esent everywhere in all that we see and work and
suffer, is the essence of all faith whatsoever; and that once
denied, or still worse, asserted with lips only, and out of bound
prayerbooks only, what other thing remains believable? That Cant
well-ordered is marketable Cant; that Heroism means gas-lighted
Histrionism; that seen with 'clear eyes' (as they call Valet-
eyes), no man is a Hero, or ever was a Hero, but all men are
Valets and Varlets. The accursed practical quintessence of all
sorts of Unbelief! For if there be now no Hero, and the Histrio
himself begin to be seen into, what hope is there for the seed of
Adam here below? We are the doomed everlasting prey of the
Quack; who, now in this guise, now in that, is to filch us, to
pluck and eat us, by such modes as are convenient for him. For
the modes and guises I care little. The Quack once inevitable,
let him come swiftly, let him pluck and eat me;--swiftly, that I
may at least have done with him; for in his Quack-world I can
have no wish to linger. Though he slay me, yet will I despise
him. Though he conquer nations, and have all the Flunkeys of the
Universe shouting at his heels, yet will I know well that _he_ is
an Inanity; that for him and his there is no continuance
appointed, save only in Gehenna and the Pool. Alas, the Atheist
world, from its utmost summits of Heaven and Westminster Hall,
downwards through poor sevenfeet Hats and 'Unveracities fallen
hungry,' down to the lowest cellars and neglected hunger-dens of
it, is very wretched.

One of Dr. Alison's Scotch facts struck us much.* A poor
Irish Widow, her husband having died in one of the Lanes of
Edinburgh, went forth with her three children, bare of all
resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments of
that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at that she
was refused; referred from one to the other, helped by none;--
till she had exhausted them all; till her strength and heart
failed her: she sank down in typhus-fever; died, and infected
her Lane with fever, so that 'seventeen other persons' died of
fever there in consequence. The humane Physician asks thereupon,
as with a heart too full for speaking, Would it not have been
_economy_ to help this poor Widow? She took typhus-fever, and
killed seventeen of you!--Very curious. The forlorn Irish Widow
applies to her fellow-creatures, as if saying, "Behold I am
sinking, bare of help: ye must help me!