of dead-men's bones, this false modern world: and no rapt Ezekiel in prophetic vision imaged to himself things sadder, more horrible and terrible, than the eyes of men, if they are awake, may now deliberately see." All these are from the "Latter-day Pamphlets." The substance of such passages as these we shall discuss presently; meanwhile, let there be observed, first, the intensely active spirit which they manifest. There is no patient waiting in them, no quiet sympathy. All is the zeal for action. And, secondly, let it be observed, there is no reasoning in them. When Mr. Browning tries to represent St. John, he makes him argue-a most fundamental error; for not in the whole of the Old and New Testament, except in the Epistles of St. Paul, who had a Greek education, is there a single instance of argument, as we understand the word. Everywhere there is the most intense, the most undoubting affirmation. And Mr. Carlyle has by nature this quality; by virtue of it, and by virtue of his zeal for action, he is Hebraic. Do we blame Mr. Carlyle for thus urging men to action? Far from it; he does well and rightly in doing so. But we blame him for this, that in his zeal for this one element he has wholly lost sight of all the other elements of a noble character. For thought, for systematization, except so far as it is conducive to immediate brilliant action, he now cares not. For the imagination which apprehends the beauty of material things he cares not. For the inward struggles of the spirit, contending against selfish desires and striving to fashion itself according to the Eternal Will, he cares not. For the germination of great thoughts and great desires out of nothingness into that incomplete and immature existence which is the lot of almost all things at first, he cares not. All these things, of which his early writings are full, are in his latter writings unmentioned, discarded, forgotten. Action, and the intellect which immediately determines action, is all that he admires. making himself ill by writing it. He is meditative, deep-thinking; his very impetuosity is no mark of a practical nature. And yet it is this man who not only takes upon himself the office of exhorting men to be practical, but who has actually inspired numerous followers, some of them most distinguished and able men, with an enthusiasm for action always intense, and oftentimes good, sound, and effective. It is no paradox to say that the contrast between Mr. Carlyle's own temperament and the temperament which he admires is at once the cause of his influence, and a proof of the great though partial strength of his nature. If Prince Bismarck or Mr. Bright were to issue addresses exhorting men to leave off theorizing and stick to practice, the exhortation would not carry with it any special weight. It would be replied to them, that they had not known the theoretical side of life. This reply cannot be made to Mr. Carlyle. He, a thinker, and many would add, a mystic, deliberately sets thought below action. He describes, with all the resources of an extensive knowledge and a brilliant imagination, the splendours of the power which displays itself in mighty events, on the great arena of kingdoms; he shows how poor a figure the mere speculatist cuts when brought face to face with these pressing crises of change and peril, how soon he is overthrown before the man who has the ready wit to understand the emergency. And yet in the midst of this, he never seems actuated by any overmeasure of indignation against the theorists; he has the air of knowing them to the bottom; he accompanies them to the limit of their efforts, and rather pities than condemns their failure. Such teaching as this was not calculated to produce any strong effect on men who were already practical and energetic; for, on the one hand, it did not meet any want or defect of their minds, and, on the other hand, it was not definite enough to help them in particular measures. But it proWhat a contrast is this to the enthusias- duced the strongest effect on those who tic praise and sympathy which he once be- were naturally theorists. It pointed out stowed on such an immature, mystical, un- to them a new possibility, an Eldorado of formed writer as Novalis! What a con- the spirit, a vision of mighty characters extrast to Mr. Carlyle's own character! For erting themselves in accordance with the he is in himself not in the least like those profoundest laws; for to the success of the whom he admires. He is no vigorous, res- man of action they tacitly superadded that olute, active man; nor (with all his illuminating flashes of insight) is continuous clearness, well-defined purpose, a characteristic of his mind. He is constitutionally weak; never, he said once on à public occasion, had he written a book without truth of meditated design which they themselves instinctively aimed at. Let us not say that Mr. Carlyle did a small or poor work in thus rousing thinkers to the desire of action, in inspiring them with a magnificent hope of realized results. The