versities 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 poetie 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?

6

the voice of

If our Actual Aristocracy, appointed Best-and-Bravest,' will be wise, how inexpressibly happy for us! If not, 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-indeath 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 eu*thanasia 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 dis'tracted 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 scoundrelblockhead'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 haring 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! Heroworship, 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 god

like 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 worth-ship, or worth or blessedness in the Earth any more!—

Independence, lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye,'-alas, yes, he is one we have got acquainted with in these late times: a very indispensable one, for spurning off with due energy 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 lionheart will become a lamb's; all its just indignation changed into just reverence, dissolved in blessed floods of noble humble love, how much heavenlier than any pride, nay, if you will, how much prouder! I know him, this lion-hearted, eagle-eyed one; have met him, rushing on, with bosom bare,' in a very distracted dishevelled manner, the times being hard-and can say, and guarantee on my life, That in him is no rebellion; that in him is the reverse of rebellion, the needful preparation for obedience. For if you do mean to obey God-made superiors, your first step is to sweep out the Tailor-made ones; order them, under penalties, to vanish, to make ready for vanishing!

Nay, what is best of all, he cannot rebel, if he would. Superiors whom God has made for us we cannot order to withdraw! Not in the least. No Grand-Turk himself, thickest-quilted tailormade 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 GrandTurks 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. Shew the dullest clod-pole,' 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 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, world-wide 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 fuligi nous 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