"The Knaves and Dastards" had to be "arrested" in some measure; or the world, almost within year and day, found that it could not live. The Knaves and Dastards accordingly were got arrested. Dastards upon the very throne had to be got arrested, and taken off the throne-by such methods as then were; by the roughest method, if there chanced to be no smoother one. Doubtless there was much harshness of operation, much severity; as, indeed, government and surgery are often somewhat severe. Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, it is like, got cuffs as often as pork-parings, if he misdemeaned himself: but Gurth did belong to Cedric: no human creature then went about connected with nobody; left to go his ways into Bastilles or worse, under Laissez-faire; reduced to prove his relationship by dying of typhus fever! Days come when there is no King in Israel, but every man is his own king, doing that which is right in his own eyes; and tar barrels are burnt to "Liberty," Ten-Pound Franchise, and the like, with considerable effect in various ways!

That Feudal Aristocracy, I say, was no imaginary one. To a respectable degree, Iarls, what we now call Earls, were Strong Ones in fact as well as etymology; its Dukes Leaders; its Lords Law-wards. They did all the Soldiering and Police of the Country, all the Judging, Law-making, even the Church-Extension; whatsoever in the way of Governing, of Guiding, and Protecting could be done. It was a Land Aristocracy; it managed the Governing of this English People, and had the reaping of the soil of England in return. It is, in many senses, the Law of Nature, this same Law of Feudalism; no right Aristocracy but a Land one! The curious are invited to meditate upon it in these days. Soldiering, Police, and Judging, Church Extension, nay, real Governance and Guidance, all this was actually done by the Holders of the Land in return for the Land. How much of it is now done by them-done by anybody! Good Heavens, "Laissez-faire, Do ye nothing, eat your wages, and sleep," is everywhere the passionate half-wise cry of this time; and they will not so much as do nothing, but must do more Corn-laws! We raise Fifty-two millions, from the general mass of us, to get our Governing done-or, alas, to get ourselves persuaded that it is done and the "peculiar burden of the Land " is to pay, not all this, but to pay, as I learn, one twenty-fourth part of all this. Our first Chartist Parliament, or Oliver Redivivus, you would say, will know where to lay the new taxes of England! Or, alas, taxes? If we made the Holders of the Land pay every shilling still of the expense of Governing the Land, what were all that,? The Land, by mere hired Governors, cannot be got governed. You cannot hire men to govern the Land; it is by a mission not contracted for in the Stock-Exchange, but felt in their own hearts as coming out of Heaven, that men can govern a Land. The mission of a Land Aristocracy is a sacred one, in both the senses of that old word. The footing it stands on, at present, might give rise to thoughts other than of Corn-laws!

But truly a "splendour of God," as in William Conqueror's rough oath, did dwell in those old rude veracious ages; did inform, more and more, with a heavenly nobleness, all departments of their work and life. Phantasms could not yet walk abroad in mere Cloth Tailorage; they were at least Phantasms "on the rim of the Horizon," pencilled there by an eternal Light-beam from within. A most "practical" Hero-worship went on, unconsciously or half-consciously everywhere. A monk Samson, with a maximum of two shillings in his pocket, could, without ballot-box, be made a Vice-king of, being seen to be worthy. The difference between a good man and a bad man was as yet felt to be, what it for ever is, an immeasurable one. Who durst have elected a Pandarus Dogdraught, Esq., in those days, to any office, Carlton Club, Senatorship, or place whatsoever! It was felt that the arch Satanas and no other had a clear right of property in Pandare •

that it were better for you to have no hand in Pandarus, to keep out of Pandarus his neighbourhood! Which is to this hour the mere fact; though for the present, alas, the forgotten fact. I think they were comparatively blessed times, those, in their way! "Violence," " war," "disorder:" well, what is war, and death itself, to such a perpetual-life-in-death, and 64 peace, peace, where there is no peace!" Unless some Hero worship, in its new appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very habitable long.

