State offered then to the understated his great case. the private affections, the

philosophic eye. The Poet has all He has taken the pattern-man in noble man of mere instinct and

passion, and put him in the chair of state;-the man whom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly graces.

'As waves before a vessel under sail

So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern.'

'If he would but incline to the people, there never was a worthier man.'

Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the nobility of human sense,—not to the loyalty of the husband,—not to the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe her weal-such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and action, and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, The laws of England are at my commandment.'

·

Crimes that the historic pen can only point to,not record,--low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations, these were the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and their kindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To these, - men who meddled with affairs of State, who took, even at such a time, the State to be their business, - must address themselves; for these were the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His veto could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in

under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then the soul of him within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions, to whom this argument must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind a most inherent baseness,' these were the weapons, the required weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these dogs of the commonalty,' men who were indeed noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed fold in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the days when England's victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at each other.'

And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform it—she must produce first her doctrine of 'true forms,' her scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes necessary in the sciences,' and to which those who would let in new light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its finger' that which was unspeakable, — her scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect,-not their anticipation of her veto only, but her eternal affirmation, the word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility,—the nobility of being,-being in the human,-the nobility of manliness,-the divinity of State, the true doctrine of it; and, to speak truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi.'

IT

CHAPTER VIII.

METAPHYSICAL AID.

I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they are Persian attire; but let them be changed.'

The King to Tom o' Bedlam.

Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
Against him first.'

T is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological order,—and not here only, but in that play of which this is a part, of which this is the play within the Play,— in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.

He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is that which makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended to make coals cheap'; he proposes to have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will cog their hearts from them,' and get elected consul yet, with all their voices.

Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about these days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill

is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question; and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish the less troublesome, whilst we are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, Friend,' said he, it is not now time to concern yourself about your fingers'-ends'. And yet -[and yet]—I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office-no more than there is now-publish, I know not what pitiful reformations, about clothes, cookery, and law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.'

That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at work already. What I say of physic generally, may serve AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says this same scribbler, under his scribbling cogWe certainly intend to comprehend them all,' says the graver authority, such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'

nomen.

เ

That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance, which was also designed for the benefit of an illused people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is the Edile also, and while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.

It is that physical suffering of the poor citizens' that he begins with here. Is is the question of the price of corn with which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men,

and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset, that this claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'

Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour-though all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in requisition to relieve their needthough the scientific discoveries and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself — though that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home that good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional human end, that good, that formal and essential good, which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not necessarily be realised.

-

For that, and nothing short of that, the advancement' of the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping for its form in nature, its ideal perfection — the advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of vermin a state which involves another kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this philosophy.

The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, strug