into the ditch, or learn a good many things. To
learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing. How much
would many a Serene Highness have learned, had he traveled
through the world with water-jug and empty wallet, _sine omni
expensa;_ and, at his victorious return, sat down not to
newspaper-paragraphs and city-illuminations, but at the foot of
St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles and bread and water! He that
cannot be servant of many, will never be master, true guide and
deliverer of many;--that is the meaning of true mastership. Had
not the Monk-life extraordinary 'political capabilities' in it;
if not imitable by us, yet enviable? Heavens, had a Duke of
Logwood, now rolling sumptuously to his place in the Collective
Wisdom, but himself happened to plough daily, at one time, on
seven-and-sixpence a week, with no out-door relief,--what a
light, unquenchable by logic and statistic and arithmetic, would
it have thrown on several things for him!

In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs.
Glass: 'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is
got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to
decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them
like a man. Catch your no-man,--alas, have you not caught the
terriblest Tartar in the world! Perhaps all the terribler, the
quieter and gentler he looks. For the mischief that one
blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious,
teeming with endless results as ours, no ciphering will sum up.
The quack bootmaker is considerable; as corn-cutters can
testify, and desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes.
But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the quack king! Why do
not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop him, as they
would a conflagration? Surely a just citizen _is_ admonished by
God and his own Soul, by all silent and articulate voices of this
Universe, to do what in _him_ lies towards relief of this poor
blockhead-quack, and of a world that groans under him. Runs
swiftly; relieve him,--were it even by extinguishing him! For
all things have grown so old, tinder-dry, combustible; and he is
more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him _down,_ at least;
keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then cease to be
conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less, as
culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!
This poor blockhead too is born for uses: why, elevat