lead on Mankind in that great, and alone true, and universal

warfare; the stars in their courses fighting for them, and all

Heaven and all Earth saying audibly, Well-done! Let the Captains

of Industry retire into their own hearts, and ask solemnly, If

there is nothing but vulturous hunger, for fine wines, valet

reputation and gilt carriages, discoverable there? Of hearts

made by the Almighty God.

I will not believe such a thing. Deep-hidden under wretchedest

god-forgetting Cants, Epicurisms, Dead-Sea Apisms; forgotten as

under foulest fat Lethe mud and weeds, there is yet, in all

hearts born into this God's-World, a spark of the Godlike

slumbering. Awake, O nightmare sleepers; awake, arise, or be

forever fallen! This is not playhouse poetry; it is sober fact.

Our England, our world cannot live as it is. It will connect

itself with a God again, or go down with nameless throes and

fire-consummation to the Devils. Thou who feelest aught of such

a Godlike stirring in thee, any faintest intimation of it as

through heavy-laden dreams, follow it, I conjure thee. Arise,

save thyself, be one of those that save thy country.

Bucaniers, Chactaw Indians, whose supreme aim in fighting is that

they may get the scalps, the money, that they may amass scalps

and money: out of such came no Chivalry, and never will! Out of

such came only gore and wreck, infernal rage and misery;

desperation quenched in annihilation. Behold it, I bid thee,

behold there, and consider! What is it that thou have a hundred

thousand-pound bills laid up in thy strong-room, a hundred scalps

hung up in thy wigwam? I value not them or thee. Thy scalps and

thy thousand-pound bills are as yet nothing, if no nobleness from

within irradiate them; if no Chivalry, in action, or in embryo

ever struggling towards birth and action, be there.

Love of men cannot be bought by cash-payment; and without love,

men cannot endure to be together. You cannot lead a Fighting

World without having it regimented, chivalried: the thing, in a

day, becomes impossible; all men in it, the highest at first,

the very lowest at last, discern consciously, or by a noble

instinct, this necessity. And can you any more continue to lead

a Working World unregimented, anarchic? I answer, and the

Heavens and Earth are now answering, No! The thing becomes not

'in a day' impossible; but in some two generations it does.

Yes, when fathers and mothers, in Stockport hunger-cellars, begin

to eat their children, and Irish widows have to prove their

relationship by dying of typhus-fever; and amid Governing

'Corporations of the Best and Bravest,' busy to preserve their

game by 'bushing,' dark millions of God's human creatures start

up in mad Chartisms, impracticable Sacred-Months, and Manchester

Insurrections;--and there is a virtual Industrial Aristocracy as

yet only half-alive, spellbound amid money-bags and ledgers; and

an actual Idle Aristocracy seemingly near dead in somnolent

delusions, in trespasses and double-barrels; 'sliding,' as on

inclined-planes, which every new year they _soap_ with new

Hansard's-jargon under God's sky, and so are 'sliding' ever

faster, towards a 'scale' and balance-scale whereon is written

_Thou art found Wanting:_--in such days, after a generation or

two, I say, it does become, even to the low and simple, very

palpably impossible! No Working World, any more than a Fighting

World, can be led on without a noble Chivalry of Work, and laws

and fixed rules which follow out of that,--far nobler than any

Chivalry of Fighting was. As an anarchic multitude on mere

Supply-and-demand, it is becoming inevitable that we dwindle in

horrid suicidal convulsion, and self-abrasion, frightful to the

imagination, into _Chactaw_ Workers. With wigwam and scalps,--

with palaces and thousand-pound bills; with savagery,

depopulation, chaotic desolation! Good Heavens, will not one

French Revolution and Reign of Terror suffice us, but must there

be two? There will be two if needed; there will be twenty if

needed; there will be precisely as many as are needed. The Laws

of Nature will have themselves fulfilled. That is a thing

certain to me.

Your gallant battle-hosts and work-hosts, as the others did, will

need to be made loyally yours; they must and will be regulated,

methodically secured in their just share of conquest under you;--

joined with you in veritable brotherhood, sonhood, by quite other

and deeper ties than those of temporary day's wages! How would

mere redcoated regiments, to say nothing of chivalries, fight for

you, if you could discharge them on the evening of the battle, on

payment of the stipulated shillings,--and they discharge you on

the morning of it! Chelsea Hospitals, pensions, promotions,

rigorous lasting covenant on the one side and on the other, are

indispensable even for a hired fighter. The Feudal Baron, much

more,--how could he subsist with mere temporary mercenaries round

him, at sixpence a day; ready to go over to the other side, if

sevenpence were offered? He could not have subsisted;--and his

noble instinct saved him from the necessity of even trying! The

Feudal Baron had a Man's Soul in him; to which anarchy, mutiny,

and the other fruits of temporary mercenaries, were intolerable:

he had never been a Baron otherwise, but had continued a Chactaw

and Bucanier. He felt it precious, and at last it became

habitual, and his fruitful enlarged existence included it as a

necessity, to have men round him who in heart loved him; whose

life he watched over with rigour yet with love; who were

prepared to give their life for him, if need came. It was

beautiful; it was human! Man lives not otherwise, nor can live

contented, anywhere or anywhen. Isolation is the sum-total of

wretchedness to man. To be cut off, to be left solitary: to

have a world alien, not your world; all a hostile camp for you;

not a home at all, of hearts and faces who are yours, whose you

are! It is the frightfulest enchantment; too truly a work of

the Evil One. To have neither superior, nor inferior, nor equal,

united manlike to you. Without father, without child, without

brother. Man knows no sadder destiny. 'How is each of us,'

exclaims Jean Paul, 'so lonely, in the wide bosom of the All!'

Encased each as in his transparent 'ice-palace;' our brother

visible in his, making signals and gesticulations to us;--

visible, but forever unattainable: on his bosom we shall never

rest, nor he on ours. It was not a God that did this; no!

Awake, ye noble Workers, warriors in the one true war: all this

must be remedied. It is you who are already half-alive, whom I

will welcome into life; whom I will conjure in God's name to

shake off your enchanted sleep, and live wholly! Cease to count

scalps, gold-purses; not in these lies your or our salvation.

Even these, if you count only these, will not long be left. Let

bucaniering be put far from you; alter, speedily abrogate all

laws of the bucaniers, if you would gain any victory that shall

endure. Let God's justice, let pity, nobleness and manly valour,

with more gold-purses or with fewer, testify themselves in this

your brief Life-transit to all the Eternities, the Gods and

Silences. It is to you I call; for ye are not dead, ye are

already half-alive: there is in you a sleepless dauntless

energy, the prime-matter of all nobleness in man. Honour to you

in your kind. It is to you I call: ye know at least this, That

the mandate of God to His creature man is: Work! The future

Epic of the World rests not with those that are near dead, but

with those that are alive, and those that are coming into life.

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in

confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness!

They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and

supply-and-demand principle: they will not; nor ought they, nor

can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, begin reducing them.

To order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for

noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be

sane and ever saner. Not as a bewildered bewildering mob; but

as a firm regimented mass, with real captains over them, will

these men march any more. All human interests, combined human

endeavours, and social growths in this world, have, at a certain

stage of their development, required organising: and Work, the

grandest of human interests, does now require it.

God knows, the task will be hard: but no noble task was ever

easy. This task will wear away your lives, and the lives of your

sons and grandsons: but for what purpose, if not for tasks like

this, were lives given to men? Ye shall cease to count your

thousand-pound scalps, the noble of you shall cease! Nay the

very scalps, as I say, will not long be left if you count only

these. Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws,

and become noble European Nineteenth-Century Men. Ye shall know

that Mammon, in never such gigs and flunky 'respectabilities,' is

not the alone God; that of himself he is but a Devil, and even

a Brute-god.

Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton;

that too was difficult. The waste cotton-shrub, long useless,

disobedient, as the thistle by the wayside,--have ye not

conquered it; made it into beautiful bandana webs; white woven

shirts for men; bright-tinted air-garments wherein flit

goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard

iron pliant to you as soft putty: the Forest-giants, Marsh-

jotuns bear sheaves of golden grain; Aegir the Sea-demon himself

stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses

and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor red-bearded,

with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong thunder-

hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, ye Sons

of the icy North, of the far East,--far marching from your rugged

Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the grey Dawn of Time! Ye

are Sons of the _Jotun_-land; the land of Difficulties

Conquered. Difficult? You must try this thing. Once try it

with the understanding that it will and shall have to be done.

Try it as ye try the paltrier thing, making of money! I will bet

on you once more, against all Jotuns, Tailor-gods, Double-

barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of Chaos whatsoever!

Chapter V

Permanence

Standing on the threshold, nay as yet outside the threshold, of a

'Chivalry of Labour,' and an immeasurable Future which it is to

fill with fruitfulness and verdant shade; where so much has not

yet come even to the rudimental state, and all speech of positive

enactments were hasardous in those who know this business only by

the eye,--let us here hint at simply one widest universal

principle, as the basis from which all organisation hitherto has

grown up among men, and all henceforth will have to grow: The

principle of Permanent Contract instead of Temporary.

