'You must not speak in such deep parables to so young a learner.'

'Is my parable so hard, then? Look around you and see what is the
characteristic of your country and of your generation at this
moment. What a yearning, what an expectation, amid infinite
falsehoods and confusions, of some nobler, more chivalrous, more
godlike state! Your very costermonger trolls out his belief that
"there's a good time coming," and the hearts of gamins, as well as
millenarians, answer, "True!" Is not that a clashing among the dry
bones? And as for flesh, what new materials are springing up among
you every month, spiritual and physical, for a state such as "eye
hath not seen nor ear heard?"--railroads, electric telegraphs,
associate-lodging-houses, club-houses, sanitary reforms,
experimental schools, chemical agriculture, a matchless school of
inductive science, an equally matchless school of naturalist
painters,--and all this in the very workshop of the world! Look,
again, at the healthy craving after religious art and ceremonial,--
the strong desire to preserve that which has stood the test of time;
and on the other hand, at the manful resolution of your middle
classes to stand or fall by the Bible alone,--to admit no
innovations in worship which are empty of instinctive meaning. Look
at the enormous amount of practical benevolence which now struggles
in vain against evil, only because it is as yet private, desultory,
divided. How dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, while
its nobles can produce a Carlisle, an Ellesmere, an Ashley, a Robert
Grosvenor,--while its middle classes can beget a Faraday, a
Stephenson, a Brooke, an Elizabeth Fry? See, I say, what a chaos of
noble materials is here,--all confused, it is true,--polarised,
jarring, and chaotic,--here bigotry, there self-will, superstition,
sheer Atheism often, but only waiting for the one inspiring Spirit
to organise, and unite, and consecrate this chaos into the noblest
polity the world ever saw realised! What a destiny may be that of
your land, if you have but the faith to see your own honour! Were I
not of my own country, I would be an Englishman this day.'

'And what is your country?' asked Lancelot. 'It should be a noble
one which breeds such men as you.'

The stranger smiled.

'Will you go thither with me?'

'Why not? I long for travel, and truly I am sick of my own country.
When the Spirit of which you speak