is
roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame,
failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty
of him also; and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds
settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will
be transfiguration behind and within them.

Sec. XIII. And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about
which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good
and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those
accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of
the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over
them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was
done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs
of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more
degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be
beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer
flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to
smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards
the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and
skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God, into leathern
thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be slave-masters indeed;
and there might be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords'
lightest words were worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed
husbandman dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while
the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory
smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted into the
fineness of a web, or racked into the exactness of a line.

Sec. XIV. And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old
cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic
ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins,
and formless monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do
not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every
workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of
being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which
it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her
children.

Sec. XV. Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is
veri