ss no Corn-Laws or the like,--he too, you would say, is or
might be a rather strong Worker! He is a Worker with such tools as no
man in this world ever before had. But in practice, very astonishing,
very ominous to look at, he proves not a strong Worker;--you are too
happy if he will prove but a No-worker, do nothing, and not be a
Wrong-worker.

You ask him, at the year's end: "Where is your three-hundred thousand
pound; what have you realised to us with that?" He answers, in
indignant surprise: "Done with it? Who are you that ask? I have eaten
it; I and my flunkies, and parasites, and slaves two-footed and
four-footed, in an ornamental manner; and I am here alive by it; _I_
am realised by it to you!"--It is, as we have often said, such an
answer as was never before given under this Sun. An answer that fills
me with boding apprehension, with foreshadows of despair. O stolid
Use-and-wont of an atheistic Half-century, O Ignavia, Tailor-godhood,
soul-killing Cant, to what passes art thou bringing us!--Out of the
loud-piping whirlwind, audibly to him that has ears, the Highest God
is again announcing in these days: "Idleness shall not be." God has
said it, man cannot gainsay.

Ah, how happy were it, if he this Aristocrat Worker would, in like
manner, see _his_ work and do it! It is frightful seeking another to
do it for him. Guillotines, Meudon Tanneries, and half-a-million men
shot dead, have already been expended in that business; and it is yet
far from done. This man too is something; nay he is a great thing.
Look on him there: a man of manful aspect; something of the
'cheerfulness of pride' still lingering in him. A free air of graceful
stoicism, of easy silent dignity sits well on him; in his heart, could
we reach it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice,
true human valour. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an
incumbrance in the Present; perish disastrously out of the Future!
From no section of the Future would we lose these noble courtesies,
impalpable yet all-controlling; these dignified reticences, these
kingly simplicities;--lose aught of what the fruitful Past still gives
us token of, memento of, in this man. Can we not save him:--can he not
help us to save him! A brave man, he too; had not undivine Ignavia,
Hearsay, Speech without meaning,--had not Cant, thousandfold Cant
within him and around him, enveloping him like choke-damp, like thick
Egyptian darkness, thrown his soul into asphyx