And yet every one would avert revolutions as still worse. Abroad, somehow, things are managed with more of the feeling of modern improvement and common-sense justice; even amid the crash of breaking-up governments, and violations of personal liberties and rights. Here the government--with our boasted nobility, the greatest in the world--takes the lead in all that is dullest and stupidest; and the genius of the nation, with utmost effort, can alone force the improvement of art and the dictates of common sense on it, long, long after date, after patience is exhausted, and frequently not before a press-feeling has again sprung up. And yet such is the vital energy of the nation, and the stubborn irresistible patience of Englishmen, that improvement keeps pace almost with other nations in all except such branches of art as are especially government-reared, such as Architecture, Sculpture, Music, and High Art. Alas for the latter! Yet has the nation forced even some of that on it, witness Dyce. Our troops are decidedly victorious, in spite of the utmost obtuseness of feeling at the Horse Guards, with respect both to improvements and the causes of promotion. It would seem as if it were impossible to set an Englishman to a duty that he does not fulfil with ability of some degree; but, were the Napoleonic spirit of promoting and evoking merit the rule with us in lieu of _family interests_, what height should we attain to in the scale of glory and the world’s wonder! But this world is a mere mouse-trap--a trap baited to catch poor, greedy, selfish, stupid man, who thinks himself so precious clever, while damning his soul to feed his guts; a most cunningly devised trap forsooth, where the utmost circumspection and wisdom, aided by the purest intentions, shall hardly serve to keep a man’s heels free. Alas! the poor selfish man is baited on all sides. Gluttony, lechery, glory, were the least chances of destruction, where a wretch may serve two ends, the safety of a nation and his own damnation; or thinks still more cunningly to save his selfish soul by selfish religion, and a giving up of man for God, and thinking to win God’s notice and refuge by forced marches, leaving all others behind. Alas! man shall forget himself in the community of being: woe to the temerity that would call down the searching eye on his individuality! Therefore is the Eternal shrouded in impenetrable mystery: otherwise who but themselves would be first to seek him? Whoever feels a tenderness for a fellow beg worships God in the act,--nay, a kind feeling for a dog or a cat shall not pass unnoticed; but woe to the self-seeker and him who despises the poor-- “Whose belly with thy treasure hid Thou fill’st: they children have In plenty; of their goods the rest They to their children leave. “But as for me, I thine own face In righteousness will see, And with thy likeness when I wake I satisfied shall be.”