Permanent not Temporary:--you do not hire the mere redcoated

fighter by the day, but by the score of years' Permanence,

persistance is the first condition of all fruitfulness in the

ways of men. The 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of

hindrances, discouragements and 'impossibilities:' it is this

that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak;

the civilised burgher from the nomadic savage,--the Species Man

from the Genus Ape! The Nomad has his very house set on wheels;

the Nomad, and in a still higher degree the Ape, are all for

'liberty;' the privilege to flit continually is indispensable

for them. Alas, in how many ways, does our humour, in this

swift-rolling self-abrading Time, shew itself nomadic, apelike;

mournful enough to him that looks on it with eyes! This humour

will have to abate; it is the first element of all fertility in

human things, that such 'liberty' of apes and nomads do by

freewill or constraint abridge itself, give place to a better.

The civilised man lives not in wheeled houses. He builds stone

castles, plants lands, makes lifelong marriage-contracts;--has

long-dated hundred-fold possessions, not to be valued in the

money-market; has pedigrees, libraries, law-codes; has memories

and hopes, even for this Earth, that reach over thousands of

years. Life-long marriage-contracts: how much preferable were

year-long or month-long--to the nomad or ape!

Month-long contracts please me little, in any province where

there can by possibility be found virtue enough for more. Month-

long contracts do not answer well even with your house-servants;

the liberty on both sides to change every month is growing very

apelike, nomadic;--and I hear philosophers predict that it will

alter, or that strange results will follow: that wise men,

pestered with nomads, with unattached ever-shifting spies and

enemies rather than friends and servants, will gradually,

weighing substance against semblance, with indignation, dismiss

such, down almost to the very shoeblack, and say, "Begone; I

will serve myself rather, and have peace!" Gurth was hired for

life to Cedric, and Cedric to Gurth. O Anti-Slavery Convention,

loud-sounding long-eared Exeter-Hall--But in thee too is a kind

of instinct towards justice, and I will complain of nothing.

Only, black Quashee over the seas being once sufficiently

attended to, wilt thou not perhaps open thy dull sodden eyes to

the 'sixty-thousand valets in London itself who are yearly

dismissed to the streets, to be what they can, when the season

ends;'--or to the hunger-stricken, pallid, _yellow_-coloured

'Free Labourers' in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, and

all other shires! These Yellow-coloured, for the present, absorb

all my sympathies: if I had a Twenty Millions, with Model-Farms

and Niger Expeditions, it is to these that I would give it!

Quashee has already victuals, clothing; Quashee is not dying of

such despair as the yellow-coloured pale man's. Quashee, it must

be owned, is hitherto a kind of blockhead. The Haiti Duke of

Marmalade, educated now for almost half a century, seems to have

next to no sense in him. Why, in one of those Lancashire

Weavers, dying of hunger, there is more thought and heart, a

greater arithmetical amount of misery and desperation, than in

whole gangs of Quashees. It must be owned, thy eyes are of the

sodden sort; and with thy emancipations, and thy twenty-

millionings and long-eared clamourings, thou, like Robespierre

with his pasteboard _Etre Supreme,_ threatenest to become a bore

to us, _Avec ton Etre Supreme tu commences m'embeter!--

In a Printed Sheet of the assiduous, much-abused, and truly

useful Mr. Chadwick's, containing queries and responses from far

and near, as to this great question, 'What is the effect of

Education on workingmen, in respect of their value as mere

workers?' the present Editor, reading with satisfaction a

decisive unanimous verdict as to Education, reads with

inexpressible interest this special remark, put in by way of

marginal incidental note, from a practical manufacturing Quaker,

whom, as he is anonymous, we will call Friend Prudence. Prudence

keeps a thousand workmen; has striven in all ways to attach them

to him; has provided conversational soirees; playgrounds, bands

of music for the young ones; went even 'the length of buying

them a drum:' all which has turned out to be an excellent

investment. For a certain person, marked here by a black stroke,

whom we shall name Blank, living over the way,--he also keeps

somewhere about a thousand men; but has done none of these

things for them, nor any other thing, except due payment of the

wages by supply-and-demand. Blank's workers are perpetually

getting into mutiny, into broils and coils: every six months,

we suppose, Blank has a strike; every one month, every day

and every hour, they are fretting and obstructing the short-sighted

Blank; pilfering from him, wasting and idling for him, omitting

and committing for him. "I would not," says Friend Prudence,

"exchange my workers for his _with seven thousand pounds to boot."_

------------

*Report on the Training of Pauper Children (1841), p. 18.

------------

Right, O honourable Prudence; thou art wholly in the right:

Seven thousand pounds even as a matter of profit for this world,

nay for the mere cash-market of this worrd! And as a matter of

profit not for this world only, but for the other world and all

worlds, it outweighs the Bank of England!--Can the sagacious

reader descry here, as it were the outmost inconsiderable

rockledge of a universal rock-foundation, deep once more as the

Centre of the World, emerging so, in the experience of this good

Quaker, through the Stygian mud-vortexes and general Mother of

Dead Dogs, whereon, for the present, all swags and insecurely

hovers, as if ready to be swallowed?

Some Permanence of Contract is already almost possible; the

principle of Permanence, year by year, better seen into and

elaborated, may enlarge itself, expand gradually on every side

into a system. This once secured, the basis of all good results

were laid. Once permanent, you do not quarrel with the first

difficulty on your path, and quit it in weak disgust; you

reflect that it cannot be quitted, that it must be conquered, a

wise arrangement fallen on with regard to it. Ye foolish Wedded

Two, who have quarrelled, between whom the Evil Spirit has

stirred up transient strife and bitterness, so that

'incompatibility' seems almost nigh, ye are nevertheless the Two

who, by long habit, were it by nothing more, do best of all

others suit each other: it is expedient for your own two foolish

selves, to say nothing of the infants, pedigrees and public in

general, that ye agree again; that ye put away the Evil

Spirit, and wisely on both hands struggle for the guidance of

a Good Spirit!

The very horse that is permanent, how much kindlier do his rider

and he work, than the temporary one, hired on any hack principle

yet known! I am for permanence in all things, at the earliest

possible moment, and to the latest possible. Blessed is he that

continueth where he is. Here let us rest, and lay out

seedfields; here let us learn to dwell. Here, even here, the

orchards that we plant will yield us fruit; the acorns will be

wood and pleasant umbrage, if we wait. How much grows

everywhere, if we do but wait! Through the swamps we will shape

causeways, force purifying drains; we will learn to thread the

rocky inaccessibilities; and beaten tracks, worn smooth by mere

traveling of human feet, will form themselves. Not a difficulty

but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity

but, if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear

to us. The sunny plains and deep indigo transparent skies of

Italy are all indifferent to the great sick heart of a Sir Walter

Scott: on the back of the Apennines, in wild spring weather, the

sight of bleak Scotch firs, and snow-spotted heath and

desolation, brings tears into his eyes.*

-----------

*Lockhart's _Life of Scott_

-----------

O unwise mortals that forever change and shift, and say, Yonder,

not Here! Wealth richer than both the Indies lies everywhere for

man, if he will endure. Not his oaks only and his fruit-trees,

his very heart roots itself wherever he will abide;--roots

itself, draws nourishment from the deep fountains of Universal

Being! Vagrant Sam-Slicks, who rove over the Earth doing

'strokes of trade,' what wealth have they? Horseloads, shiploads

of white or yellow metal: in very sooth, what are these? Slick

rests nowhere, he is homeless. He can build stone or marble

houses; but to continue in them is denied him. The wealth of a

man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he

is loved and blessed by! The herdsman in his poor clay shealing,

where his very cow and dog are friends to him, and not a cataract

but carries memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods old

recognition: his life, all encircled as in blessed mother's-

arms, is it poorer than Slick's with the ass-loads of yellow

metal on his back? Unhappy Slick! Alas, there has so much grown

nomadic, apelike, with us: so much will have, with whatever

pain, repugnance and 'impossibility,' to alter itself, to fix

itself again,--in some wise way, in any not delirious way!

A question arises here: Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps some

not far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,' your Master-

Worker may not find it possible, and needful, to grant his

Workers permanent _interest_ in his enterprise and theirs? So

that it become, in practical result, what in essential fact and

justice it ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the Chief

Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative, economically as

well as loyally concerned for it?--Which question I do not

answer. The answer, near or else far, is perhaps, Yes;--and yet

one knows the difficulties. Despotism is essential in most

enterprises; I am told, they do not tolerate 'freedom of debate'

on board a Seventy-four! Republican senate and _plebiscita_

would not answer well in Cotton-Mills. And yet observe there

too: Freedom, not nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom;

this is indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To

reconcile Despotism with Freedom:--well, is that such a mystery?

Do you not already know the way? It is to make your Despotism

_just._ Rigorous as Destiny; but just too, as Destiny and its

Laws. The Laws of God: all men obey these, and have no

'Freedom' at all but in obeying them. The way is already known,

part of the way;--and courage and some qualities are needed for

walking on it!

