Who,then,is to be the Reforming Statesman,and begin the le work for us?He is the preliminary;one such;with him we may prosecute the enterprise to length after length;without him we can stir in it at all.A true king ,temporary king,that dare undertake the government of Britain,on condition of beginning in sacred earnest to "reform"it,at this or that extremity,but at the heart and centre.That will expurgate Downing Street,and the practical Administration of our Affairs;clear out its accumulated mountains of pendantries and cobwebs;bid the Pedants and the Dullards depart,bid the Gifted and the Seeing enter and inhabit.So that henceforth there be Heavenly light there,instead of Stygian dusk;that God's vivifying light instead of Satan's deadening and killing dusk,may radiate therefrom,and visit with healing all regions of this British Empire,--which writhes through every limb of it,in dire agony as if of death!The enterprise is great,the enterprise may be called formidable and even awful;but there is e ler among the sublunary affairs of mankind just .Nay tacitly it is the enterprise of every man who undertakes to be British Premier in these times;--and I can esteem him an enviable Premier who,because the engagement is tacit ,flatters himself that it does exist!"Show it me in the bond,"he says.Your Lordship,it actually exists:and I think you will see it yet,in aher kind of "bond"than that sheepskin one!
But truly,in any time,what a strange feeling,egh to alarm a very big Lordship,this:that he,of the size he is,has got to the apex of English affairs!Smallest wrens,we k,by training and the aid of machinery,are capable of many things.
For this world abounds in miraculous combinations,far transcending anything they do at Drury Lane in the melodramatic way.A world which,as solid as it looks,is made all of aerial and even of spiritual stuff;permeated all by incalculable sleeping forces and electricities;and liable to go off,at any time,into the hugest developments,upon a scratch thoughtfully or thoughtlessly given on the right point:--Nay,for every one of us,could the sputter of a poor pistol-shot shrivel the Immensities together like a burnt scroll,and make the Heavens and the Earth pass away with a great se?Smallest wrens,and canary-birds of some dexterity,can be trained to handle lucifer-matches;and have,before ,fired off whole powder-magazines and parks of artillery.Perhaps without much astonishment to the canary-bird.The canary-bird can hold only its own quantity of astonishment;and may possibly egh retain its presence of mind,were even Doomsday to come.It is on this principle that I explain to myself the equanimity of some men and Premiers whom we have kn.