' In the same way we find him almost lamenting
the fact that Oxford, once apparently so fast-anchored as to be
immovable, has begun to twist and toss on the eddy of new ideas.
"It is impossible to glance at Mr. Carlyle's Easter Monday discourse
without recalling the oration which his predecessor pronounced on
resigning office last autumn. * * * Mr. Carlyle is as simple and
practical as his predecessor was dazzling and rhetorical. An ounce of
mother wit, quotes the new Lord Rector, is worth a pound of clergy,
and while he admires Demosthenes, he prefers the eloquence of Phocion.
A little later he repeats his old doctrine on the virtue of silence,
laments the fact that 'the finest nations in the world--the English
and the American--are going all away into wind and tongue,' and
protests that a man is not to be esteemed wise because he has poured
out speech copiously. Mr. Carlyle has so often inculcated these
sentiments in his books that there can be no suspicion of an _arriere
pensee_ in their utterance now, but the contrast between him and his
predecessor is at the least instructive.
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