Chapter VI

The Landed

A man with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds a

day, given him freely, without condition at all,--on condition,

as it now runs, that he will sit with his hands in his pockets

and do no mischief, pass no Corn-Laws or the like,--he too, you

would say, is or might be a rather strong Worker! He is a Worker

with such tools as no man in this world ever before had. But in

practice, very astonishing, very ominous to look at, he proves

not a strong Worker;--you are too happy if he will prove but a

No-worker, do nothing, and not be a Wrong-worker.

You ask him, at the year's end: "Where is your three-hundred

thousand pound; what have you realised to us with that?" He

answers, in indignant surprise: "Done with it? Who are you that

ask? I have eaten it; I and my flunkeys, and parasites, and

slaves two-footed and four-footed, in an ornamental manner; and

I am here alive by it; _I_ am realised by it to you!"--It is, as

we have often said, such an answer as was never before given

under this Sun. An answer that fills me with boding

apprehension, with foreshadows of despair. O stolid Use-and-wont

of an atheistic Half-century, O Ignavia, Tailor-godhood, soul-

killing Cant, to what passes art thou bringing us!--Out of the

loud-piping whirlwind, audibly to him that has ears, the Highest

God is again announcing in these days: "Idleness shall not be."

God has said it, man cannot gainsay.

Ah, how happy were it, if he this Aristocrat Worker would, in

like manner, see _his_ work and do it! It is frightful seeking

another to do it for him. Guillotines, Meudon Tanneries, and

half-a-million men shot dead, have already been expended in that

business; and it is yet far from done. This man too is

something; nay he is a great thing. Look on him there: a man

of manful aspect; something of the 'cheerfulness of pride' still

lingering in him. A free air of graceful stoicism, of easy

silent dignity sits well on him; in his heart, could we reach

it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice, true

human valour. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an

incumbrance in the Present; perish disastrously out of the

Future! From no section of the Future would we lose these noble

courtesies, impalpable yet all-controlling; these dignified

reticences, these kingly simplicities;--lose aught of what the

fruitful Past still gives us token of, memento of, in this man.

Can we not save him:--can he not help us to save him! A brave

man he too; had not undivine Ignavia, Hearsay, Speech without

meaning,--had not Cant, thousandfold Cant within him and around

him, enveloping him like choke-damp, like thick Egyptian

darkness, thrown his soul into asphyxia, as it were extinguished

his soul; so that he sees not, hears not, and Moses and all the

Prophets address him in vain.

Will he awaken, be alive again, and have a soul; or is this

death-fit very death? It is a question of questions, for himself

and for us all! Alas, is there no noble work for this man too?

Has he not thick-headed ignorant boors; lazy, enslaved farmers;

weedy lands? Lands! Has he not weary heavy-laden ploughers of

land; immortal souls of men, ploughing, ditching, day-drudging;

bare of back, empty of stomach, nigh desperate of heart; and

none peaceably to help them but he, under Heaven? Does he find,

with his three hundred thousand pounds, no noble thing trodden

down in the thoroughfares, which it were godlike to help up? Can

he do nothing for his Burns but make a Gauger of him; lionise

him, bedinner him, for a foolish while; then whistle him down

the wind, to desperation and bitter death?--His work too is

difficult, in these modern, far-dislocated ages. But it may be

done; it may be tried;--it must be done.

A modern Duke of Weimar, not a god he either, but a human duke,

levied, as I reckon, in rents and taxes and all incomings

whatsoever, less than several of our English Dukes do in rent

alone. The Duke of Weimar, with these incomings, had to govern,

judge, defend, every way administer _his_ Dukedom. He does all

this as few others did: and he improves lands besides all this,

makes river-embankments, maintains not soldiers only but

Universities and Institutions;--and in his Court were these four

men: Wieland, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. Not as parasites, which

was impossible; not as table-wits and poetic Katerfeltoes; but

as noble Spiritual Men working under a noble Practical Man.

Shielded by him from many miseries; perhaps from many

shortcomings, destructive aberrations. Heaven had sent, once

more, heavenly Light into the world; and this man's honour was

that he gave it welcome. A new noble kind of Clergy, under an

old but still noble kind of King! I reckon that this one Duke of

Weimar did more for the Culture of his Nation than all the

English Dukes and _Duces_ now extant, or that were extant since

Henry the Eighth gave them the Church Lands to eat, have done for

theirs!--I am ashamed, I am alarmed for my English Dukes: what

word have I to say?

_If_ our Actual Aristocracy, appointed 'Best-and-Bravest,' will

be wise, how inexpressibly happy for us! If not,--the voice of

God from the whirlwind is very audible to me. Nay, I will thank

the Great God, that He has said, in whatever fearful ways, and

just wrath against us, "Idleness shall be no more!" Idleness?

The awakened soul of man, all but the asphyxied soul of man,

turns from it as from worse than death. It is the life-in-death

of Poet Coleridge. That fable of the Dead-Sea Apes ceases to be

a fable. The poor Worker starved to death is not the saddest of

sights. He lies there, dead on his shield; fallen down into the

bosom of his old Mother; with haggard pale face, sorrow-worn,

but stilled now into divine peace, silently appeals to the

Eternal God and all the Universe,--the most silent, the most

eloquent of men.

Exceptions,--ah yes, thank Heaven, we know there are exceptions.

Our case were too hard, were there not exceptions, and partial

exceptions not a few, whom we know, and whom we do not know.

Honour to the name of Ashley,--honour to this and the other

valiant Abdiel, found faithful still; who would fain, by work

and by word, admonish their Order not to rush upon destruction!

These are they who will, if not save their Order, postpone the

wreck of it;--by whom, under blessing of the Upper Powers, 'a

quiet euthanasia spread over generations, instead of a swift

torture-death concentred into years,' may be brought about for

many things. All honour and success to these. The noble man can

still strive nobly to save and serve his Order;--at lowest, he

can remember the precept of the Prophet: "Come out of her, my

people; come out of her!"

To sit idle aloft, like living statues, like absurd Epicurus'-

gods, in pampered isolation, in exclusion from the glorious

fateful battlefield of this God's-World: it is a poor life for a

man, when all Upholsterers and French-Cooks have done their

utmost for it!--Nay, what a shallow delusion is this we have all

got into. That any man should or can keep himself apart from

men, have 'no business' with them, except a cash-account

business!' It is the silliest tale a distressed generation of

men ever took to telling one another. Men cannot live isolated:

we _are_ all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual

misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can

disunite himself from any lowest. Consider it. Your poor

'Werter blowing out his distracted existence because Charlotte

will not have the keeping thereof:' this is no peculiar phasis;

it is simply the highest expression of a phasis traceable

wherever one human creature meets another! Let the meanest

crookbacked Thersites teach the supremest Agamemnon that he

actually does not reverence him, the supremest Agamemnon's eyes

flash fire responsive; a real pain, and partial insanity, has

seized Agamemnon. Strange enough: a many-counselled Ulysses is

set in motion by a scoundrel-blockhead; plays tunes, like a

barrel-organ, at the scoundrel-blockhead's touch,--has to snatch,

namely, his sceptre cudgel, and weal the crooked back with bumps

and thumps! Let a chief of men reflect well on it. Not in

having 'no business' with men, but in having no unjust business

with them, and in _having_ all manner of true and just business,

can either his or their blessedness be found possible, and this

waste world become, for both parties, a home and peopled garden.

Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the

world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man! Hero-

worship, true and blessed, or else mistaken, false and accursed,

goes on everywhere and everywhen. In this world there is one

godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of

godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the

hearts of men. Hero-worship, in the souls of the heroic, of the

clear and wise,--it is the perpetual presence of Heaven in our

poor Earth: when it is not there, Heaven is veiled from us; and

all is under Heaven's ban and interdict, and there is no worship,

or worthship, or worth or blessedness in the Earth any more!--

Independence, 'lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye'--alas, yes,

he is a lord we have got acquainted with in these late times: a

very indispensable lord, for spurning off with due energy

innumerable sham-superiors, Tailor-made: honour to him, entire

success to him! Entire success is sure to him. But he must not

stop there, at that small success, with his eagle-eye. He has

now a second far greater success to gain: to seek out his real

superiors, whom not the Tailor but the Almighty God has made

superior to him, and see a little what he will do with these!

Rebel against these also? Pass by with minatory eagle-glance,

with calm-sniffing mockery, or even without any mockery or sniff,

when these present themselves? The lion-hearted will never dream

of such a thing. Forever far be it from him! His minatory

eagle-glance will veil itself in softness of the dove: his lion-

heart will become a lamb's; all is just indignation changed into

just reverence, dissolved in blessed floods of noble humble love,

how much heavenlier than any pride, nay, if you will, how much

prouder! I know him, this lion-hearted, eagle-eyed one; have

met him, rushing on, 'with bosom bare,' in a very distracted

dishevelled manner, the times being hard;--and can say, and

guarantee on my life, That in him is no rebellion; that in him

is the reverse of rebellion, the needful preparation for

obedience. For if you do mean to obey God-made superiors, your

first step is to sweep out the Tailormade ones; order them,

under penalties, to vanish, to make ready for vanishing!

Nay, what is best of all, he cannot rebel, if he would.

Superiors whom God has made for us we cannot order to withdraw!

Not in the least. No Grand-Turk himself, thickest-quilted

tailor-made Brother of the Sun and Moon can do it: but an Arab

Man, in cloak of his own clouting; with black beaming eyes, with

flaming sovereign-heart direct from the centre of the Universe;

and also, I am told, with terrible 'horse-shoe vein' of swelling

wrath in his brow, and lightning (if you will not have it as

light) tingling through every vein of him,--he rises; says

authoritatively: "Thickest-quilted Grand-Turk, tailor-made

Brother of the Sun and Moon, No:--_I_ withdraw not; thou shalt

obey me or withdraw!" And so accordingly it is: thickest-

quilted Grand-Turks and all their progeny, to this hour,

obey that man in the remarkablest manner; preferring _not_

to withdraw.

O brother, it is an endless consolation to me, in this

disorganic, as yet so quack-ridden, what you may well call hag-

ridden and hell-ridden world, to find that disobedience to the

Heavens, when they send any messenger whatever, is and remains

impossible. It cannot be done; no Turk grand or small can do

it. 'Skew the dullest clodpole,' says my invaluable German

friend, 'shew the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than

himself is here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must

down and worship.

Chapter VII

The Gifted

Yes, in what tumultuous huge anarchy soever a Noble human

Principle may dwell and strive, such tumult is in the way of

being calmed into a fruitful sovereignty. It is inevitable. No

Chaos can continue chaotic with a soul in it. Besouled with

earnest human Nobleness, did not slaughter, violence and fire-

eyed fury, grow into a Chivalry; into a blessed Loyalty of

Governor and Governed? And in Work, which is of itself noble,

and the only true fighting, there shall be no such possibility?

Believe it not; it is incredible; the whole Universe

contradicts it. Here too the Chactaw Principle will be

subordinated; the Man Principle will, by degrees, become

superior, become supreme.

I know Mammon too; Banks-of-England, Credit-Systems, worldwide

possibilities of work and traffic; and applaud and admire them.

Mammon is like Fire; the usefulest of all servants, if the

frightfulest of all masters! The Cliffords, Fitzadelms and

Chivalry Fighters 'wished to gain victory,' never doubt it: but

victory, unless gained in a certain spirit, was no victory;

defeat, sustained in a certain spirit, was itself victory. I say

again and again, had they counted the scalps alone, they had

continued Chactaws, and no Chivalry or lasting victory had been.

And in Industrial Fighters and Captains is there no nobleness

discoverable? To them, alone of men, there shall forever be no

blessedness but in swollen coffers? To see beauty, order,

gratitude, loyal human hearts around them, shall be of no moment;

to see fuliginous deformity, mutiny, hatred and despair, with the

addition of half a million guineas, shall be better? Heaven's

blessedness not there; Hell's cursedness, and your half-million

bits of metal, a substitute for that! Is there no profit in

diffusing Heaven's blessedness, but only in gaining gold?--If so,

I apprise the Mill-owner and Millionaire, that he too must

prepare for vanishing; that neither is _he_ born to be of the

sovereigns of this world; that he will have to be trampled and

chained down in whatever terrible ways, and brass-collared safe,

among the born thralls of this worrd! We cannot have _Canailles_

and Doggeries that will not make some Chivalry of themselves:

our noble Planet is impatient of such; in the end, totally

intolerant of such!

For the Heavens, unwearying in their bounty, do send other souls

into this world, to whom yet, as to their forerunners, in Old

Roman, in Old Hebrew and all noble times, the omnipotent guinea

is, on the whole, an impotent guinea. Has your half-dead

avaricious Corn-Law Lord, your half-alive avaricious Cotton-Law

Lord, never seen one such? Such are, not one, but several; are,

and will be, unless the gods have doomed this world to swift dire

ruin. These are they, the elect of the world; the born

champions, strong men, and liberatory Samsons of this poor world:

whom the poor Delilah-world will not always shear of their

strength and eyesight, and set to grind in darkness at _its_ poor

gin-wheel! Such souls are, in these days, getting somewhat out

of humour with the world. Your very Byron, in these days, is at

least driven mad; flatly refuses fealty to the world. The world

with its injustices, its golden brutalities, and dull yellow

guineas, is a disgust to such souls: the ray of Heaven that is

in them does at least pre-doom them to be very miserable here.

Yes:--and yet all misery is faculty misdirected, strength that

has not yet found its way. The black whirlwind is mother of the

lightning. No _smoke,_ in any sense, but can become flame and

radiance! Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern

University, steps out superior to your guinea.

Dost thou know, O sumptuous Corn-Lord, Cotton-Lord, O mutinous

Trades-Unionist, gin-vanquished, undeliverable; O much-enslaved

World,--this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy

promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of

Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent,

whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at

the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The

joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy

promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls

who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants

none of thy rewards; behold also, he fears none of thy

penalties. Thou canst not answer even by killing him: the case

of Anaxarchus thou canst kill; but the self of Anaxarchus, the

word or act of Anaxarchus, in no wise whatever. To this man

death is not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest

and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death.

Not a May-game is this man's life; but a battle and a march, a

warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade

through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited

on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours: it is a stern

pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of

thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men; loves men, with

inexpressible soft pity,--as they _cannot_ love him: but his

soul dwells in solitude, in the uttermost parts of Creation. In

green oases by the palm-tree wells, he rests a space; but anon

he has to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the

Splendours, the Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all

Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the

Immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their

dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep.

Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man?

Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets and

law-penalties restrain him. He eludes thee like a Spirit. Thou

canst not forward him, thou canst not hinder him. Thy penalties,

thy poverties, neglects, contumelies: behold, all these are good

for him. Come to him as an enemy; turn from him as an unfriend;

only do not this one thing,--infect him not with thy own

delusion: the benign Genius, were it by very death, shall guard

him against this!--What wilt thou do with him? He is above thee,

like a god. Thou, in thy stupendous three-inch pattens, art

under him. He is thy born king, thy conqueror and supreme

lawgiver: not all the guineas and cannons, and leather and

prunella, under the sky can save thee from him. Hardest

thickskinned Mammon-world, ruggedest Caliban shall obey him, or

become not Caliban but a cramp. Oh, if in this man, whose eyes

can flash Heaven's lightning, and make all Calibans into a cramp,

there dwelt not, as the essence of his very being, a God's

justice, human Nobleness, Veracity and Mercy,--I should tremble

for the world. But his strength, let us rejoice to understand,

is even this: The quantity of Justice, of Valour and Pity that

is in him. To hypocrites and tailored quacks in high places, his

eyes are lightning; but they melt in dewy pity softer than a

mother's to the downpressed, maltreated; in his heart, in his

great thought, is a sanctuary for all the wretched. This world's

improvement is forever sure.

'Man of Genius?' Thou hast small notion, meseems, O Mecaenas

Twiddledee, of what a Man of Genius is! Read in thy New

Testament and elsewhere,--if, with floods of mealymouthed

inanity, with miserable froth-vortices of Cant now several

centuries old, thy New Testament is not all bedimmed for thee.

_Canst_ thou read in thy New Testament at all? The Highest Man

of Genius, knowest thou him; Godlike and a God to this hour?

His crown a Crown of Thorns? Thou fool, with _thy_ empty

Godhoods, Apotheoses _edgegilt;_ the Crown of Thorns made into a

poor jewel-room crown, fit for the head of blockheads; the

bearing of the Cross changed to a riding in the Long-Acre Gig!

Pause in thy mass-chantings, in thy litanyings, and Calmuck

prayings by machinery; and pray, if noisily, at least in a

more human manner. How with thy rubrics and dalmatics, and

clothwebs and cobwebs, and with thy stupidities and grovelling

baseheartedness, hast thou hidden the Holiest into all

but invisibility!--

'Man of Genius:' O Mecaenas Twiddledee, hast thou any notion

what a Man of Genius is? Genius is 'the inspired gift of God.'

It is the clearer presence of God Most High in a man. Dim,

potential in all men; in this man it has become clear, actual.

So says John Milton, who ought to be a judge; so answer him the

Voices of all Ages and all Worlds. Wouldst thou commune with

such a one,--_be_ his real peer then: does that lie in thee?

Know thyself and thy real and thy apparent place, and know him

and his real and his apparent place, and act in some noble

conformity therewith. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall

eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown

children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and

blow through scrannel-pipes; soothe thy sated soul with visions

of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of

Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, this

twangling, jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou dost

well to say with sick Saul, "It is naught, such harping!"--and in

sudden rage grasp thy spear, and try if thou canst pin such a one

to the wall. King Saul was mistaken in his man, but thou art

right in thine. It is the due of such a one: nail him to the

wall, and leave him there. So ought copper shillings to be

nailed on counters; copper geniuses on walls, and left there for

a sign!--

I conclude that the Men of Letters too may become a 'Chivalry,'

an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood, with result

immeasurable,--so soon as there is nobleness in themselves for

that. And, to a certainty, not sooner! Of intrinsic Valetisms

you cannot, with whole Parliaments to help you, make a Heroism.