work was great, and will endure. The deliberate omissions alone are evil and pernicious. something more than this has characterized the great statesmen of the earth Solon, Cæsar, the Barons of the Magna Charta. Their work remained when they themselves were dead, and was the basis of legislation for centuries; that of Cromwell vanished into mist as soon as ever his strong hand was withdrawn. He instituted no system into which the spirit of the nation might flow, preserving itself by its own vigour; he accomplished no enduring work; he stood above those whom he governed, and did not amalgamate himself with their efforts. But of all this Mr. Carlyle thinks nothing: he looks at the immediate splendour, not at the permanent result. Does Mr. Carlyle forget his own sayings about the Silences? It is in silence that the foundation of great things is laid, in the meditative vision, unbroken by inroads from without. But the Silences of late years must complain of neglect on the part of their former worshipper. Or, if he himself has now and then turned his relenting eyes back on them, he has led his followers to far different altars, to those of Force and Strength, under whose hands the benefactors of mankind now, as of old, fare but badly. The exquisite and lucid genius of Mr. Ruskin has been hurried away into subjects which he has not proved, It is precisely the same with respect to with which he deals as an infant deals with his treatment of intellectual systems. No the first seen phenomena of the world. one need be reminded what keen remarks That eloquent historian, Mr. Froude, has Mr. Carlyle can make about the foundain an evil hour been induced to mount the tions of such systems; as when he comprophetic tripod, and to deliver oracles re- pares the metaphysician to the "Irish saint specting that demigod, Henry VIII., which who swam across the Channel carrying his awaken in the passers-by feelings of min- head in his teeth," adding, "that the feat gled astonishment and amusement. And has never been repeated; or when he all this, because Mr. Carlyle has chosen to satirizes the Utilitarians by putting to them consider that the only virtue existent is the problem, "Given a world of Knaves, that single virtue of which he himself is to deduce an Honesty from their united absolutely devoid, the virtue of practical action?" But he cannot put truths toability. gether, fit them in with each other, harFurther; not only does Mr. Carlyle monize them. In his early works this is overrate the value of the mere practical simply a defect on his own part; in his intellect, but he does not even always know this quality, when he sees it. He mistakes vividness of insight in particular points of a career for a clear purpose running through the whole. Take, for example, Take, for example, his treatment of his admiration of Cromwell. That great Coleridge. Coleridge is not a specially man is a man whom we do not wish to systematic thinker, as compared with some condemn utterly; he had magnanimous others; he did not weld his speculations impulses in his heart, and strong intellect together with the iron bonds of Spinoza in his head; if he was at times cruel, he or Kant; and in appearance he is even was far less wantonly so than many gener- more unsystematic than he is in reality; als of his own and succeeding times, who for his indolent temper and sickly health have been esteemed most highly-as, for caused him too often to write in a nerveinstance, Turenne; if he aggrandized him- less, unpointed style, that disguised the self, it may be pleaded for him that his do- real excellence of his thoughts; and many ing so secured a breathing space of set- of his best sayings are mere fragments. tled government for the country, in cir- But still there is a true sequence in all cumstances when there was great risk of that he, writes; he had formed to himself anarchy. We are as unwilling as Mr. a full, broad, and not inharmonious concepCarlyle to believe that his religious senti- tion of the world in which we live, and our ments, expressed in his most private let- duties in it, though, no doubt, he might have ters, and with every appearance of sinceri- worked it out much more clearly in detail, ty, were delusive and hypocritical. His and expressed it in a much more convincing portrait bears in it no meanness or cow- manner, than he did. This, then, was preardice, or vice; it indicates a character, at cisely the case to bring out Mr. Carlyle's any rate, straightforward and genuine. weak side. Coleridge's faults are very As Englishmen, we cannot but be proud of manifest to him; he seizes on the obscure his imperial patriotism, and his unhesitat- and inadequate expression, and derides ing bearing towards foreign powers. But even the physical weakness of utterance later works it becomes also an offence towards others, whose complex thinkings he despises without even endeavouring to comprehend them. of the philosopher; and again he feels his gets beyond the mere battles of Frederown superiority to Coleridge in the