d in the main features, the kind of thing you
propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not
at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families
she is the Goddess of _not_ Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all
their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must
always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not
skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What
then! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who have
the power, and they should keep who can,"[221] is less iniquitous,
when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that,
though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness,
we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done,
and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my
friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and
if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must
know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always
insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty.
But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being
captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does
not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take
all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or
land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to
consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the
contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of
this,--by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's
work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible
as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely,
unostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body with
jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ a
King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the
nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to
be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.[222]
But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in
ruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourers
governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish
the true dynasties.