rple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps,
artistically spread out,--to save the ignorant from worse.

O reader, I say not who are Belial's elect. This poor amphibious
Pope too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent
than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late
Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, the only
creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad: they descended
fearless into all gulfs and bedlams; watched over the pillow of
the dying, with help, with counsel and hope; shone as luminous
fixed stars, when all else had gone out in chaotic night: honour
to them! This poor Pope,--who knows what good is in him? In a
Time otherwise too prone to forget, he keeps up the mournfulest
ghastly memorial of the Highest, Blessedest, which once was;
which, in new fit forms, will again partly have to be. Is he not
as a perpetual death's-head and cross-bones, with their
_Resurgam,_ on the grave of a Universal Heroism,--grave of a
Christianity? Such Noblenesses, purchased by the world's best
heart's-blood, must not be lost; we cannot afford to lose them,
in what confusions soever. To all of us the day will come, to a
few of us it has already come, when no mortal, with his heart
yearning for a 'Divine Humility,' or other 'Highest form of
Valour,' will need to look for it in death's-heads, but will see
it round him in here and there a beautiful living head.

Besides, there is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the
Scenic Theory of Worship, a frankness which I rather honour. Not
half and half, but with undivided heart does _he_ set about
worshiping by stage-machinery; as if there were now, and could
again be, in Nature no other. He will ask you, What other?
Under this my Gregorian Chant, and beautiful wax-light
Phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an Abyss, of black
Doubt, Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism; an Orcus that
has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool _is_ thatched with
pancakes,'--as Jeannie Deans's Innkeeper defied it to be! The
Bottomless of Scepticism, Atheism, Jacobinism, behold, it is
thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties
judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me
only from rheumatism, but you also from what other _isms!_ In
this your Life-pilgrimage Nowhither, a fine Squallacci marching-
music, and Gregorian Chant, accompanies you, and the hollow Night
of Orcus is well hid!

Yes truly, few men that