Rulers, real Governing Persons (called Peers, Mitred Abbots,
Lords, Knights of the Shire, or howsoever called), actually
_ruling_ each his section of the country,--and possessing (it
must be said) in the lump, or when assembled as a Council,
uncommon patience, devoutness, probity, discretion and good
fortune,--that the said Parliament ever came to be good for
much? In that case it will not be easy to "imitate" the English
Parliament; and the ballot-box and suffrage will be the mere bow
of Robin Hood, which it is given to very few to bend, or shoot
with to any perfection. And if the Peers become mere big
Capitalists, Railway Directors, gigantic Hucksters, Kings of
Scrip, _without_ lordly quality, or other virtue except cash; and
the Mitred Abbots change to mere Able-Editors, masters of
Parliamentary Eloquence, Doctors of Political Economy, and such
like; and all _have_ to be elected by a universal-suffrage
ballot-box,--I do not see how the English Parliament itself will
long continue sea-worthy! Nay, I find England in her own big
dumb heart, wherever you come upon her in a silent meditative
hour, begins to have dreadful misgivings about it.

The model of the world, then, is at once unattainable by the
world, and not much worth attaining? England, as I read the
omens, is now called a second time to "show the Nations how to
live;" for by her Parliament, as chief governing entity, I fear
she is not long for this world! Poor England must herself again,
in these new strange times, the old methods being quite worn out,
"learn how to live." That now is the terrible problem for
England, as for all the Nations; and she alone of all, not _yet_
sunk into open Anarchy, but left with time for repentance and
amendment; she, wealthiest of all in material resource, in