XCIV.

“I know him well, on every sideWalled round with wilful prejudice;A self-taught peasant rough in speech,Self-taught, and confident to teach,In blame not overwise.What matter, if an honest thoughtSometimes a homely phrase require?Let those who fear the bracing airLook for a milder sky elsewhere,Or stay beside the fire.There are worse things in this bad worldThan bitter speech and bearing free—I hail thee, genuine English born—Not yet the lineage is outwornThat owns a man like thee.”

“I know him well, on every sideWalled round with wilful prejudice;A self-taught peasant rough in speech,Self-taught, and confident to teach,In blame not overwise.What matter, if an honest thoughtSometimes a homely phrase require?Let those who fear the bracing airLook for a milder sky elsewhere,Or stay beside the fire.There are worse things in this bad worldThan bitter speech and bearing free—I hail thee, genuine English born—Not yet the lineage is outwornThat owns a man like thee.”

“I know him well, on every sideWalled round with wilful prejudice;A self-taught peasant rough in speech,Self-taught, and confident to teach,In blame not overwise.

“I know him well, on every side

Walled round with wilful prejudice;

A self-taught peasant rough in speech,

Self-taught, and confident to teach,

In blame not overwise.

What matter, if an honest thoughtSometimes a homely phrase require?Let those who fear the bracing airLook for a milder sky elsewhere,Or stay beside the fire.

What matter, if an honest thought

Sometimes a homely phrase require?

Let those who fear the bracing air

Look for a milder sky elsewhere,

Or stay beside the fire.

There are worse things in this bad worldThan bitter speech and bearing free—I hail thee, genuine English born—Not yet the lineage is outwornThat owns a man like thee.”

There are worse things in this bad world

Than bitter speech and bearing free—

I hail thee, genuine English born—

Not yet the lineage is outworn

That owns a man like thee.”

The state of Europe thirty years ago was far more dead and hopeless than now. There were no wars, certainly, and no expectations of wars. But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up feeling abroad, as if the lid were screwed down on the nations, and the thing which had been, however cruel and heavy and mean, was that which was to remain to the end. England was better off than her neighbors, but yet in bad case. In the south and west particularly, several causes had combined to spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the agricultural poor. First among these stood the new poor law, the provisions of which were rigorously carried out in most districts. The poor had as yet felt the harshness only of the new system. Then the land was in many places in the hands of men on their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had begun business as young men while the great war was going on, had made money hand over hand for a few years out of the war prices, and had tried to go on living with grayhounds and yeomanry uniforms—“horse to ride and weapon towear”—through the hard years which had followed. These were bad masters in every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing machines, to take the little bread which a poor man was still able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and children—so at least the poor thought and muttered to one another; and the mutterings broke out every now and then in the long nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and broken machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia and America had not yet become familiar words in every English village, and the labor market was everywhere overstocked; and last, but not least, the corn laws were still in force, and the bitter and exasperating strife in which they went out was at its height. And while Swing and his myrmidons were abroad in the counties, and could scarcely be kept down by yeomanry and poor-law guardians, the great towns were in almost worse case. Here too emigration had not yet set in to thin the labor market; wages were falling, and prices rising; the corn-law struggle was better understood and far keener than in the country; and Chartism was gaining force every day, and rising into a huge threatening giant, waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the occasion which seemed at hand.

You generation of young men, who were too young then to be troubled with such matters, and have growninto manhood since, you little know—may you never know!—what it is to be living the citizens of a divided and distracted nation. For the time that danger is past. In a happy hour, and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in time, came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife and the sense of injustice passed away out of men’s minds. The nation was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful distress in other parts of the country, to begin looking steadily and seriously at some of the sores which were festering in its body, and undermining health and life. And so the tide had turned, and England had already passed the critical point, when 1848 came upon Christendom, and the whole of Europe leapt up into a wild blaze of revolution.

Is any one still inclined to make light of the danger that threatened England in that year, to sneer at the 10th of April, and the monster petition, and the monster meetings on Kennington and other commons? Well, if there be such persons amongst my readers, I can only say that they can have known nothing of what was going on around them and below them, at that time, and I earnestly hope that their vision has become clearer since then, and that they are not looking with the same eyes that see nothing, at the signs of to-day. For that there are questions still to be solved by us in England, in this current half-century, quite as likely to tear the nation in pieces as the corn laws, no man withhalf an eye in his head can doubt. They may seem little clouds like a man’s hand on the horizon just now, but they will darken the whole heaven before long, unless we can find wisdom enough amongst us to take the little clouds in hand in time, and make them descend in soft rain.