Old Anselm, exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the purest-minded men of genius," was travelling to make his appeal to Rome, against King Rufus a man of rough ways, in whom the inner Light-beam shone very fitfully. It is beautiful to read in Monk Eadmer how the continental populations welcomed and venerated this Anselm, as no French population now venerated a Jean Jacques or giant-killing Voltaire; as not even an American population now venerates a Schnüspel the distinguished Novelist! They had, by phantasy and true insight, the intensest conviction that a God's-Blessing dwelt in this Anselin-as it is my conviction too. They crowded round with bent knees and enkindled hearts, to receive his blessing, to hear his voice, to see the light of his face. My blessings on them and⚫ on him! But the notablest was a certain necessitous or covetous Duke of Burgundy, in straitened circumstances we shall hope-who reflected that in all likelihood this English Archbishop, going toward Rome to appeal, must have taken store of cash with him to bribe the Cardinals. Wherefore he of Burgundy, for his part, decided to lie in wait and rob him. "In an open space of a wood" some "wood" then green and growing, eight centuries ago, in Burgundian land-this fierce duke, with fierce steel-followers, shaggy, savage as the Russian Bear, dashes out on the weak old Anselm, riding along there on his small quiet-going pony; escorted only by Eadmer and another poor monk on ponies; and, except some small modicum of roadmoney, not a gold coin in his possession. The steel-clad Russian Bear

emerges, glaring: the old white-bearded man starts not-paces on unmoved, looking into it with his clear old earnest eyes, with his venerable, sorrowful, time-worn face; of whom nothing need be afraid, and who also is afraid of no created thing. The fierce eyes of his Burgundian Grace meet these clear eye-glances, convey them swift to his heart: he bethinks him that probably this feeble, fearless, hoary Figure has in it something of the Most High God; that probably he shall be damned if he meddle with it-that, on the whole, he had better not. He plunges, the rough savage, off his warhorse, down to his knees, embraces the feet of old Anselm: he too begs his blessing-orders men to escort him from being robbed, and, under dread penalties, see him safe on his way! Per os Dei, as his majesty was wont to ejaculate!

Neither is this quarrel of Rufus and Anselm, of Henry and Becket, uninstructive to us. It was, at bottom, a great quarrel. For, admitting that Anselm was full of Divine Blessing, he by no means included in him all forms of Divine Blessing; there were far other forms withal, which he little dreamed of; and William Redbeard was unconsciously the representative and spokesman of these! In truth, could your divine Anselm, your divine Pope Gregory have had their way, the results had been very notable. Our Western World had all become a European Thibet, with one Grand Lama sitting at Rome; our one honourable business that of singing mass all day and all night. Which would not in the least have suited us! The Supreme Powers willed it not so.

It was as if King Redbeard, unconsciously addressing Anselm, Becket; and the others, had said: "Right Reverend, your theory of the Universe is ndisputable by man or devil; to the core of our heart we feel that this divine thing which you call Mother Church does fill the whole world hitherto known,

and is and shall be all our salvation and all our desire. And yet—and yet -Behold, though it is an unspoken secret, the world is wider than any of us think, right Reverend! Behold, there are yet other unmeasurable sacrednesses in this that you call Heathenism, Secularity! On the whole I, in an obscure, but most rooted manner, feel that I cannot comply with you. Western Thibet and perpetual mass-chaunting-No. I am, so to speak, in the family way; with child, of I know not what certainly of something far different from this! I have-Per os Dei, I have Manchester Cotton-trades, Bromwicham Iron-trades, American Commonwealths, Indian Empires, Steam Mechanisms, and Shakspeare Dramas in my belly, and cannot do it, right Reverned!" So accordingly it was decided and Saxon Becket spilt his life in Canterbury Cathedral, as Scottish Wallace did on TowerHill, and as generally a noble man and martyr has to do-not for nothing; no, but for a divine something, other than he had altogether calculated. We will now quit this of the hard organic, but limited Feudal, ages; and glance timidly into the immense Industrial Ages, as yet all inorganic, and in a quite pulpy condition, requiring desperately to harden themselves into some organism!

