ochs and AEons hang
on this poor jargoning of yours; the Eternal Destinies are asking
their much-favored Nation, 'Will you, can you?'--much-favored Nation is
answering in that manner. Astonished at its own stupidity, and taking
refuge in laughter. The Eternal Destinies are very patient with some
Nations; and can disregard their follies, for a long while; and have
their Cromwell, have their Pitt, or what else is essential, ready for
the poor Nation, in a grandly silent way!

"Certain it is,--though how could poor Newcastle know it at all!--here
is again the hour of tide for England. Tide is full again; has been
flowing long hundreds of years, and is full: certain, too, that time and
tide wait on no man or nation. In a dialect different from Cromwell's or
Pitt's, but with a sense true to theirs, I call it the Eternal Destinies
knocking at England's door again: 'Are you ready for the crisis,
birth-point of long Ages to you, which is now come?' Greater question
had not been, for centuries past. None to be named with it since that
high Spiritual Question (truly a much higher, and which was in fact
the PARENT of this and of all of high and great that lay ahead), which
England and Oliver Cromwell were there to answer: 'Will you hold by
Consecrated Formulas, then, you English, and expect salvation from
traditions of the elders; or are you for Divine Realities, as the one
sacred and indispensable thing?' Which they did answer, in what way we
know. Truly the Highest Question; which if a Nation can answer WELL, it
will grow in this world, and may come to be considerable, and to have
many high Questions to answer,--this of Pitt's, for example. And the
Answers given do always extend through coming ages; and do always bear
harvests, accursed or else blessed, according as the Answers were. A
thing awfully true, if you have eye for it;--a thing to make Honorable
Gentlemen serious, even in the age of percussion-caps! No, my friend,
Newcastleisms, impious Poltrooneries, in a Nation, do not die:--neither
(thank God) do Cromwellisms and pious Heroisms; but are alive for the
poor Nation, even in its somnambulancies, in its stupidest dreams. For
Nations have their somnambulancies; and, at any rate, the questions
put to Nations, in different ages, vary much. Not in any age, or
turning-point in History, had England answered the Destinies in such a
dialect as now under its Newcastle and National Palaver."

3. OF WALPOLE, AS RECORDING ANGEL. "W