d the upper classes so much sympathy
with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet
never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation
between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it
is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between
upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is
pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to
come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men
will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence
to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of
liberty,--liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth,
and to another, Come, and he cometh,[159] has, in most cases, more sense
of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements
of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by
the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be
lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at
it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at
his disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which a
man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is
servile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noble
reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so
noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling
pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised
by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the
Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with
his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain
servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and
the lives of his seven sons for his chief?--as each fell, calling forth
his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"[160] And therefore, in
all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made
by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and
famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been
borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts
of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who
received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But
to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked,