he will ever raise a Paul's Cathedral out of all that, yea or no! Rough, rude, contradictory are all things and persons, from the mutinous masons and Irish hodmen, up to the idle Nell Gwyn Defenders, to blustering red tape Officials, foolish unarchitectural Bishops. All these things and persons are there, not for Christopher's sake and his cathedrals; they are there for their own sake mainly! Christopher will have to conquer and constrain all these, if he be able. All these are against him. Equitable Nature herself, who carries her mathematics and architectonics not on the face of her, but deep in the hidden heart of her—Nature herself is but partially for him; will be wholly against him, if he constrain her not! His very money, where is it to come from? The pious munificence of England lies far scattered, distant, unable to speak, and say, “I am here;"-must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious munificence, and all help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; impediment, contradictions manifold are so loud and near! O brave Sir Christopher, trust thou in those, notwithstanding, and front all these; understand all these ; by valiant patience, noble effort, insight, vanquish and compel all these, and, on the whole, strike down victoriously the last topstone of that Paul's edifice: thy monument for certain centuries, the stamp "Great Man" impressed very legibly in Portland stone there !

Yes, all manner of work, and pious response from Men or Nature, is always what we call silent; cannot speak or come to light till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first "impossible." In very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through Immensity, inarticulate, undiscoverable except to faith. Like Gideon thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether, under the wide arch of Heaven, there be any bounteous moisture, or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven; and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind Localities and town and country Parishes there never could, blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature: work is of a brave nature; which it is the aim of all religion to be. "All work of man is as the swimmer's :" a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. "It is so," says Goethe," with all things that man undertakes in this world."

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king--Columbus, my hero, royalest Seaking of all! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am

told), are not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee forward :—and the huge Winds that sweep from Ursa Major to the Tropics and Equators, dancing their giant waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle skiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate speaking friends, my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far off, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad South-wester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science of defence the while; valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favouring East, the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage; thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;-how much wilt thou swallow down! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than this Sea, which is but ten miles deep; a Silence unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great Man. Yes, my WorldSoldier, thou of the world Marine-Service-thou wilt have to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured World here round thee is: thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shalt embrace it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on-to new Americas, or whither God wills!

Religion, I said; for, properly speaking, all true Work is Religion; and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will; with me it shall have no harbour. Admirable was that of the old Monks, "Laborare est Orare, Work is Worship."

Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring Gospel: Work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of active Method, a Force for Work ;-and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him; make Order of him, the subject, not of Chaos, but of Intelligence, Divinity and Thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cottonshrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.

But above all, where thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brute-minded

ness-attack it I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, fuller than any Sinai thunders, or syllabled speech of Whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep Eternities, of Worlds from beyond the morningstars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn Ages; the old Graves, with their long-mouldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry-do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep Death-kingdoms, the stars in their never resting courses, all Space and all Time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called To-day. For the Night cometh wherein no man can work.

66

All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true handlabour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms-up to that " Agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not "worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow Workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving: sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Body-guard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind-as a noble Mother; as that Spartan Mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou too shalt return home, in honour to thy far-distant Home, in honour; doubt it not-if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain.

66.-SCENES FROM THE ALCHEMIST.

BEN JONSON.

["O RARE BEN JONSON!"-the inscription on his tomb-stone in Westminster Abbey, which a mason cut for eighteen pence to please a looker on when the grave was covering-is a familiar phrase to many who have not even opened the works of this celebrated man. Jonson was born in 1574, and died in 1637. He was a

ripe scholar-a most vigorous thinker. There are passages and delineations of character in his plays, which are matchless of their kind;-but he is the dramatist of peculiarities, then called "humours;"-he is the converse of what he described Shakspere to be he is "for an age," and not "for all time."]

Lovewit, a housekeeper in London, has fled to the country during a season when the plague was raging. His servant, Face, abusing his opportunities, admits an impostor, Subtle, and his female confederate, Dol, into the house; and there the three worthies carry on a profitable trade by pretending to tell fortunes, and transmute metals into gold. The first Scene exhibits the Alchemist and the Servant in high quarrel. We pass over this scene, and proceed to others which exhibit some of the more remarkable personifications of Jonson's times:

SCENE I.

A principal figure in 'The Alchemist' is Abel Drugger, a tobacco dealer, who wants to learn a quick way to be rich::

Sub. What is your name, say you, Abel Drugger?

Drug. Yes, Sir.

Sub. A seller of tobacco ?

Drug. Yes, Sir.

Sub. Umph!

Free of the grocers?

Drug. Ay, an 't please you.

Sub. Well

Your business, Abel?

Drug. This, an 't please your worship;
I am a young beginner, and am building
Of a new shop, and, like your worship, just
At corner of a street :-Here's the plot on 't-
And I would know by art, Sir, of your worship,
Which way I should make my door, by necromancy,
And where my shelves; and which should be for boxes,
And which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, Sir:
And I was wish'd to your worship by a gentleman,
One Captain Face, that says you know men's planets,
And their good angels, and their bad.

Sub. I do,

If I do see them.

Re-enter FACE.

Face. What! My honest Abel?

Thou art well met here.

Drug. Troth, Sir, I was speaking,

Just as your worship came here, of your worship:
I pray you speak for me to master doctor.

you

Face. He shall do any thing. Doctor, do
This is my friend, Abel, an honest fellow;
He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not

hear?

Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil,
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,
Nor buries it in gravel under ground,
But keeps it in fine lily-pots, that, open'd,
Smell like conserve of roses or French beans.
He has his mapel block, his silver tongs,
Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper:

A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith.
Sub. He is a fortunate fellow, that I am sure on.
Face. Already Sir, have you found it? Lo thee, Abel!
Sub. And in right way toward riches—

Face. Sir!

Sub. This summer

He will be of the clothing of his company,

And next spring call'd to the scarlet; spend what he can.
Face. What! and so little beard?

Sub. Sir, you must think,

He may have a receipt to make hair come :

But he'll be wise, preserve his youth, and fine for 't;
His fortune looks for him another way.

Face. 'Slid, Doctor, how canst thou know this so soon?
I am amused at that!

Sub. By a rule, Captain,

In metoposcopy, which I do work by :

A certain star in the forehead, which you see not.

Your chestnut or your olive-colour'd face

Does never fail : and your long ear doth promise.

I knew 't, by certain spots, too, in his teeth,

And on the nail of his mercurial finger.

Face. Which finger's that?

Sub. His little finger.

You were born upon a Wednesday?

Drug. Yes, indeed, Sir.

Sub. The thumb, in chiromancy, we give Venus ; The fore-finger to Jove; the midst, to Saturn;

The ring to Sol; the least, to Mercury,

Who was the lord, Sir, of his horoscope,

His house of life being Libra; which foreshew'd,

He should be a merchant, and should trade with balance.
Face. Why, this is strange! Is it not, honest Nab?
Sub. There is a ship now, coming from Ormus,

That shall yield him such a commodity

Of drugs-This is the west, this the south?

[Pointing to the plan.