shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of
shoes,--thou unfortunate, and I! O my right honourable friend, when
the Paragraphs flowed in, who was like Sir Jabesh? On the swelling
tide he mounted; higher, higher, triumphant, heaven-high. But the
Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise Paragraphs needs must: Sir
Jabesh lies stranded, sunk and forever sinking in ignominious ooze;
the Mud-nymphs, and ever-deepening bottomless Oblivion, his portion to
eternal time. 'Posterity?' Thou appealest to Posterity, thou? My right
honourable friend, what will Posterity do for thee! The voting of
Posterity, were it continued through centuries in thy favour, will be
quite inaudible, extra-forensic, without any effect whatever.
Posterity can do simply nothing for a man; nor even seem to do much if
the man be not brainsick. Besides, to tell the truth, the bets are a
thousand to one, Posterity will not hear of thee, my right honourable
friend! Posterity, I have found, has generally his own Windbags
sufficiently trumpeted in all market-places, and no leisure to attend
to ours. Posterity, which has made of Norse Odin a similitude, and of
Norman William a brute monster, what will or can it make of English
Jabesh? O Heavens, 'Posterity!'--

"These poor persecuted Scotch Covenanters," said I to my inquiring
Frenchman, in such stinted French as stood at command, "_ils s'en
appelaient a_"--"_A la Posterite_," interrupted he, helping me
out.--"_Ah, Monsieur, non, mille fois non!_ They appealed to the
Eternal God; not to Posterity at all! _C'etait different._"

CHAPTER XV.

MORRISON AGAIN.

Nevertheless, O Advanced-Liberal, one cannot promise thee any 'New
Religion,' for some time; to say truth, I do not think we have the
smallest chance of any! Will the candid reader, by way of closing this
Book Third, listen to a few transient remarks on that subject?

Candid readers have not lately met with any man who had less notion to
interfere with their Thirty-Nine or other Church-Articles; wherewith,
very helplessly as is like, they may have struggled to form for
themselves some not inconceivable hypothesis about this Universe, and
their own Existence there. Superstition, my friend, is far from me;
Fanaticism, for any _Fanum_ likely to arise soon on this Earth, is
far. A man's Church-Articles are surely articles of price to him; and
in these times one has to be tolerant of many strange 'Articles,' and
of many still stranger 'No-articles,' whic