on our 'patronage of genius.'

Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An inspired
Soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great
fire-heart, to see the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's
own sacred voice heard once more athwart the dreary boundless
element of hearsaying and canting, of twaddle and poltroonery, in
which the bewildered Earth, nigh perishing, has _lost its way._
Hear once more, ye bewildered benighted mortals; listen once
again to a voice from the inner Light-sea and Flame-sea, Nature's
and Truth's own heart; know the Fact of your Existence what it
is, put away the Cant of it which it is not; and knowing, do,
and let it be well with you!--

George the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in
those years; George the Third is head charioteer of the
Destinies of England, to guide them through the gulf of French
Revolutions, American Independences; and Robert Burns is Gauger
of ale in Dumfries. It is an Iliad in a nutshell. The
physiognomy of a world now verging towards dissolution, reduced
now to spasms and death-throes, lies pictured in that one fact,--
which astonishes nobody, except at me for being astonished at it.
The fruit of long ages of confirmed Valethood, entirely confirmed
as into a Law of Nature; cloth-worship and quack-worship:
entirely _confirmed_ Valethood,--which will have to unconfirm
itself again; God knows, with difficulty enough!--

Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation; rain
beating through it, material rain and metaphorical, from all
quarters of the compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking
nightly, and doing mere _tacenda._ Our larders are reduced to
leanness, Jew Harpies and unclean creatures our purveyors; in
our basket is no bread. Old women with their distaffs rush out
on a distressed Cellarer in shrill Chartism. 'You cannot stir
abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon you with unsettled
bonds;' debts boundless seemingly as the National Debt of
England. For four years our new Lord Abbot never went abroad but
Jew creditors and Christian, and all manner of creditors, were
about him; driving him to very despair. Our Prior is remiss;
our Cellarers, officials are remiss, our monks are remiss: what
man is not remiss? Front this, Samson, thou alone art there to
front it; it is thy task to front and fight this, and to die or
kill it. May the Lord have mercy on thee!

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