(1)Prose of its very nature is longer than verse, and the virtues peculiar to it manifest themselves gradually.(2)If the cardinal virtue of poetry is love, the cardinal virtue of prose is justice; and, whereas love make's you act and speak on the spur of the moment, justice needs inquiry, patience, and a control even of the noblest passions.(3)By justice here I do not mean justice only to particular people or ideas, but a habit of justice in all the processes of thought, a style tranquillized and a form moulded by that habit.(4)The master of prose is not cold, but he will not let any word or image inflame him with a heat irrelevant to his purpose. Unhasting, unresting, he pursues it, subduing all the riches of his mind to it, ...(5)But he has his reward, for he is trusted and convinces, as those who are at the mercy of their own eloquence do not; and he gives a pleasure all the greater for being hardly noticed.(6)In the best prose, whether narrative or argument, we are so led on as we read, that we do not stop to applaud the writer, nor do we stop to question him.