ack of its real work, will
find that same expand into whole continents of new unexpected, most
blessed activity; as its dramatic functions, declared superfluous,
more and more fall inert, and go rushing like huge torrents of extinct
exuviae, dung and rubbish, down to the Abyss forever. O Heaven, to see
a State that knew a little why it was there, and on what ground, in this
Year 1850, it could pretend to exist, in so extremely earnest a world as
ours is growing! The British State, if it will be the crown and keystone
of our British Social Existence, must get to recognize, with a veracity
very long unknown to it, what the real objects and indispensable
necessities of our Social Existence are. Good Heavens, it is not
prevenient grace, or the color of the Bishop's nightmare, that is
pinching us; it is the impossibility to get along any farther for
mountains of accumulated dung and falsity and horror; the total
closing-up of noble aims from every man,--of any aim at all, from many
men, except that of rotting out in Idle Workhouses an existence below
that of beasts!

Suppose the State to have fairly started its "Industrial Regiments of
the New Era," which alas, are yet only beginning to be talked of,--what
continents of new real work opened out, for the Home and all other
Public Offices among us! Suppose the Home Office looking out, as for
life and salvation, for proper men to command these "Regiments." Suppose
the announcement were practically made to all British souls that the
want of wants, more indispensable than any jewel in the crown, was that
of men _able to command men_ in ways of industrial and moral well-doing;
that the State would give its very life for such men; that such men
_were_ the State; that the quantity of them to be found in England
lamentably small at present, was the exact measure of England's
worth,--what a new dawn of everlasting day for all British souls! Noble
British soul, to whom the gods have given faculty and heroism, what men
call genius, here at last is a career for thee. It will not be needful
now to swear fealty to the Incredible, and traitorously cramp thyself
into a cowardly canting play-actor in God's Universe; or, solemnly
forswearing that, into a mutinous rebel and waste bandit in thy
generation: here is an aim that is clear and credible, a course fit
for a man. No need to become a tormenting and self-tormenting mutineer,
banded with rebellious souls, if thou wouldst live; no need to r