Here,then,is a young soul,brought to the years of legal majority,furnished from his training-schools with such and such shining capabilities,and ushered on the scene of things to inquire practically,What he will do there?Piety is in the man,noble human valor,bright intelligence,ardent proud veracity;light and fire,in none of their many senses,wanting for him,but abundantly bestowed:a kingly kind of man;--whose "kingdom,"however,in this bewildered place and epoch of the world will probably be difficult to find and conquer!
For,alas,the world,as we said,already stands convicted to this young soul of being an untrue,unblessed world;its high dignitaries many of them phantasms and players'-masks;its worthships and worships unworshipful:from Dan to Beersheba,a mad world,my masters.And surely we may say,and none will now gainsay,this his idea of the world at that epoch was nearer to the fact than at most other epochs it has been.Truly,in all times and places,the young ardent soul that enters on this world with heroic purpose,with veracious insight,and the yet unclouded "inspiration of the Almighty"which has given us our intelligence,will find this world a very mad one:why else is he,with his little outfit of heroisms and inspirations,come hither into it,except to make it diligently a little saner?Of him there would have been no need,had it been quite sane.This is true;this will,in all centuries and countries,be true.
And yet perhaps of no time or country,for the last two thousand years,was it _so_true as here in this waste-weltering epoch of Sterling's and ours.A world all rocking and plunging,like that old Roman one when the measure of its iniquities was full;the abysses,and subterranean and supernal deluges,plainly broken loose;in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out.No star of Heaven visible,hardly now to any man;the pestiferous fogs,and foul exhalations grown continual,have,except on the highest mountaintops,blotted out all stars:will-o'-wisps,of various course and color,take the place of stars.Over the wild-surging chaos,in the leaden air,are only sudden glares of revolutionary lightning;then mere darkness,with philanthropistic phosphorescences,empty meteoric lights;here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hovering,hanging on to its old quaking fixtures,pretending still to be a Moon or Sun,--though visibly it is but a Chinese lantern made of _paper_mainly,with candle-end foully dying in the heart of it.Surely as mad a world as you could wish!
If you want to make sudden fortunes in it,and achieve the temporary hallelujah of flunkies for yourself,renouncing the perennial esteem of wise men;if you can believe that the chief end of man is to collect about him a bigger heap of gold than ever before,in a shorter time than ever before,you will find it a most handy and every way furthersome,blessed and felicitous world.But for any other human aim,I think you will find it not furthersome.If you in any way ask practically,How a noble life is to be led in it?you will be luckier than Sterling or I if you get any credible answer,or find any made road whatever.Alas,it is even so.Your heart's question,if it be of that sort,most things and persons will answer with a "Nonsense!
Noble life is in Drury Lane,and wears yellow boots.You fool,compose yourself to your pudding!"--Surely,in these times,if ever in any,the young heroic soul entering on life,so opulent,full of sunny hope,of noble valor and divine intention,is tragical as well as beautiful to us.