his trade with him, not caring a straw
for the seasons, is a lord of the creation: he remembers his own
liabilities to the usurer--and, lo! we have arrived at bondage and
hatred, No. 1.

But the _Workman_, after all, is not so well off as he looks in his
Sunday's best. Work fluctuates, and at times there is a want of work
altogether: moreover, there are wicked _cabarets_ and _cafes_, that play
havoc with his four or five francs _per diem_. And, above all, there is
that tremendous rival, with lungs of iron that know no rest, and never
cease, whom men call MACHINERY, and who laughs the skill and strength of
man to scorn. "It is humiliating," says the historian, "to behold, in
presence of machinery, man fallen so low. The head is giddy, and the
heart oppressed, when, for the first time, we visit those fairy halls,
where iron and copper of a dazzling polish seem moving of themselves,
and to have both thought and will, whilst pale and feeble man is the
humble servant of those giants of steel." No reverie, no musing is
allowed in the temples of MACHINERY. The _Lollards_, those mystic
weavers of the middle ages, received their name, because, whilst
working, they _lulled_, or hummed in an under tone some nursery rhyme
that cheered then in their labour: for it is wisely said by our author,
who can speak like a prophet and a sage when he will--shame to him when
he speaks otherwise!--that "in the manual labours subject to our
impulse, our inmost thought becomes identified with the work, puts it in
its proper place; and the inert instrument, to which we impart the
movement, far from being an obstacle to the spiritual movement, becomes
its aid and companion. The rhythm of the shuttle, pushed forth and
pulled back at equal periods, associated itself (in the case of the
Lollards) with the rhythm of the heart; in the evening, it often
happened, that, together with the cloth, a hymn, a lamentation, was
woven to the self-same numbers." No human heart beats harmoniously with
the thunder of machinery, whose abode is the real hell of _ennui_. "It
seems, during those long hours, as if another heart, common to all, had
taken its place--a metallic, indifferent, pitiless heart." Pitiless,
indeed, if it degrade the human creature to the level of the brute. "The
manufactory is a world of iron, a kingdom of necessity and fatality. The
only living thing there is the severity of the foreman; there they often
punish, but never reward. There man feel