l Waltheof; Yorkshire
and the North reduced to ashes: all which is undoubtedly lamentable.
But even Dryasdust apprises me of one fact: 'A child, in this
William's reign, might have carried a purse of gold from end to end of
England.' My erudite friend, it is a fact which outweighs a thousand!
Sweep away thy constitutional, sentimental and other cobwebberies;
look eye to eye, if thou still have any eye, in the face of this big
burly William Bastard: thou wilt see a fellow of most flashing
discernment, of most strong lion-heart;--in whom, as it were, within a
frame of oak and iron, the gods have planted the soul of 'a man of
genius'! Dost thou call that nothing? I call it an immense
thing!--Rage enough was in this Willelmus Conquaestor, rage enough for
his occasions;--and yet the essential element of him, as of all such
men, is not scorching _fire_, but shining illuminative _light_. Fire
and light are strangely interchangeable; nay, at bottom, I have found
them different forms of the same most godlike 'elementary substance'
in our world: a thing worth stating in these days. The essential
element of this Conquaestor is, first of all, the most sun-eyed
perception of what _is_ really what on this God's-Earth;--which, thou
wilt find, does mean at bottom 'Justice,' and 'Virtues' not a few:
_Conformity_ to what the Maker has seen good to make; that, I suppose,
will mean Justice and a Virtue or two?--

Dost thou think Willelmus Conquaestor would have tolerated ten
years' jargon, one hour's jargon, on the propriety of killing
Cotton-manufactures by partridge Corn-Laws? I fancy, this was not the
man to knock out of his night's-rest with nothing but a noisy
bedlamism in your mouth! "Assist us still better to bush the
partridges; strangle Plugson who spins the shirts?"--"_Par la
Splendeur de Dieu!_"----Dost thou think Willelmus Conquaestor, in this
new time, with Steamengine Captains of Industry on one hand of him,
and Joe-Manton Captains of Idleness on the other, would have doubted
which _was_ really the Best; which did deserve strangling, and which
not?

I have a certain indestructible regard for Willelmus Conquaestor. A
resident House-Surgeon, provided by Nature for her beloved English
People, and even furnished with the requisite fees, as I said; for he
by no means felt himself doing Nature's work, this Willelmus, but his
own work exclusively! And his own work withal it was; informed '_par
la Splendeur de Dieu_.'--I say, it i