ot truer. Forgotten in
these days, it is old as the foundations of the Universe, and
will endure till the Universe cease. It is forgotten now; and
the first mention of it puckers thy sweet countenance into a
sneer: but it will be brought to mind again,--unless indeed the
Law of Gravitation chance to cease, and men find that they can
walk on vacancy. Unanimity of the Twenty-seven Millions will do
nothing: walk not thou with them; fly from them as for thy
life. Twenty-seven Millions traveling on such courses, with gold
jingling in every pocket, with vivats heaven-high, are
incessantly advancing, let me again remind thee, towards the
_firm-land's end,_--towards the end and extinction of what
Faithfulness, Veracity, real Worth, was in their way of life.
Their noble ancestors have fashioned for them a 'life-road!'--in
how many thousand senses, this! There is not an old wise Proverb
on their tongue, an honest Principle articulated in their hearts
into utterance, a wise true method of doing and despatching any
work or commerce of men, but helps yet to carry them forward.
Life is still possible to them, because all is not yet Puffery,
Falsity, Mammon-worship and Unnature; because somewhat is yet
Faithfulness, Veracity and Valour. With a certain very
considerable finite quantity of Unveracity and Phantasm, social
life is still possible; not with an infinite quantity! Exceed
your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat, and all things upwards
to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to reel and flounder,--
in Manchester Insurrections, Chartisms, Sliding-scales; the Law
of Gravitation not forgetting to act. You advance incessantly
towards the land's end; you are, literally enough, 'consuming
the way.' Step after step, Twenty-seven Million unconscious
men;--till you are at the land's end; till there is not
Faithfulness enough among you any more: and the next step now is
lifted _not_ over land, but into air, over ocean-deeps and
roaring abysses:--unless perhaps the Law of Gravitation have
forgotten to act?

O, it is frightful when a whole Nation, as our Fathers used to
say, has 'forgotten God;' has remembered only Mammon, and what
Mammon leads to! When your self-trumpeting Hatmaker is the
emblem of almost all makers, and workers, and men, that make
anything,--from soul-overseerships, body-overseerships, epic
poems, acts of parliament, to hats and shoe-blacking! Not one
false man but does uncountable mischief: