o were a good appendage to
it. What a truth in these old Fables!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Return of Paupers for England and Wales, at Ladyday 1842, is,
'In-door 221,687, Out-door 1,207,402, Total 1,429,089.' _Official
Report._

CHAPTER II.

THE SPHINX.

How true, for example, is that other old Fable of the Sphinx, who sat
by the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers, which if
they could not answer she destroyed them! Such a Sphinx is this Life
of ours, to all men and societies of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is
of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness; the face and bosom of
a goddess, but ending in claws and the body of a lioness. There is in
her a celestial beauty,--which means celestial order, pliancy to
wisdom; but there is also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are
infernal. She is a goddess, but one not yet dis-imprisoned; one still
half-imprisoned,--the articulate, lovely still encased in the
inarticulate, chaotic. How true! And does she not propound her riddles
to us? Of each man she asks daily, in mild voice, yet with a terrible
significance, "Knowest thou the meaning of this Day? What thou canst
do Today; wisely attempt to do?" Nature, Universe, Destiny, Existence,
howsoever we name this grand unnamable Fact in the midst of which we
live and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and
brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them; a destroying
fiend to them who cannot. Answer her riddle, it is well with thee.
Answer it not, pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself; the
solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws; Nature is a dumb
lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. Thou art not now
her victorious bridegroom; thou art her mangled victim, scattered on
the precipices, as a slave found treacherous, recreant, ought to be
and must.

With Nations it is as with individuals: Can they rede the riddle of
Destiny? This English Nation, will it get to know the meaning of _its_
strange new Today? Is there sense enough extant, discoverable anywhere
or anyhow, in our united twenty-seven million heads to discern the
same; valour enough in our twenty-seven million hearts to dare and do
the bidding thereof? It will be seen!--

The secret of gold Midas, which he with his long ears never could
discover, was, That he had offended the Supreme Powers;--that he had
parted company with the eternal inner Facts of this Universe, and
followed the t