thee to put up thy parchments; to go home to thy place,
and make no needless noise whatever. Our heart's wish is to save
thee: yet there as thou art, hapless Anomaly, with nothing but
thy yellow parchments, noisy futilities, and shotbelts and fox-
brushes, who of gods or men can avert dark Fate? Be counselled,
ascertain if no work exist for thee on God's Earth; if thou find
no commanded-duty there but that of going gracefully idle? Ask,
inquire earnestly, with a half-frantic earnestness; for the
answer means Existence or Annihilation to thee. We apprise thee
of the world-old fact, becoming sternly disclosed again in these
days, That he who cannot work in this Universe cannot get existed
in it: had he parchments to thatch the face of the world, these,
combustible fallible sheepskin, cannot avail him. Home, thou
unfortunate; and let us have at least no noise from thee!"

Suppose the unfortunate Idle Aristocracy, as the unfortunate
Working one has done, were to 'retire three days to _its_ bed,'
and consider itself there, what o'clock it had become?--

How have we to regret not only that men have 'no religion,' but
that they have next to no reflection; and go about with heads
full of mere extraneous noises, with eyes wide-open but
visionless,--for most part, in the somnambulist state!

Chapter VIII

Unworking Aristocracy

It is well said, 'Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy;'
whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any other,
is the Governor, Viceking of the people on the Land. It is in
these days as it was in those of Henry Plantagenet and Abbot
Samson; as it will in all days be. The Land is _Mother_ of us
all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all;
in how many ways, from our first wakening to our last sleep on
her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with blessed mother-arms,
enfold us all!

The Hill I first saw the Sun rise over, when the Sun and I and
all things were yet in their auroral hour, who can divorce me
from it? Mystic, deep as the world's centre, are the roots I
have struck into my Native Soil; no _tree_ that grows is rooted
so. From noblest Patriotism to humblest industrial Mechanism;
from highest dying for your country, to lowest quarrying and
coal-boring for it, a Nation's Life depends upon its Land. Again
and again we have to say, there can be no true Aristocracy but
must possess the Land.

Men talk of 'selling' Land. Land, it is t