was not there. He had
_lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days;
and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or uttering that.
With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he
could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;--he
did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely
he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing.
Intellect is not speaking and logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining.
Virtue, Virtues, manhood, _hero_hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate
regularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_
(_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or _Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to
_do_. This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him.

One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament,
he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great
in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what is
in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity
are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable
feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer.
In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to
assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite
resolution rose among them, some "door of hope," as they would name it,
disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries
to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before
them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be;
a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against
a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish,
Devilish,--they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need,
not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon
them,--how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light?
Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the
one to be followed without hesitation any more? To them it was as the
shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the waste-howling darkness; the
Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate
perilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get
guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,--devout
prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the
G