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Our Epic having now become. Tools and the Man, it is more than usually impossible to prophesy the Future. The boundless Future does lie there, predestined-nay, already extant, though unseen; hiding, in its continents of Darkness, "Good hap and sorrow;" but the supremest intelligence of man cannot prefigure much of it: the united intelligence and effort of All Men in all coming generations, this alone will gradually prefigure it, and figure and form it into a seen fact? Straining our eyes hitherto, the utmost effort of intelligence sheds but some most glimmering dawn a little way into its dark enormous Deeps; only huge outlines loom uncertain on the sight; and the ray of prophesy at a short distance expires. But may we not say, here as always, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof! To shape the whole Future is not our problem; but only to shape faithfully a small part of it, according to rules already known. It is perhaps possible for each of us, who will with due earnestness inquire, to ascertain clearly what he, for his own part, ought to do; this let him, with true heart, do, and continue doing. The general issue will, as it has always done, rest well with a Higher Intelligence than ours.

One grand "outline," or even two, many earnest readers may perhaps, at this stage of the business, be able to prefigure for themselves and draw some guidance from. One prediction, or even two are already possible. For the Lifetree Igdrasil in all its new developements, is the self-same worldold Lifetree, having found an element or elements there, running from the very roots of it, in Hela's Realins, in the Well of Miner, and of the Three Normans or Times, up to this present hour of it in our own hearts, we conclude that such will have to continue. A man has, in his own soul, an Eternal; can read something of the Eternal there, if he will look! He already knows what will continue; what cannot, by any means of appliance whatsoever, be made to continue !

One wide and widest "outline" ought really, in all ways, to be becoming clear to us: this, namely: That a "Splendour of God," in one form or other, will have to unfold itself from the heart of these our Industrial Ages too or they will never get themselves “organized :" but continue chaotic, distressed, distracted evermore, and have to perish in frantic suicidal dissolution. A second "outline" or prophecy narrower, but also wide enough, seems not less certain: That there will again be a king in Israel: a system of Order and Government and every man shall, in some measure, see himself constrained to do that which is right in the King's eyes! This too we may call a sure element of the Future: for this too is of the Eternal; this too is of the Present, though hidden from most: and without it no fibre

of the Past ever was. An actual new Sovereignty, Industrial Aristocracy, is indispensable and indubitable for us.

But what an Aristocracy; on what new, far more complex and cunningly devised conditions than that old Feudal fighting one! For we are to bethink us that the Epic verily is not Arms and the Man, but Tools and the Manan infinitely wider kind of Epic. And again we are to bethink us that we cannot now be bound to men by brass collars-not at all: that this brasscollar method, in all figures of it, has vanished out of Europe for evermore ! Huge Democracy, walking the streets everywhere in its Sack Coat, has asserted so much, irrevocably, brooking nor eply! True enough, man is for ever the "born thrall" of certain men born master of certain other men, born equal of certain others, let him acknowledge the fact or not. It is unblessed for him when he cannot acknowledge this fact; he is in the chaotic state, ready to perish, till he do get the fact acknowledged. But no man is, or can henceforth be, the brass-collar thrall of any man; you will have to bind him by other, far nobler, and cunninger methods. Once for all, he is to be loose of the brass-collar, to have a scope as wide as his faculties now are : will he not be all the usefuller to you in that new state? Let him go abroad as a trusted one, as a free one; and return home to you with rich earnings at night! Gurth could only tend pigs; this one will build cities, conquer waste worlds. How, in conjunction with inevitable Democracy, indispensable Sovereignty is to exist: certainly it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded to mankind! The solution of which is work for long years and centuries. Years and centuries of one knows not what complexion; blessed or unblessed, according as they shall, with earnest valiant effect, make progress therein, or in slothful unveracity and dilettantism only talk of making progress. For either progress therein, or swift and ever swifter progress toward dissolution, is henceforth a necessity.

It is of importance that this grand reformation were begun; that Corn-law Debatings and other jargon, little less than delirious in such a time, had fled far away, and left us room to begin! For the evil has grown practical, extremely conspicuous; if it be not seen and provided for, the blindest fool will have to feel it 'ere long. There is much that can wait; but there is something also that cannot wait. With millions of eager Working men imprisoned in "Impossibility" and Poor-law Bastilles, it is time that some means of dealing with them were trying to become " possible!" Of the Government of England, of all articulate-speaking functionaries, real and imaginary Aristocracies, of me and of thee, it is imperatively demanded, "How do you mean to manage these men! Where are they to find a supportable existence? What is to become of them-and of you?"

