Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain.

One

And who art thou that braggest of [100 thy life of Idleness; complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous cushions; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep? Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any idle hero, saint, god, or even devil? Not a vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the In the Heavens, in the Earth, in the Waters under the Earth, is none like unto thee. Thou art an [110 original figure in this Creation; a denizen in Mayfair alone, in this extraordinary Century or Half-Century alone! monster there is in the world: the idle man. What is his "Religion"? That Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning beggary or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is a lie; and that Man and his Life are a lie.-Alas, alas, who of us is there that can say, I [120 have worked? The faithfulest of us are unprofitable servants; the faithfulest of us know that best. The faithfulest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel, "Much of my life has been trifled away!" But he that has, and except "on public occasions" professes to have, no function but that of going idle in a graceful or graceless manner; and of begetting sons to go idle; and to address Chief Spin- [130 ners and Diggers, who at least are spinning and digging, "Ye scandalous persons who produce too much"-My Corn-Law friends, on what imaginary still richer. Eldorados, and true iron-spikes with law of gravitation, are ye rushing!

As to the Wages of Work there might innumerable things be said; there will and must yet innumerable things be said and spoken, in St. Stephen's and out [140 of St. Stephen's; and gradually not a few things be ascertained and written, on Law-parchment, concerning this very matter: "Fair day's-wages for a fair day's-work" is the most unrefusable demand! Money-wages "to the extent of keeping your worker alive that he may work more:" these, unless you mean to dismiss him straightway out of this world,

are indispensable alike to the noblest [150 Worker and to the least noble:

One thing only I will say here, in special reference to the former class, the noble and noblest; but throwing light on all the other classes and their arrangements of this difficult matter: The "wages" of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or else Nowhere. Not in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's Labor-bank, or any the most improved establishment [160 of banking and money-changing, needest thou, heroic soul, present thy account of earnings. Human banks and laborbanks know thee not; or know thee after generations and centuries have passed away, and thou art clean gone from "rewarding,"-all manner of bank-drafts, shop-tills, and Downing-street Exchequers lying very invisible, so far from thee! Nay, at bottom, dost thou need any [170 reward? reward? Was it thy aim and life-purpose to be filled with good things for thy heroism; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call "happy," in this world, or in any other world? I answer for thee deliberately, No. The whole spiritual secret of the new epoch lies in this, that thou canst answer for thyself, with thy whole clearness of head and heart, deliberately, No!

[180

My brother, the brave man has to give his Life away. Give it, I advise thee; -thou dost not expect to sell thy Life in an adequate manner? What price, for example, would content thee? The just price of thy LIFE to thee,-why, God's entire Creation to thyself, the whole Universe of Space, the whole Eternity of Time, and what they hold: that is the price which would content thee; that, [190 and if thou wilt be candid, nothing short of that! It is thy all; and for it thou wouldst have all. Thou art an unreasonable mortal;-or rather thou art a poor infinite mortal, who, in thy narrow clayprison here, seemest so unreasonable! Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of thy Life, in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart; let the price be Nothing: thou hast then, in a certain [200 sense, got All for it! The heroic man,and is not every man, God be thanked, a potential hero?-has to do so, in all

times and circumstances. In the most heroic age, as in the most unheroic, he will have to say, as Burns said proudly and humbly of his little Scottish Songs, little dewdrops of Celestial Melody in an age when so much was unmelodious: "By Heaven, they shall either be in- [210 valuable or of no value; I do not need your guineas for them." It is an element which should, and must, enter deeply into all settlements of wages here below. They never will be "satisfactory" otherwise; they cannot, O Mammon Gospel, they never can! Money for my little piece of work "to the extent that will allow me to keep working;" yes, this, unless you mean that I shall go my [220 ways before the work is all taken out of me: but as to "wages"-!

On the whole, we do entirely agree with those old Monks, Laborare est Orare. In a thousand senses, from one end of it to the other, true Work is Worship. He that works, whatsoever be his work, he bodies forth the form of Things Unseen; a small Poet every Worker is. The idea, were it but of his [230 poor Delf Platter, how much more of his Epic Poem, is as yet "seen," half-seen, only by himself; to all others it is a thing unseen, impossible; to Nature herself it is a thing unseen, a thing which never hitherto was; very "impossible," for it is as yet a No-thing! The Unseen Powers had need to watch over such a man; he works in and for the Unseen. Alas, if he look to the Seen Powers [240 only, he may as well quit the business; his No-thing will never rightly issue as a Thing, but as a Deceptivity, a Sham-thing, -which it had better not do!

