sa, with seeing eye and
understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads
out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted
patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including
Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox:
every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of
Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as
in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the
Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into
lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one
Free Man, and thou art he!

"Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and
for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert
asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of
Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is
George Fox the greatest of the Moderns, and greater than Diogenes
himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood,
casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride,
undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him
warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, and dwells in an
element of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's
Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from which
man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater
is the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in
Scorn but in Love."

George Fox's "perennial suit," with all that it held, has been worn
quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on
the _Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind
sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdrockh, himself is no Quaker; with all
his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North
Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms?

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this
passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling
at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an
underhand satire in it), with which that "Incident" is here brought
forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as
he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockh
anticipate that, in this age of re