mering on the old quiet House ;-dry-rot is in it, who knows how deep; don't disturb the old beams and junctures : varnish, varnish, if you will be blessed by gods and men! This is called the Constitutional System, Conservative System, and other fine names; and this at last has its fruits,—such as we see. Mendacity hanging in the very air we breathe; all men become, unconsciously or half or wholly consciously, liars to their own souls and to other men's; grimacing, finessing, periphrasing, in continual hypocrisy of word, by way of varnish to continual past, present, future misperformance of thing:— clearly sincere about nothing whatever, except in silence, about the appetites of their own huge belly, and the readiest method of assuaging these. From a Population of that sunk kind, ardent only in pursuits that are low and in industries that are sensuous and beaverish, there is little peril of human enthusiasms, or revolutionary transports, such as occurred in 1789, for instance. A low-minded pecus all that; essentially torpid and ignavum, on all that is high or nobly human in revolutions.

It is true there is in such a population, of itself, no help at all towards reconstruction of the wreck of your Niagara plunge; of themselves they, with whatever cry of "liberty" in their mouths, are inexorably marked by Destiny as slaves; and not even the immortal gods could make them free, except by making them anew and on a different pattern. No help in them at all, to your model Aristocrat, or to any noble man or thing. But then likewise there is no hindrance, or a minimum of it! Nothing there in bar of the noble Few, who we always trust will be born to us, generation after generation; and on whom and whose living of a noble and valiantly cosmic life amid the worst impediments and hugest anarchies, the whole of our hope depends. Yes, on them only! If amid the thickest welter of surrounding gluttony and baseness, and what must be reckoned bottomless anarchy from shore to shore, there be found no man, no small but invincible minority of men, capable of keeping themselves free from all that, and of living a heroically human life, while the millions round them are noisily living a mere beaverish or doglike one, then truly all hope is gone. But we always struggle to believe Not. Aristocracy by title, by fortune and position, who can doubt but there are still precious possibilities among the chosen of that class? And

if that fail us, there is still, we hope, the unclassed Aristocracy by nature, not inconsiderable in numbers, and supreme in faculty, in wisdom, human talent, nobleness and courage, 'who derive their patent of nobility direct from Almighty God.' If indeed these also fail us, and are trodden out under the unanimous torrent of brutish hoofs and hobnails, and cannot vindicate themselves into clearness here and there, but at length cease even to try it, then indeed it is all ended: national death, scandalous Copper-Captaincy' as of France, stern Russian Abolition and Erasure as of Poland; in one form or another, well deserved annihilation, and dismissal from God's universe, that and nothing else lies ahead for our once heroic England too.

How many of our Titular Aristocracy will prove real gold when thrown into the crucible? That is always a highly interesting question to me; and my answer, or guess, has still something considerable of hope lurking in it. But the question as to our Aristocracy by Patent from God the Maker, is infinitely interesting. How many of these, amid the ever-increasing bewilderments, and welter of impediments, will be able to develop themselves into something of Heroic Well-doing by act and by word? How many of them will be drawn, pushed and seduced, their very docility and lovingness assisting, into the universal vulgar whirlpool of Parliamenteering, Newspapering, Novel-writing, Comte-Philosophy-ing, immortal Versewriting, &c. &c. (if of vocal turn, as they mostly will be, for some time yet)? How many, by their too desperate resistance to the unanimous vulgar of a Public round them, will become spasmodic instead of strong; and will be overset, and trodden out, under the hoofs and hobnails above-said? Will there, in short, prove to be a recognisable small nucleus of Invincible "Aporo fighting for the Good Cause, in their various wisest ways, and never ceasing or slackening till they die? This is the question of questions, on which all turns; in the answer to this, could we give it clearly, as no man can, lies the oracle"Life for you," response, ," "Death for you"! Looking into this, there are fearful dubitations many. But considering what of Piety, the devoutest and the bravest yet known, there once was in England, and how extensively, in stupid, maundering and

degraded forms, it still lingers, one is inclined timidly to hope the best!

The best: for if this small Aristocratic nucleus can hold out and work, it is in the sure case to increase and increase; to become (as Oliver once termed it) "a company of poor men, who will spend all their blood rather." An openly belligerent company, capable at last of taking the biggest slave Nation by the beard, and saying to it, “Enough, ye slaves, and servants of the mud-gods; all this must cease! Our heart abhors all this; our soul is sick under it; God's curse is on us while this lasts. Behold, we will all die rather than that this last. Rather all die, we say;—what is your view of the corresponding alternative on your own part?" I see well it must at length come to battle; actual fighting, bloody wrestling, and a great deal of it: but were it unit against thousand, or against thousand-thousand, on the above terms, I know the issue, and have no fear about it. That also is an issue which has been often tried in Human History; and, while God lives'-(I hope the phrase is not yet obsolete, for the fact is eternal, though so many have forgotten it!)-said issue can or will fall only one way.

VI.