Doggeries never so gold-plated, Doggeries never so escutcheoned,

Doggeries never so diplomaed, bepuffed, gas-lighted, continue

Doggeries, and must take the fate of such.

Chapter VIII

The Didactic

Certainly it were a fond imagination to expect that any preaching

of mine could abate Mammonism; that Bobus of Houndsditch will

love his guineas less, or his poor soul more, for any preaching

of mine! But there is one Preacher who does preach with effect,

and gradually persuade all persons: his name is Destiny, is

Divine Providence, and his Sermon the inflexible Course of

Things. Experience does take dreadfully high school-wages; but

he teaches like no other!

I revert to Friend Prudence the good Quaker's refusal of 'seven

thousand pounds to boot.' Friend Prudence's practical conclusion

will, by degrees, become that of all rational practical men

whatsover. On the present scheme and principle, Work cannot

continue. Trades' Strikes, Trades' Unions, Chartisms; mutiny,

squalor, rage and desperate revolt, growing ever more desperate,

will go on their way. As dark misery settles down on us, and our

refuges of lies fall in pieces one after one, the hearts of men,

now at last serious, will turn to refuges of truth. The eternal

stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark _enough._

Begirt with desperate Trades' Unionism and Anarchic Mutiny, many

an Industrial _Law-ward,_ by and by, who has neglected to make

laws and keep them, will be heard saying to himself: "Why have I

realised five hundred thousand pounds? I rose early and sat

late, I toiled and moiled, and in the sweat of my brow and of my

soul I strove to gain this money, that I might become

conspicuous, and have some honour among my fellow-creatures. I

wanted them to honour me, to love me. The money is here, earned

with my best lifeblood: but the honour? I am encircled with

squalor, with hunger, rage, and sooty desperation. Not honoured,

hardly even envied; only fools and the flunkey-species so much

as envy me. I am conspicuous,--as a mark for curses and

brickbats. What good is it? My five hundred scalps hang here in

my wigwam: would to Heaven I had sought something else than the

scalps; would to Heaven I had been a Christian Fighter, not a

Chactaw one! To have ruled and fought not in a Mammonish but in

a Godlike spirit; to have had the hearts of the people bless me,

as a true ruler and captain of my people; to have felt my own

heart bless me, and that God above instead of Mammon below was

blessing me,--this had been something. Out of my sight, ye

beggarly five hundred scalps of banker's-thousands: I will try

for something other, or account my life a tragical futility!"

Friend Prudence's 'rock-ledge,' as we called it, will gradually

disclose itself to many a man; to all men. Gradually, assaulted

from beneath and from above, the Stygian mud-deluge of Laissez-

faire, Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one Duty, will abate

on all hands; and the everlasting mountain-tops, and secure

rock-foundations that reach to the centre of the world, and rest

on Nature's self, will again emerge, to found on, and to build

on. When Mammon-worshippers here and there begin to be God-

worshippers, and bipeds-of-prey become men, and there is a Soul

felt once more in the huge-pulsing elephantine mechanic Animalism

of this Earth, it will be again a blessed Earth.

"Men cease to regard money?" cries Bobus of Houndsditch: "What

else do all men strive for? The very Bishop informs me that

Christianity cannot get on without a minimum of Four thousand

five hundred in its pocket. Cease to regard money? That will be

at Doomsday in the afternoon!"--O Bobus, my opinion is somewhat

different. My opinion is, that the Upper Powers have not yet

determined on destroying this Lower World. A respectable, ever-

increasing minority, who do strive for something higher than

money, I with confidence anticipate; ever-increasing, till there

be a sprinkling of them found in all quarters, as salt of the

Earth' once more. The Christianity that cannot get on without a

minimum of Four thousand five hundred, will give place to

something better that can. Thou wilt not join our small

minority, thou? Not till Doomsday in the afternoon? Well;

_then,_ at least, thou wilt join it, thou and the majority

in mass!

But truly it is beautiful to see the brutish empire of Mammon

cracking everywhere; giving sure promise of dying, or of being

changed. A strange, chill, almost ghastly dayspring strikes up

in Yankeeland itself: my Transcendental friends announce there,

in a distinct, though somewhat lankhaired, ungainly manner, that

the Demiurgus Dollar is dethroned; that new unheard-of

Demiurgusships, Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Growths and

Destructions, are already visible in the grey of coming Time.

Chronos is dethroned by Jove; Odin by St. Olaf: the Dollar

cannot rule in Heaven forever. No; I reckon, not. Socinian

Preachers quit their pulpits in Yankeeland, saying, "Friends,

this is all gone to a coloured cobweb, we regret to say!"--and

retire into the fields to cultivate onion-beds, and live frugally

on vegetables. It is very notable. Old godlike Calvinism

declares that its old body is now fallen to tatters, and done;

and its mournful ghost, disembodied, seeking new embodiment,

pipes again in the winds;--a ghost and spirit as yet, but

heralding new Spirit-worlds, and better Dynasties than the

Dollar one.

Yes, here as there, light is coming into the world; men love not

darkness, they do love light. A deep feeling of the eternal

nature of justice looks out among us everywhere,--even through

the dull eyes of Exeter Hall; an unspeakable religiousness

struggles, in the most helpless manner, to speak itself, in

Puseyisms and the like. Of our Cant, all condemnable, how much

is not condemnable without pity; we had almost said, without

respect! The inarticulate worth and truth that is in England

goes down yet to the Foundations.

Some 'Chivalry of Labour,' some noble Humanity and practical

Divineness of Labour, will yet be realised on this Earth. Or why

_will;_ why do we pray to Heaven, without setting our own

shoulder to the wheel? The Present, if it will have the Future

accomplish, shall itself commence. Thou who prophesiest, who

believest, begin thou to fulfil. Here or nowhere, now equally as

at any time! That outcast help-needing thing or person, trampled

down under vulgar feet or hoofs, no help 'possible' for it, no

prize offered for the saving of it,--canst not thou save it,

then, without prize? Put forth thy hand, in God's name; know

that 'impossible,' where Truth and Mercy and the everlasting

Voice of Nature order, has no place in the brave man's

dictionary. That when all men have said "Impossible," and

tumbled noisily elsewhither, and thou alone art left, then first

thy time and possibility have come. It is for thee now: do thou

that, and ask no man's counsel, but thy own only and God's.

Brother, thou hast possibility in thee for much: the possibility

of writing on the eternal skies the record of a heroic life.

That noble downfallen or yet unborn 'Impossibility,' thou canst

lift it up, thou canst, by thy soul's travail, bring it into

clear being. That loud inane Actuality, with millions in its

pocket, too 'possible' that, which rolls along there, with

quilted trumpeters blaring round it, and all the world escorting

it as mute or vocal flunkey,--escort it not thou; say to it,

either nothing, or else deeply in thy heart: "Loud-blaring

Nonentity, no force of trumpets, cash, Long-Acre art, or

universal flunkeyhood of men, makes thee an Entity; thou art a

_Non_entity, and deceptive Simulacrum, more accursed than thou

seemest. Pass on in the Devil's name, unworshipped by at least

one man, and leave the thoroughfare clear!"

Not on Ilion's or Latium's plains; on far other plains and

places henceforth can noble deeds be now done. Not on Ilion's

plains; how much less in Mayfair's drawingrooms! Not in victory

over poor brother French or Phrygians; but in victory over

Frost-jotuns, Marsh-giants, over demons of Discord, Idleness,

Injustice, Unreason, and Chaos come again. None of the old Epics

is longer possible. The Epic of French and Phrygians was

comparatively a small Epic: but that of Flirts and Fribbles,

what is that? A thing that vanishes at cock-crowing,--that

already begins to scent the morning air! Game-preserving

Aristocracies, let them 'bush' never so effectually, cannot

escape the Subtle Fowler. Game seasons will be excellent, and

again will be indifferent, and by and by they will not be at all.

The Last Partridge of England, of an England where millions of

men can get no corn to eat, will be shot and ended.

Aristocracies with beards on their chins will find other work to

do than amuse themselves with trundling-hoops.

But it is to you, ye Workers, who do already work, and are as

grown men, noble and honourable in a sort, that the whole world

calls for new work and nobleness. Subdue mutiny, discord,

widespread despair, by manfulness, justice, mercy and wisdom.

Chaos is dark, deep as Hell; let light be, and there is instead

a green flowery World. O, it is great, and there is no other

greatness. To make some nook of God's Creation a little

fruitfuler, better, more worthy of God; to make some human

hearts a little wiser, manfuler, happier,--more blessed, less

accursed! It is work for a God. Sooty Hell of mutiny and

savagery and despair can, by man's energy, be made a kind of

Heaven; cleared of its soot, of its mutiny, of its need to

mutiny; the everlasting arch of Heaven's azure overspanning _it_

too, and its cunning mechanisms and tall chimney-steeples, as a

birth of Heaven; God and all men looking on it well pleased.

