rs; lazy, enslaved farmers;
weedy lands? Lands! Has he not weary heavy-laden ploughers of
land; immortal souls of men, ploughing, ditching, day-drudging;
bare of back, empty of stomach, nigh desperate of heart; and
none peaceably to help them but he, under Heaven? Does he find,
with his three hundred thousand pounds, no noble thing trodden
down in the thoroughfares, which it were godlike to help up? Can
he do nothing for his Burns but make a Gauger of him; lionise
him, bedinner him, for a foolish while; then whistle him down
the wind, to desperation and bitter death?--His work too is
difficult, in these modern, far-dislocated ages. But it may be
done; it may be tried;--it must be done.

A modern Duke of Weimar, not a god he either, but a human duke,
levied, as I reckon, in rents and taxes and all incomings
whatsoever, less than several of our English Dukes do in rent
alone. The Duke of Weimar, with these incomings, had to govern,
judge, defend, every way administer _his_ Dukedom. He does all
this as few others did: and he improves lands besides all this,
makes river-embankments, maintains not soldiers only but
Universities and Institutions;--and in his Court were these four
men: Wieland, Herder, Schiller, Goethe. Not as parasites, which
was impossible; not as table-wits and poetic Katerfeltoes; but
as noble Spiritual Men working under a noble Practical Man.
Shielded by him from many miseries; perhaps from many
shortcomings, destructive aberrations. Heaven had sent, once
more, heavenly Light into the world; and this man's honour was
that he gave it welcome. A new noble kind of Clergy, under an
old but still noble kind of King! I reckon that this one Duke of
Weimar did more for the Culture of his Nation than all the
English Dukes and _Duces_ now extant, or that were extant since
Henry the Eighth gave them the Church Lands to eat, have done for
theirs!--I am ashamed, I am alarmed for my English Dukes: what
word have I to say?

_If_ our Actual Aristocracy, appointed 'Best-and-Bravest,' will
be wise, how inexpressibly happy for us! If not,--the voice of
God from the whirlwind is very audible to me. Nay, I will thank
the Great God, that He has said, in whatever fearful ways, and
just wrath against us, "Idleness shall be no more!" Idleness?
The awakened soul of man, all but the asphyxied soul of man,
turns from it as from worse than death. It is the life-in-death
of Poet Coleridge. That fable