a thing not admirable, not adorable; unmelodious rather, and ghastly and bodeful, as the speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight! Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British man, thou that art now growing to be something: not a Stump-Orator, if thou canst help it. Appeal not to the vulgar, with its long ears and its seats in the Cabinet; not by spoken words to the vulgar; _hate_ the profane vulgar, and bid it begone. Appeal by silent work, by silent suffering if there be no work, to the gods, who have nobler than seats in the Cabinet for thee! Talent for Literature, thou hast such a talent? Believe it not, be slow to believe it! To speak, or to write, Nature did not peremptorily order thee; but to work she did. And know this: there never was a talent even for real Literature, not to speak of talents lost and damned in doing sham Literature, but was primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind. Of Literature, in all ways, be shy rather than otherwise, at present! There where thou art, work, work; whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it,--with the hand of a man, not of a phantasm; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and exceeding great reward. Thy words, let them be few, and well-ordered. Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days, when, for very speaking, the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man; and hearts, in this loud babbling, sit dark and dumb towards one another. Witty,--above all, oh be not witty: none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties; to be wise and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties! Brave young friend, dear to me, and _known_ too in a sense, though never seen, nor to be seen by me,--you are, what I am not, in the happy case to learn to _be_ something and to _do_ something, instead of eloquently talking about what has been and was done and may be! The old are what they are, and will not alter; our hope is in you. England's hope, and the world's, is that there may once more be millions such, instead of units as now. _Macte; i fausto pede_. And may future generations, acquainted again with the silences, and once more cognizant of what is noble and faithful and divine, look back on us with pity and incredulous astonishment! Italicized text is represented in the etext with underscores _thusly_. Greek text has been transliterated into English, with notation "[Gr.]" appended to it. Otherwise the etext has been left as it was in the printed text. Footnotes have been embedded directly into the text, with the notation [Footnote: ...]. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Latter-Day Pamphlets, by Thomas Carlyle