* * * * *

Or, alas, why go to Rome for Phantasms walking the streets? Phantasms,
ghosts, in this midnight hour, hold jubilee, and screech and jabber;
and the question rather were, What high Reality anywhere is yet awake?
Aristocracy has become Phantasm-Aristocracy, no longer able to _do_
its work, not in the least conscious that it has any work longer to
do. Unable, totally careless to _do_ its work; careful only to clamour
for the _wages_ of doing its work,--nay for higher, and _palpably_
undue wages, and Corn-Laws and _increase_ of rents; the old rate of
wages not being adequate now! In hydra-wrestle, giant '_Mill_ocracy'
so-called, a real giant, though as yet a blind one and but half-awake,
wrestles and wrings in choking nightmare, 'like to be strangled in
the partridge-nets of Phantasm-Aristocracy,' as we said, which fancies
itself still to be a giant. Wrestles, as under nightmare, till it do
awaken; and gasps and struggles thousandfold, we may say, in a truly
painful manner, through all fibres of our English Existence, in these
hours and years! Is our poor English Existence wholly becoming a
Nightmare; full of mere Phantasms?--

The Champion of England, cased in iron or tin, rides into Westminster
Hall, 'being lifted into his saddle with little assistance,' and there
asks, If in the four quarters of the world, under the cope of Heaven,
is any man or demon that dare question the right of this King? Under
the cope of Heaven no man makes intelligible answer,--as several men
ought already to have done. Does not this Champion too know the world;
that it is a huge Imposture, and bottomless Inanity, thatched over
with bright cloth and other ingenious tissues? Him let us leave there,
questioning all men and demons.

Him we have left to his destiny; but whom else have we found? From
this the highest apex of things, downwards through all strata and
breadths, how many fully awakened Realities have we fallen in
with:--alas, on the contrary, what troops and populations of
Phantasms, not God-Veracities but Devil-Falsities, down to the very
lowest stratum,--which now, by such superincumbent weight of
Unveracities, lies enchanted in St. Ives' Workhouses, broad enough,
helpless enough! You will walk in no public thoroughfare or remotest
byway of English Existence but you will meet a man, an interest of
men, that has given up hope in the Everlasting, True, and placed its
hope in the Temporary, half or wh