"Now comes 'The Moral.' As you could not speak on the great Ionian question, why not _write_ on it? Write down what you would or could have said on the subject. Take two or three hours of leisure and quiet; write with great deliberation, but _write on_ till the subject is concluded. No deferring, no bit by bit piecework, but all offhand. No _correction_, not a word to be altered; once written let it stand. Put the Essay aside for a month. Then criticize it with your best judgment--the order and sequence of facts, its verbal defects, its want or superabundance of illustration, its want or superabundance of detail, etc., etc." Another letter of Dilke's in his freshman year concerns the art of debate: "What is wanted is common-sense discussion in well-worded speeches with connected argument, the whole to be spoken loud enough to be heard, and with sufficient liveliness to convince the hearers of the speaker's interest in what he is saying. So far as this is oratory, it is cultivated (with very moderate success) at the Union." From the ideal here indicated--an accurate analysis of 'the House of Commons manner'--Charles Dilke never departed, and his grandfather in replying eagerly reinforced the estimate: "I agree to all you say about that same Union, and about the Orators and Oratory. I should have said it myself, but thought it necessary to _clear the way_. I rejoice that no such preliminary labour was required. I agree that even Chatham was a 'Stump'--what he was in addition is not our question. I hope and believe he was the last of our Stumpers. Burke, so far as he was an Orator, was a Stump and something more, and the more may be attributed to the fact that he was a practised _writer,_ where Chatham was not, and that he reported his own speeches. Latterly his _writings_ were all Stump. I had not intended to have written for a week or more, for you have so many correspondents and are so punctual in reply that I fear the waste of precious time; but I am as pleased with your letter as an old dog- fancier when a terrier-pup catches his first rat--it is something to see my boy hunt out and hunt down that old humbug Oratory." Charles Dilke's own mature judgment on the matters concerned was expressed in a letter to the _Cantab_ of October 27th, 1893: "The value of Union debates as a training for political life? Yes, if they are debates. There is probably little debate in the Union. There was little in my time. There is little real debating in the House of Commons. But debating is mastery. The gift of debate means the gift of making your opinion prevail. Set speaking is useless and worse than useless in these days."