is same Law of Feudalism;--no right Aristocracy but a
Land one! The curious are invited to meditate upon it in these
days. Soldiering, Police and Judging, Church-Extension, nay real
Government and Guidance, all this was actually _done_ by the
Holders of the Land in return for their Land. How much of it is
now done by them; done by anybody? Good Heavens, "Laissez-
faire, Do ye nothing, eat your wages and sleep," is everywhere
the passionate half-wise cry of this time; and they will not so
much as do nothing, but must do mere Corn-Laws! We raise Fifty-
two millions, from the general mass of us, to get our Governing
done,--or, alas, to get ourselves persuaded that it is done: and
the 'peculiar burden of the Land' is to pay, not all this, but to
pay, as I learn, one twenty-fourth part of all this. Our first
Chartist Parliament, or Oliver _Redivivus,_ you would say, will
know where to lay the new taxes of England!--Or, alas, taxes? If
we made the Holders of the Land pay every shilling still of the
expense of Governing the Land, what were all that? The Land, by
mere hired Governors, cannot be got governed. You cannot hire
men to govern the Land: it is by a mission not contracted for in
the Stock-Exchange, but felt in their own hearts as coming out of
Heaven, that men can govern a Land. The mission of a Land
Aristocracy is a sacred one, in both the senses of that old word.
The footing it stands on, at present, might give rise to thoughts
other than of Corn-Laws!--

But truly a 'Splendour of God,' as in William Conqueror's rough
oath, did dwell in those old rude veracious ages; did inform,
more and more, with a heavenly nobleness, all departments of
their work and life. Phantasms could not yet walk abroad in mere
Cloth Tailorage; they were at least Phantasms 'on the rim of the
horizon,' pencilled there by an eternal Light-beam from within.
A most 'practical' Hero-worship went on, unconsciously or half-
consciously, everywhere. A Monk Samson, with a maximum of two
shillings in his pocket, could, without ballot-box, be made a
Viceking of, being seen to be worthy. The difference between a
good man and a bad man was as yet felt to be, what it forever is,
an immeasurable one. Who _durst_ have elected a Pandarus Dog-
draught, in those days, to any office, Carlton Club, Senatorship,
or place whatsoever? It was felt that the arch Satanas and no
other had a clear right of property in Pandarus; that it were
bette