in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable manner; and
handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of a shilling
per day? Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not
so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant
as the light of the sun: raw materials,--O woe, and loss, and
scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated,
and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and
stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting,
festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong
practical virtue! A Mrs. Manning "dying game,"--alas, is not
that the foiled potentiality of a kind of heroine too? Not a
heroic Judith, not a mother of the Gracchi now, but a hideous
murderess, fit to be the mother of hyenas! To such extent can
potentialities be foiled. Education, kingship, command,--where
is it, whither has it fled? Woe a thousand times, that this,
which is the task of all kings, captains, priests, public
speakers, land-owners, book-writers, mill-owners, and persons
possessing or pretending to possess authority among mankind,--is
left neglected among them all; and instead of it so little done
but protocolling, black-or-white surplicing, partridge-shooting,
parliamentary eloquence and popular twaddle-literature; with such
results as we see!--


Howard abated the Jail-fever; but it seems to me he has been the
innocent cause of a far more distressing fever which rages high
just now; what we may call the Benevolent-Platform Fever. Howard
is to be regarded as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous
frothy ocean-tide of benevolent sentimentality, "abolition of
punishment," all-absorbing "prison-discipline," and general