The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky is over him, and
nothing more. He, the gentleman born, the clergyman born--for you must
recollect who and what St John the Baptist was, and that he was neither
democrat nor vulgar demagogue, nor flatterer of ignorant mobs, but a man
of an ancestry as ancient and illustrious as it was civilised, and bound
by long ties of duty, of patriotism, of religion, and of the temple
worship of God:--he, the noble and the priest, has thrown off--not in
discontent and desperation, but in hope and awe--all his family
privileges, all that seems to make life worth having; and there aloft and
in the mountains, alone with nature and with God, feeding on locusts and
wild honey and whatsoever God shall send, and clothed in skins, he, like
Elijah of old, renews not merely the habits, but the spirit and power of
Elijah, and preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness and
superstition, party spirit, and the rest of the seven devils which
brought on the fall of his native land, and which will bring on the fall
of every land on earth, preaches to them, I say--What?
The most common, let me say boldly, the most vulgar--in the good old
sense of the word--the most vulgar morality.
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