he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He
is an accident in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world

of which he is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the
misguidance!

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has
devised. Odin's _Runes_ were the first form of the work of a Hero; _Books_

written words, are still miraculous _Runes_, the latest form! In Books
lies the _soul_ of the whole Past Time; the articulateaudible voice of the

Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished
like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities,

high-domed, many-engined,--they are precious, great: but what do they
become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all

is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but
the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally

lives: can be called up again into life. No magic _Rune_ is stranger than
a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying

as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen
possession of men.

Do not Books still accomplish _miracles_, as _Runes_ were fabled to do?
They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which

foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate
the actual practical weddings and households of those foolish girls. So

"Celia" felt, so "Clifford" acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped
into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider

whether any _Rune_ in the wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did such
wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! What built St.

Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine
Hebrew BOOK,--the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his

Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai!
It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. With the art of

Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively
insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced.

It related, with a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the
Past and Distant with the Present in time and place; all times and all

places with this our actual Here and Now. All things were altered for men;
all modes of important work of men: teaching, preaching, governing, and

all else.
To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable, respectable

product of the modern ages. Their existence too is modified, to the very
basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose while there

were yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single Book, had to give
an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some

knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round
him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what

Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as
thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of

his. And now for any other teacher who had also something of his own to
teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to

learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him
was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the

better, the more teachers there came. It only needed now that the King
took notice of this new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the various

schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and
named it _Universitas_, or School of all Sciences: the University of

Paris, in its essential characters, was there. The model of all subsequent
Universities; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have

gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of
Universities.

It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of
getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were

changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or
superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round

him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a Book, and
all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside,

much more effectually to learn it!--Doubtless there is still peculiar
virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in some circumstances,

find it convenient to speak also,--witness our present meeting here! There
is, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct

province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all
things this must remain; to Universities among others. But the limits of

the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in
practice: the University which would completely take in that great new

fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for
the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet

come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final
highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began

doing,--teach us to _read_. We learn to _read_, in various languages, in
various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books.

But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is
the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all manner of

Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days
is a Collection of Books.

But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its
preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books. The Church is the

working recognized Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise
teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even while

there was no Easy-writing, or _Printing_, the preaching of the voice was
the natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books! --He that

can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and
Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England? I many a time say,

the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these _are_ the real
workingeffective Church of a modern country. Nay not only our preaching,

but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Books?
The noble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious

words, which brings melody into our hearts,--is not this essentially, if we
will understand it, of the nature of worship? There are many, in all

countries, who, in this confused time, have no other method of worship. He
who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the

fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the Fountain
of all Beauty; as the _handwriting_, made visible there, of the great Maker

of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse
of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who sings, who says,

or in any way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, darings
and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our hearts as with

a live coal _from the altar_. Perhaps there is no worship more authentic.
Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an "apocalypse of Nature," a

revealing of the "open secret." It may well enough be named, in Fichte's
style, a "continuous revelation" of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and

Common. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is brought
out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness:

all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or unconsciously,
doing so. The dark stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and

perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery of a French
sceptic,--his mockery of the False, a love and worship of the True. How

much more the sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral
music of a Milton! They are something too, those humblegenuine lark-notes

of a Burns,--skylark, starting from the humblefurrow, far overhead into
the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there! For all true

singing is of the nature of worship; as indeed all true _working_ may be
said to be,--whereof such _singing_ is but the record, and fit melodious

representation, to us. Fragments of a real "Church Liturgy" and "Body of
Homilies," strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found

weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call
Literature! Books are our Church too.

Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, was
a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and

decided; what we were to _do_ as a nation. But does not, though the name
Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at

all times, in a far more comprehensive way, _out_ of Parliament altogether?
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters'

Gallery yonder, there sat a _Fourth Estate_ more important far than they
all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal

fact,--very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament
too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is

equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing
brings Printing; brings universaleveryday extempore Printing, as we see at

present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a
power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in

all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or
garnitures. the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others

will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed
by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually _there_. Add