every one of them would be cut down or captured before they were twenty miles on the road. He was answered as before with contempt and suspicions of cowardice. A Methodist, half-starved, grey-haired, with black rings round his eyes and a yellow face, harangued them. “My friends,” he said, “we have been told to go back; that we are too few to accomplish the task to which we have set ourselves. What said the Lord unto Gideon, Judges vii.: ‘The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Gilead.’ Well, twenty-two thousand went back and at last Gideon had only the three hundred who lapped the water. By those three hundred Israel was saved from the Midianites. Our thousands have left us; but we shall triumph. It may be the Lord’s will that more should depart. It may be that there are yet too many. I say, then, in the words of Gideon, ‘Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return.’ Is there anybody?” (Loud shouts answered “None.”) “The Lord is with us,” continued the speaker—“the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” Every one shouted again. Respectable Manchester was frightened when the Blanketeers met, and laughed them to scorn when they were dispersed. No wonder at the laughter. What could be more absurd? And yet, when we call to mind the THING then on the throne; the THING that gave £180 for an evening coat, and incurred enormous debts, while his people were perishing; the THING that drank and lied and whored; the THING that never did nor said nor thought anything that was not utterly brutish and contemptible—when we think that the THING was a monarch, Heaven-ordained, so it was said, on which side does the absurdity really lie? Of a truth, not only is the wisdom of this world foolishness, as it ever was, but that which to this world is foolishness is adjudged wisdom by the Eternal Arbiter. The Blanketeers shivering on Ardwick Green, the weavers who afterwards drilled on the Lancashire moors, and were hung according to law, or killed at Peterloo, are less ridiculous than those who hung or sabred them, less ridiculous than the Crimean war and numberless dignified events in human history, the united achievements of the sovereigns and ministries of Europe.