r, and the inevitable nemesis
of things, the universal kennel is set to diet upon _leather_; and from
its keepers, its 'Liberal Premiers,' or whatever their title is, will
accept or expect nothing else, and calls it by the pleasant name of
progress, reform, emancipation, abolition-principles, and the like,--I
consider the fate of said kennel and of said keepers to be a thing
settled. Red republic in Phrygian nightcap, organization of labor _a la_
Louis Blanc; street-barricades, and then murderous cannon-volleys _a la_
Cavaignac and Windischgratz, follow out of one another, as grapes, must,
new wine, and sour all-splitting vinegar do: vinegar is but _vin-aigre_,
or the self-same 'wine' grown _sharp_! If, moreover, I find the Worship
of Human Nobleness abolished in any country, and a _new_ astonishing
Phallus-Worship, with universal Balzac-Sand melodies and litanies in
treble and in bass, established in its stead, what can I compute
but that Nature, in horrible throes, will repugn against such
substitution,--that, in short, the astonishing new Phallus-Worship, with
its finer sensibilities of the heart, and 'great satisfying loves,'
with its sacred kiss of peace for scoundrel and hero alike, with its
all-embracing Brotherhood, and universal Sacrament of Divorce, will have
to take itself away again!"

The Ancient Germans, it appears, had no scruple about public executions;
on the contrary, they thought the just gods themselves might fitly
preside over these; that these were a solemn and highest act of worship,
if justly done. When a German man had done a crime deserving death,
they, in solemn general assembly of the tribe, doomed him, and
considered that Fate and all Nature had from the beginning doomed him,
to die with ignominy. Certain crimes there were of a supreme nature;
him that had perpetrated one of these, they believed to have declared
himself a prince of scoundrels. Him once convicted they laid hold of,
nothing doubting; bore him, after judgment, to the deepest convenient
Peat-bog; plunged him in there, drove an oaken frame down over him,
solemnly in the name of gods and men: "There, prince of scoundrels, that
is what we have had to think of thee, on clear acquaintance; our grim
good-night to thee is that! In the name of all the gods lie there, and
be our partnership with thee dissolved henceforth. It will be better for
us, we imagine!"

My friends, after all this beautiful whitewash and humanity and
prison-di