h go about placarding
themselves in a very distracted manner,--the numerous long
placard-poles, and questionable infirm paste-pots, interfering with
one's peaceable thoroughfare sometimes!

Fancy a man, moreover, recommending his fellow men to believe in God,
that so Chartism might abate, and the Manchester Operatives be got to
spin peaceably! The idea is more distracted than any placard-pole seen
hitherto in a public thoroughfare of men! My friend, if thou ever do
come to believe in God, thou wilt find all Chartism, Manchester riot,
Parliamentary incompetence, Ministries of Windbag, and the wildest
Social Dissolutions, and the burning-up of this entire Planet, a most
small matter in comparison. Brother, this Planet, I find, is but an
inconsiderable sand-grain in the continents of Being: this Planet's
poor temporary interests, thy interests and my interests there, when I
look fixedly into that eternal Light-Sea and Flame-Sea with _its_
eternal interests, dwindle literally into Nothing; my speech of it
is--silence for the while. I will as soon think of making Galaxies and
Star-Systems to guide little herring-vessels by, as of preaching
Religion that the Constable may continue possible. O my
Advanced-Liberal friend, this new second progress, of proceeding 'to
invent God,' is a very strange one! Jacobinism unfolded into
Saint-Simonism bodes innumerable blessed things; but the thing itself
might draw tears from a Stoic!--As for me, some twelve or thirteen New
Religions, heavy Packets, most of them unfranked, having arrived here
from various parts of the world, in a space of six calendar months, I
have instructed my invaluable friend the Stamped Postman to introduce
no more of them, if the charge exceed one penny.

* * * * *

Henry of Essex, duelling in that Thames Island, 'near to Reading
Abbey,' had a religion. But was it in virtue of his seeing armed
Phantasms of St. Edmund 'on the rim of the horizon,' looking minatory
on him? Had that, intrinsically, anything to do with his religion at
all? Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner Light or Moral Conscience
of his own soul; such as is vouchsafed still to all souls of
men;--which Inner Light shone here 'through such intellectual and
other media' as there were; producing 'Phantasms,' Kircherean
Visual-Spectra, according to circumstances! It is so with all men. The
clearer my Inner Light may shine, through the _less_ turbid media,
the _fewer