g? Hadst thou been of them, thou
hadst seen! The feline Heart laboured, as with steam up--to the
bursting point; and death-doing energy nerved every muscle: they had a
work there; and did it! On the morrow, two tails were found left, and
peaceable annihilation; a neighbourhood _delivered_ from despair.

Again, are not Spinning-Dervishes an eloquent emblem, significant of
much? Hast thou noticed him, that solemn-visaged Turk, the eyes shut;
dingy wool mantle circularly hiding his figure;--bell-shaped; like a
dingy bell set spinning on the _tongue_ of it? By centrifugal force
the dingy wool mantle heaves itself; spreads more and more, like
upturned cup widening into upturned saucer: thus spins he, to the
praise of Allah and advantage of mankind, fast and faster, till
collapse ensue, and sometimes death!--

A Government such as ours, consisting of from seven to eight hundred
Parliamentary Talkers, with their escort of Able Editors and Public
Opinion; and for head, certain Lords and Servants of the Treasury, and
Chief Secretaries and others, who find themselves at once Chiefs and
No-Chiefs, and often commanded rather than commanding,--is doubtless a
most complicate entity, and none of the alertest for getting on with
business! Clearly enough, if the Chiefs be not self-motive and what we
call men, but mere patient lay-figures without self-motive principle,
the Government will not move anywhither; it will tumble disastrously,
and jumble, round its own axis, as for many years past we have seen it
do.--And yet a self-motive man who is not a lay-figure, place him in
the heart of what entity you may, will make it move more or less! The
absurdest in Nature he will make a little _less_ absurd, he. The
unwieldiest he will make to move;--that is the use of his existing
there. He will at least have the manfulness to depart out of it, if
not; to say: "I cannot move in thee, and be a man; like a wretched
drift-log dressed in man's clothes and minister's clothes, doomed to a
lot baser than belongs to man, I will not continue with thee, tumbling
aimless on the Mother of Dead Dogs here:--Adieu!"

For, on the whole, it is the lot of Chiefs everywhere, this same. No
Chief in the most despotic country but was a Servant withal; at once
an absolute commanding General, and a poor Orderly-Sergeant, ordered
by the very men in the ranks,--obliged to collect the vote of the
ranks too, in some articulate or inarticulate shape, and weigh well
the s