beaverism, and make honest money with it. If indeed he could become a
_heroic_ industrial, and have a life "eminently human"! But that is not
easy at present. Probably some ninety-nine out of every hundred of our
gifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go this
beaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is
plentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it,
is dreadfully behindhand.

But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of vivid,
impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to give itself
sensible utterance,--I find that, in this case, the field it has in
England is narrow to an extreme; is perhaps narrower than ever offered
itself, for the like object, in this world before. Parliament, Church,
Law: let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career, he
finds among variable conditions one condition invariable, and extremely
surprising, That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue.
For heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no account
kept:--The English Nation does not need that silent kind, then, but only
the talking kind? Most astonishing. Of all the organs a man has, there
is none held in account, it would appear, but the tongue he uses
for talking. Premiership, woolsack, mitre, and quasi-crown: all is
attainable if you can talk with due ability. Everywhere your proof-shot
is to be a well-fired volley of talk. Contrive to talk well, you will
get to Heaven, the modern Heaven of the English. Do not talk well, only
work well, and heroically hold your peace, you have no chance whatever
to get thither; with your utmost industry you may get to Threadneedle
Street, and accumulate more gold than a dray-horse can draw. Is not this
a very wonderful arrangement?

I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks; of human
competitors, high aspirants, climbing heavenward on the soaped pole;
seizing the soaped pig; and clutching with cleft fist, at full gallop,
the fated goose tied aloft by its foot;--which feats do prove agility,
toughness and other useful faculties in man: but this of dexterous talk
is probably as strange a competition as any. And the question rises,
Whether certain of these other feats, or perhaps an alternation of all
of them, relieved now and then by a bout of grinning through the collar,
might not be profitably substituted for the solitary proof-feat of talk,
now getting rather monotono