Thy No-thing of an Intended Poem, O Poet who hast looked merely to reviewers, copyrights, booksellers, popularities, behold it has not yet become a Thing; for the truth is not in it! Though printed, hotpressed, reviewed, celebrated, sold [250 to the twentieth edition: what is all that? The Thing, in philosophical uncommercial language, is still a No-thing, mostly semblance and deception of the sight;benign Oblivion incessantly gnawing at it, impatient till Chaos, to which it belongs, do reabsorb it!

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech. Thou [260 must descend to the Mothers, to the Manes, and Hercules-like long suffer and labor there, wouldst thou emerge with victory into the sunlight. As in battle and the shock of war,-for is not this a battle?— thou too shalt fear no pain or death, shalt love no ease or life; the voice of festive Lubberlands, the noise of greedy Acheron, shall alike lie silent under thy victorious feet. Thy work, like Dante's, shall [270 "make thee lean for many years." The world and its wages, its criticisms, counsels, helps, impediments, shall be as a waste ocean-flood; the chaos through which thou art to swim and sail. Not the waste waves and their weedy gulfstreams, shalt thou take for guidance: thy star alone,-"Se tu segui tua stella!" Thy star alone, now clear-beaming over Chaos, nay now by fits gone out, dis- [280 astrously eclipsed: this only shalt thou strive to follow. O, it is a business, as I fancy, that of weltering your way through Chaos and the murk of Hell, Green-eyed dragons watching you, threeheaded Cerberuses, not without sympathy of their sort! "Eccovi l' uom ch' è stato all' Inferno." For in fine, as Poet Dryden says, you do walk hand in hand with sheer Madness, all the way, [290 who is by no means pleasant company! You look fixedly into Madness, and her undiscovered, boundless, bottomless Nightempire; that you may extort new Wisdom out of it, as an Eurydice from Tartarus. The higher the Wisdom, the closer was its neighborhood and kindred with mere Insanity; literally so;-and thou wilt, with a speechless feeling, observe how highest Wisdom, struggling up into this world, [300 has oftentimes carried such tinctures and adhesions of Insanity still cleaving to it hither!

All Works, each in their degree, are a making of Madness sane; truly enough a religious operation; which cannot be carried on without religion. You have not work otherwise; you have eye-service, greedy grasping of wages, swift and ever swifter manufacture of semblances [310 to get hold of wages. Instead of better

felt-hats to cover your head, you have bigger lath-and-plaster hats set traveling the streets on wheels. Instead of heavenly and earthly Guidance for the souls of men, you have "Black or White Surplice" Controversies, stuffed hair-andleather Popes;-terrestrial Law-wards, Lords and Law-bringers, "organizing Labor" in these years, by passing [320 Corn-Laws. With all which, alas, this distracted Earth is now full, nigh to bursting. Semblances most smooth to the touch and eye; most accursed, nevertheless, to body and soul. Semblances, be they of Sham-woven Cloth or of Dilettante Legislation, which are not real wool or substance, but Devil's-dust, accursed of God and man! No man has worked, or can work, except reli- [330 giously; not even the poor day-laborer, the weaver of your coat, the sewer of your shoes. All men, if they work not as in a Great Taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, work unhappily for themselves and you.

Industrial work, still under bondage to Mammon, the rational soul of it not yet awakened, is a tragic spectacle. Men in Men in the rapidest motion and self-motion; restless, with convulsive energy, as if [340 driven by Galvanism, as if possessed by a Devil; tearing asunder mountains,-to no purpose, for Mammonism is always Midas-eared! This is sad, on the face of it. Yet courage: the beneficent Destinies, kind in their sternness, are apprising us that this cannot continue. Labor is not a devil, even while encased in Mammonism; Labor is ever an imprisoned god, writhing unconsciously or con- [350 sciously to escape out of Mammonism! Plugson of Undershot, like Taillefer of Normandy, wants victory; how much happier will even Plugson be to have a Chivalrous victory than a Choctaw one! The unredeemed ugliness is that of a slothful People. Show me a People energetically busy; heaving, struggling, all shoulders at the wheel; their heart pulsing, every muscle swelling, with [360 man's energy and will;-I show you a People of whom great good is already predicable; to whom all manner of good is yet certain, if their energy endure. By very working, they will learn; they

have, Antæus-like, their foot on Mother Fact: how can they but learn?

