d, bewildered, sniffing, sneering,
godforgetting unfortunates as we are? It is a work for
centuries; to be taught us by tribulations, confusions,
insurrections, obstructions; who knows if not by conflagration
and despair! It is a lesson inclusive of all other lessons; the
hardest of all lessons to learn.

One thing I do know: Those Apes chattering on the branches by
the Dead Sea never got it learned; but chatter there to this
day. To them no Moses need come a second time; a thousand
Moseses would be but so many painted Phantasms, interesting
Fellow-Apes of new strange aspect,--whom they would 'invite to
dinner,' be glad to meet with in lion-soirees. To them the voice
of Prophecy, of heavenly monition, is quite ended. They chatter
there, all Heaven shut to them, to the end of the world. The
unfortunates! O, what is dying of hunger, with honest tools in
your hand, with a manful purpose in your heart, and much real
labour lying round you done, in comparison? You honestly quit
your tools; quit a most muddy confused coil of sore work, short
rations, of sorrows, dispiritments and contradictions, having now
honestly done with it all;--and await, not entirely in a
distracted manner, what the Supreme Powers, and the Silences and
the Eternities may have to say to you.

A second thing I know: This lesson will have to be learned,--
under penalties! England will either learn it, or England also
will cease to exist among Nations. England will either learn to
reverence its Heroes, and discriminate them from its Sham-Heroes
and Valets and gaslighted Histrios; and to prize them as the
audible God's-voice, amid all inane jargons and temporary market-
cries, and say to them with heart-loyalty, "Be ye King and
Priest, and Gospel and Guidance for us:" or else England will
continue to worship new and ever-new forms of Quackhood,--and so,
with what resiliences and reboundings matters little, go down to
the Father of Quacks! Can I dread such things of England?
Wretched, thick-eyed, gross-hearted mortals, why will ye worship
lies, and 'Stuffed Clothes-suits, created by the ninth-parts of
men!' It is not your purses that suffer; your farm-rents, your
commerces, your mill-revenues, loud as ye lament over these; no,
it is not these alone, but a far deeper than these: it is your
Souls that lie dead, crushed down under despicable Nightmares,
Atheisms, Brain-fumes; and are not Souls at all, but mere
succedanea for _salt