hyself have us do?
cry indignant readers. Nothing, my friends,--till you have got a soul
for yourselves again. Till then all things are 'impossible.' Till then
I cannot even bid you buy, as the old Spartans would have done,
two-pence worth of powder and lead, and compendiously shoot to death
this poor Irish Widow: even that is 'impossible' for you. Nothing is
left but that she prove her sisterhood by dying, and infecting you
with typhus. Seventeen of you lying dead will not deny such proof that
she _was_ flesh of your flesh; and perhaps some of the living may lay
it to heart.

* * * * *

'Impossible:' of a certain two-legged animal with feathers it is said,
if you draw a distinct chalk-circle round him, he sits imprisoned, as
if girt with the iron ring of Fate; and will die there, though within
sight of victuals,--or sit in sick misery there, and be fatted to
death. The name of this poor two-legged animal is--Goose; and they
make of him, when well fattened, _Pate de foie gras_, much prized by
some!

FOOTNOTES:

[26] _Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland_, by
William Pulteney Alison, M.D. (Edinburgh, 1840.)

CHAPTER III.

GOSPEL OF DILETTANTISM.

But after all, the Gospel of Dilettantism, producing a Governing Class
who do not govern, nor understand in the least that they are bound or
expected to govern, is still mournfuler than that of Mammonism.
Mammonism, as we said, at least works; this goes idle. Mammonism has
seized some portion of the message of Nature to man; and seizing that,
and following it, will seize and appropriate more and more of Nature's
message: but Dilettantism has missed it wholly. 'Make money:' that
will mean withal, 'Do work in order to make money.' But, 'Go
gracefully idle in Mayfair,' what does or can that mean? An idle,
game-preserving and even corn-lawing Aristocracy, in such an England
as ours: has the world, if we take thought of it, ever seen such a
phenomenon till very lately? Can it long continue to see such?

Accordingly the impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice and
Saynothingism in Speech, which we have to witness on that side of our
affairs, is altogether amazing. A Corn-Law demonstrating itself
openly, for ten years or more, with 'arguments' to make the angels,
and some other classes of creatures, weep! For men are not ashamed to
rise in Parliament and elsewhere, and speak the things they do _not_
think. 'Expedie