f best in a country liberated; Oliver
Cromwell did not shine in rhetoric; Goethe, when he had but a book in
view, found that he must say nothing 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 not 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 not 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 no means the complete
outfit,--a miserable outfit where there is nothing farther.

Will your Lordship give me leave to say that, practically, the intrinsic
qualities will presuppose these preliminaries too, but by no 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 nothing.
A man of real dignity will not find it impossible to bear himself in a
dignified manner; a man of real understanding and insight will get
to know, 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 noble 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 honors him, and he will not "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 not be
soft like his _constitutional_ ones, when men and kings took him for
somewhat like the thing he was. Given a noble man, I th