. Men and Northumbrian Norse populations know little what
has ended, what is but beginning! The Ribble and the Aire roll down,
as yet unpolluted by dyers' chemistry; tenanted by merry trouts and
piscatory otters; the sunbeam and the vacant wind's-blast alone
traversing those moors. Side by side sleep the coal-strata and the
iron-strata for so many ages; no Steam-Demon has yet risen smoking
into being. Saint Mungo rules in Glasgow; James Watt still slumbering
in the deep of Time. _Mancunium_, Manceaster, what we now call
Manchester, spins no cotton,--if it be not _wool_ 'cottons,' clipped
from the backs of mountain sheep. The Creek of the Mersey gurgles,
twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, clangorous
with sea-fowl; and is a _Lither_-Pool, a _lazy_ or sullen Pool, no
monstrous pitchy City, and Seahaven of the world! The Centuries are
big; and the birth-hour is coming, not yet come. _Tempus ferax, tempus
edax rerum._

CHAPTER VI.

MONK SAMSON.

Within doors, down at the hill-foot, in our Convent here, we are a
peculiar people,--hardly conceivable in the Arkwright Corn-Law ages,
of mere Spinning-Mills and Joe-Mantons! There is yet no Methodism
among us, and we speak much of Secularities: no Methodism; our
Religion is not yet a horrible restless Doubt, still less a far
horribler composed Cant; but a great heaven-high Unquestionability,
encompassing, interpenetrating the whole of Life. Imperfect as we may
be, we are here, with our litanies, shaven crowns, vows of poverty, to
testify incessantly and indisputably to every heart, That this Earthly
Life and _its_ riches and possessions, and good and evil hap, are not
intrinsically a reality at all, but _are_ a shadow of realities
eternal, infinite; that this Time-world, as an air-image, fearfully
_emblematic_, plays and flickers in the grand still mirror of
Eternity; and man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are
alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell. This, with our poor
litanies, we testify, and struggle to testify.

Which, testified or not, remembered by all men or forgotten by all
men, does verily remain the fact, even in Arkwright Joe-Manton ages!
But it is incalculable, when litanies have grown obsolete; when
_fodercorns_, _avragiums_, and all human dues and reciprocities have
been fully changed into one great due of _cash payment_; and man's
duty to man reduces itself to handing him certain metal coins, or
covenanted