prac- ick, his inadequacy is complete and surtical application of truths, in the power prising. of bringing them to bear, in the strong and incisive enforcement of them, on the consciences of men. But he fails to observe wherein Coleridge is superior to himself; the faculty of logical systematization is one which Coleridge has, and, if we consider the variety of his mind, has in no mean degree; Mr. Carlyle has it not. In the "Life of Frederick the Great" the same fault is discernible. The French Revolution had been a happy subject for Mr. Carlyle; here little or no understanding of complex organizations was required; rather it was the very triumph of the historian to show how all organizations fell prone and shattered before that tremendous flood-to exhibit the living force of human instinct as victorious over all the bonds that would have confined it. But in "Frederick the Great" Mr. Carlyle has to prove a point; and at proofs he is never good. He has asserted that Frederick was a hero, a surpassingly great man; and he has to show reason why we should think so too. His failure is absurd. What he does show is, that Frederick was a surpassingly great soldier; a very different proposition. To substitute one of these propositions for the other is justly deemed immoral, since it makes material force the test of greatness. And the very faint reprobation with which Mr. Carlyle visits that audacious act of Frederick's, the ȧpx Kakav, his seizure of Silesia, increases the impression of the immorality of the book. Nevertheless we believe that the idea, which Mr. Carlyle in a dim manner had conceived as the central point of his history, was not immoral. Frederick the Great does differ from such monarchs as Louis XIV. and Gustavus Adolphus in this, that his victories had a real permanent result; they were the starting-point of a nation; and whereas France was ruined by Louis XIV., Prussia must date her career of solid and splendid development from the time of Frederick. This fact certainly points to Mr. Carlyle's conclusion; but it only points to it; it by no means proves it. And, indeed, there is very much to be said on the other side. It might plausibly be argued, that the spur and stimulus of victory was in any case much more likely to be beneficial to the slow German temper than to the quick eagerness of the French. But we are not called upon to argue the matter here; we need only observe, that whenever Mr. Carlyle And yet this very "History of Frederick the Great" supplies clear evidence that the deficiency of Mr. Carlyle in continuous and methodical reasoning results from choice, and not from inability. Nothing can be better, as a lucid summary of a long period of history, than his account of the gradual amalgamation of the intensely complex elements out of which the Prussian monarchy was founded. Nor do we know any history in which battles and military campaigns are so adequately described, with such power of seizing the salient points and impressing them on the reader. No words of praise can be too high for his description of such battles as those of Leuthen and Torgau. Having once read them, it is impossible to forget them. And it is clear, from Mr. Carlyle's character why he shows this power of method in his military narrations, and nowhere else. Conquests and victories are brilliant and blazing things, and carry their results on the face of them; the region of doubt, of obscurity, of under-currents of purpose and character, of slow, scarce-recognized development, does not exist in respect of them; it is possible to apprehend them completely, and not partially. Political and social history is precisely the reverse of this: the historian, if he is to be just, cannot always be clear of his judgment; many points are necessarily uncertain; a nation, unlike an army, contains throughout its extent large tracts of utter darkness, large tracts of what is still more difficult to deal with, the twilight of semi-obscurity. And this is what Mr. Carlyle will not tolerate, will not even recognize, and therefore utterly fails in dealing with. Nay, more; he is even angry that such is the case, and imputes it as a fault to the statesmen of his own day that they cannot take the command of a nation as a general does of his army, and lead it, with unwavering step, to some end, the nature of which he does not precisely specify, but which he dimly feels to be something divine and transcendental. And here we approach that doctrine which is the centre of his political teaching; a doctrine which he himself supposes to be very much more than this; which he gives us as the worthy outcome and perfect flower of the meditations of a lifetime. This is his celebrated doctrine of hero-worship, to which we, indeed, can by no means assign the rank claimed for it by its author. It seems to us a torso, wrought indeed by the hand of genius, and bearing the marks of a chisel that struck fire from the stone in its working, but rude, misshapen, maimed, deformed. And though we are aware that in this gigantesque