Unstained by wasteful deformities, by wasted tears or heart's-

blood of men, or any defacement of the Pit, noble fruitful

Labour, growing ever nobler, will come forth,--the grand sole

miracle of Man; whereby Man has risen from the low places of

this Earth, very literally, into divine Heavens. Ploughers,

Spinners, Builders; Prophets, Poets, Kings; Brindleys and

Goethes, Odins and Arkwrights; all martyrs, and noble men, and

gods are of one grand Host: immeasurable; marching ever forward

since the Beginnings of the World. The enormous, all-conquering,

flame-crowned Host, noble every soldier in it; sacred, and alone

noble. Let him who is not of it hide himself; let him tremble

for himself. Stars at every button cannot make him noble;

sheaves of Bath-garters, nor bushels of Georges; nor any other

contrivance but manfully enlisting in it, valiantly taking place

and step in it. O Heavens, will he not bethink himself; he too

is so needed in the Host! It were so blessed, thrice-blessed,

for himself and for us all! In hope of the Last Partridge, and

some Duke of Weimar among our English Dukes, we will be patient

yet a while.

The Future hides in it

Gladness and sorrow;

We press still thorow,

Nought that abides in it

Daunting us,--onward.

THE END

-------------------

Summary

Book I--Proem

Chap. I _Midas_

The condition of England one of the most ominous ever seen in

this world: Full of wealth in every kind, yet dying of

inanition; Workhouses, in which no work cane be done.

Destitution in Scotland. Stockport Assizes. England's

unprofitable success: Human faces glooming discordantly on one

another. Midas longed for gold, and the gods gave it him.

Chap. II. _The Sphinx_

The grand unnamable Sphinx-riddle, which each man is called upon

to solve. Notions of the foolish concerning justice and

judgment. Courts of Westminster, and the general High Court of

the Universe. The one strong thing, the just thing, the true

thing. A noble Conservatism, as well as an ignoble. In all

battles of men each fighter, in the end, prospers according to

his right: Wallace of Scotland. Fact and Semblance. What is

justice? As many men as there are in a Nation who can _see_

Heaven's justice, so many are there who stand between it

and perdition.

Chap. III. _Manchester Insurrection_

Peterloo not an unsuccessful Insurrection. Governors who wait

for Insurrection to instruct them, getting into the fatalest

courses. Unspeakable County Yeomanry. Poor Manchester

operatives, and their huge inarticulate question: Unhappy

Workers, unhappier idlers, of this actual England! Fair day's-

wages for fair day's-work: Milton's 'wages;' Cromwell's. Pay

to each man what he has earned and done and deserved; what more

have we to ask? Some not _in_supportable approximation

indispensable and inevitable.

Chap. IV. _Morrison's Pill_

A state of mind worth reflecting on. No Morrison's Pill for

curing the maladies of Society: Universal alteration of regimen

and way of life: Vain jargon giving place to some genuine Speech

again. If we walk according to the Law of this Universe, the

Law-Maker will befriend us; if not, not. Quacks, sham heroes,

the one bane of the world. Quack and Dupe, upper side and under

of the selfsame substance.

Chap. V. _Aristocracy of Talent_

All misery the fruit of unwisdom: Neither with individuals nor

with Nations is it fundamentally otherwise. Nature in late

centuries universally supposed to be dead; but now everywhere

asserting herself to be alive and miraculous. That guidance of

this country not sufficiently wise. Aristocracy of talent, or

government by the Wisest, a dreadfully difficult affair to get

started. The true _eye_ for talent; and the flunky eye for

respectabilities, warm garnitures and

larders dropping fatness: Bobus and Bobissimus.

Chap. VI. _Hero-worship_

Enlightened Egoism, never so luminous, not the rule by which

man's life can be led: A _soul,_ different from a stomach in any

sense of the word. Hero-worship done differently in every

different epoch of the world. Reform, like Charity, must begin

at home. Arrestment of the knaves and dastards, beginning by

arresting our own poor selves out of that fraternity. The

present Editor's purpose to himself full of hope. A Loadstar

in the eternal sky: glimmering of light, for here and there

a human soul.

Book II--The Ancient Monk

Chap. I. _Jocelin of Brakelond_

How the Centuries stand lineally related to each other. The one

Book not permissible, the kind that has nothing in it. Jocelin's

'Chronicle,' a private Boswellean Note-book, now seven centuries

old. How Jocelin, from under his monk's cowl, looked out on that

narrow section of the world in a really _human_ manner: A wise

simplicity in him; a _veracity_ that goes deeper than words.

Jocelin's Monk-Latin; and Mr. Rokewood's editorial helpfulness

and fidelity. A veritable Monk of old Bury St. Edmunds worth

attending to. This England of ours, of the year 1200: Coeur-de-

Lion: King Lackland, and his thirteenpenny mass. The poorest

historical Fact, and the grandest imaginative Fiction.

Chap. II. _St. Edmundsbury_

St. Edmund's Bury, a prosperous brisk Town: Extensive ruins of

the Abbey still visible. Assiduous Pedantry, and its rubbish-

heaps called 'History.' Another world it was, when those black

ruins first saw the sun as walls. At lowest, O dilettante

friend, let us know always that it _was_ a world. No easy matter

to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries: Of all helps; a

Boswell, even a small Boswell, the welcomest.

Chap. III. _Landlord Edmund_

'Battle of Fornham,' a fact, though a forgotten one. Edmund,

Landlord of the Eastern Counties: A very singular kind of

'landlord.' How he came to be 'sainted.' Seen and felt to have

done verily a man's part in this life pilgrimage of his. How

they took up the slain body of their Edmund, and reverently

embalmed it. Pious munificence, ever growing by new pious gifts.

Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner;

others in a rather shabby one.

Chap. IV. _Abbot Hugo_

All things have two faces, a light one and dark: The Ideal has

to grow in the Real, and to seek its bed and board there, often

in a very sorry manner. Abbot Hugo, grown old and feeble. Jew

debts and Jew creditors. How approximate justice strives to

accomplish itself. In the old monastic Books almost no Mention

whatever of 'personal religion.' A poor Lord Abbot, all stuck-

over with horse-leeches: A 'royal commission of inquiry,' to no

purpose. A monk's first duty, obedience. Magister Samson,

Teacher of the Novices. The Abbot's providential death.

Chap. V. _Twelfth Century_

Inspectors of Custodiars; the King not in any breathless haste

to appoint a new Abbot. Dim and very strange looks that monk-

life to us. Our venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,

shrieking, and rushing out with their distaffs. Lakenheath eels

too slippery to be caught. How much is alive in England, in that

Twelfth Century; how much, not yet come into life. Feudal

Aristocracy; Willelmus conquaestor: Not a steeple-chimney yet

got on end from sea to sea.

Chap. VI. _Monk Samson_

Monk-Life and Monk-Religion: A great heaven-high

Unquestionability, encompassing, interpenetrating all human

Duties. Our modern Arkwright Joe-Manton ages: All human dues

and reciprocities, changed into one great due of 'cash-payment'

The old monks but a limited class of creatures, with a somewhat

dull life of it. One Monk of a taciturn nature distinguishes

himself among those babling ones. A Son of poor Norfolk parents.

Little Samson's awful dream: His poor Mother dedicates him to

St. Edmund. He grows to be a learned man, of devout grave

nature. Sent to Rome on business; and returns _too_ successful:

Method of traveling thither in those days. His tribulations at

home: Strange conditions under which Wisdom has sometimes to

struggle with folly.

Chap. VII. _The Canvassing_

A new Abbot to be elected. Even gossip, seven centuries off, has

significance. The Prior with Twelve Monks, to wait on his

Majesty at Waltham. An 'election' the on important social act:

Given the Man a People choose, the worth and worthlessness of the

People itself is given.

Chap. VIII. _The Election_

Electoral methods and manipulations. Brother Samson ready

oftenest with some question, some suggestion that his wisdom in

it. The Thirteen off to Waltham, to choose their Abott: In the

solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her birthtime,

what gossiping, babbling, dreaming of dreams! King Henry II in

his high Presence-chamber. Samson chosen Abbot: the King's

royal acceptation. St. Edmundsbury Monks, without express ballot

box or other winnowing machine. In every nation and Community

there is at all times _a fittest,_ wisest, bravest, best. Human

Worth and human Worthlessness.

Chap. IX. _Abbot Samson_

The Lord Abbot's arrival at St. Edmundsbury: The self-same

Samson yesterday a poor mendicant, this day, finds himself a

_Dominus Abbas_ and mitred Peer of Parliament. Depth and

opulence of true social vitality in those old barbarous ages.

True Governors go about under all manner of disguises now as

then. Genius, Poet; what these words mean. George the Third,

head charioteer of England; and Robert Burns, gauger of ale in

Dumfries. How Abbot Samson found a Convert all in dilapidation.

