hat he is a kind of blockhead, from which salutary self-knowledge
the excellent stump-orator is debarred. A mouthpiece of Chaos to poor
benighted mortals that lend ear to him as to a voice from Cosmos, this
excellent stump-orator fills me with amazement. Not empty these musical
wind-utterances of his; they are big with prophecy; they announce, too
audibly to me, that the end of many things is drawing nigh!

Let the British reader consider it a little; he too is not a little
interested in it. Nay he, and the European reader in general, but he
chiefly in these days, will require to consider it a great deal,--and to
take important steps in consequence by and by, if I mistake not. And in
the mean while, sunk as he himself is in that bad element, and like a
jaundiced man struggling to discriminate yellow colors,--he will have to
meditate long before he in any measure get the immense meanings of the
thing brought home to him; and discern, with astonishment, alarm, and
almost terror and despair, towards what fatal issues, in our Collective
Wisdom and elsewhere, this notion of talent meaning eloquent speech, so
obstinately entertained this long while, has been leading us! Whosoever
shall look well into origins and issues, will find this of eloquence
and the part it now plays in our affairs, to be one of the gravest
phenomena; and the excellent stump-orator of these days to be not only
a ridiculous but still more a highly tragical personage. While the
many listen to him, the few are used to pass rapidly, with some gust of
scornful laughter, some growl of impatient malediction; but he deserves
from this latter class a much more serious attention.

In the old Ages, when Universities and Schools were first instituted,
this function of the schoolmaster, to teach mere speaking, was the
natural one. In those healthy times, guided by silent instincts and the
monition of Nature, men had from of old been used to teach themselves
what it was essential to learn, by the one sure method of learning
anything, practical apprenticeship to it. This was the rule for all
classes; as it now is the rule, unluckily, for only one class. The
Working Man as yet sought only to know his craft; and educated himself
sufficiently by ploughing and hammering, under the conditions given, and
in fit relation to the persons given: a course of education, then as
now and ever, really opulent in manful culture and instruction to him;
teaching him many solid virtue