th Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic
Dominion,--is not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its
royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and
dismemberment, we are organised into Polities, into nations, and a
whole co-operating Mankind, the creation, as has here been often
irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone?--What too are all Poets and
moral Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which
high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked
us: "Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods for
men; brought them down to us; and raised us up to them?"

'And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his
Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a
man! Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of
hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou
sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like
some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down
Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of
hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom
of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will
repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the Anchorite that
was scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an
Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will
recognise that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its
God.

'As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these
Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth,
which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within
myself: How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy,
besides this Arabian Whinstone!

'Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the
Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood
written that such and such a one was "Breeches-Maker to his Majesty";
and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and
between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not
this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet
sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better
day? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to
man, and the Scissors become forever venerable.

'Neither, perhaps, may I no