Lonsdale churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and

folded morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the
dead who have left these for other valleys and for other skies, a

group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to
strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the words of

the dead that would teach us, and strike them far from us with our
bitter, reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which the

wind scatters had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon
the seal of an enchanted vault--nay, the gate of a great city of

sleeping kings, who would awake for us and walk with us, if we knew
but how to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the

marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old kings in
their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and stir the crowns

on their foreheads; and still they are silent to us, and seem but a
dusty imagery; because we know not the incantation of the heart that

would wake them;--which, if they once heard, they would start up to
meet us in their power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and

consider us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly
fallen, saying, "Art thou also become weak as we--art thou also

become one of us?" so would these kings, with their undimmed,
unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou also become pure and

mighty of heart as we--art thou also become one of us?"
Mighty of heart, mighty of mind--"magnanimous"--to be this, is

indeed to be great in life; to become this increasingly, is, indeed,
to "advance in life,"--in life itself--not in the trappings of it.

My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head
of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in

his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of
them placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his

presence? Suppose it were offered to you in plain words, as it IS
offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian

honour, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose
the offer were this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily

grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a
rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and

sink through the earth into the ice of Caina; but, day by day, your
body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher chariots, and

have more orders on its breast--crowns on its head, if you will.
Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up

and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their
tables' heads all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within

it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on
its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull;--no

more. Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel?
Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and

verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us
grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it, who

desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means
only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more

fortune, and more public honour, and--NOT more personal soul. He
only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose

blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into
Living {22} peace. And the men who have this life in them are the

true lords or kings of the earth--they, and they only. All other
kingships, so far as they are true, are only the practical issue and

expression of theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic
royalties,--costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels, instead

of tinsel--but still only the toys of nations; or else they are no
royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and practical

issue of national folly; for which reason I have said of them
elsewhere, "Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the

diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more."
But I have no words for the wonder with which I hear Kinghood still

spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a
personal property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise

acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose
fleece he was to gather; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base

kings, "people-eating," were the constant and proper title of all
monarchs; and the enlargement of a king's dominion meant the same

thing as the increase of a private man's estate! Kings who think
so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation

than gadflies are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive
it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their courts, and their

armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large species of marsh
mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered

trumpeting, in the summer air; the twilight being, perhaps,
sometimes fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering

mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly,
if at all, and hate ruling; too many of them make "il gran rifiuto;"

and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely to become
useful to it, is pretty sure to make ITS "gran rifiuto" of THEM.

Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some day, if ever day
comes when he will estimate his dominion by the FORCE of it,--not

the geographical boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent
cuts you a cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there.

But it does matter to you, king of men, whether you can verily say
to this man, "Go," and he goeth; and to another, "Come," and he

cometh. Whether you can turn your people, as you can Trent--and
where it is that you bid them come, and where go. It matters to

you, king of men, whether your people hate you, and die by you, or
love you, and live by you. You may measure your dominion by

multitudes, better than by miles; and count degrees of love-
latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator.

Measure!--nay, you cannot measure. Who shall measure the difference
between the power of those who "do and teach," and who are greatest

in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven--and the power of those who
undo, and consume--whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of

the moth and the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay up
treasures for the moth; and the Rust-kings, who are to their

peoples' strength as rust to armour, lay up treasures for the rust;
and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; but how few kings

have ever laid up treasures that needed no guarding--treasures of
which, the more thieves there were, the better! Broidered robe,

only to be rent; helm and sword, only to be dimmed; jewel and gold,
only to be scattered;--there have been three kinds of kings who have

gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order of
kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of long ago, that there

was a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel and gold could not
equal, neither should it be valued with pure gold. A web made fair

in the weaving, by Athena's shuttle; an armour, forged in divine
fire by Vulcanian force; a gold to be mined in the very sun's red

heart, where he sets over the Delphian cliffs;--deep-pictured
tissue;--impenetrable armour;--potable gold!--the three great Angels

of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and waiting at
the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their winged power, and

guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the path which no fowl
knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen! Suppose kings

should ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last
gathered and brought forth treasures of--Wisdom--for their people?

Think what an amazing business THAT would be! How inconceivable, in
the state of our present national wisdom! That we should bring up

our peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise!--
organise, drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of

thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers!--find national amusement in
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a fair shot

at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. What an
absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the wealth of the

capitalists of civilised nations should ever come to support
literature instead of war!

Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single sentence out of