o
many centuries back; this? The golden flower of our grand alchemical
projection, which has set the world in astonishment so long, and been
the envy of surrounding nations, is--what we here see. To be governed by
his Lordship, and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by this
respectable degree of human faculty. With our utmost soul's travail we
could discover, by the sublimest methods eulogized by all the world, no
abler Englishman than this?

Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime methods, and ask
ourselves very seriously, whether, notwithstanding the eulogy of all
the world, they can be other than extremely astonishing methods, that
require revisal and reconsideration very much indeed! For the kind of
"man" we get to govern us, all conclusions whatsoever centre there, and
likewise all manner of issues flow infallibly therefrom. "Ask well, who
is your Chief Governor," says one: "for around him men like to him will
infallibly gather, and by degrees all the world will be made in his
image." "He who is himself a noble man, has a chance to know the
nobleness of men; he who is not, has none. And as for the poor
Public,--alas, is not the kind of 'man' you set upon it the liveliest
symbol of its and your veracity and victory and blessedness, or
unveracity and misery and cursedness; the general summation and
practical outcome of all else whatsoever in the Public and in you?"

Time was when an incompetent Governor could not be permitted among men.
He was, and had to be, by one method or the other, clutched up from his
place at the helm of affairs, and hurled down into the hold, perhaps
even overboard, if he could not really steer. And we call those ages
barbarous, because they shuddered to see a Phantasm at the helm of their
affairs; an eyeless Pilot with constitutional spectacles, steering by
the ear mainly? And we have changed all that; no-government is now the
best; and a tailor's foreman, who gives no trouble, is preferable to any
other for governing? My friends, such truly is the current idea; but you
dreadfully mistake yourselves, and the fact is not such. The fact, now
beginning to disclose itself again in distressed Needlewomen, famishing
Connaughts, revolting Colonies, and a general rapid advance towards
Social Ruin, remains really what it always was, and will so remain!

Men have very much forgotten it at present; and only here a man and
there a man begins again to bethink himself of it: but