image Mr. Carlyle intends something far beyond the bounds of mere politics, we shall for the present, for the sake of greater definition, confine ourselves to its political signification. We shall, in short, consider the hero as leading men not simply or chiefly by spiritual influence, but also by material force. It is thus that Mr. Carlyle has of late best loved to contemplate him as the sword of God, in the splendour of outward action, ruling and chastising the nations. call to the helm of the state. More than this; he would have, in every portion of society, the inferior natures avowedly guided by the higher, as these would be guided by those higher than themselves, till the whole culminated in that single man whom ail the rest judged to be most eminent among them. Now let it be observed that this theory is not, as it is often represented to be, a theory of mere despotism. There is a vast difference between saying that all nations should use their utmost endeavors to gain a Head, a Wisest Man, in whom they can trust; and saying that every nation which is governed by a single strong despot has a government which can be approved of. The theory does not even say that every nation should immediately choose for itself a single individual as its head; but only that this is the ideal state of things. Secondly, it is at the very farthest possible distance from any theory that would sanction castes, or the hereditary domination of an aristocratical class, or even the hereditary descent of a monarchy from a king to his descendants; for instance, take the following passage from the " Latter-day Pamphlets": Now we must guard ourselves against being supposed to assert that this doctrine of hero-worship is, on the political or any other side, untrue. That is not our charge against it. Let us, however, before going further, state as briefly as possible what it is. Mr. Carlyle's exposition of it may be put pretty much as follows:- He desires, first, that the action of a state should be resolute, and directed with clear purpose. But, next, he sees that it is impossible to have a perfectly clear purpose perfectly carried out, except under the guidance of "This question always rises as the alpha and one man, who both conceives and executes. Nothing can be more true; for though Society has of summoning aloft into the high omega of social questions, What methods the many men may nominally be actuated by places, for its help and governance, the wisdom a single purpose, there will always be dif- that is born to it in all places, and of course is ferences in the way of conceiving that pur- born chiefly in the more populous or lower pose which will blur and weaken the ac- places? For this, if you will consider it, extion. Hence Mr. Carlyle demands a head presses the ultimate available result, and net or governor of a state in whose mind the sum-total, of all the efforts, struggles and confull purpose of the state, which by others fused activities that go on in the Society; and is conceived imperfectly and inadequately, determines whether they are true and wise should represent itself completely, as in a efforts, certain to be victorious, or false aud mirror; he demands that the effort of all foolish, certain to be futile, and to fall captive persons should be to recognize this man, In all Societies, Turkey included, and I suppose and caitiff. How do men rise in your Society? or the man who comes nearest to this ideal, Dahomey included, men do rise; but the questo set him at their head, obey him them-tion of questions always is, What kind of men? selves, and provide him with sufficient force Men of noble gifts, or men of ignoble?". to put down those who, from their selfish Stump Orator. and partial view, oppose themselves to his wiser plan. He is specially indignant with those who think that a nation can be guided infallibly into the right course by the machinery of Parliaments or Congresses, or by any device which makes the final decision to rest with a majority of the nation, simply because they are the majority, without any effort to obtain the judgment of those who are most competent to decide. He demands that there shall be in every case a clear and wise design; and he insists that the wisest design can in its full compass be only comprehended by the one Wisest Man, whom all other men must No republican could express more strongly that cardinal doctrine of republicanism -the essential equality of rights in men, born in whatever rank. - But, thirdly, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's sense of the importance of unity of purpose in the head of the state, he is well aware that his Hero, or Wisest Man, will need the advice, information, and assistance of others who are inferior to himself. And thus Parliaments have a place in his system; for, though he has written much against Parliaments as they actually are, it is erroneous to imagine that he would as think. Without in some way knowing it with moderate exactitude, he has not a possibility to govern at all. For