their sole authority on a recognition of the rights of weakness. He acknowledges the importance of new powers that have not yet found their place; but he despises new ideas that have not yet become powers. This is the negative aspect of Mr. Carlyle's political philosophy. Its positive side is Hero-worship—his notion of Order and Fealty. Feudalism had its chiefs, and flourished, or not, as it followed them well or ill. Democracy, the new idea of this age, must also find its representatives in great men. Political science consists in discovering the will of the people; but this will is not to be found by universal suffrage and ballot-boxes. It is only a sovereign, well chosen and loyally served, who can express it. Theoretically Carlyle's view ignores the conception of collective wisdom and the action of masses, different in kind as well as degree, from that of units. It is partly a result of his excessive individualism. He forgets the practical impossibility of finding wisdom before trial—the misery of mistakes which are irrevocable. What we want is the guidance of our wisest men; but how many of her wisest men has any nation been able to rank among her kings? In despotic governments we have a happy hit for how many unhappy misses? Carlyle assigns everywhere too wide a sphere to compulsion, and forgets that freedom itself is greater than any end. He is not altogether responsible for the use that has been made of his views to support theories of absolutism; but it cannot be concealed that some of these views lie athwart the best tendencies of the time, and have materially obstructed their progress. Even this, the weakest phase of Mr. Carlyle's philosophy, has some advantages. Standing aside from all political parties, he corrects in turn the errors of each, and checks their exaggerations even by his own. He sees deeply into the undercurrent evils of the time. He assails, with equal force and justice, our practice of leaving those evils to adjust themselves, or dealing with them by empty catchwords. He brands the meanness which too often marks our mercantile dealing, the selfishness which results from over-strained competition, and teaches a truth we are apt to ignore; viz., that wealth is not the one thing needful for national prosperity. Some of his direct suggestions are practical and excellent; as the advice to let merit rise from the ranks in all spheres—to employ our army and navy in time of peace—to provide a national education for the people—to fix more exactly the province of the executive and legislative bodies—to promote men of eminence who cannot face a popular election—to organize a new chivalry of labour—making industrial regiments of our able-bodied paupers, and enlarging the sphere of partnerships in all trades. Even on the vexed question of the negroes, his proposals to change their servitude into serfdom, and open the door to the purchase of liberty by the slaves themselves, indicate the best path towards securing their ultimate emancipation.
But it is neither as a politician nor a biographer, nor even in the domain of history proper, that Carlyle's greatness preeminently appears. Everything he writes has at bottom a personal reference. It is as an ethical and religious teacher that he has the largest claim on our gratitude. When he first came to London, everybody was making inquiries about the political and religious opinions of the rising author; was he a chartist, an absolutist, a calvinist, or an atheist?—inquiries which were then and ever doomed to disappointment. He had come from the Scottish moors and his study of the great German literature, a strange element into their society, not to promulgate a new set of opinions, but to infuse a new spirit into those already existing. He found Benthamism prevailing in philosophy; the Byronic vein in poetry; formalism in religion; society was regulated by fashion and routine; men wore their dogmata like their dress, and really believed only in that on which they could lay their hands. His mission was not to controvert any form of creed, but to show the insufficiency of this mode of belief. He raised the tone of literature by referring to higher standards; he tried to elevate men's minds to the contemplation of something better than themselves, and impress upon them the necessity of professing nothing with their lips which in their hearts they could not believe. He taught that we must make our own convictions, and that the matter of profoundest consequence is the degree of sincerity with which we hold them. Beliefs by hearsay are not merely barren but obstructive; it is only "when half gods go, the gods arrive." Carlyle had to war against credulity, in order to grapple with unbelief. A deep sense of reverence lies at the root of all his symbolism. He uses new phrases to express a meaning that old ones have ceased to convey. After all that has been done to explain it, this world seems to him still a mystery, and we ourselves the miracle of miracles. There is beneath all the soundings of science a deeper deep. Content with what we see and know, we would need no religion. It is the feeling that mere sight and knowledge leave us only more forlorn, that creates the grand want. However Carlyle's own form of faith may differ from others (and we have no right to assume more than he chooses to announce), his appeal to the sense on which they all depend, has done service to the cause of religion which it is not easy to estimate. He has done much to shatter all existing schemes of utilitarianism. Our relation to our fellows is not a relation of repulsion merely; we are bound to them by invisible yet adamantine chains of duty. Duty is with Carlyle something which cannot be derived. Bare calculation would leave the world a wilderness of mean contentions. It is through the sense of the infinite within and around us, that our moral, as well as our religious nature, first truly unfolds itself. "The hero gives his life, he does not sell it." We must be ready to renounce the pursuit of happiness, and in self-annihilation—merging our interests in our duties—we shall find blessedness. Thus alone are true ethics possible. There may be something of the spirit of the mystic in that portion of "Sartor Resartus" where this view is unfolded, but surely there is much of the essence of christianity. It is a firm grasp of the religious sentiment that qualities any one to be the exponent of religious epochs in history. By this alone, says Dr. Chalmers, "Thomas Carlyle has done so much to vindicate and bring to light the Augustan age of christianity in England." It is the secret of his sympathy with the Puritans. It is the secret, also, of his appreciation of the higher Teutonic literature. "It is obvious from all his writings," we quote from the same authority, "that they are not the dogmata of Germany which he idolizes, but the lofty intellect, the high-souled independence, and above all, as most akin with the aspirings of his own chivalrous and undaunted nature, the noble-heartedness of Germany." Those are the common characteristics which have bound him so closely to Goethe The relation between the great poet and his English interpreter is a remarkable one. There are many points of contrast between them. The one, self-centered, solitary in his calm, "totus teres atque rotundus," an Apollo sending forth notes of Memnonian music; the other, a rough giant, struggling, restless, suffering with the sorrows of all humanity; the one all symmetry, the other all strength. It is as if Shakspeare and Luther had been born again as master and disciple. Yet they are one at heart. They have the same deep insight—the same sense of the glory and mystery of the universe—the same great grasp of life—the same reverence for man as man—the same intense convictions and the earnestness they bring. The essential difference between Carlyle and the Germans is that of action and thought. To know is not his end, but to be. Either to know ourselves or others is in great measure impossible. "Know thy work and do it." A practical philosopher, he habitually depreciates metaphysicians. (Vide his treatment of Leibnitz.) He loves the lyre, but it is the lyre that builds the walls of cities. Truth is with him not so much a majestic vision, as an element to mould the character and rule the will. Carlyle does not rest in it—paint, sing, or prove it; but breathes, moves, fights, and dies for it. He loves the strife; like Luther's, his words are battles. Hence his gospel of labour, his sympathy with all its forms. Laborare est orare. He, and he alone, is honourable who does his day's task bravely, whether by the axe, or plough, or pen. Knowledge and strength are the rewards of toil. Action converts the ring of necessity that girds us into a ring of duty; it frees us from the unhealthy blight of self-consciousness—from morbid dreams—from childish fretfulness—from despair itself—and makes us men. There is nothing grander in literature than some of these litanies of labour. They have the roll of music that makes armies march; rousing us, as by a trumpet, to put forth new power, and force, and energy. They are among the most beneficent influences of Carlyle's philosophy, for they continue to present it on its most genial side. It has another and less consolatory aspect. The appreciation of what is wise and excellent involves, in a world like ours, an equally present sense of folly and crime; but it is unfortunate when the sense of evil predominates over the sense of good. Carlyle seems to forget his own best teaching when, turning from the past with its religious aisles and solemn memories—the past, softened and harmonized
