otest mountains rises the little Kirk;
the Dead all slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, 'in
hope of a happy resurrection:'--dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in
any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in
the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness) it spoke to
thee--things unspeakable, that went into thy soul's soul. Strong was he
that had a Church, what we can call a Church: he stood thereby, though
'in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities,' yet
manlike towards God and man; the vague shoreless Universe had become for
him a firm city, and dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief;
in these words, well spoken: I believe. Well might men prize their
Credo, and raise stateliest Temples for it, and reverend Hierarchies,
and give it the tithe of their substance; it was worth living for and
dying for.

Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men first
raised their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and with clanging
armour and hearts, said solemnly: Be thou our Acknowledged Strongest! In
such Acknowledged Strongest (well named King, Kon-ning, Can-ning, or Man
that was Able) what a Symbol shone now for them,--significant with the
destinies of the world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving
Obedience; properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol
which might be called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what is
better than we, an indestructible sacredness? On which ground, too, it
was well said there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a divine right;
as surely there might in the Strongest, whether Acknowledged or
not,--considering who made him strong. And so, in the midst of
confusions and unutterable incongruities (as all growth is confused),
did this of Royalty, with Loyalty environing it, spring up; and grow
mysteriously, subduing and assimilating (for a principle of Life was in
it); till it also had grown world-great, and was among the main Facts of
our modern existence. Such a Fact, that Louis XIV., for example, could
answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his "L'Etat c'est moi (The
State? I am the State);" and be replied to by silence and abashed looks.
So far had accident and forethought; had your Louis Elevenths, with
the leaden Virgin in their hatband, and torture-wheels and conical
oubliettes (man-eating!) under their feet; your Henri Fourths, with
their prophesied social millennium, 'whe