example, the Chief Governor of Constantinople, having no Parliament to tell it him, knows it only by the frequency of incendiary fires in his capital, the frequency of bakers hanged at their shop lintels; a most inferior ex-post-facto method!” It will be seen that in spite of Mr. Carlyle's prepossession for his supreme ruler, he is well aware that parliaments and peo ples have a power of their own, which on occasions they may justifiably use, even against their monarch. And with this admission Mr. Carlyle's theory may be said to close. "To King Rufus there could no more natural method present itself of getting his affairs of Bovereignty transacted, than this same. To assemble all his working Sub-kings about him; and gather in a human manner, by the aid of sad speech and of cheerful, what their real notions, opinions, and determinations were. No way of making a law, or of getting one executed when made, except by even such a General Consult in one form or another. Naturally too, as in all places where men meet, there established themselves modes of proceeding in this Christmas Parliamentum. So likewise, in the time of the Edwards, when Parliament gradually split itself in Two Houses; and Borough There is really nothing to be said Members and Knights of the Shire were sum- against it. It is all true; it may all be moned up to answer, Whether they could stand granted at once. Let Mr. Carlyle prosuch and such an impost? and took upon them ceed; we wait for his next step. He gives to answer, Yes, your Majesty; but we have it. Take your hero, and put him at the head such and such grievances greatly in need of redress first'-nothing could be more natural of affairs. Here we demur. We have and human than such a Parliament still was. accepted Mr. Carlyle's view as an ideal; And so, granting subsidies, stating grievances, but it is an ideal, as we shall immediately and notably widening its field in that latter di- show, which, though it may indirectly rection, accumulating new modes, and practices guide us, cannot be taken as a direct aim of Parliament greatly important in world-his- for our efforts. There is one important tory, the old Parliament continued an eminently preliminary necessity. Mr. Carlyle has human, veracious, and indispensable entity, surely forgotten the first sentence of Mrs. achieving real work in the centuries." Par- Glasse's invaluable receipt for cooking a liaments. hare; "First catch your hare." In giving us a receipt for the salvation of society, which receipt has a hero for its principal ingredient, he is bound, we submit, to give us information on this primary point: How we are to catch our hero. Should we elect him by a plébiscite? Is it to the Prime Minister that we must hand over the absolute command of the national forces? or, perchance, is it too bold a guess that it is in Chelsea that the hero is to be found? Will Mr. Carlyle accept the post him And so in the following passage from the same pamphlet, which is one of the few pieces of long well-sustained argument in Mr. Carlyle's writings: "Votes of men are worth collecting, if convenient. True, their opinions are generally of little wisdom, and can on occasion reach to all conceivable and inconceivable degrees of folly; but their instincts, where these can be deciphered, are wise and human; these, hidden under the noisy utterance of what they call their opinions, are the unspoken sense of man's heart, and well deserve attending to. Know well what the people inarticulately feel, for the Law of Heaven itself is dimly written there; nay do not neglect, if you have opportunity, to ascertain what they vote and say. One thing the stupidest multitude at a hustings can do, provided only it be sincere: Inform you how it likes this man or that, this proposed law or that. . . . Beyond doubt it will be useful, will be indispensable, for the King or Governor to know what the mass of men think upon public questions legislative and administrative; what they will assent to willingly, what unwillingly; what they will resist with superficial discontents and remonstrances, what with obstinate determination, with riot, perhaps with armed rebellion. To which end, Parliaments, free presses, and such like, are excellent; they keep the Governor fully aware of what the people, wisely or foolishly, self? To speak seriously; a hero, a man who reaches to the height and length and breadth of his generation; who dominates by right of genius the intellect and will of his contemporaries, is the gift of Heaven. It is not by our wishing that he will come, neither will he depart from us because we may be unwilling to accept him. The age, the nation, which has such a man is happy above other ages and nations; yet the age or nation that has him not may have much of honest worth, and may be loved by us equally, though admired less. And far better is it for the age or nation that has him not to acquiesce in its own inferiority, and not set up a spasmodic strain for a phantasm of heroism. This is what is so pernicious in the prac |