His life-long harsh apprenticeship to governing, namely obeying.

First get your Man; all is got. Danger of blockheads.

Chap. X. _Government_

Beautiful, how the chrysalis governing-soul, shaking off its

dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true royal soul!

One first labour, to institute a strenuous review and radical

reform of his economics. Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie,

let it have a care; here is a man that has declared war with it.

In less than four years the Convent debts are all liquidated, and

the harpy Jews banished from St. Edmundsbury. New life springs

beneficent everywhere: Spiritual rubbish as little tolerated

as material.

Chap. XI. _The Abbot's Ways_

Reproaches, open and secret, of ingratitude, unsociability;

Except for 'fit men' in all kinds, hard to say for whom Abbot

Samson had much favour. Remembrance of benefits. An eloquent

man, but intent more on substance than on ornament. A just clear

heart the basis of all true talent. One of the justest of

judges; His invaluable 'talent of silence.' Kind of people he

liked worst. Hospitality and stocism. The country in those days

still dark with noble wood and umbrage; How the old trees

gradually died out, no man heeding it. Monachism itself, so rich

and fruitful once, now all rotted into _peat._ Devastations of

four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths.

Chap. XII. _The Abbot's Troubles_

The troubles of Abbot Samson more than tongue can tell. Not the

spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle, can be theirs

who really govern. An insurrection of the Monks: Behave better,

ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot. Worn down

with incessant toil and tribulation: Gleams of hilarity too;

little snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. How

my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his _un_due 'debt,' gets a

Roland for his Oliver. A Life of Literature, noble and ignoble.

Chap. XIII. _In Parliament_

Confused days of Lackland's usurpation, while Coeur-de-Lion was

away: Our brave Abbot took helmet himself, excommunicating all

who should favour Lackland. Kind Richard a captive in Germany.

St. Edmund's Shrine not meddled with: A heavenly Awe

overshadowed and encompassed, as it still ought and must, all

earthly Business whatsoever.

Chap. XIV. _Henry of Essex_

How St. Edmund punished terribly, yet with mercy; A Naratice

significant of the time. Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of

England: No right reverence for the Heavenly in Man. A traitor

or coward. Solemn Duel, by the King's appointment. An evil

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

Chap. XV. _Practical-Devotional_

A Tournament proclaimed and held in the Abbot's domain, in spite

of him. Roystering young dogs brought to reason. The Abbot a

man that generally remains master at last: The importunate

Bishop of Ely outwitted. A man that dare abide King Richard's

anger, with justice on his side. Thou brave Richard, thou brave

Samson! The basis of Abbot Samson's life truly religion. His

zealous interest in the Crusades. The great antique heart, like

a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest

solemnity and depth. His comparative silence as to his religion

precisely the healthiest sign of him and it. Methodism,

dilettantism, Puseyism.

Chap. XVI. _St. Edmund_

Abbot Samson built many useful, many pious edifices: All

ruinous, incomplete things an eye-sorrow to him. Rebuilding the

great Altar: A glimpse of the glorious Martyr's very Body. What

a scene; how far vanished from us, in these unworshipping ages

of ours! The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily the innermost

fact of their existence, determining all the rest. On the whole,

who knows how to reverence the Body of man? Abbot Samson, at the

culminating point of his existence: Our real-phantasmagory of

St. Edmundsbury plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century

again, and all is over.

Chap. XVII. _The Beginnings_

Formulas the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's Life:

Living Formulas and dead. Habit the deepest law of human nature.

A pathway through the pathless. Nationalities. Pulpy infancy,

kneaded, baked into any form you choose: The Man of business;

the hard-handed Labourer; the genus Dandy. No Mortal out of the

depths of Bedlam but lives by Formulas. The hosts and

generations of brave men Oblivion has swallowed: Their crumbled

dust, the soil our life-fruit grows on. Invention of Speech;

Forms of Worship; Methods of Justice. This English Land, here

and now, the summary of what was wise and noble, and accordant

with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. The

thing called 'Fame.'

Book III.--The Modern Worker

Chap. I. _Phenomena_

How men have 'forgotten God;' taken the Fact of this Universe as

it is _not;_ God's Laws become a Greatest-happiness Principle, a

Parliamentary Expediency. Man has lost the _soul_ out of him,

and begins to find the want of it. The old Pope of Rome, with

his stuffed dummy to do the kneeling for him. Few men that

worship by the rotatory Calabash, do it in half so great, frank

or effectual a way. Our Aristocracy no longer able to _do_ its

work, and not in the least conscious that it has any work to do.

The Champion of England 'lifted into his saddle.' The hatter in

the Strand, mounting a huge lath-and-plaster Hat. Our noble

ancestors have fashioned for us, in how many thousand sense, a

'life-road;' and we their sons are madly, literally enough,

'consuming the way.'

Chap. II. _Gospel of Mammonism_

Heaven and Hell, often as the words are on our tongue, got to be

fabulous or semi-fabulous for most of us. The real 'Hell' of the

English. Cash-payment, _not_ the sole or even chief relation of

human beings. Practical Atheism, and its despicable fruits. One

of Dr. Alison's melancholy facts: A poor Irish widow, in the

Lanes of Endinburgh, _proving_ her sisterhood. Until we get a

human _soul_ within us, all things are _im_possible: Infatuated

geese, with feathers and without.

Chap. III. _Gospel of Dilettantism_

Mammonism at least works; but 'Go gracefully idle in Mayfair,'

what does or can that mean?--Impotent, insolent Donothingism in

Practice and Saynothingism in Speech. No man now speaks a plain

word: Insincere Speech the prime material of insincere Action.

Moslem parable of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead sea: The

Universe _become_ a Humbug to the Apes that thought it one.

Chap. IV. _Happy_

All work noble; and every noble crown a crown of thorns. Man's

pitiful pretension to be what he calls "happy;" His Greatest-

Happiness Principle fast becoming a rather unhappy one. Byron's

large audience. A philosophical Doctor: A disconsolate Meat-

jack, gnarring and creaking with rust and work. The only

'happiness' a brave man ever troubled himself much about, the

happiness to get his work done.

Chap. V. _The English_

With all thy theoretic platitudes, what a depth of practical

sense in thee, great England! A dumb people, who can do great

acts, but not describe them. The noble Warhorse, and the Dog of

Knowledge: The freest utterances not by any means the best. The

done Work, much more than the spoken Word, an epitome of the man.

The Man of Practice, and the Man of Theory: Ineloquent Brindley.

The English, of all Nations the stupidest in speech, the wisest

in action: Sadness and seriousness: Unconsciously this great

Universe is great to them. The silent Romans. John Bull's

admirable insensibility to Logic. All great Peoples

conservative. Kind of Ready-Reckoner a Solecism in East-cheap.

Berserkir rage. Truth and Justice alone _capable_ of being

'conserved.' Bitter indignation engendered by the Corn-Laws in

every just English heart.

Chap. VI. _Two Centuries_

The 'Settlement' of the year 1660 one of the mournfulest that

ever took place in this land of ours. The true end of Government

to guide men in the way they should go: The true good of this

life, the portal of infinite good in the life to come. Oliver

Cromwell's body hung on the Tyburn gallows, the type of

Puritanism found futil, inexecutable, execrable. The

Spiritualism of England, for two godless centuries, utterly

forgettable: Her practical material Work alone memorable.

Bewildering obscurations and impediments: Valiant Sons of Toil

enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille. Giant

Labour yet to be King of this Earth.

Chap. VII. _Over-Production_

An idle Governing Class addressing its Workers with an indictment

of 'Over-production.' Duty of justly apportioning the Wages

of Work done. A game-preserving Aristocracy, guiltless of

producing or apportioning anything. Owning the soil of England.

The Working Aristocracy steeped in ignoble Mammonism: The Idle

Aristocracy, with its yellow parchments and pretentious futilities.

Chap. VIII. _Unworking Aristocracy_

Our Land the _Mother_ of us all: No true Aristocracy but must

possess the Land. Men talk of 'selling' Land: Whom it belongs

to. Our much-consuming Aristocracy: By the law of their

position bound to furnish guidance and governance. Man and

miserable Corn-Laws. The Working Aristocracy, and its terrible

New-Work: The Idle Aristocracy, and its horoscope of despair. A

High Class without duties to do, like a tree planted on

precipices. In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful

making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The pagan

Hercules; the Czar of Russia. Parchments, venerable and not

venerable. Benedict the Jew, and his usuries. No Chapter on the

Corn-Laws: The Corn-Laws too mad to have a Chapter.

Chap. IX. _Working Aristocracy_

Many things for the Working Aristocracy, in their exteme need, to

consider. A national Existence supposed to depend on 'selling

cheaper' than any other People. Let inventive men try to invent

a little how cotton at its present cheapness could be somewhat

justlier divided. Many 'imposibilities' will have to become

possible. Supply-and-demand: For what noble work was there ever

yet any audible 'demand' in that poor sense?

