260 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



scaffolding ; it certainly is not the house we live in, 

 but an appurtenance or necessity of the house. A 

 government, in the long run, can never be better or 

 worse than the people governed. In voting for Jones 

 for constable, am I voting for or against the unalter- 

 able laws of the universe an act wherein the con- 

 sequences of a mistake are so appalling that voting 

 had better be dispensed with and the selection of 

 constables be left to the evolutionary principle of 

 the solar system ? 



Carlyle was not a reconciler. When he saw a 

 fact, he saw it with such intense and magnifying eyes, 

 as I have already said, that it became at once irrec- 

 oncilable with other facts. He could not and would 

 not reconcile popular government, the rule of ma- 

 jorities, with what he knew and what we all know to 

 be popular follies, or the proneness of the multitude 

 to run after humbugs. How easy for fallacies, speci- 

 osities, quackeries, etc., to become current. That a 

 thing is popular makes a wise man look upon it with 

 suspicion. Are the greatest or best books the most 

 read books ? Have riot the great principles, the great 

 reforms, begun in minorities and fought their way 

 against the masses ? Does not the multitude gen- 

 erally greet its saviors with " Crucify him, crucify 

 him " ? Who have been the martyrs and the perse- 

 cuted in all ages ? Where does the broad road lead 

 to, and which is the Narrow Way ? " Can it be proved 

 that, since the beginning of the world, there was ever 

 given a universal vote in favor of the worthiest man 