The years 1848-9 had been years of revolution, and, as always happens at such times, the minds of men had been greatly stirred on many questions, and especially on the problem of the social condition of the great mass of the poor in all European countries. In Paris, the revolution had been the signal for a great effort on the part of the workmen; and some remarkable experiments had been made, both by the Provisional Government of 1848 and by certain employers of labor, and bodies of skilled mechanics, with a view to place the conditions of labor upon a more equitable and satisfactory footing, or, to use the common phrase of the day, to reconcile the interests of capital and labor. The government experiment of “national workshops” had failed disastrously, but a number of the private associations were brilliantly successful. The history of some of these associations—of the sacrifices which had been joyfully made by the associates in order to collect the small funds necessary to start them—of the ability andindustry with which they were conducted, and of their marvellous effect on the habits of all those engaged in the work, had deeply interested many persons in England. It was resolved to try an experiment of the same kind in England, but the conditions were very different. The seed there had already taken root amongst the industrial classes, and the movement had come from them. In England the workpeople, as a rule, had no belief in association, except for defensive purposes. It was chiefly amongst young professional men that the idea was working, and it was necessary to preach it to those whom it most concerned. Accordingly a society was formed, chiefly of young barristers, under the presidency of the late Mr. Maurice, who was then Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, for the purpose of establishing associations similar to those in Paris. It was called the Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations, and I happened to be one of the original members, and on the Council. We were all full of enthusiasm and hope in our work, and of propagandist zeal: anxious to bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now think of my own state of mind at the time without wonder and amusement. I certainly thought (and for that matter have never altered my opinion to this day) that here we had found the solution of the great labor question; but I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just to announce it, and found an association or two, in order to convert all England, and usher in the millenniumat once, so plain did the whole thing seem to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the Council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the majority. Consequently we went at it with a will: held meetings at six o’clock in the morning (so as not to interfere with our regular work) for settling the rules of our central society, and its off-shoots, and late in the evening, for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other handicraftsmen, whom we might set to work; started a small publishing office, presided over by a diminutive one-eyed costermonger, a rough-and-ready speaker and poet (who had been in prison as a Chartist leader), from which we issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small newspaper; and, as the essential condition of any satisfactory progress, commenced a vigorous agitation for such an amendment in the law as would enable our infant associations to carry on their business in safety, and without hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our denunciations of unlimited competition brought on us attacks in newspapers and magazines, which we answered, nothing loth. Our opponents called us Utopians and Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we were Christians; that our trade principles were on all-fours with Christianity, while theirs were utterly opposed to it. So we got, or adopted, the name of Christian Socialists, and gave it to our tracts, and our paper. We were ready to fight our battle wherever we found an opening, and got support from the most unexpectedquarters. I remember myself being asked to meet Archbishop Whately, and several eminent political economists, and explain what we were about. After a couple of hours of hard discussion, in which I have no doubt I talked much nonsense, I retired, beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the late Lord Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers and gave me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment; and a few days later I found another nobleman, sitting on the counter of our shoemakers’ association, arguing with the manager, and giving an order for boots.

It was just in the midst of all this that my brother came to live with us. I had already converted him, as I thought. He was a subscribing member of our Society, and dealt with our Associations; and I had no doubt would now join the Council, and work actively in the new crusade. I knew how sound his judgment was, and that he never went back from a resolution once taken, and therefore was all the more eager to make sure of him, and, as a step in this direction, had already placed his name on committees, and promised his attendance. But I was doomed to disappointment. He attended one or two of our meetings, but I could not induce him to take any active part with us. At a distance of more than twenty years it is of course difficult to recall very accurately what passed between us, but I can remember his reasons well enough to give the substance of them. And first, as he had formerlyobjected to the violent language of the leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, so he now objected to what he looked upon as our extravagance.

“You don’t want to divide other people’s property?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then why call yourselves Socialists?”

“But we couldn’t help ourselves: other people called us so first.”

“Yes; but you needn’t have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?”

“Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition as the true law of industry; and of organizing labor—of securing the laborer’s position by organizing production and consumption—and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who believe, or say, that a desire to divide other people’s property is of the essence of Socialism.”

“That may be very true: but nine-tenths of mankind, or at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of those categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.”

This was his first objection, and he proved to be right.At any rate, after some time we dropped the name, and the “Christian Socialist” was changed into the “Journal of Association.” English Socialists generally have instinctively avoided it ever since, and called themselves “co-operators,” thereby escaping much abuse in the intervening years. And when I look back, I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather than attracted men who, like my brother, were inclined theoretically to agree with us. For I am bound to admit that a strong vein of fanaticism and eccentricity ran through our ranks, which the marvellous patience, gentleness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough to counteract or control. Several of our most active and devoted members were also strong vegetarians, and phonetists. In a generation when beards and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant, and almost truculent, tone about us, which was well calculated to keep men of my brother’s temperament at a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its unwisdom when I saw its effects on him, and others, who were inclined to join us, and would have proved towers of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce the evils of unlimited competition, and the falsehood of the economic doctrine of “every man for himself;” but quite unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole system of trade as “the disgustingvice of shop-keeping,” as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest members.

Hardy had a way of throwing life into what he was talking about, and, like many men with strong opinions, and passionate natures, either carried his hearers off their legs and away with him altogether, or roused every spark of combativeness in them. The latter was the effect which his lecture on the Punic Wars had on Tom. He made several protests as Hardy went on; but Grey’s anxious looks kept him from going fairly into action, till Hardy stuck the black pin, which represented Scipio, triumphantly in the middle of Carthage, and, turning round said, “And now for some tea, Grey, before you have to turn out.”

Tom opened fire while the tea was brewing.

“You couldn’t say anything bad enough about aristocracies this morning, Hardy, and now to-night you are crowing over the success of the heaviest and cruelest oligarchy that ever lived, and praising them up to the skies.”

