In pompous men in public seats obeyed;
In humble placemen, heralds, solemn drones;
...
Order to these is armour and defence,
And love of method serves in lack of sense.”
Exceptions allowed for, as in every rule, yet is the rule sufficiently approved, that order is heaven’s first law. The poet of “The Angel in the House” in style, and spirit, and sentiment, how salient a contrast to Crabbe, utters the conceit (poeticè) in one of his tender preludes, that—
“Sweet Order has its draught of bliss
Graced with the pearl of God’s consent,”—
a conceit that allows of wide application, as do many of those of so suggestive a writer.
But to conclude. When the judicious Hooker—to call him by his conventional epithet—lay a-dying, he expressed his joy at the near prospect of entering a World of Order. The author of “The Book of the Church” emphasises the import of holy Richard’s “placid and profound contentment,” by reminding us that because he had been employed in ecclesiastical polemics, and because his life had been passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the happiness of heaven must have seemed in Hooker’s estimation, to consist primarily in Order, as, indeed, in all human societies this is the first thing needful.