Kingdom of the Inane. Gifted
men, and once valiant nations, and as it were the whole world with one
accord, are marching thither, in melodious triumph, all the drums and
hautboys giving out their cheerfulest _Ca-ira_. It is the universal
humor of the world just now. My friends, I am very sure you will
_arrive_, unless you halt!--

Considered as the last finish of education, or of human culture, worth
and acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and even divine; it is
like the kindling of a Heaven's light to show us what a glorious world
exists, and has perfected itself, in a man. But if no world exist in the
man; if nothing but continents of empty vapor, of greedy self-conceits,
common-place hearsays, and indistinct loomings of a sordid _chaos_
exist in him, what will be the use of "light" to show us that? Better
a thousand times that such a man do not speak; but keep his empty
vapor and his sordid chaos to himself, hidden to the utmost from all
beholders. To look on that, can be good for no human beholder; to
look away from that, must be good. And if, by delusive semblances of
rhetoric, logic, first-class degrees, and the aid of elocution-masters
and parliamentary reporters, the poor proprietor of said chaos should
be led to persuade himself, and get others persuaded,--which it is the
nature of his sad task to do, and which, in certain eras of the world,
it is fatally possible to do,--that this is a cosmos which he owns; that
_he_, being so perfect in tongue-exercise and full of college-honors,
is an "educated" man, and pearl of great price in his generation; that
round him, and his parliament emulously listening to him, as round some
divine apple of gold set in a picture of silver, all the world should
gather to adore: what is likely to become of him and the gathering
world? An apple of Sodom set in the clusters of Gomorrah: that, little
as he suspects it, is the definition of the poor chaotically
eloquent man, with his emulous parliament and miserable adoring
world!--Considered as the whole of education, or human culture, which
it now is in our modern manners; all apprenticeship except to mere
handicraft having fallen obsolete, and the "educated man" being with us
emphatically and exclusively the man that can speak well with tongue
or pen, and astonish men by the quantities of speech he has _heard_
("tremendous _reader_," "walking encyclopaedia," and such like),--the
Art of Speech is probably definable in that case