“Hullo! here’s a breeze!” said Hardy, smiling; “but I rejoice, O Brown, in that they thrashed the Carthaginians, and not, as you seem to think, in that they, being aristocrats, thrashed the Carthaginians; for oligarchs they were not at this time.”

“At any rate they answer to the Spartans in the struggle, and the Carthaginians to the Athenians; and yet all your sympathies are with the Romans to-night in the Punic Wars, though they were with the Athenians before dinner.”

“I deny your position. The Carthaginians were nothing but a great trading aristocracy—with a glorious family or two I grant you, like that of Hannibal; but, on the whole, a dirty, bargain-driving, buy-cheap-and-sell-dear aristocracy—of whom the world was well rid. They like the Athenians indeed! Why, just look what the two people have left behind them——”

“Yes,” interrupted Tom; “but we only know the Carthaginians through the reports of their destroyers. Your heroes trampled them out with hoofs of iron.”

“Do you think the Roman hoof could have trampled out their Homer if they ever had one?” said Hardy. “The Romans conquered Greece too, remember.”

“But Greece was never so near beating them.”

“True. But I hold to my point. Carthage was the mother of all hucksters, compassing sea and land to sell her wares.”

“And no bad line of life for a nation. At least Englishmen ought to think so.”

“No, they ought not; at least if ‘Punica fides’ is to be the rule of trade. Selling any amount of Brummagem wares never did nation or man much good, and never will. Eh, Grey?”

Grey winced at being appealed to, but remarked that he hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from the fate of Tyre and Carthage, the great trading nations of the old world: and then, swallowing his tea, and looking as if he had been caught robbing a hen-roost, he made a sudden exit, and hurried away out of college to the night-school.

“What a pity he is so odd and shy,” said Tom; “I should so like to know more of him.”

“Itisa pity. He is much better when he is alone with me. I think he has heard from some of the set that you are a furious Protestant, and sees an immense amount of stiff-neckedness in you.”

“But about England and Carthage,” said Tom, shirking the subject of his own peculiarities; “you don’t really think us like them? It gave me a turn to hear you translating ‘Punica fides’ into Brummagem wares just now.”

“I think that successful trade is our rock ahead. The devil who holds new markets and twenty per cent. profits in his gift is the devil that England has most to fear from. ‘Because of unrighteous dealings, and riches gotten by deceit, the kingdom is translated from one people to another,’ said the wise man. Grey falls back on the Church, you see, to save the nation; but the Church he dreams of will never do it. Is there any that can? Theremustbe surely, or we have believed a lie. But this work of making trade righteous, of Christianizingtrade, looks like the very hardest the Gospel has ever had to take in hand—in England at any rate.”

Hardy spoke slowly and doubtfully, and paused as if asking for Tom’s opinion.

“I never heard it put in that way. I know very little of politics or the state of England. But come, now; the putting down the slave-trade and compensating our planters,thatshows that we are not sold to the trade-devil yet, surely.”

“I don’t think we are. No, thank God, there are plenty of signs that we are likely to make a good fight of it yet.”

The newest school of philosophy preaches an “organized religion,” an hierarchy of the best and ablest. In an inarticulate way the confession rises from the masses that they feel on every side of them the need of wise and strong government—of a will to which their will may loyally submit—before all other needs; have been groping blindly after it this long while; begin to know that their daily life is in daily peril for want of it, in a country of limited land, air, and water, and practically unlimited wealth. But Democracy—how about Democracy? We had thought a cry for it, and not for kings, God made or of any other kind, was the characteristicof our time. Certainly kings, such as we have seen them, have not gained or deserved much reverence of late years, are not likely to be called for with any great earnestness by those who feel most need of guidance and deliverance, in the midst of the bewildering conditions and surroundings of our time and our life.

Thirty years ago the framework of society went all to pieces over the greater part of Christendom, and the kings just ran away or abdicated, and the people, left pretty much to themselves, in some places made blind work of it. Solvent and well-regulated society caught a glimpse of that same “big black democracy,”—the monster, the Frankenstein, as they hold him, at any rate the great undeniable fact of our time—a glimpse of him moving his huge limbs about, uneasily and blindly. Then, mainly by the help of broken pledges and bayonets, the so-called kings managed to get the gyves put on him again, and to shut him down in his underground prison. That was the sum of their work in the great European crisis; not a thankworthy one from the people’s point of view. However, society was supposed to be saved, and the “party of order,” so called, breathed freely. No; for the 1848 kind of king there is surely no audible demand anywhere. In England in that year we had our 10th of April, and muster of half a million special constables of the comfortable classes, with much jubilation over such muster, and mutual congratulations that we were not as other men,or even as these Frenchmen, Germans, and the like. Taken for what it was worth, let us admit that the jubilations did not lack some sort of justification. The 10th of April muster may be perhaps accepted as a sign that the reverence for the constable’s staff has not quite died out amongst us. But let no one think that for this reason democracy is one whit less inevitable in England than on the Continent, or that its sure and steady advance, and the longing for its coming, which all thoughtful men recognize, however little they may sympathize, with them, in the least incompatible with the equally manifest longing for what our people intend by this much-worshipped and much-hated name.