What we can expect this Aristocracy of Nature to do for us? They are of two kinds: the Speculative, speaking or vocal; and the Practical or industrial, whose function is silent. These are of brother quality; but they go very different roads: 'men of genius' they all emphatically are, the 'inspired Gift of God' lodged in each of them. They do infinitely concern the world and us; especially that first or speaking class,—provided God have 'touched their lips with his hallowed fire'! Supreme is the importance of these. They are our inspired speakers and seers, the light of the world; who are to deliver the world from its swarmeries, its superstitions (political or other);—priceless and indispensable to us that first Class!

Nevertheless it is not of these I mean to speak at present; the topic is far too wide, nor is the call to it so immediately pressing. These Sons of Wisdom, gifted to speak as with hallowed lips a real God's-message to us,-I don't much expect they will be numerous, for a long while yet, nor even perhaps appear at all in this time of swarmeries, or be disposed to speak

And if they did, 1 mortal's, that they For a great while

their message to such audience as there is. know well it is not from my advice, or any could learn their feasible way of doing it. yet, most of them will fly off into "Literature," into what they call Art, Poetry and the like; and will mainly waste themselves in that inane region, - fallen so inane in our mad era. Alas, though born Sons of Wisdom, they are not exempt from all our 'Swarmeries,' but only from the grosser kinds of them. This of "Art," "Poetry" and so forth, is a refined Swarmery; the most refined now going; and comes to us, in venerable form, from a distance of above a thousand years. And is still undoubtingly sanctioned, canonised and marked sacred, by the unanimous vote of cultivated persons to this hour. How stir such questions in the present limits? Or in fact, what chance is there that a guess of mine, in regard to what these born Sons of Wisdom in a yet unborn section of Time will say, or to how they will say it, should avail in the least my own contemporaries, much less them or theirs? Merely on a point or two I will hint what my poor wish is; and know well enough that it is the drawing a bow, not at a venture indeed, but into the almost utterly dark.

First, then, with regard to Art, Poetry and the like, which at present is esteemed the supreme of aims for vocal genius, I hope my literary Aristos will pause, and seriously make question before embarking on that; and perhaps will end, in spite of the Swarmeries abroad, by devoting his divine faculty to something far higher, far more vital to us. Poetry? It is not pleasant singing that we want, but wise and earnest speaking:

‘Art,' ' High Art' &c. are very fine and ornamental, but only to persons sitting at their ease: to persons still wrestling with deadly chaos, and still fighting for dubious existence, they are a mockery rather. Our Aristos, well meditating, will perhaps discover that the genuine 'Art' in all times is a higher synonym for God Almighty's Facts, which come to us direct from Heaven, but in so abstruse a condition, and cannot be read at all till the better intellect interpret them. That is the real function of our Aristos and of his divine gift. Let him think well of this! He will find that all real Art' is definable as Fact, or say as the disimprisoned 'Soul of Fact;' that any other kind of Art, Poetry or High Art is quite idle in comparison.

The Bible itself has, in all changes of theory about it, this as its highest distinction, that it is the truest of all Books;Book springing, every word of it, from the intensest convictions, from the very heart's core, of those who penned it. And has not that been a "successful" Book? Did all the Paternoster-Rows of the world ever hear of one so "successful"! Homer's Iliad, too, that great Bundle of old Greek Ballads, is nothing of a Fiction; it is the truest a Patriotic Balladsinger, rapt into paroxysm and enthusiasm for the honour of his native Country and native Parish, could manage to sing. To sing,' you will observe; always sings,-pipe often rusty, at a loss for metre (flinging-in his yɛ, μèv, dè); a rough, laborious, walletbearing man; but with his heart rightly on fire, when the audience goes with him, and 'hangs on him with greed' (as he says they often do). Homer's Iliad I almost reckon next to the Bible; so stubbornly sincere is it too, though in a far different element, and a far shallower.

Fiction,"-my friend, you will be surprised to discover at last what alarming cousinship it has to Lying: don't go into "Fiction," you Aristos, nor concern yourself with Fine Literature," or Coarse ditto, or the unspeakable glories and rewards of pleasing your generation; which you are not sent hither to please, first of all! In general, leave "Literature," the thing called "Literature" at present, to run through its rapid fermentations (how more and more rapid they are in these years!), and to fluff itself off into Nothing, in its own way,—like a poor bottle of soda-water with the cork sprung;-it won't be long. In our time it has become all the rage; highest noblemen and dignitaries courting a new still higher glory there; innumerable men, women and children rushing towards it, yearly ever more. It sat painfully in Grub Street, in hungry garrets, so long; some few heroic martyrs always serving in it, among such a miscellany of semi-fatuous worthless ditto, courting the bubble reputation in worse than the cannon's mouth; in general, a very flimsy, foolish set. But that little company of martyrs has at last lifted Literature furiously or foamingly high in the world. Goes like the Iceland geysers in our time,-like uncorked sodawater; and will, as I said, soon have done. Only wait: in fifty years, I should guess, all really serious souls will have quitted that mad province, left it to the roaring populaces; and for any