se; by valiant patience,
noble effort, insight, by man's strength, vanquish and compel all
these,--and, on the whole, strike down victoriously the last
topstone of that Paul's Edifice; thy monument for certain
centuries, the stamp 'Great Man' impressed very legibly on
Portland-stone there!--Yes, all manner of help, and pious
response from Men or Nature, is always what we call silent;
cannot speak or come to light, till it be seen, till it be spoken
to. Every noble work is at first impossible. In very truth, for
every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through
Immensity; inarticulate, undiscoverable except to faith. Like
Gideon thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent;
see whether under the wide arch of Heaven there be any bounteous
moisture, or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a
miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to
Heaven; and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind
Localities and town and country Parishes there never could,
blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature:--work is of a _brave_ nature;
which it is the aim of all religion to be. 'All work of man is
as the swimmer's:' a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he
front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise
defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it
loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. 'It
is so,' says Goethe, with all things that man undertakes in
this world.'

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king,--Columbus, my hero, royalest
Sea-king of all! It is no friendly environment this of thine, in
the waste deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls,
behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil
of Night. Brother, these wild water-mountains, bounding from
their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am told), are not entirely
there on thy behalf! Meseems _they_ have other work than
floating thee forward:--and the huge Winds, that sweep from Ursa
Major to the Tropics and Equators, dancing their giant-waltz
through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little
about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-
mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art not among
articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among
immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as the world
here. Secret, far off, invisible to all hearts b