ll words; and their talk, even
honestly uttered, might not have been worth much; it will not be thought
of ten years hence; still less a hundred years hence. No one will buy
our parliamentary speeches to keep in portfolios this time next century;
and if people are weak enough now to pay for any special and flattering
cadence of syllable, it is little matter. But _you_, with your painfully
acquired power, your unwearied patience, your admirable and manifold
gifts, your eloquence in black and white, which people will buy, if it
is good (and has a broad margin), for fifty guineas a copy--in the year
2000; to sell it all, as Ananias his land, "yea, for so much," and hold
yourselves at every fool's beck, with your ready points, polished and
sharp, hasting to scratch what _he_ wills! To bite permanent mischief in
with acid; to spread an inked infection of evil all your days, and pass
away at last from a life of the skillfulest industry--having done
whatsoever your hand found (remuneratively) to do, with your might, and
a great might, but with cause to thank God only for this--that the end
of it all has at last come, and that "there is no device nor work in the
Grave." One would get quit of _this_ servitude, I think, though we
reached the place of Rest a little sooner, and reached it fasting.

73. My English fellow-workmen, you have the name of liberty often on
your lips; get the fact of it oftener into your business! talk of it
less, and try to understand it better. You have given students many
copy-books of free-hand outlines--give them a few of free _heart_
outlines.

It appears, however, that you do not intend to help me with any
utterance respecting these same outlines.[70] Be it so: I must make out
what I can by myself. And under the influence of the Solstitial sign of
June I will go backwards, or askance, to the practical part of the
business, where I left it three months ago, and take up that question
first, touching Liberty, and the relation of the loose swift line to the
resolute slow one and of the etched line to the engraved one. It is a
worthy question, for the open field afforded by illustrated works is
tempting even to our best painters, and many an earnest hour and active
fancy spend and speak themselves in the black line, vigorously enough,
and dramatically, at all events: if wisely, may be considered. The
French also are throwing great passion into their _eaux fortes_--working
with a vivid haste and dark, br