ithing unconsciously or consciously to escape out of
Mammonism! Plugson of Undershot, like Taillefer of Normandy,
wants victory; how much happier will even Plugson be to have a
Chivalrous victory than a Chactaw one. The unredeemed ugliness
is that of a slothful People. Shew me a People energetically
busy; heaving, struggling, all shoulders at the wheel; their
heart pulsing, every muscle swelling, with man's energy and
will;--I Shew you a People of whom great good is already
predicable; to whom all manner of good is yet certain, if their
energy endure. By very working, they will learn; they have,
Antaeus-like, their foot on Mother Fact: how can they but learn?

The vulgarest Plugson of a Master-Worker, who can command Workers
and get work out of them, is already a considerable man. Blessed
and thrice-blessed symptoms I discern of Master-Workers who are
not vulgar men; who are Nobles, and begin to feel that they must
act as such: all speed to these, they are England's hope at
present! But in this Plugson himself, conscious of almost no
nobleness whatever, how much is there! Not without man's
faculty, insight, courage, hard energy, is this rugged figure.
His words none of the wisest; but his actings cannot be
altogether foolish. Think, how were it, stoodst thou suddenly in
his shoes! He has to command a thousand men. And not imaginary
commanding; no, it is real, incessantly practical. The evil
passions of so many men (with the Devil in them, as in all of us)
he has to vanquish; by manifold force of speech and of silence,
to repress or evade. What a force of silence, to say nothing of
the others, is in Plugson! For these his thousand men he has to
provide raw-material, machinery, arrangement, house-room; and
ever at the week's end, wages by due sale. No Civil-List, or
Goulburn-Baring Budget has he to fall back upon, for paying of
his regiment; he has to pick his supplies from this confused
face of the whole Earth and Contemporaneous History, by his
dexterity alone. There will be dry eyes if he fail to do it!--He
exclaims, at present, 'black in the face,' near strangled with
Dilettante Legislation: "Let me have elbow-room, throat-room,
and I will not fail! No, I will spin yet, and conquer like a
giant: what 'sinews of war' lie in me, untold resources towards
the Conquest of this Planet, if instead of hanging me, you
husband them, and help me!"--My indomitable friend, it is _true;_
and thou s