ith thee
is done; and there is no road or footing any farther, and the abyss
yawns sheer!--

Parliament and the Courts of Westminster are venerable to me; how
venerable; gray with a thousand years of honourable age! For a
thousand years and more, Wisdom and faithful Valour, struggling amid
much Folly and greedy Baseness, not without most sad distortions in
the struggle, have built them up; and they are as we see. For a
thousand years, this English Nation has found them useful or
supportable; they have served this English Nation's want; _been_ a
road to it through the abyss of Time. They are venerable, they are
great and strong. And yet it is good to remember always that they are
not the venerablest, nor the greatest, nor the strongest! Acts of
Parliament are venerable; but if they correspond not with the writing
on the 'Adamant Tablet,' what are they? Properly their one element of
venerableness, of strength or greatness, is, that they at all times
correspond therewith as near as by human possibility they can. They
are cherishing destruction in their bosom every hour that they
continue otherwise.

Alas, how many causes that can plead well for themselves in the Courts
of Westminster; and yet in the general Court of the Universe, and free
Soul of Man, have no word to utter! Honourable Gentlemen may find this
worth considering, in times like ours. And truly, the din of
triumphant Law-logic, and all shaking of horse-hair wigs and
learned-serjeant gowns having comfortably ended, we shall do well to
ask ourselves withal, What says that high and highest Court to the
verdict? For it is the Court of Courts, that same; where the universal
soul of Fact and very Truth sits President;--and thitherward, more and
more swiftly, with a really terrible increase of swiftness, all causes
do in these days crowd for revisal,--for confirmation, for
modification, for reversal with costs. Dost thou know that Court; hast
thou had any Law-practice there? What, didst thou never enter; never
file any petition of redress, reclaimer, disclaimer or demurrer,
written as in thy heart's blood, for thy own behoof or another's; and
silently await the issue? Thou knowest not such a Court? Hast merely
heard of it by faint tradition as a thing that was or had been? Of
thee, I think, we shall get little benefit.

For the gowns of learned-serjeants are good: parchment records, fixed
forms, and poor terrestrial Justice, with or without horse-hair, what
sane