rt of any
consequence--that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to
cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which
you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of
the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates,
your courage and endurance are not written for ever,--not merely with
an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English
vice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worlds
that roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere of
hell--the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your
commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your
wars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next
neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer
possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in
its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes
of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the
earth,--you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in
policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your
Cheviot hills--

They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,

And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you
think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not
written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength
of the right hands that forged it?

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the
more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of
being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private
gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only
by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called me
to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin
looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and
such a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and
there on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah,"
says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but
you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the world
credits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but
do you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in
steel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the
other side the wall, you know: we're very good