For what does democracy mean to Englishmen? Simply an equal chance for all; a fair field for the best men, let them start from where they will, to get to the front; a clearance out of sham governors, and of unjust privilege, in every department of human affairs. It cannot be too often repeated, that they who suppose the bulk of our people want less government, or fear the man who “can rule and dare not lie,” know little of them. Ask any representative of a popular constituency, or other man with the means of judging, what the people are ready for in this direction. He will tell you that, in spite perhaps of all he can say or do, theywillgo for compulsory education, the organization of labor (including therein the sharp extinction of able-bodied pauperism), the utilization of public lands, andother reforms of an equally decided character. That for these purposes they desire more government, not less; will support with enthusiasm measures, the very thought of which takes away the breath and loosens the knees of ordinary politicians; will rally with loyalty and trustfulness to men who will undertake these things with courage and singleness of purpose.

The corners of Hardy’s room were covered with sheets of paper of different sizes, pasted against the wall in groups. In the line of sight, from about the height of four to six feet, there was scarcely an inch of the original paper visible, and round each centre group there were outlying patches and streamers, stretching towards floor or ceiling, or away nearly to the bookcases or fireplace.

“Well, don’t you think it a great improvement on the old paper?” said Hardy. “I shall be out of rooms next term, and it will be a hint to the College that the rooms want papering. You’re no judge of such matters, or I should ask you whether you don’t see great artistic taste in the arrangement.”

“Why, they’re nothing but maps, and lists of names and dates,” said Tom, who had got up to examine the decorations. “And what in the world are all thesequeer pins for?” he went on, pulling a strong pin with a large red sealing-wax head out of the map nearest to him.

“Hullo! take care there; what are you about?” shouted Hardy, getting up and hastening to the corner. “Why, you irreverent beggar, those pins are the famous statesmen and warriors of Greece and Rome.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn’t know I was in such august company;” saying which, Tom proceeded to stick the red-headed pin back into the wall.

“Now, just look at that,” said Hardy, taking the pin out from the place where Tom had stuck it. “Pretty doings there would be amongst them with your management. This pin is Brasidas; you’ve taken him away from Naupactus, where he was watching the eleven Athenian galleys anchored under the temple of Apollo, and stuck him down right in the middle of the Pnyx, where he will be instantly torn in pieces by a ruthless and reckless mob. You call yourself a Tory indeed! However, ’twas always the same with you Tories; calculating, cruel, and jealous. Use your leaders up, and throw them over—that’s the golden rule of aristocracies.”

“Hang Brasidas,” said Tom, laughing; “stick him back at Naupactus again. Here, which is Cleon? The scoundrel! give me hold of him, and I’ll put him in a hot berth.”

“That’s he, with the yellow head. Let him alone, Itell you, or all will be hopeless confusion when Grey comes for his lecture. We’re only in the third year of the war.”

“I like your chaff about Tories sacrificing their great men,” said Tom, putting his hands in his pockets to avoid temptation. “How about your precious democracy, old fellow? Which is Socrates?”

“Here, the dear old boy!—this pin with the great gray head, in the middle of Athens, you see. I pride myself on my Athens. Here’s the Piræus and the long walls, and the hill of Mars. Isn’t it as good as a picture?”

“Well, itisbetter than most maps, I think,” said Tom; “but you’re not going to slip out so easily. I want to know whether your pet democracy did or did not murder Socrates.”

“I’m not bound to defend democracies. But look at my pins. It may be the natural fondness of a parent, but I declare they seem to me to have a great deal of character, considering the material. You’ll guess them at once, I’m sure, if you mark the color and shape of the wax. This one now, for instance, who is he?”

“Alcibiades,” answered Tom, doubtfully.

“Alcibiades!” shouted Hardy; “you fresh from Rugby, and not know your Thucydides better than that. There’s Alcibiades, that little purple-headed, foppish pin, by Socrates. This rusty colored one is that respectable old stick-in-the-mud, Nicias.”

“Well, but you’ve made Alcibiades nearly the smallest of the whole lot,” said Tom.

“So he was, to my mind,” said Hardy; “just the sort of insolent young ruffian whom I should have liked to buy at my price, and sell at his own. He must have been very like some of our gentlemen-commoners, with the addition of brains.”

“I should really think, though,” said Tom, “it must be a capital plan for making you remember the history.”

“It is, I flatter myself. I’ve long had the idea, but I should never have worked it out and found the value of it but for Grey. I invented it to coach him in his history. You see we are in the Grecian corner. Over there is the Roman. You’ll find Livy and Tacitus worked out there, just as Herodotus and Thucydides are here; and the pins are stuck for the Second Punic War, where we are just now. I shouldn’t wonder if Grey got his first, after all, he’s picking up so quick in my corners; and says he never forgets any set of events when he has pricked them out with the pins.”

The Reformation had to do its work in due course, in temporal as well as in spiritual things, in the visible as in the invisible world; for the Stuart princes asserted in temporal matters the powers which the Pope had claimed in spiritual. They, too, would acknowledge the sanctityof no law above the will of princes—would vindicate, even with the sword and scaffold, their own powers to dispense with laws. So the second great revolt of the English nation came, against all visible earthly sovereignty in things temporal. Puritanism arose, and Charles went to the block, and the proclamation went forth that henceforth the nation would have no king but Christ; that he was the only possible king for the English nation from that time forth, in temporal as well as spiritual things, and that his kingdom had actually come. The national conscience was not with the Puritans as it had been with Henry at the time of the Reformation, but the deepest part of their protest has held its own, and gained strength ever since, from their day to ours. The religious source and origin of it was, no doubt, thrust aside at the Revolution, but the sagacious statesmen of 1688 were as clear as the soldiers of Ireton and Ludlow in their resolve, that no human will should override the laws and customs of the realm. So they, too, required of their sovereigns that they should “solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same; ... that they will to the utmost of their power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law.” The same protest in a far different form came forth again atthe great crisis at the end of the eighteenth century, when the revolutionary literature of France had set Europe in a blaze, and the idea of the rights of man had shrunk back, and merged in the will of the mob. Against this assertion of this form of self-will again the English nation took resolute ground. They had striven for a law which was above popes and kings, to which these must conform on pain of suppression. They strove for it now against mob-law, against popular will, openly avowing its own omnipotence, and making the tyrant’s claim to do what was right in its own eyes. And so through our whole history the same thread has run. The nation, often confusedly and with stammering accents, but still on the whole consistently, has borne the same witness as the Church, that as God is living and reigning there must be a law, the expression of his will, at the foundation of all human society, which priests, kings, rulers, people must discover, acknowledge, obey.

Christians may acknowledge that, as a rule, and in the long run, the decision of a country, fairly taken, is likely to be right, and that the will of the people is likely to be more just and patient than that of any person or class. No one can honestly look at the history of our race in the last quarter of a century, to go nofarther back, and not gladly admit the weight of evidence in favor of this view. There is no great question of principle which has arisen in politics here, in which the great mass of the nation has not been from the first on that which has been at last acknowledged as the right side. In America, to take one great example, the attitude of the Northern people from first to last, in the great civil war, will make proud the hearts of English-speaking men as long as their language lasts.

The real public opinion of a nation, expressing its deepest conviction (as distinguished from what is ordinarily called public opinion, the first cry of professional politicians and journalists, which usually goes wrong,) is undoubtedly entitled to very great respect. But after making all fair allowances, no honest man, however warm a democrat he may be, can shut his eyes to the facts which stare him in the face at home, in our colonies, in the United States, and refuse to acknowledge that the will of the majority in a nation, ascertained by the best processes yet known to us, is not always or altogether just, or consistent, or stable; that the deliberate decisions of the people are not unfrequently tainted by ignorance, or passion, or prejudice.

Are we, then, to rest contented with this ultimateregal power, to resign ourselves to the inevitable, and admit that for us, here at last in this nineteenth century, there is nothing higher or better to look for; and if we are to have a king at all, it must be king people or king mob, according to the mood in which our section of collective humanity happens to be? Surely we are not prepared for this any more than the Pope is. Many of us feel that Tudors, and Stuarts, and Oliver Cromwell, and cliques of Whig or Tory aristocrats, may have been bad enough; but that any tyranny under which England has groaned in the past has been light by the side of what we may come to, if we are to carry out the new political gospel to its logical conclusion, and surrender ourselves to government by the counting of heads, pure and simple.

But if we will not do this is there any alternative, since we repudiate personal government, but to fall back on the old Hebrew and Christian faith, that the nations are ruled by a living, present, invisible King, whose will is perfectly righteous and loving, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever? It is beside the question to urge that such a faith throws us back on an invisible power, and that we must have visible rulers. Of course we must have visible rulers, even after the advent of the “confederate social republic of Europe.” When the whole people is king it must have viceroys like other monarchs. But is public opinion visible? Can we see “collective humanity?” Is it easier for princes or statesmen—forany man or men upon whose shoulders the government rests—to ascertain the will of the people than the will of God? Another consideration meets us at once, and that is, that this belief is assumed in our present practice. Not to insist upon the daily usage in all Christian places of worship and families throughout the land, the Parliament of the country opens its daily sittings with the most direct confession of this faith which words can express, and prays—addressing God, and not public opinion, or collective humanity—“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” Surely it were better to get rid of this solemn usage as a piece of cant, which must demoralize the representatives of the nation, if we mean nothing particular by it, and either recast our form of prayer, substituting “the people,” or what else we please, for “God,” or let the whole business alone, as one which passes man’s understanding. If we really believe that a nation has no means of finding out God’s will, it is hypocritical and cowardly to go on praying that it may be done.

But it will be said, assuming all that is asked, what practical difference can it possibly make in the government of nations? Admit as pointedly as you can, by profession and by worship, and honestly believe, that a Divine will is ruling in the world, and in each nation, what will it effect? Will it alter the course of events one iota, or the acts of any government or governor. Would not a Neapolitan Bourbon be just as ready tomake it his watchword as any English Alfred! Might not a committee of public safety placard the scaffold with a declaration of this faith? It is a contention for a shadow.

Is it so? Does not every man recognize in his own life, and in his own observation of the world around him, the enormous and radical difference between the two principles of action and the results which they bring about? What man do we reckon worthy of honor, and delight to obey and follow—him who asks, when he has to act, what will A, B, and C say to this? or him who asks, is this right, true, just, in harmony with the will of God. Don’t we despise ourselves when we give way to the former tendency, or in other words, when we admit the sovereignty of public opinion? Don’t we feel that we are in the right and manly path when we follow the latter? And if this be true of private men, it must hold in the case of those who are in authority.

