beyond measure.  It seems then this Mahomet was not a quack?  Not a bit of him!  That he is a better Christian, with his “bastard Christianity,” than the most of us shovel-hatted?  I guess than almost any of you!—­Not so much as Oliver Cromwell ("the Hero as King”) would I allow to have been a Quack.  All quacks I asserted to be and to have been Nothing, chaff that would not grow:  my poor Mahomet “was wheat with barn sweepings”; Nature had tolerantly hidden the barn sweepings; and as to the wheat, behold she had said Yes to it, and it was growing!—­On the whole, I fear I did little but confuse my esteemed audience:  I was amazed, after all their reading of me, to be understood so ill;—­ gratified nevertheless to see how the rudest speech of a man’s heart goes into men’s hearts, and is the welcomest thing there.  Withal I regretted that I had not six months of preaching, whereby to learn to preach, and explain things fully!  In the fire of the moment I had all but decided on setting out for America this autumn, and preaching far and wide like a very lion there.  Quit your paper formulas, my brethren,—­equivalent to old wooden idols, undivine as they:  in the name of God, understand that you are alive, and that God is alive!  Did the Upholsterer make this Universe?  Were you created by the Tailor?  I tell you, and conjure you to believe me literally, No, a thousand times No!  Thus did I mean to preach, on “Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic”; in America too.  Alas! the fire of determination died away again:  all that I did resolve upon was to write these Lectures down, and in some way promulgate them farther.  Two of them accordingly are actually written; the Third to be begun on Monday:  it is my chief work here, ever since the end of May.  Whether I go to preach them a second time extempore in America rests once more with the Destinies.  It is a shame to talk so much about a thing, and have it still hang in nubibus: but I was, and perhaps am, really nearer doing it than I had ever before been.  A month or two now, I suppose, will bring us back to the old nonentity again.  Is there, at bottom, in the world or out of it, anything one would like so well, with one’s whole heart well, as PEACE?  Is lecturing and noise the way to get at that?  Popular lecturer!  Popular writer!  If they would undertake in Chancery, or Heaven’s Chancery, to make a wise man Mahomet Second and Greater, “Mahomet of Saxondom,” not reviewed only, but worshiped for twelve centuries by all Bulldom, Yankee-doodle-doodom, Felondom New Zealand, under the Tropics and in part of Flanders,—­would he not rather answer:  Thank you; but in a few years I shall be dead, twelve Centuries will have become Eternity; part of Flanders Immensity:  we will sit still here if you please, and consider what quieter thing we can do!  Enough of this.