e him to consider well what truth he can gradually find in them:--

First, that excellent speech, even speech _really_ excellent, is not,
and never was, the chief test of human faculty, or the measure of a
man's ability, for any true function whatsoever; on the contrary, that
excellent _silence_ needed always to accompany excellent speech, and was
and is a much rarer and more difficult gift.

_Secondly_, that really excellent speech--which I, being possessed
of the Hebrew Bible or Book, as well as of other books in my own and
foreign languages, and having occasionally heard a wise man's word among
the crowd of unwise, do almost unspeakably esteem, as a human gift--is
terribly apt to get confounded with its counterfeit, sham-excellent
speech! And furthermore, that if really excellent human speech is among
the best of human things, then sham-excellent ditto deserves to be
ranked with the very worst. False speech,--capable of becoming, as some
one has said, the falsest and basest of all human things:--put the case,
one were listening to _that_ as to the truest and noblest! Which, little
as we are conscious of it, I take to be the sad lot of many excellent
souls among us just now. So many as admire parliamentary eloquence,
divine popular literature, and such like, are dreadfully liable to
it just now: and whole nations and generations seem as if getting
themselves _asphyxiaed_, constitutionally into their last sleep, by
means of it just now!

For alas, much as we worship speech on all hands, here is a _third_
assertion which a man may venture to make, and invite considerate men
to reflect upon: That in these times, and for several generations back,
there has been, strictly considered, no really excellent speech at all,
but sham-excellent merely; that is to say, false or quasi-false
speech getting itself admired and worshipped, instead of detested and
suppressed. A truly alarming predicament; and not the less so if we find
it a quite pleasant one for the time being, and welcome the advent of
asphyxia, as we would that of comfortable natural sleep;--as, in so
many senses, we are doing! Surly judges there have been who did not much
admire the "Bible of Modern Literature," or anything you could distil
from it, in contrast with the ancient Bibles; and found that in the
matter of speaking, our far best excellence, where that could be
obtained, was excellent silence, which means endurance and exertion, and
good work with lips cl