distressing
impedimental adjunct. The fighting too was indispensable, for
ascertaining who had the might over whom, the right over whom. By much
hard fighting, as we once said, 'the unrealities, beaten into dust,
flew gradually off;' and left the plain reality and fact, "Thou
stronger than I; thou wiser than I; thou king, and subject I," in a
somewhat clearer condition.

Truly we cannot enough admire, in those Abbot-Samson and
William-Conqueror times, the arrangement they had made of their
Governing Classes. Highly interesting to observe how the sincere
insight, on their part, into what did, of primary necessity, behove to
be accomplished, had led them to the way of accomplishing it, and in
the course of time to get it accomplished! No imaginary Aristocracy
would serve their turn; and accordingly they attained a real one. The
Bravest men, who, it is ever to be repeated and remembered, are also
on the whole the Wisest, Strongest, everyway Best, had here, with a
respectable degree of accuracy, been got selected; seated each on his
piece of territory, which was lent him, then gradually given him, that
he might govern it. These Vicekings, each on his portion of the common
soil of England, with a Head King over all, were a 'Virtuality
perfected into an Actuality' really to an astonishing extent.

For those were rugged stalwart ages; full of earnestness, of a rude
God's-truth:--nay, at any rate, their _quilting_ was so unspeakably
_thinner_ than ours; Fact came swiftly on them, if at any time they
had yielded to Phantasm! 'The Knaves and Dastards' had to be
'arrested' in some measure; or the world, almost within year and day,
found that it could not live. The Knaves and Dastards accordingly were
got arrested. Dastards upon the very throne had to be got arrested,
and taken off the throne,--by such methods as there were; by the
roughest method, if there chanced to be no smoother one! Doubtless
there was much harshness of operation, much severity; as indeed
government and surgery are often somewhat severe. Gurth, born thrall
of Cedric, it is like, got cuffs as often as pork-parings, if he
misdemeaned himself; but Gurth did belong to Cedric: no human creature
then went about connected with nobody; left to go his way into
Bastilles or worse, under _Laissez-faire_; reduced to prove his
relationship by dying of typhus-fever!--Days come when there is no
King in Israel, but every man is his own king, doing that which is
right in hi