feeble an approximation to these high ulterior results,
the best Reform of Downing Street, presided over by the fittest
Statesman one can imagine to exist at present, would be, is too apparent
to me. A long time yet till we get our living interests put under due
administration, till we get our dead interests handsomely dismissed. A
long time yet till, by extensive change of habit and ways of thinking
and acting, _we_ get living "lungs" for ourselves! Nevertheless, by
Reform of Downing Street, we do begin to breathe: we do start in the way
towards that and all high results. Nor is there visible to me any other
way. Blessed enough were the way once entered on; could we, in our evil
days, but see the noble enterprise begun, and fairly in progress!

What the "_New_ Downing Street" can grow to, and will and must if
England is to have a Downing Street beyond a few years longer, it is
far from me, in my remote watch-tower, to say with precision. A Downing
Street inhabited by the gifted of the intellects of England; directing
all its energies upon the real and living interests of England, and
silently but incessantly, in the alembics of the place, burning up the
extinct imaginary interests of England, that we may see God's sky a
little plainer overhead, and have all of us a great accession of "heroic
wisdom" to dispose of: such a Downing Street--to draw the plan of it,
will require architects; many successive architects and builders will
be needed there. Let not editors, and remote unprofessional persons,
interfere too much!--Change in the present edifice, however, radical
change, all men can discern to be inevitable; and even, if there shall
not worse swiftly follow, to be imminent. Outlines of the future edifice
paint themselves against the sky (to men that still have a sky, and
are above the miserable London fogs of the hour); noble elements of new
State Architecture, foreshadows of a new Downing Street for the New Era
that is come. These with pious hope all men can see; and it is good
that all men, with whatever faculty they have, were earnestly looking
thitherward;--trying to get above the fogs, that they might look
thitherward!

Among practical men the idea prevails that Government can do nothing
but "keep the peace." They say all higher tasks are unsafe for it,
impossible for it,--and in fine not necessary for it or for us. On this
footing a very feeble Downing Street might serve the turn!--I am well
aware that Gov