telescopes; we have lights, link-lights and
rush-lights of an enlightened free Press, burning and dancing
everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance; singeing your whiskers as
you traverse the public thoroughfares in town and country. Great
souls, true Governors, go about under all manner of disguises now as
then. Such telescopes, such enlightenment,--and such discovery! How
comes it, I say; how comes it? Is it not lamentable; is it not even,
in some sense, amazing?

Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is less a
defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those superstitious
blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, but they had
still an eye; not ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth, abhorrence
of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus Mr. Sale informs
me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in liveliest _gaudeamus_, and
sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly
thank the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shown himself. As
indeed they well might; for what usefuler, I say not nobler and
heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any
Tribe or Nation, in any time or circumstances? I declare to thee, my
afflicted quack-ridden brother, in spite of thy astonishment, it is
very lamentable! We English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been
made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun; and do we
kindle bonfires, or thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking due counsel
of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of Dumfries; and
pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'

Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An inspired Soul once
more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great fire-heart, to see
the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's own sacred voice heard
once more athwart the dreary boundless element of hearsaying and
canting, of twaddle and poltroonery, in which the bewildered Earth,
nigh perishing, has _lost its way_. Hear once more, ye bewildered
benighted mortals; listen once again to a voice from the inner
Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's and Truth's own heart; know the Fact
of your Existence what it is, put away the Cant of it which it is
_not_; and knowing, do, and let it be well with you!--

George the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in those
years; George the Third is head charioteer of the Destinies of
England, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolut