Note 2 — LETTER XLV.

No, my lords and gentlemen,—you won it at the lance’s point, and must so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if still you may. No otherwise. You won ‘it,’ I say,—your dole,—as matters now stand. But perhaps, as matters used to stand, something else. As receivers of alms, you will find there is no fight in you. No beggar, nor herd of beggars, can fortify so very wide circumference of dish. And the real secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the clubs of Sempach, is—“that villanous saltpetre”—you think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the fruitless spiculæ. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been fighting these three hundred years for what you could get, instead of what you could give. You were ravenous enough in rapine in the olden times;2 but you lived fearlessly and innocently by it, because, essentially, you wanted money and food to give,—not to consume; to maintain your followers with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, invariably, by knights who were content all their lives with their horse and armour and daily bread. Your kings, of true power, never desired for themselves more,—down to the last of them, Friedrich. What they did desire was strength of manhood round them, and, in their own hands, the power of largesse.