Those rulers, whatever name they may go by, who turn to what constituents, leagues, the press are saying or doing, to guide them as to the course they are to follow, in the faith that the will of the majority is the ultimate and only possible arbiter, will never deliver or strengthen a nation however skilful they may be in occupying its best places.

All the signs of our time tell us that the day of earthly kings has gone by, and the advent to power of the great body of the people, those who live by manual labor, is at hand. Already a considerable percentage of them are as intelligent and provident as the classes above them, and as capable of conducting affairs, and administering large interests successfully. In England, the co-operative movement and the organization of the trade societies should be enough to prove this, to any one who has eyes, and is open to conviction. In another generation that number will have increased tenfold, and the sovereignty of the country will virtually pass into their hands. Upon their patriotism and good sense the fortunes of the kingdom will depend as directly and absolutely as they have ever depended on the will of earthly king or statesman. It is vain to blink the fact that democracy is upon us, that “new order of society which is to be founded by labor for labor,” and the only thing for wise men to do is to look it in the face, and see how the short intervening years may be used to the best advantage. Happily for us, the task has been already begun in earnest. Our soundest and wisest political thinkers are all engaged upon the great and inevitable change, whether they dread, or exult in the prospect. Thus far, too, they all agree that the great danger of the future lies in that veryreadiness of the people to act in great masses, and to get rid of personal and individual responsibility, which is the characteristic of the organizations by which they have gained, and secured, their present position. Nor is there any danger as to how this danger is to be met. Our first aim must be to develop to the utmost the sense of personal and individual responsibility.

But how is this to be done? To whom are men wielding great powers to be taught that they are responsible? If they can learn that there is still a King ruling in England through them, whom if they will fear they need fear no other power in earth or heaven, whom if they can love and trust they will want no other guide or helper, all will be well, and we may look for a reign of justice in England such as she has never seen yet, whatever form our government may take. But, in any case, those who hold the old faith will still be sure that the order of God’s kingdom will not change. If the kings of the earth are passing away, because they have never acknowledged the order which was established for them, the conditions on which they were set in high places, those who succeed them will have to come under the same order, and the same conditions. When the great body of those who have done the hard work of the world, and got little enough of its wages hitherto—the real stuff of which every nation is composed—have entered on their inheritance, they may sweep away many things, and make short work with thrones and kings.But there is one throne which they cannot pull down—the throne of righteousness, which is over all the nations; and one King whose rule they cannot throw off—the Son of God and Son of Man, who will judge them as he has judged all kings and all governments before them.

Kings, priests, judges, whatever men succeed to, or usurp, or are thrust into power, come immediately under that eternal government which the God of the nation has established, and the order of which cannot be violated with impunity. Every ruler who ignores or defies it saps the national life and prosperity, and brings trouble on his country, sometimes swiftly, but always surely. There is the perpetual presence of a King, with whom rulers and people must come to a reckoning in every national crisis and convulsion, and who is no less present when the course of affairs is quiet and prosperous. The greatest and wisest men of the nation are those in whom this faith burns most strongly. Elijah’s solemn opening, “As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand;” David’s pleading, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”—his confession that in heaven or hell, or the uttermost parts of the sea, “there also shall thy hand lead, and thy right hand shall guide me”—areonly well-known instances of a universal consciousness which never wholly leaves men or nations, however much they may struggle to get rid of it.

“Who is that who has just come in, in beaver?” said Tom, touching the next man to him.

“Oh, don’t you know? That’s Blake; he’s the most wonderful fellow in Oxford,” answered his neighbor.

“How do you mean?” said Tom.

“Why, he can do everything better than almost anybody, and without any trouble at all. Miller was obliged to have him in the boat last year though he never trained a bit. Then he’s in the eleven, and is a wonderful rider, and tennis-player, and shot.”

“Aye, and he’s so awfully clever with it all,” joined in the man on the other side. “He’ll be a safe first, though I don’t believe he reads more than you or I. He can write songs, too, as fast as you can talk nearly, and sings them wonderfully.”

“Is he of our College, then?”

“Yes, of course, or he couldn’t have been in our boat last year.”

“But I don’t think I ever saw him in chapel or hall.”

“No, I dare say not. He hardly ever goes to either, and yet he manages never to get hauled up much, noone knows how. He never gets up now till the afternoon, and sits up nearly all night playing cards with the fastest fellows, or going round singing glees at three or four in the morning.”

Tom looked with great interest at the admirable Crichton of St. Ambrose’s; and, after watching him a few minutes, said in a low tone to his neighbor:

“How wretched he looks! I never saw a sadder face.”

Poor Blake! one can’t help calling him “poor,” although he himself would have winced at it more than at any other name you could have called him. You might have admired, feared, or wondered at him, and he would have been pleased; the object of his life was to raise such feelings in his neighbors; but pity was the last which he would have liked to excite.

He was indeed a wonderfully gifted fellow, full of all sorts of energy and talent, and power and tenderness; and yet, as his face told only too truly to any one who watched him when he was exerting himself in society, one of the most wretched men in the College. He had a passion for success—for beating everybody else in whatever he took in hand, and that, too, without seeming to make any great effort himself. The doing a thing well and thoroughly gave him no satisfaction unless he could feel that he was doing it better and more easily than A, B, or C, and that they felt and acknowledged this. He had had his full swing of successfor two years, and now the Nemesis was coming.

