Harz-Rock,'
arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes and elsewhere, by
steam and otherwise, to the 'season' here!--What a Future; wide as the
world, if we have the heart and heroism for it,--which, by Heaven's
blessing, we shall:

'Keep not standing fixed and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.

In what land the sun does visit,
Brisk are we, whate'er betide:
To give space for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.'[28]

Fourteen hundred years ago, it was by a considerable 'Emigration
Service,' never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion and
apparatus, that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable Island,--and
got into our present difficulties among others!

* * * * *

It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, is of
slow temper; essentially conservative. In our wildest periods of
reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice always the
invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to admit the _minimum_ of
New; to expand, if it be possible, some old habit or method, already
found fruitful, into new growth for the new need. It is an instinct
worthy of all honour; akin to all strength and all wisdom. The Future
hereby is not dissevered from the Past, but based continuously on it;
grows with all the vitalities of the Past, and is rooted down deep
into the beginnings of us. The English Legislature is entirely
repugnant to believe in 'new epochs.' The English Legislature does not
occupy itself with epochs; has, indeed, other business to do than
looking at the Time-Horologe and hearing it tick! Nevertheless new
epochs do actually come; and with them new imperious peremptory
necessities; so that even an English Legislature has to look up, and
admit, though with reluctance, that the hour has struck. The hour
having struck, let us not say 'impossible:'--it will have to be
possible! 'Contrary to the habits of Parliament, the habits of
Government?' Yes: but did any Parliament or Government ever sit in a
Year Forty-three before? One of the most original, unexampled years
and epochs; in several important respects totally unlike any other!
For Time, all-edacious and all-feracious, does run on: and the Seven
Sleepers, awakening hungry after a hundred years, find that it is not
their old nurses who can now give them suck!

For the rest, let not any