Chap. X. _Plugson of Undershot_

Man's Philosophies usually the 'supplement of his practice:'

Symptoms of social death. Cash-Payment: The Plugson Ledger, and

the Tablets of heaven's Chancery, discrepant exceedingly. All

human things do require to have an Ideal in them. How murderous

fighting became a 'glorious Chivalry.' Noble devout-hearted

Chevaliers. Ignoble Bucaniers and Chactaw Indians: Howel

Davies, Napoleon flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter

end of him sternly compensating for the beginning. The

indomitable Plugson, as yet a Bacanier and Chactaw. William

Conqueror and his Norman followers. Organisation of Labour:

Courage, there are yet many brave men in England!

Chap. XI. _Labour_

A perennial nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Significance

of the Potter's Wheel. Blessed is he who has found his Work;

let him ask no other blessedness. A brave Sir Christopher, and

his Paul's Cathedral: Every noble work at first 'impossible.'

Columbus royalest Sea-king of all: a depth of Silence, deeper

than the Sea; a silence unsoundable; known to God only.

Chap. XII. _Reward_

Work is worship: Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in

Heaven. One monster there is in the world, the idle man. 'Fair

day's-wages for a fair day's-work,' the most unrefusable demand.

The 'wages' of every noble Work in Heaven, or else Nowhere: The

brave man has to _give_ his Life away. He that works bodies

forth the form of Things Unseen. Strange mystic affinity of

Wisdom and Insanity: All Work, in its degree, a making of

Madness sane. Labour not a devil, even when encased in

Mammonism: The unredeemed ugliness, a slothful People. The

vulgarist Plugson of a Master-Worker, not a man to strangle by

Corn-Laws and Shotbelts.

Chap. XIII. _Democracy_

Man must actually have his debts and earnings a little better

paid by man. At no time was the lot of the dumb millions of

toilers so entirely unbearable as now. Sisterhood, brotherhood

often forgotten, but never before so expressly denied. Mungo

Park and his poor Black Benefactress. Gurth, born thrall of

Cedric the Saxon: Liberty a divine thing; but 'liberty to die

by starvation' not so divine. Nature's Aristocracies. William

Conqueror, a resident House-Surgeon provided by nature for her

beloved English People. Democracy, the despair of finding Heroes

to govern us, and contented putting-up with the want of them.

The very Tailor unconsciously symbolising the reign of Equality.

Wherever ranks do actually exist, strict division of costumes

will also be enforced. Freedom from oppression, an indispensable

yet most insignificant portion of Human Liberty. A _best path_

does exist for every man; a thing which, here and now, it

were of all things _wisest_ for him to do. Mock Superiors and

Real Superiors.

Chap. XIV. _Sir Jabesh Windbag_

Oliver Cromwell, the remarkablest Governor we have had for the

last five centuries or so: No vulunteer in Public Life, but

plainly a balloted soldier: The Government of England put into

his hands. Windbag, weak in the faith of a God; strong only in

the faith that Paragraphs and Plausibilities bring votes. Five

years of popularity or unpopularity; and _after_ those five

years, an Eternity. Oliver has to appear before the Most High

Judge: Windbag, appealing to 'Posterity.'

Chap. XV. _Morison Again_

New Religions: This new stage of progress, proceeding 'to invent

God,' a very strange one indeed. Religion, the Inner Light or

Moral Conscience of a man's soul. Infinite difference between a

Good man and a Bad. The Great soul of the World, just and not

unjust: Faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual 'prayer.'

Penalities: The French Revolution; cruelest Portent that has

risen into created Space these ten centuries. Man needs no "New

Religion;" nor is like to get it: spiritual Dastardism, and

sick folly. One Liturgy which does remain forever

unexceptionable, that of _Praying by Working._ Sauerteig on the

symbolic influences of Washing. Chinese Pontiff-Emperor and his

significant 'punctualities.' Goethe and German Literature. The

great event for the world, now as always, the arrival in it of a

new Wise Man. Goethe's _Mason-Lodge._

Book IV.--Horoscope

Chap. I. _Aristocracies_

To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so

impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled:

a godless century, looking back to centuries that were godly. A

new real Aristocracy and Priesthood. The noble Priest always a

noble _Aristos_ to begin with, and something more to end with.

Modern Preachers, and the _real_ Satanas that now is. Abbot-

Samson and William-Conqueror times. The mission of a Land

Aristocracy a _sacred_ one, in both senses of that old word.

Truly a 'Splendor of God' did dwell in those old rude veracious

ages. Old Anselm traveling to Rome, to appeal against King

Rufus. Their quarrel at bottom a great quarrel. The boundless

future, predestined, nay already extant though unseen. Our

Epic, not _Arms and the Man,_ but _Tools and the Man;_ an

infinitely wider kind of Epic. Important that our grand

Reformation were begun.

Chap. II. _Bribery Committee_

Our theory, perfect purity of Tenpound Franchise; our practice,

irremediable bribery. Bribery, indicative not only of length of

purse, but of brazen dishonesty: Proposed improvements. A

parliament, starting with a lie in its mouth, promulgates strage

horoscopes of itself. Respect paid to those worthy of no

respect: Pandarus Dogdraught. The indigent discerning Freeman;

and the kind of men he is called upon to vote for.

Chap. III. _The One Institution_

The 'Organisation of Labour,' if well understood, the Problem of

the whole Future. Governments of various degrees of utility.

Kilkenny Cats; spinning-Dervishes; Parliamentary eloquence. A

prime-Minister who would dare believe the heavenly omens. Who

can despair of Governments, that passes a Soldier's Guardhouse?--

Incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, can

be made of men. Organisms enough in the dim huge Future; and

'United Services' quite other than the red-coat one. Legislative

interference between Workers and master-Workers increasingly

indispensable. Sanitary Reform: People's Parks: A right

Education Bill, and effective Teaching Service. Free bridge for

emigrants: England's sure markets among her colonies. London

the _All-Saxon-Home,_ rendezvous of all the 'Children of the

Harz-Rock.' The English essentially conservative: Always the

invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old, to admit the

_minimum_ of New. Yet new epochs do actually come; and

with them new peremptory necessities. A certain Editor's

stipulated work.

Chap. IV. _Captains of Industry_

Government can do much, but it can in nowise do all. Fall of

Mammon: to be a noble Master among noble Workers, will again be

the first ambition with some few. The Leaders of Industry,

virtually the Captains of the world: doggeries and Chivalries.

Isolation, the sum-total of wretchedness to man. All social

growths in the world have required organising; and work, the

grandest of human interests, does now require it.

Chap. V. _Permanence_

The 'tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hindrances,

discouragements and 'impossibilities,' that which distinguishes

the Species Man from the Genus Ape. Month-long contracts, and

Exeter-Hall purblindness. A practical manufacturing Quaker's care

for his workmen. Blessing of permanent Contract: Permanence in

all things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest

possible. Vagrant Sam-Slicks. The wealth of a man the number of

things he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.

The Worker's _interest_ in the enterprise with which he is

connected. How to reconcile Despotism with Freedom.

Chap. VI. _The Landed_

A man with fifty, with five hundred, with a thousand pounds a

day, given him freely, without condition at all, might be a

rather strong Worker: The sad reality, very ominous to look at.

Will he awaken, be alive again; or is this death-fit very

death?--Goeth's Duke of Weimar. Doom of Idleness. To sit idle

aloft, like absurd Epicurus'-gods, a poor life for a man.

Independence 'lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye:' Rejection

of sham Superiors, the needful preparation for obedience to

_real_ Superiors.

Chap. VII _The gifted_

Tumultuous anarchy calmed by noble effort into fruitful

sovereignty. Mammon, like Fire, the usefulest of servants, if

the frightfulest of masters. Souls to whom the omnipotent guinea

is, on the whole, an impotent guinea: Not a May-game is this

man's life; but a battle and stern pilgrimage: God's justice,

human Nobleness, Veracity and Mercy, the essence of his very

being. What a man of Genius is. The Highest 'Man of Genius.'

Genius, the clearer presence of God Most High in a man. Of

intrinsic Valetism you cannot, with whole Parliaments to help

you, make a heroism.

Chap. VIII. _The Didactic_

One preacher who does preach with effect, and gradually persuade

all persons. Repentant Captains of Industry: A Chactaw Fighter

becomes a Christian Fighter. Doomsday in the afternoon. The

'Christianity' that cannot get on without a minimum of Four-

thousand-five-hundred, will give place to something better that

can. Beautiful to see the brutish empire of Mammon cracking

everywhere: A strange, chill, almost ghastly dayspring in

Yankeeland itself. Here as there, Light is coming into the

world. Whoso believes, let him begin to fulfil: 'Impossible,'

where Truth and Mercy and the everlasting Voice of Nature order,

can have no place in the brave man's dictionary. Not on Ilion's

or Latium's plains; on far other plains and places henceforth

can noble deeds be done. The last Partridge of England shot and

ended: Aristocracies with beards on their chins. O, it is

great, and there is no other greatness: To make some nook of

god's Creation a little fruitfuler; to make some human hearts a

little wiser, manfuler, happier: It is work for a God!