at, among all the wondrous provinces of
Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such
astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with
our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous conflict
of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle
for the Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable
Constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves
in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the
Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable Film
dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all
is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and
straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. And then with
such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the
inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant
by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say,
rather in any other age than in his own! It is our painful duty to
announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep,
silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with
shuddering admiration.

Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the Elective
Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: "Satisfy yourselves,"
he says, "by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing
or will do, whether FREEDOM, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and
so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically
hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or
at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or
Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of
manufacture witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the
British constitution, even slightly?--He says, under another figure:
"But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, To
rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since you must live in
it the while), what better, what other, than the Representative Machine
will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name
of Free, 'when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental
festoons.'"--Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of such
an assertion as this: "The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so
unwisely; there is then a deman