For, although not an extravagant man, many of the pursuits in which he had eclipsed all rivals were far beyond the means of any but a rich one, and Blake was not rich. He had a fair allowance, but by the end of his first year was considerably in debt, and, at the time we are speaking of, the whole pack of Oxford tradesmen, into whose books he had got (having smelt out the leanness of his expectations), were upon him, besieging him for payment. This miserable and constant annoyance was wearing his soul out. This was the reason why his oak was sported, and he was never seen till the afternoons, and turned night into day. He was too proud to come to an understanding with his persecutors, even had it been possible; and now, at his sorest need, his whole scheme of life was failing him; his love of success was turning into ashes in his mouth; he felt much more disgust than pleasure at his triumphs over other men, and yet the habit of striving for such successes, notwithstanding its irksomeness, was too strong to be resisted.

Poor Blake! he was living on from hand to mouth, flashing out with all his old brilliancy and power, and forcing himself to take the lead in whatever company he might be; but utterly lonely and depressed when by himself—reading feverishly in secret, in a desperate effort to retrieve all by high honors and a fellowship.As Tom said to his neighbors, there was no sadder face than his to be seen in Oxford.

One of the moralists whom we sat under in my youth—was it the great Richard Swiveller, or Mr. Stiggins?—says: “We are born in a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.” These consequences, I for one am ready to encounter. I pity people who weren’t found in a vale. I don’t mean a flat country, but a vale; that is a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hillalwaysin view if you choose to turn towards him, that’s the essence of a vale. There he is for ever in the distance, your friend and companion; you never lose him as you do in hilly districts.

All dwellers in and about London are, alas, too well acquainted with that never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at least, in every spring. As each succeeding winter wears away, the same thing happens to us.

For some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot believe that the dirty pair of sparrowswho live opposite our window are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their twittering. But morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is no longer any vice in the air; we drop our overcoats; we rejoice in the green shoots which the privet-hedge is making in the square garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends; we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden Market to see the ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.

This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any rate. Don’t we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure—sure as Christmas bills, or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything surer than these—comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.

But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. All moisture, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dryup; our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple, and see that it points N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being ill-treated. We could have borne with it well enough in November; it would have been natural, and all in the day’s work in March; but now, when Rotten-row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure-vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or the poor remains of dear Epping Forrest, when the exhibitions are open or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up, for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life’s blood shall have been thoroughly warmed up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and Garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system, we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the smallest pretext.

This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for certain mental ones through which most of us pass. The real crisis over, we drift into theskirts of the storm, and lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm may break over us again at any minute, and find us almost as helpless as ever.

Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at one crisis of his life, was reading. For three or four days running, he really worked hard—very hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books with his oak sported—hard, even though we should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since his quarrel with Hardy, felt a sensation of real comfort—it hardly amounted to pleasure—as he closed his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just finished the last of the Greek plays which he meant to take in for his first examination. He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting his thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting backinto the black stormy sea, in the trough of which he had been laboring so lately, and which he felt he was by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party at one of his acquaintance’s rooms; or, he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of the dozen other places. On second thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa, and went to his bookcase. The reading had paid so well that evening that he resolved to go on with it. He had no particular object in selecting one book more than another, and so took down carelessly the first that came to hand.

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord in the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous defence, and throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to thebrink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be trembling to come out of it to all the cries, now defiant, now plaintive, which had gone out of his heart in this time of trouble! For his thought was of that spirit, distinct from himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in him, knowing him better than he knew himself, never misleading him, always leading him to light and truth, of which the old philosopher spoke. “The old heathen, Socrates, did actually believe that—there can be no question about it;” he thought, “Has not the testimony of the best men through these two thousand years borne witness that he was right—that he did not believe a lie! That was what we were told. Surely I don’t mistake! Were we not told, too, or did I dream it, that what was true for him is true for every man—for me? That there is a spirit dwelling in me, striving with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I will submit to his guidance?

“Ah! submit, submit, there’s the rub! Give yourself up to his guidance! Throw up the reins, and say you’ve made a mess of it. Well, why not? Haven’t I made a mess of it? Am I fit to hold the reins?

“Not I,”—he got up and began walking about his rooms—“I give it up.”

“Give it up!” he went on presently; “yes, but to whom? Not to the dæmon, spirit, whatever it was, who took up his abode in the old Athenian—at least, so he said, and so I believe. No, no! Two thousand years and all that they have seen have not passed over the world to leave us just where he was left. We want no dæmons or spirits. And yet the old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want more? and who ever wanted guidance more than I now—here—in this room—at this minute? I give up the reins; who will take them?” And so there came on him one of those seasons when a man’s thoughts cannot be followed in words. A sense of awe came upon him, and over him, and wrapped him round; awe at a presence of which he was becoming suddenly conscious, into which he seemed to have wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there, around him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. There was hope and longing in his heart mingling with the fear of that presence, but withal the old reckless and daring feeling which he knew so well, still bubbling up untamed, untamable it seemed to him.

