!
Posterity, I have found, has generally his own Windbags
sufficiently trumpeted in all market-places, and no leisure to
attend to ours. Posterity, which has made of Norse Odin a
similitude, and of Norman William a brute monster, what will or
can it make of English Jabesh? O Heavens, 'Posterity!'

"These poor persecuted Scotch Covenanters," said I to my inquiring
Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at command, _"ils
s'en appelaient a"_--_"A la Posterite,"_ interrupted he, helping
me out.--_"Ah, Monsieur, non, mille fois non!_ They appealed to
the Eternal God; not to Posterity at all! _C'etait different."_

Chapter XV

Morrison Again

Nevertheless, O Advanced Liberal, one cannot promise thee any
'New Religion,' for some time; to say truth, I do not think we
have the smallest chance of any! Will the candid reader, by way
of closing this Book Third, listen to a few transient remarks on
that subject?

Candid readers have not lately met with any man who had less
notion to interfere with their Thirty-Nine, or other Church-
Articles; wherewith, very helplessly as is like, they may have
struggled to form for themselves some not inconceivable
hypothesis about this Universe, and their own Existence there.
Superstition, my friend, is far from me; Fanaticism, for any
_Fanum_ likely to arise soon on this Earth, is far. A man's
Church-Articles are surely articles of price to him; and in
these times one has to be tolerant of many strange 'Articles,'
and of many still stranger 'No-articles,' which go about
placarding themselves in a very distracted manner,--the numerous
long placard-poles, and questionable infirm paste-pots,
interfering with one's peaceable thoroughfare sometimes!

Fancy a man, moreover, recommending his fellow men to believe in
God, that so Chartism might abate, and the Manchester Operatives
be got to spin peaceably! The idea is more distracted than any
placard-pole seen hitherto in a public thoroughfare of men! My
friend, if thou ever do come to believe in God, thou wilt find
all Chartism, Manchester riot, Parliamentary incompetence,
Ministries of Windbag, and the wildest Social Dissolutions, and
the burning up of this entire Planet, a most small matter in
comparison. Brother, this Planet, I find, is but an
inconsiderable sandgrain in the continents of Being: this
Planet's poor temporary interests, thy interests and my interests
there, when I look fixedly into that eternal Ligh