te _De Tallagio non concedendo_, nor any Statute,
Law-method, Lawyer's-wig, much less were the Statute-Book and Four
Courts, with Coke upon Lyttelton and Three Estates of Parliament in
the rear of them, got together without human labour,--mostly forgotten
now! From the time of Cain's slaying Abel by swift head-breakage, to
this time of killing your man in Chancery by inches, and slow
heart-break for forty years,--there too is an interval! Venerable
Justice herself began by Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed
furrowfield, slowly worked out, and rendered arable, from the waste
jungle of Club-Law. Valiant Wisdom tilling and draining; escorted by
owl-eyed Pedantry, by owlish and vulturish and many other forms of
Folly;--the valiant husbandman assiduously tilling; the blind greedy
enemy _too_ assiduously sowing tares! It is because there is yet in
venerable wigged Justice some wisdom, amid such mountains of wiggeries
and folly, that men have not cast her into the River; that she still
sits there, like Dryden's Head in the _Battle of the Books_,--a huge
helmet, a huge mountain of greased parchment, of unclean horsehair,
first striking the eye; and then in the innermost corner, visible at
last, in size as a hazelnut, a real fraction of God's Justice, perhaps
not yet unattainable to some, surely still indispensable to all;--and
men know not what to do with her! Lawyers were not all pedants,
voluminous voracious persons; Lawyers too were poets, were heroes,--or
their Law had been past the Nore long before this time. Their Owlisms,
Vulturisms, to an incredible extent, will disappear by and by, their
Heroisms only remaining, and the helmet be reduced to something like
the size of the head, we hope!--

It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed,
articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The hands of
forgotten brave men have made it a World for us; they,--honour to
them; they, in _spite_ of the idle and the dastard. This English
Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and
noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of
English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were
Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage; speakable in proportion to the
number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors,
which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real
conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and
their representativ