facturer, as the topstone of English Puffery, was
very notable.

Alas, that we natives note him little, that we view him as a
thing of course, is the very burden of the misery. We take it
for granted, the most rigorous of us, that all men who have made
anything are expected and entitled to make the loudest possible
proclamation of it; call on a discerning public to reward them
for it. Every man his own trumpeter; that is, to a really
alarming extent, the accepted rule. Make loudest possible
proclamation of your Hat: true proclamation if that will do; if
that will not do, then false proclamation,--to such extent of
falsity as will serve your purpose; as will not seem too false
to be credible!--I answer, once for all, that the fact is not so.
Nature requires no man to make proclamation of his doings and
hat-makings; Nature forbids all men to make such. There is not
a man or hat-maker born into the world but feels, at first, that
he is degrading himself if he speak of his excellencies and
prowesses, and supremacy in his craft: his inmost heart says to
him, "Leave thy friends to speak of these; if possible, thy
enemies to speak of these; but at all events, thy friends!" He
feels that he is already a poor braggart; fast hastening to be a
falsity and speaker of the Untruth.

Nature's Laws, I must repeat, are eternal: her small still
voice, speaking from the inmost heart of us, shall not, under
terrible penalties, be disregarded. No one man can depart from
the truth without damage to himself; no one million of men; no
Twenty-seven Millions of men. Shew me a Nation fallen everywhere
into this course, so that each expects it, permits it to others
and himself, I will shew you a Nation traveling with one assent
on the broad way. The broad way, however many Banks of England,
Cotton-Mills and Duke's Palaces it may have! Not at happy
Elysian fields, and everlasting crowns of victory, earned by
silent Valour, will this Nation arrive; but at precipices,
devouring gulfs, if it pause not. Nature has appointed happy
fields, victorious laurel-crowns; but only to the brave and
true: _Un_nature, what we call Chaos, holds nothing in it but
vacuities, devouring gulfs. What are Twenty-seven Millions, and
their unanimity? Believe them not: the Worlds and the Ages, God
and Nature and All Men say otherwise.

'Rhetoric all this?' No, my brother, very singular to say, it is
Fact all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is n