Yes, all manner of work is always what we call silent; cannot speak or come to light till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first "impossible.” Like Gideon, thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether, under the wide arch of Heaven, there be any bounteous moisture or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven; and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind Localities and town and country Parishes there never could, blessed dew-moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen!

Work is of a religious nature; work is of a brave nature, which it is the aim of all religion to be. "All work of man is as the swimmer's." A waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along.

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king-Columbus, my hero, royalest Sea-king of all! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste deep waters; around thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild water-mountains are not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee forward :—and the huge Winds care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small sails in this cockle skiff of thine! Secret, far off, invisible to all hearts but

thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that.

Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad South-wester spend itself; valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favouring East springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage; thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;-how much wilt thou swallow down! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than this Sea; a Silence unsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great Man. Yes, my World-Soldier, thou wilt have to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured World here round thee is thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shalt embrace it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on to new Americas, or whither God wills!

Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, for-ever-enduring Gospel: Work, and therein have wellbeing. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not in the innermost heart of thee a force for Work, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it! Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy; attack him swiftly, subdue him; make Order of him! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.

But above all, where thou findest Ignorance, Stupidity, Brute-mindedness-attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The Highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. Thou, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called To-day. For the Night cometh wherein no man can work.

ness.

All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineLabour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms-up to that "Agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! O brother, if this is not "worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky.

Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving. Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the immeasured solitudes of Time !

CARLYLE.

58. THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR.

The dignity of labour! Consider its achievements! Dismayed by no difficulty, shrinking from no exertion, exhausted by no struggle, ever eager for renewed efforts in its persevering promotion of human happiness, clamorous Labour knocks with its hundred hands at the golden gate of the morning," obtaining each day, through succeeding centuries, fresh benefactions for the world!

rose.

Labour clears the forest, and drains the morass, and makes the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the Labour drives the plough, and scatters the seed, and reaps the harvest, and grinds the corn, and converts it into bread, the staff of life. Labour, tending the pastures and sweeping the waters, as well as cultivating the soil, provides with daily sustenance the thousand millions of the family of man.

Labour moulds the brick, and splits the slate, and quarries the stone, and shapes the column, and rears, not only the humble cottage, but the gorgeous palace, the tapering spire, and the stately dome.

Labour, diving deep into the solid earth, brings up its long-hidden stores of coal, to feed ten thousand furnaces, and in millions of habitations to defy the winter's cold. Labour explores the rich veins of deeply-buried rocks, extracting the gold, the silver, the copper, and the tin. Labour smelts the iron, and moulds it into a thousand shapes for use and ornament—from the massive pillar to the tiniest needle, from the ponderous anchor to the wire-gauze, from

the mighty fly-wheel of the steam-engine to the polished purse-ring or the glittering bead.

Labour hews down the gnarled oak, and shapes the timber, and builds the ship, and guides it over the deep, plunging through the billows and wrestling with the tempest, to bear to our shores the produce of every clime. Labour brings us Indian rice and American cotton; African ivory and Greenland oil; fruits from the sunny South and furs from the frozen North; tea from the East and sugar from the West; —carrying, in exchange, to every land the products of British industry and British skill. Labour, by the universally spread ramifications of trade, distributes its own treasures from country to country, from city to city, from house to house, conveying to the doors of all the necessaries and luxuries of life; and, by the pulsations of an untrammelled commerce, maintaining healthy life in the great social system.

Labour, fusing opaque particles of rock, produces transparent glass, which it moulds and polishes, and combines so wondrously that sight is restored to the blind; while worlds, before invisible from distance, are brought so near as to be weighed and measured with unerring exactness; and atoms, which had escaped all detection from their minuteness, reveal a world of wonder and beauty in themselves.

Labour, possessing a secret far more important than the philosopher's stone, transmutes the most worthless substances into the most precious; and, placing in the crucible of its potent chemistry the putrid refuse of the sea and the land, extracts fra