nch Revolutions, Chartisms, Manchester
Insurrections, that make the heart sick in these bad days, the
Supreme Powers are driving us. On the whole, blessed be the
Supreme Powers, stern as they are! Towards that haven will we, O
friends; let all true men, with what of faculty is in them, bend
valiantly, incessantly, with thousandfold endeavour, thither,
thither! There, or else in the Ocean-abysses, it is very clear
to me, we shall arrive.

Well; here truly is no answer to the Sphinx-question; not the
answer a disconsolate Public, inquiring at the College of Health,
was in hopes of! A total change of regimen, change of constitution
and existence from the very centre of it; a new body to be got,
with resuscitated soul,--not without convulsive travail-throes;
as all birth and new-birth presupposes travail! This is sad news
to a disconsolate discerning Public, hoping to have got off by
some Morrison's Pill, some Saint-John's corrosive mixtures and
perhaps a little blistery friction on the back!--We were prepared
to part with our Corn-Law, with various Laws and Unlaws: but
this, what is this?

Nor has the Editor forgotten how it fares with your ill-boding
Cassandras in Sieges of Troy. Imminent perdition is not usually
driven away by words of warning. Didactic Destiny has other
methods in store; or these would fail always. Such words
should, nevertheless, be uttered, when they dwell truly in the
soul of any man. Words are hard, are importunate; but how much
harder the importunate events they foreshadow! Here and there a
human soul may listen to the words,--who knows how many human
souls? whereby the importunate events, if not diverted and
prevented, will be rendered _less_ hard. The present Editor's
purpose is to himself full of hope.

For though fierce travails, though wide seas and roaring gulfs
lie before us, is it not something if a Loadstar, in the eternal
sky, do once more disclose itself; an everlasting light, shining
through all cloud-tempests and roaring billows, ever as we emerge
from the trough of the sea: the blessed beacon, far off on the
edge of far horizons, towards which we are to steer incessantly
for life? Is it not something; O Heavens, is it not all? There
lies the Heroic Promised Land; under that Heaven's-light, my
brethren, bloom the Happy Isles,--there, O there! Thither
will we;

There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew.*

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* Tennyson's _Poems_ (U