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 flunkeys, 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 asphyxia, as it were extinguished
his soul; so that he sees not, hears not, and Moses and all the
Prophets address him in vain.

Will he awaken, be alive again, and have a soul; or is this
death-fit very death? It is a question of questions, for himself
and for us all! Alas, is there no noble work for this man too?
Has he not thick-headed ignorant boo