reasons, I bid thee close that mouth of thine. Enough of
balderdash these long-eared have now drunk. Depart thou; _do_
some benevolent work; at lowest, be silent. Disappear, I say;
away, and jargon no more in that manner, lest a worst thing
befall thee." _Exeat_ Fiddlestring!--Beneficent men are not they
who appear on platforms, pleading against the Almighty Maker's
Laws; these are the maleficent men, whose lips it is pity that
some authority cannot straightway shut. Pandora's Box is not
more baleful than the gifts these eloquent benefactors are
pressing on us. Close your pedler's pack, my friend; swift, away
with it! Pernicious, fraught with mere woe and sugary poison is
that kind of benevolence and beneficence.

Truly, one of the saddest sights in these times is that of poor
creatures, on platforms, in parliaments and other situations,
making and unmaking "Laws;" in whose soul, full of mere vacant
hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law;
whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the
Earth--could not have what kind of Law you pleased! Human
Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think of. An
impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is so made;
all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischief
wheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now
like an incubus over this Earth, so innumerable are they. How
long, O Lord, how long!--O ye Eternities, Divine Silences, do you
dwell no more, then, in the hearts of the noble and the true; and
is there no inspiration of the Almighty any more vouchsafed us?
The inspiration of the Morning Newspapers--alas, we have had
enough of that, and are arrived at the gates of death by means of
that!