The vulgarest Plugson of a MasterWorker, who can command Workers, and get work out of them, is already [370 a considerable man. Blessed and thrice

blessed symptoms I discern of MasterWorkers who are not vulgar men; who are Nobles, and begin to feel that they must act as such: all speed to these, they are England's hope at present! But in this Plugson himself, conscious of almost no nobleness whatever, how much is there! Not without man's faculty, insight, courage, hard energy, is this [380 rugged figure. His words none of the wisest; but his actings cannot be altogether foolish. Think, how were it, stoodst thou suddenly in his shoes! He has to command a thousand men. And not imaginary commanding; no, it is real, incessantly practical. The evil passions of so many men (with the Devil in them, as in all of us) he has to vanquish; by manifold force of speech and of silence, [390 to repress or evade. What a force of silence, to say nothing of the others, is in Plugson! For these his thousand men he has to provide raw-material, machinery, arrangement, houseroom; and ever at the week's end, wages by due sale. No Civil-List, or Goulburn-Baring Budget has he to fall back upon, for paying of his regiment; he has to pick his supplies from the confused face of the whole [400 Earth and Contemporaneous History, by his dexterity alone. There will be dry eyes if he fail to do it! He exclaims, at present, "black in the face," near strangled with Dilettante Legislation: "Let me have elbow-room, throat-room, and I will not fail! No, I will spin yet, and conquer like a giant: what 'sinews of war' lie in me, untold resources towards the Conquest of this Planet, if, [410 instead of hanging me, you husband them, and help me!"-My indomitable friend, it is true; and thou shalt and must be helped.

This is not a man I would kill and strangle by Corn-Laws, even if I could! No, I would fling my Corn-Laws and shot-belts to the Devil; and try to help this man. I would teach him, by noble

precept and law-precept, by noble [420 example most of all, that Mammonism was not the essence of his or of my station in God's Universe; but the adscititious excrescence of it; the gross, terrene, godless embodiment of it; which would have to become, more or less, a godlike one. By noble real legislation, by true, noble's-work, by unwearied, valiant, and were it wageless effort, in my Parliament and in my Parish, I would aid, con- [430 strain, encourage him to effect more or less this blessed change. I should know that it would have to be effected; that unless it were in some measure effected, he and I and all of us, I first and soonest of all, were doomed to perdition!-Effected it will be; unless it were a Demon that made this Universe; which I, for my own part, do at no moment, under no form, in the least believe. [440

May it please your Serene Highnesses, your Majesties, Lordships and Lawwardships, the proper Epic of this world is not now "Arms and the Man", how much less, "Shirt-frills and the Man": no, it is now "Tools and the Man": that, henceforth to all time, is now our Epic; -and you, first of all others, I think, were wise to take note of that!

From CROMWELL'S LETTERS
AND SPEECHES

THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR "The Lord General about four o'clock," say the old Pamphlets, "went into the Town to take some refreshment," a hasty late dinner, or early supper, whichever we may call it; "and very soon returned back," having written Sir Arthur's Letter, I think, in the interim. Coursing about the field, with enough of things to order; walking at last with Lambert in the Park or Garden of Brocksmouth [10 House, he discerns that Lesley is astir on the Hillside; altering his position somewhat. That Lesley, in fact, is coming wholly down to the basis of the Hill, where his horse had been since sunrise: coming wholly down to the edge of the Brook and glen, among the sloping harvest-fields there; and also is bringing up his left

wing of horse, most part of it, towards his right; edging himself, "shogging," [20 as Oliver calls it, his whole line more and more to the right! His meaning is, to get hold of Brocksmouth House and the pass of the Brook there; after which it will be free to him to attack us when he will!-Lesley, in fact, considers, or at least the Committee of Estates and Kirk consider, that Oliver is lost; that, on the whole, he must not be left to retreat, but must be attacked and annihilated [30 here. A vague story, due to Bishop Burnet, the watery source of many such, still circulates about the world, That it was the Kirk Committee who forced Lesley down against his will; that Oliver, at sight of it, exclaimed, "The Lord hath delivered," etc.; which nobody is in the least bound to believe. It appears, from other quarters, that Lesley was advised or sanctioned in this attempt by the [40 Committee of Estates and Kirk, but also that he was by no means hard to advise; that, in fact, lying on the top of Doon Hill, shelterless in such weather, was no operation to spin out beyond necessity; and that if anybody pressed too much upon him with advice to come down and fight, it was likeliest to be Royalist Civil Dignitaries, who had plagued him with their cavilings at his cunctations, [50 at his "secret fellow-feeling for the Sectarians and Regicides" ever since this war began. The poor Scotch Clergy have enough of their own to answer for in this business; let every back bear the burden that belongs to it. In a word, Lesley descends, has been descending all day, and "shogs" himself to the right,— urged, I believe, by manifold counsel, and by the nature of the case; and, [60 what is equally important for us, Oliver sees him, and sees through him, in this movement of his.

