of God, the gift
of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken
efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves
despised,[185] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed
words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days
on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those
other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by
the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the
desert found them, and slew.

This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all
her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair,
and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been
able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of
these, her despised.

I take one at mere chance:

'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]

Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with
truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his
experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our
eyes _have_ kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it
difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be;
and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau.
But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's
_Im_mortality instead of dulled by his death,--and, gazing on the sky,
look for the day when every eye must gaze also--for behold, He cometh
with the clouds--this it is no more possible for Christian England to
apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.

'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'--He, the reprobate! how
should such as he think of Christ?

Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another
line or two, to try:

'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]
If _he_ speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'

Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The
first line I gave you was easy Byron--almost shallow Byron--these are of
the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,--nor in
a hurry.

'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How _did_ Carnage behave in the
Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether
the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stoo