judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old
figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be effected: this, as
heretofore, continues our only method. Among such light-spots, the
following, floating in much wild matter about _Perfectibility_, has seemed
worth clutching at:--
"Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," says
Teufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of
Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed
carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of
ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of
Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was
one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the
Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of
Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness,
unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted
Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced.
Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns,
rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had,
nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired
Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and
discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled
even with some prospect of victuals, and an honorable Mastership in
Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the
crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to such a
mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far
country, came Splendors and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said,
was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to
minister, was full of holy mystery to him.
"The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters of
that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to his
consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink
beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end
were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped
out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a
church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held
over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the
Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with
tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible.
Mountains of encumbrance, higher than AEtna, had been heaped over that
Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long
days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's
force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed
tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and
emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known
it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine.--'So bandaged,
and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, 'with thousand requisitions,
obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not
my own am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and
Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why not;
what binds me here? Want, want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages
under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light? Only
Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods: the hollow
of a tree will lodge me, wild berries feed me; and for Clothes, cannot I
stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!'