At the sight of this movement, Oliver suggests to Lambert standing by him, Does it not give us an advantage, if we, instead of him, like to begin the attack? Here is the Enemy's right wing coming out to the open space, free to be attacked on any side; and the main-battle, [70 hampered in narrow sloping ground between Doon Hill and the Brook, has no

room to maneuver or assist: beat this right wing where it now stands; take it in flank and front with an overpowering force, it is driven upon its own mainbattle, the whole Army is beaten? Lambert eagerly assents, "had meant to say the same thing." Monk, who comes up at this moment, likewise assents; as [80 the other officers do, when the case in set before them. It is the plan resolved upon for battle. The attack shall begin tomorrow before dawn.

And so the soldiers stand to their arms, or lie within instant reach of their arms, all night; being upon an engagement very difficult indeed. The night is wild and wet;-2d of September means 12th by our calendar: the Harvest [90 Moon wades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. Whoever has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the wrestle of death is at hand. Pray, and withal keep his powder dry! And be ready for extremities, and quit himself like a man! Thus they pass the night; making that Dunbar Peninsula and Brock Rivulet long memorable to me. We English have some tents; the Scots have [100 none. The hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and heavy against these whinstone bays; the sea and the tempests are abroad, all else asleep but we, and there is one that rides on the wings of the wind.

Towards three in the morning the Scotch foot, by order of a Major-General say some, extinguish their matches, all but two in a company; cower under [110 the corn-shocks, seeking some imperfect shelter and sleep. Be wakeful, ye English; watch, and pray, and keep your powder dry. About four o'clock comes order to my pudding-headed Yorkshire friend, that his regiment must mount and march straightway; his and various other regiments march, pouring swiftly to the left to Brocksmouth House, to the Pass over the Brock. With over- [120 powering force let us storm the Scots right wing there; beat that, and all is beaten. Major Hodgson riding along, heard, he says, "a Cornet praying in the night;" a company of poor men, I think, making worship there, under the void

Heaven, before battle joined: Major Hodgson, giving his charge to a brother Officer, turned aside to listen for a minute, and worship and pray along [130 with them; haply his last prayer on this Earth, as it might prove to be. But no: this Cornet prayed with such effusion as was wonderful; and imparted strength to my Yorkshire friend, who strengthened his men by telling them of it. And the Heavens, in their mercy, I think, have opened us a way of deliverance!--The Moon gleams out, hard and blue, riding among hail-clouds; and over St. Abb's [140 Head a streak of dawn is rising.

And now is the hour when the attack should be, and no Lambert is yet here, he is ordering the line far to the right yet; and Oliver occasionally, in Hodgson's hearing, is impatient for him. The Scots too, on this wing, are awake; thinking to surprise us; there is their trumpet sounding, we heard it once; and Lambert, who was to lead the attack, is [150 not here. The Lord General is impatient;-behold Lambert at last! The trumpets peal, shattering with fierce clangor Night's silence; the cannons awaken along all the Line: "The Lord of Hosts! The Lord of Hosts!" On, my brave ones, on!—

The dispute "on this right wing was hot and stiff, for three quarters of an hour." Plenty of fire, from field- [160 pieces, snap-hances, matchlocks, entertains the Scotch main-battle across the Brock;-poor stiffened men, roused from the corn-shocks with their matches all out! But here on the right, their horse, "with lancers in the front rank," charge desperately; drive us back across the hollow of the Rivulet;-back a little; but the Lord gives us courage, and we storm home again, horse and foot, [170 upon them, with a shock like tornado tempests; break them, beat them, drive them all adrift. "Some fled towards Copperspath, but most across their own foot." Their own poor foot, whose matches were hardly well alight yet! Poor men, it was a terrible awakening for them: field-pieces and charge of foot across the Brocksburn; and now here is their own horse in mad panic tramp- [180