have the St. Edmundsbury Monks, without express
ballot-box or other good winnowing-machine, contrived to
accomplish the most important social feat a body of men can do,
to winnow out the man that is to govern them: and truly one sees
not that, by any winnowing-machine whatever, they could have done
it better. O ye kind Heavens, there is in every Nation and
Community, a _fittest,_ a wisest, bravest, best; whom could we
find and make King over us, all were in very truth well;--the
best that God and Nature had permitted _us_ to make it! By what
art discover him? Will the Heavens in their pity teach us no
art; for our need of him is great!

Ballot-boxes, Reform Bills, winnowing-machines: all these are
good, or are not so good;--alas, brethren, how _can_ these, I
say, be other than inadequate, be other than failures, melancholy
to behold? Dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and
awful meaning of Human Worth and Truth, we shall never, by all
the machinery in Birmingham, discover the True and Worthy. It is
written, 'if we are ourselves valets, there shall exist no hero
for us; we shall not know the hero when we see him;'--we
shall take the quack for a hero; and cry, audibly through
all ballot-boxes and machinery whatsoever, Thou art he; be
thou King over us!

What boots it? Seek only deceitful Speciosity, godlike Reality
will be forever far from you. The Quack shall be legitimate
inevitable King of you; no earthly machinery able to exclude the
Quack. Ye shall be born thralls of the Quack, and suffer under
him, till you hearts are near broken, and no French Revolution or
Manchester Insurrection, or partial or universal volcanic
combustions and explosions; never so many, can do more than
'change the _figure_ of your Quack;' the essence of him
remaining, for a time and times.--"How long, O Prophet?" say
some, with a rather melancholy sneer. Alas, ye _un_prophetic,
ever till this come about: Till deep misery, if nothing softer
will, have driven you out of your Speciosites _into_ your
Sincerities; and you find there either is a Godlike in the
world, or else ye are an unintelligible madness; that there is a
God, as well as a Mammon and a Devil, and a Genius of Luxuries
and canting Dilettantisms and Vain Shows! How long that will be,
compute for yourselves. My unhappy brothers!--

Chapter IX

Abbot Samson

So then the bells of St. Edmundsbury clang out one and all, and
in church and