Men and women occupied with the common work of life—who are earning their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, and bringing up children, andstruggling, and sinning, and repenting—feel that certain questions which school-men are discussing are somehow their questions. Not indeed in form, for not one in a thousand of the persons whose minds are thus disturbed care to make themselves acquainted with the forms and modes of theological controversies. If they try to do so, they soon throw them aside with impatience. They feel, “No, it is not this. We care not what may be said about ideology, or multitudinism, or evidential views, or cogenogonies. At the bottom of all this we suspect—nay, we know—there is a deeper strife, a strife about the very foundations of faith and human life. We want to know from you learned persons, whether (as we have been told from our infancy) there is a faith for mankind, for us as well as for you, for the millions of our own countrymen, and in all Christian and heathen lands, who find living their lives a sore business, and have need of all the light they can get to help them.”

It cannot be denied. The sooner we face the fact, the better. This is the question, and it has to be answered now, by us living Englishmen and Englishwomen; the deepest question which man has to do with, and yet—or rather, therefore—one which every toiling man must grapple with, for the sake of his own honesty, of his own life.

For many years I have been thrown very much into the society of young men of all ranks. I spend a great part of my time with them, I like being with them, and I think they like being with me. I know well, therefore, how rare anything like a living faith—a faith in and by which you can live, and for which you would die—is amongst them. I know that it is becoming rarer every day. I find it every day more difficult to get them to speak on the subject: they will not do so unless you drive them to it.

I feel deeply that for the sake of England they must be driven to it, and therefore that it is the bounden duty of every man who has any faith himself, and who has a chance of being listened to by them, to speak out manfully what he has to say, concealing nothing, disguising nothing, and leaving the issue to God.

That which has been called the “negative theology,” has been spreading rapidly these last few years, though for the most part silently. In the first instance it may have been simply “a recoil from some of the doctrines which are to be heard at church and chapel; a distrust of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a miraculous revelation;and a misgiving as to the authority, or extent of the authority of the Scriptures.” But as was sure to be the case, the “negative theology” could not stop, and has not stopped here. Men who have come across these recoils, distrusts, misgivings, will soon find, if they are honest and resolute with themselves, that there is another doubt underlying all these, a doubt which they may turn from in horror when it is first whispered in their hearts, but which will come back again and again. That doubt is whether there is a God at all, or rather, whether a living, personal God, thinking, acting, and ruling in this world in which we are, has ever revealed Himself to man.

This is the one question of our time, and of all times; upon the answer which nations or men can give to it hang life and death.... One cannot stand upon a simple negation. The world is going on turning as it used to do, night succeeding day and generation generation; nations are waking into life, or falling into bondage; there is a deal of wonderful work of one sort or another going on in it, and you and I in our little corner have our own share of work to get done as well as we can. If you put out my old light, some light or other I must have, and you would wish me to have. What is it to be?

You will answer, probably, that I have touched the heart of the matter in putting my question. Night follows day, and generation, generation. All things arefounded on a “permanent order,” “self-sustaining and self-evolving powers pervade all nature.” Of this order and these powers we are getting to know more every day; when we know them perfectly, man, the colossal man, will have reached the highest development of which he is capable. We need not trouble ourselves about breaking them, or submitting to them; some of you would add, for we cannot either break them or submit to them. They will fulfil themselves. It is they, these great generalizations, which are alone acting in, and ruling the world. We, however eccentric our actions may be, however we may pride ourselves on willing and working, are only simple links in the chain. A generallaw of averageorders the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.

But here I must ask, on what is this permanent order, on what are these laws which you tell me of, founded? I acknowledge a permanent order, physical laws, as fully as you can, but believe them to be expressions of a living and a righteous will; I believe a holy and true God to be behind them, therefore I can sit down humbly, and try to understand them, and when I understand, to obey. Are the permanent order, the laws you speak of, founded on a will? If so, on whose will? If on the will ofaGod, of what God? Of a God who has revealed His character, His purpose, Himself, to you? If so, where, how, when?

But if you tell me that these laws, this order, are notfounded on any living will, or that you do not know that they are, then I say you are holding out to me “an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends in nothing—which may be possible to the logical understanding, but is not possible to the spirit of man”—and you are telling me, since worship is a necessity of my being, to worship that. In the name and in the strength of a man, and a man’s will I utterly reject and defy your dead laws, for dead they must be. They may grind me to powder, but I have that in me which is above them, which will own no obedience to them. Dead laws are, so far as I can see, just what you and I and all mankind have been put into this world to fight against. Call them laws of nature if you will, I do not care. Take the commonest, the most universal; is it or is it not by the law of nature that the ground brings forth briers and all sorts of noxious and useless weeds if you let it alone? If it is by the law of nature, am I to obey the law, or to dig my garden and root out the weeds? Doubtless I shall get too old to dig, and shall die, and the law will remain, and the weeds grow over my garden and over my grave, but for all that I decline to obey the law.

I see a law of death working all around me; I feel it in my own members. Is this one of your laws, a part of the “permanent order,” which is to serve me instead of the God of my fathers? If it be I mean to resist it to the last gasp. I utterly hate it. No noble or truework is done in this world except in direct defiance of it. What is to become of the physician’s work, of every effort at sanitary reform, of every attempt at civilizing and raising the poor and the degraded, if we are to sit down and submit ourselves to this law?

Am I never to build a house, out of respect to the law of gravitation? Sooner or later the law will assert itself, and my house will tumble down. Nevertheless I will conquer the law for such space as I can. In short, I will own no dead law as my master. Dead laws I will hate always, and in all places, with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength.

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