O man of Toil, thy struggling and thy daring, these six long years of insurrection and tribulation, thou hast profited nothing by it, then?  Thou consumest thy herring and water, in the blessed gold-red evening.  O why was the Earth so beautiful, becrimsoned with dawn and twilight, if man’s dealings with man were to make it a vale of scarcity, of tears, not even soft tears?  Destroying of Bastilles, discomfiting of Brunswicks, fronting of Principalities and Powers, of Earth and Tophet, all that thou hast dared and endured,—­it was for a Republic of the Cabarus Saloons?  Patience; thou must have patience:  the end is not yet.

Chapter 3.7.VII.

The Whiff of Grapeshot.

In fact, what can be more natural, one may say inevitable, as a Post-Sansculottic transitionary state, than even this?  Confused wreck of a Republic of the Poverties, which ended in Reign of Terror, is arranging itself into such composure as it can.  Evangel of Jean-Jacques, and most other Evangels, becoming incredible, what is there for it but return to the old Evangel of Mammon?  Contrat-Social is true or untrue, Brotherhood is Brotherhood or Death; but money always will buy money’s worth:  in the wreck of human dubitations, this remains indubitable, that Pleasure is pleasant.  Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag.  It is the course through which all European Societies are at this hour travelling.  Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy?  An infinitely baser; the basest yet known!

In which however there is this advantage, that, like Anarchy itself, it cannot continue.  Hast thou considered how Thought is stronger than Artillery-parks, and (were it fifty years after death and martyrdom, or were it two thousand years) writes and unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains; models the World like soft clay?  Also how the beginning of all Thought, worth the name, is Love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart?  The Heavens cease not their bounty:  they send us generous hearts into every generation.  And now what generous heart can pretend to itself, or be hoodwinked into believing, that Loyalty to the Moneybag is a noble Loyalty?  Mammon, cries the generous heart out of all ages and countries, is the basest of known Gods, even of known Devils.  In him what glory is there, that ye should worship him?  No glory discernable; not even terror:  at best, detestability, ill-matched with despicability!—­Generous hearts, discerning, on this hand, widespread Wretchedness, dark without and within, moistening its ounce-and-half of bread with tears; and on that hand, mere Balls in fleshcoloured drawers, and inane or foul glitter of such sort,—­cannot but ejaculate, cannot but announce:  Too much, O divine Mammon; somewhat too much!—­The voice of these, once announcing itself, carries fiat and pereat in it, for all things here below.