with some hope; for here, in the most impressive way, is a divine
sermon acted. Didactic as no spoken sermon could be. Didactic,
devotional too;--in awed solemnity, a recognition that Eternal
Justice rules the world; that at the call of this, human pity
shall fall silent, and man be stern as his Master and Mandatory
is!--Understand too that except upon a basis of even such rigor,
sorrowful, silent, inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, there
is no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and
plentiful without that basis, is mere _ignavia_ and cowardly
effeminacy; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness
of head--contemptible as a drunkard's tears.

To see our Supreme Scoundrel hung upon the gallows, alas, that is
far from us just now! There is a worst man in England,
too,--curious to think of,--whom it would be inexpressibly
advantageous to lay hold of, and hang, the first of all. But we
do not know him with the least certainty, the least approach even
to a guess,--such buzzards and dullards and poor children of the
Dusk are we, in spite of our Statistics, Unshackled Presses, and
Torches of Knowledge;--not eagles soaring sunward, not brothers
of the lightnings and the radiances we; a dim horn-eyed,
owl-population, intent mainly on the catching of mice! Alas, the
supreme scoundrel, alike with the supreme hero, is very far from
being known. Nor have we the smallest apparatus for dealing with
either of them, if he were known. Our supreme scoundrel sits, I
conjecture, well-cushioned, in high places, at this time; rolls
softly through the world, and lives a prosperous gentleman;
instead of sinking him in peat-bogs, we mount the brazen image of
him on high columns: such is the world's temporary judgment
about its supreme scoundrels; a mad world, my masters. To get