all, in England? It turns on that, whether England, rapidly crumbling
in these very years and months, shall go down to the Abyss as her
neighbors have all done, or survive to new grander destinies _without_
solution of continuity! Probably the chief question of the world at
present.

The true "commander" and king; he who knows for himself the divine
Appointments of this Universe, the Eternal Laws ordained by God the
Maker, in conforming to which lies victory and felicity, in departing
from which lies, and forever must lie, sorrow and defeat, for each and
all of the Posterity of Adam in every time and every place; he who has
sworn fealty to these, and dare alone against the world assert these,
and dare not with the whole world at his back deflect from these;--he,
I know too well, is a rare man. Difficult to discover; not quite
discoverable, I apprehend, by manoeuvring of ballot-boxes, and riddling
of the popular clamor according to the most approved methods. He is not
sold at any shop I know of,--though sometimes, as at the sign of the
Ballot-box, he is advertised for sale. Difficult indeed to discover:
and not very much assisted, or encouraged in late times, to discover
_himself_;--which, I think, might be a kind of help? Encouraged rather,
and commanded in all ways, if he be wise, to _hide_ himself, and
give place to the windy Counterfeit of himself; such as the universal
suffrages can recognize, such as loves the most sweet voices of the
universal suffrages!--O Peter, what becomes of such a People; what can
become?

Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that fateful Hebrew
Prophecy, I think the fatefulest of all, which sounds daily through
the streets, "Ou' clo! Ou' clo!"--A certain People, once upon a time,
clamorously voted by overwhelming majority, "Not _he_; Barabbas, not
he! _Him_, and what he is, and what he deserves, we know well enough:
a reviler of the Chief Priests and sacred Chancery wigs; a seditious
Heretic, physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and mankind:
To the gallows and the cross with him! Barabbas is our man; Barabbas, we
are for Barabbas!" They got Barabbas:--have you well considered what
a fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque _flunkyism_ grown truculent and
transcendent; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for the
eternal noblenesses; sordid loyalty to the prosperous Semblances, and
high-treason against the Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens in these
nature