for all my brethren of mankind! The footprints are trodden and
retrodden; the path wears ever broader, smoother, into a broad
highway, where even wheels can run; and many travel it;--till--till
the Town of Stowe disappear from that locality (as towns have been
known to do), or no merchandising, heavenly oracle, or real business
any longer exist for one there: then why should anybody travel the
way?--Habit is our primal, fundamental law; Habit and Imitation, there
is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of
all Working and all Apprenticeship, of all Practice and all Learning,
in this world.

Yes, the wise man too speaks, and acts, in Formulas; all men do so.
And in general, the more completely cased with Formulas a man may be,
the safer, happier is it for him. Thou who, in an All of rotten
Formulas, seemest to stand nigh bare, having indignantly shaken off
the superannuated rags and unsound callosities of Formulas,--consider
how thou too art still clothed! This English Nationality, whatsoever
from uncounted ages is genuine and a fact among thy native People, in
their words and ways: all this, has it not made for thee a skin or
second-skin, adhesive actually as thy natural skin? This thou hast not
stript off, this thou wilt never strip off: the humour that thy mother
gave thee has to show itself through this. A common, or it may be an
uncommon Englishman thou art: but, good Heavens, what sort of Arab,
Chinaman, Jew-Clothesman, Turk, Hindoo, African Mandingo, wouldst thou
have been, _thou_ with those mother-qualities of thine!

It strikes me dumb to look over the long series of faces, such as any
full Church, Courthouse, London-Tavern Meeting, or miscellany of men
will show them. Some score or two of years ago, all these were little
red-coloured pulpy infants; each of them capable of being kneaded,
baked into any social form you chose: yet see now how they are fixed
and hardened,--into artisans, artists, clergy, gentry, learned
serjeants, unlearned dandies, and can and shall now be nothing else
henceforth!

Mark on that nose the colour left by too copious port and viands; to
which the profuse cravat with exorbitant breastpin, and the fixed,
forward, and as it were menacing glance of the eyes correspond. That
is a 'Man of Business;' prosperous manufacturer, house-contractor,
engineer, law-manager; his eye, nose, cravat have, in such work and
fortune, got such a character: deny him not thy pra