stiny, is Divine Providence, and
his Sermon the inflexible Course of Things. Experience does take
dreadfully high school-wages; but he teaches like no other!

I revert to Friend Prudence the good Quaker's refusal of 'seven
thousand pounds to boot.' Friend Prudence's practical conclusion will,
by degrees, become that of all rational practical men whatsoever. On
the present scheme and principle, Work cannot continue. Trades'
Strikes, Trades' Unions, Chartisms; mutiny, squalor, rage and
desperate revolt, growing ever more desperate, will go on their way.
As dark misery settles down on us, and our refuges of lies fall in
pieces one after one, the hearts of men, now at last serious, will
turn to refuges of truth. The eternal stars shine out again, so soon
as it is dark _enough_.

Begirt with desperate Trades' Unionism and Anarchic Mutiny, many an
Industrial _Law-ward_, by and by, who has neglected to make laws and
keep them, will be heard saying to himself: "Why have I realised five
hundred thousand pounds? I rose early and sat late, I toiled and
moiled, and in the sweat of my brow and of my soul I strove to gain
this money, that I might become conspicuous, and have some honour
among my fellow-creatures. I wanted them to honour me, to love me. The
money is here, earned with my best lifeblood: but the honour? I am
encircled with squalor, with hunger, rage, and sooty desperation. Not
honoured, hardly even envied; only fools and the flunky-species so
much as envy me. I am conspicuous,--as a mark for curses and
brickbats. What good is it? My five hundred scalps hang here in my
wigwam: would to Heaven I had sought something else than the scalps;
would to Heaven I had been a Christian Fighter, not a Chactaw one! To
have ruled and fought not in a Mammonish but in a Godlike spirit; to
have had the hearts of the people bless me, as a true ruler and
captain of my people; to have felt my own heart bless me, and that God
above instead of Mammon below was blessing me,--this had been
something. Out of my sight, ye beggarly five hundred scalps of
banker's-thousands: I will try for something other, or account my life
a tragical futility!"

Friend Prudence's 'rock-ledge,' as we called it, will gradually
disclose itself to many a man; to all men. Gradually, assaulted from
beneath and from above, the Stygian mud-deluge of Laissez-faire,
Supply-and-demand, Cash-payment the one Duty, will abate on all hands;
and the everlasting mountain-tops