urdity will die! Not easily again shall
a Corn-Law argue ten years for itself; and still talk and argue, when
impartial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so long back, they
have heard no 'argument' advanced for it but such as might make the
angels and almost the very jackasses weep!--

Wholly a blessed time: when jargon might abate, and here and there
some genuine speech begin. When to the noble opened heart, as to such
heart they alone do, all noble things began to grow visible; and the
difference between just and unjust, between true and false, between
work and sham-work, between speech and jargon, was once more, what to
our happier Fathers it used to be, _infinite_,--as between a Heavenly
thing and an Infernal: the one a thing which you were _not_ to do,
which you were wise not to attempt doing; which it were better for you
to have a millstone tied round your neck, and be cast into the sea,
than concern yourself with doing!--Brothers, it will not be a
Morrison's Pill, or remedial measure, that will bring all this about
for us.

* * * * *

And yet, very literally, till, in some shape or other, it be brought
about, we remain cureless; till it begin to be brought about, the cure
does not begin. For Nature and Fact, not Redtape and Semblance, are to
this hour the basis of man's life; and on those, through never such
strata of these, man and his life and all his interests do, sooner or
later, infallibly come to rest,--and to be supported or be swallowed
according as they agree with those. The question is asked of them,
not, How do you agree with Downing Street and accredited Semblance?
but, How do you agree with God's Universe and the actual Reality of
things? This Universe _has_ its Laws. If we walk according to the Law,
the Law-Maker will befriend us; if not, not. Alas, by no Reform Bill,
Ballot-box, Five-point Charter, by no boxes or bills or charters, can
you perform this alchemy: 'Given a world of Knaves, to produce an
Honesty from their united action!' It is a distillation, once for all,
not possible. You pass it through alembic after alembic, it comes out
still a Dishonesty, with a new dress on it, a new colour to it. 'While
we ourselves continue valets, how _can_ any hero come to govern us?'
We are governed, very infallibly, by the 'sham-hero,'--whose name is
Quack, whose work and governance is Plausibility, and also is Falsity
and Fatuity; to which Nature says, and must s