So it is said.--Doubtless,I think,he will see and suffer much in Parliament,and inure himself to several things;--he will,with what eyes he has,gradually see Parliament itself,for one thing;what a high-soaring,helplessly floundering,ever-babbling yet inarticulate dark dumb Entity it is (certainly one of the strangest under the sun just ):which doubtless,if he have in view to get measures voted there one day,will be an important acquisition for him.But as to breeding himself for a Doer of Work,much more for a King,or Chief of Doers,here in this element of talk;as to that I confess the fatalest doubts,or rather,alas,I have doubt!Alas,it is our fatalest misery just ,easily alterable,and yet urgently requiring to be altered,That British man can attain to be a Statesman,or Chief of Workers ,till he has first proved himself a Chief of Talkers :which mode of trial for a Worker,is it precisely,of all the trials you could set him upon,the falsest and unfairest?
Nay,I doubt much you are likely ever to meet the fittest material for a Statesman,or Chief of Workers,in such an element as that.Your Potential Chief of Workers,will he come there at all,to try whether he can talk?Your poor tenpound franchisers and electoral world generally,in love with eloquent talk,are they the likeliest to discern what man it is that has worlds of silent work in him?Or is such a man,even if born in the due rank for it,the likeliest to present himself,and court their most sweet voices?Again,
The Age that admires talk so much can have little discernment for inarticulate work,or for anything that is deep and genuine.
Ody,or hardly anybody,having in himself an earnest sense for truth,how can anybody recognize an inarticulate Veracity,or Nature-fact of any kind;a Human Doer especially,who is the most complex,profound,and inarticulate of all Nature's Facts?
Ody can recognize him:till once he is patented,get some public stamp of authenticity,and has been articulately proclaimed,and asserted to be a Doer.To the worshipper of talk,such a one is a sealed book.An excellent human soul,direct from Heaven,--how shall any excellence of man become recognizable to this unfortunate?except by anncing and placarding itself as excellent,--which,I reckon,it above other things will probably be in great haste to do.
Wisdom,the divine message which every soul of man brings into this world;the divine prophecy of what the new man has got the new and peculiar capability to do,is intrinsically of silent nature.It can at once,or completely at all,be read off in words;for it is written in abstruse facts,of endowment,position,desire,opportunity,granted to the man;--interprets itself in presentiments,vague struggles,passionate endeavors and is only legible in whole when his work is done .by the le monitions of Nature,but by the igle,is a man much tempted to publish the secret of his soul in words.Words,if he have a secret,will be forever inadequate to it.Words do but disturb the real answer of fact which could be given to it;disturb,obstruct,and will in the end abolish,and render impossible,said answer.grand Doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings.William the Silent spoke himself best in a country liberated;Oliver Cromwell did shine in rhetoric;Goethe,when he had but a book in view,found that he must say hing even of that,if it was to succeed with him.
Then as to politeness,and breeding to business.An official man must be bred to business;of course he must:and for essence only,but even for the manners of office he requires breeding.
Besides his intrinsic faculty,whatever that may be,he must be cautious,vigilant,discreet,--above all things,he must be reticent,patient,polite.Certain of these qualities are by nature imposed upon men of station;and they are trained from birth to some exercise of them:this constitutes their one intrinsic qualification for office;--this is their one advantage in the New Downing Street projected for this New Era;and it will go for much in that Institution.One advantage,or temporary advantage;against which there are so many counterbalances.It is the indispensable preliminary for office,but by means the complete outfit,--a miserable outfit where there is hing farther.
Will your Lordship give me leave to say that,practically,the intrinsic qualities will presuppose these preliminaries too,but by means vice versa .That,on the whole,if you have got the intrinsic qualities,you have got everything,and the preliminaries will prove attainable;but that if you have got only the preliminaries,you have yet got hing.A man of real dignity will find it impossible to bear himself in a dignified manner;a man of real understanding and insight will get to k,as the fruit of his very first study,what the laws of his situation are,and will conform to these.Rough old Samuel Johnson,blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often was,defined himself,justly withal,as a polite man:a le manful attitude of soul is his;a clear,true and loyal sense of what others are,and what he himself is,shines through the rugged coating of him;comes out as grave deep rhythmus when his King hos him,and he will "bandy compliments with his King;"--is traceable too in his indignant trampling down of the Chesterfield patronages,tailor-made insolences,and contradictions of sinners;which may be called his revolutionary movements,hard and peremptory by the law of them;these could be soft like his constitutional ones,when men and kings took him for somewhat like the thing he was.