l, 'Do
work in order to make money.' But, 'Go gracefully idle in
Mayfair,' what does or can that mean? An idle, game-preserving
and even corn-Jawing Aristocracy, in such an England as ours:
has the world, if we take thought of it, ever seen such a
phenomenon till very lately? Can it long continue to see such?

Accordingly the impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice, and
Saynothingism in Speech, which we have to witness on that side of
our affairs, is altogether amazing. A Corn-Law demonstrating
itself openly, for ten years or more, with 'arguments' to make
the angels, and some other classes of creatures, weep! For men
are not ashamed to rise in Parliament and elsewhere, and speak
the things they do _not_ think. 'Expediency,' 'Necessities of
Party,' &c. &c.! It is not known that the Tongue of Man is a
sacred organ; that Man himself is definable in Philosophy as an
'Incarnate _Word;'_ the Word not there, you have no Man there
either, but a Phantasm instead! In this way it is that
Absurdities may live long enough,--still walking, and talking for
themselves, years and decades after the brains are quite out!
How are 'the knaves and dastards' ever to be got 'arrested' at
that rate?--

"No man in this fashionable London of yours," friend Sauerteig
would say, "speaks a plain word to me. Every man feels bound to
be something more than plain; to be pungent withal, witty,
ornamental. His poor fraction of sense has to be perked into
some epigrammatic shape, that it may prick into me;--perhaps
(this is the commonest) to be topsyturvied, left standing on its
head, that I may remember it the better! Such grinning inanity
is very sad to the soul of man. Human faces should not grin on
one like masks; they should look on one like faces! I love
honest laughter, as I do sunlight; but not dishonest: most
kinds of dancing too; but the St.-Vitus kind not at all! A
fashionable wit, ach Himmel, if you ask, Which, he or a Death's-
head, will be the cheerier company for me? pray send _not_ him!"

Insincere Speech, truly, is the prime material of insincere
Action. Action hangs, as it were, _dissolved_ in Speech, in
Thought whereof Speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself
therefrom. The kind of Speech in a man betokens the kind of
Action you will get from him. Our Speech, in these modern days,
has become amazing. Johnson complained, "Nobody speaks in
earnest, Sir; there is no serious conversation." To us a