struggle of men
intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the
semblances and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, seem mere
savage Iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of Forms; but it were more just
to call them haters of _untrue_ Forms. I hope we know how to respect
Laud and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been
weak and ill-starred, not dishonest; an unfortunate Pedant rather than
anything worse. His 'Dreams' and superstitions, at which they laugh
so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a
College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion
is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed
suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head
not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex
deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old
decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and
improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence
towards his purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of
prudence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules obeyed by his
Collegians; that first; and till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred
Pedant, as I said. He would have it the world was a College of that
kind, and the world _was not_ that. Alas, was not his doom stern
enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all frightfully avenged
on him?

It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and all else naturally
clothes itself in forms. Everywhere the _formed_ world is the only
habitable one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I
praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity,--praising only the
spirit which had rendered that inevitable! All substances clothe
themselves in forms: but there are suitable true forms, and then there
are untrue unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say,
Forms which _grow_ round a substance, if we rightly understand that,
will correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will be true,
good; forms which are consciously _put_ round a substance, bad. I
invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in
Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in all human
things.

There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity in forms. In the
commonest meeting of men, a person making, what we call, 'set
speeches,' is not he an offence? In the mere drawing-room,