CHAPTER II.

BRIBÉRY COMMITTEE.

In the case of the late Bribery Committee it seemed to be the conclusion of the soundest practical minds that Bribery could not be put down; that Pure Election was a thing we had seen the last of, and must now go on without as we best could. A conclusion not a little startling; to which it requires a practical mind of some seasoning to reconcile yourself at once! It seems, then, we are henceforth to get ourselves constituted Legislators, not according to what merit we may have, or even what merit we may seem to have, but according to the length of our purse and our frankness, impudence and dexterity in laying out the contents of the same. Our theory written down in all books and law-books, spouted forth from all barrel-heads, is perfect purity of ten-pound franchise, absolute sincerity of question put and answer given; and our practice is irremediable bribery; irremediable,

unpunishable, which you will do more harm than good by attempting to punish! Once more, a very startling conclusion indeed; which, whatever the soundest practical minds in Parliament may think of it, invites all British men to meditations of various kinds.

A Parliament, one would say, which proclaims itself elected and eligible by bridery, tells the nation that is governed by it a piece of very singular news. Bribery: have we reflected what bribery is? Bribery means not only length of purse, which is neither qualification nor the contrary for legislating well; but it means dishonesty, and even impudent dishonesty; brazen insensibility to lying and to making others lie; total oblivion, and flinging overboard for the nonce, of any real thing you call veracity, morality; with dextrous putting on the cast-clothes of that real thing, and strutting about in them! What Legislating can you get out of a man in that fatal situation? None that will profit much, one would think! A Legisator who has left his veracity lying on the door-threshold, he, why surely he -ought to be sent out to seek it again!

Heavens, what an improvement, were there once fairly, in Downing-street, an Election-office opened, with a Tariff of Boroughs! Such and such a population, amount of property-tax, ground-rental, extent-of-trade; returns two Members, returns one Member, for so much money down: Ipswich so many thousands, Nottingham so many-as they happened, one by one, to fall into this new Downing-street Schedule A! An incalculable improvement, in comparison: for now at least you have it fairly by length of purse, and leave the dishonesty, the impudence, the unveracity all handsomely aside. Length of purse and desire to be a Legislator ought to get a man into Parliament, not with, but, if possible, without, the unveracity, the impudence, and the dishonesty! Length of purse and desire, these are, as intrinsic qualifications, correctly equal to zero; but they are not yet less than zero, as the smallest edition of that lattter sort will make them!

And is it come to this? And does our venerable Parliament announce itself elected and eligible in this manner? Surely such a parliament promulgates strange horoscopes of itself. What is to become of a Parliament elected or eligible in this manner? Unless Belial and Beelzebub have got possession of the throne of this Universe, such Parliament is preparing itself for new reform-bills. We shall have to try it by Chartism, or any conceiveableism, rather than put up with this! There is already in England "religion" enough to get six hundred and fifty-eight Consulting Men brought together who do not begin with a lie in their mouth. Our poor old Parliament, thousands of years old, is still good for something, for several things: though many are beginning to ask, with ominous anxiety, in these days, "For what thing?" But for whatever thing and things Parliament be good, indisputably it must start with other than a lie in its mouth! On the whole, a Parliament working with a lie in its mouth, will have to take itself away. To no Parliament or thing that one has heard of, did this Universe ever long yield harbour on that footing. At all hours of the day and night. some Chartism is advancing, some armed Cromwell is advancing, to apprise such Parliament: "Ye are no Parliament. In the name of God→→ go!"

In sad truth, once more, how is our whole existence, in these present days, built on Cant, Speciosity, Falsehood, Dilettantism; with this one serious veracity in it: Mammonism! Dig down where you will, through the Parliament floor or elsewhere, how infallibly do you, at spade's depth below the surface, come upon this universal Liar's-rock Substratum? Much else is ornamental; true on barrel-heads, in pulpits, hustings, Parliamentary benches; but this is for ever true and truest: "money does bring money's worth; Put money in your purse." Here, if nowhere else, is the human soul still in thorough earnest;. sincere with a prophet's sincerity: and "the