should have no difficulty in finding amongst his works some passage whether eloquent or not, or how far intelligible, would be just a mere chance-in which he would tell us that this capacity for joint effort, this habit of co-operation, was the greatest boast our times could make, and gave the fairest promise for the future. In Ireland, by the way, one man can still effect something, and work after the fashion, if not with so pure a fanaticism, as Peter the Hermit. The spectacle does not appear very edify ing. Pray-the question just occurs to us-pray has Mr O'Connell got an eye? Would Mr Carlyle acknowledge that this man has swallowed all formulas? Having been bred a lawyer, we are afraid, or, in common Christian speech, we hope, that he has not. But we are not about to proceed through a volume such as this in a carping spirit, though food enough for such a spirit may be found; there is too much genuine merit, too much genuine humour, in the work. What, indeed, is the use of selecting from an author who will indulge in all manner of vagaries, whether of thought or expression, passages to prove that he can be whimsical and absurd, can deal abundantly in obscurities and contradictions, and can withal write the most motley, confused English of any man living? Better take, with thanks, from so irregular a genius, what seems to us good, or affords us gratification, and leave the rest alone. We will not enter into the account of Abbot Samson; it is a little historical sketch, perfect in its kind, in which no part is redundant, and which, being gathered itself from very scanty sources, will not bear further mutilation. We turn, therefore, from the Past, although, in a literary point of view, a very attractive portion of the work, and will draw our extracts (they cannot now be numerous) from his lucubrations upon the Present. Perhaps the most characteristic passage in the volume is that where, in the manner of a philosopher who suddenly finds himself awake in this "half-realized" world, he scans the institution of an army-looks out upon the soldier. "Who can despair of Government that passes a soldier's guard-house, or meets a red-coated man on the streets! That a body of men could be got together to kill other men when you bade them; this, à priori, does it not seem one of the imYet look-behold it; possiblest things? in the stolidest of do-nothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there, with buff-belts, red coats on its back; walking sentry at guard-houses, brushing white breeches in barracks; an indisputable, palpable fact. Out of grey antiquity, amid all finance-difficulties, scaccarium-tallies, ship-monies, coatand-conduct monies, and vicissitudes of chance and time, there, down to the present blessed hour, it is. · "Often, in these painfully decadent, and painfully nascent times, with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings, and impossibilities;' meeting a tall lifeguardsman in his snow-white trousers, or seeing those two statuesque lifeguardsmen, in their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coal-black, sleek, fiery quadrupeds, riding sentry at the HorseGuards-it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how, in such universal down-rushing and wrecked impotence of almost all old institutions, this oldest priest who believes God to be-what, in the name of God, does he believe God to be? -and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax candles, organ blasts, Gregorian chants, mass - brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to save the ignorant from worse. * * "There is in this poor Pope, and his practice of the scenic theory of worship, a frankness which I rather honour. Not half and half, but with undivided heart, does he set about worshipping by stage machinery; as if there were now, and could again Under this my Gregorian be, in nature no other. He will ask you, What other? chant, and beautiful wax-light phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an abyss of black doubts, scepticism, nay, sans-culottic Jacobinism, an orcus that has no bottom. Think of that.' Groby Pool is thatched with pancakes,' as Jeannie Deans's innkeeper defined it to be! The bottomless of scepticism, atheism, Jacobinism, behold it is thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you also from what other isms!"-P. 187, fighting institution is still so young! Fresh complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this fighting man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being, while so much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty semblance, a clothes'-suit, and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's blanket-here still is a reality! "The man in horse-hair wig advances, promising that he will get me 'justice;' he takes me into Chancery law-courts, into decades, half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and does get me-disappointment, almost desperation; and one refuge that of dismissing him and his justice' altogether out of my head. For I have work to do; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing with other men about the exact wages of my work: I will work cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery lawsuit in my heart. He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul. O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he gets orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact, and not a shadow. Alive in this year Forty-three, able and willing to do his work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances, have all changed and again changed; but the human battle-engine, in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. "Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection-this of successfully killing one another? Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding, and regimenting, you can make of men. These thousand straight-standing, firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat, and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they? Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets-an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you have made them this! Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining, and commanding among men. Let no man despair of Governments who look on these two sentries at the Horse-Guards!" -P. 349. Passages there are in the work which a political agitator might be glad enough to seize on; but, upon the whole, it is very little that Radicalism or Chartism obtain from Mr Carlyle. No political party would choose him for its champion, or find in him a serviceable ally. Observe how he demolishes the hope of those who expect, by new systems of election, to secure some incomparably pure and wise body of legislators-some aristocracy of talent! "We must have more wisdom to govern us, we must be governed by the wisest, we must have an aristocracy of talent! cry many. True, most true; but how to get it? The following extract from our young friend of the Houndsditch Indicator is worth perusing- At this time,' says he,' while there is a cry every where, articulate or inarticulate, for an aristocracy of talent, a governing class, namely, what did govern, not merely which took the wages of governing, and could not with all our industry be kept from misgoverning, corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce with us-it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an aristocracy is! Do you expect, my friends, that your indispensable aristocracy of talent is to be enlisted straightway, by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general population; arranged in supreme regimental order; and set to rule over us? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out of chaff, from the twenty-seven million British subjects; that any ballot-box, reform-bill, or other political machine, with force of public opinion ever so active on it, is likely to perform said process of sifting? Would to heaven that we had a sieve; that we could so much as fancy 1843.] Past and Present, by Carlyle. any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or ne plus ultra of machinery, devisable by man that would do it! "Done, nevertheless, sure enough, it We are must be; it shall, and will be. rushing swiftly on the road to destruction; every hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure, done. The doing of it is not doubtful; only the method or the costs! Nay, I will even mention to you an infallible sifting-process, whereby he that has ability will be sifted out to rule amongst us, and that same blessed aristocracy of talent be verily, in an approximate degree, vouchsafed us by-and-by; an infallible siftingprocess; to which, however, no soul can help his neighbour, but each must, with devout prayer to heaven, help himself. It is, O friends! that all of us, that many of us, should acquire the true eye for talent, which is dreadfully wanting at present. "For example, you, Bobus Higgins, sausage-maker on the great scale, who are raising such a clamour for this aristocracy of talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart of yours, chiefly in very fact pay reverence to? Is it to talent, intrinsic manly worth of any The kind, you unfortunate Bobus? manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did you ever reverence him; did you so much as know that he was a manly man at all, till his coat grew better? Talent! I understand you to be able to worship the fame of talent, the power, cash, celebrity, or other success of talent; but the talent itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay, what is it in yourself that you are proudest of, that you take most pleasure in surveying, meditatively, in thoughtful moments? Speak now, is it the bare Bobus, stript of his very name and shirt, and turned loose upon society, that you admire and thank heaven for; or Bobus, with his cash-accounts, and larders dropping fatness, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony chaise, admirable in some measure to certain of the flunkey species? Your own degree of worth and talent, is it of infinite value to you; or only of finite-measurable by the degree of currency, and conquest of praise or pudding, it has brought you to? Bobus, you are in a vicious circle, rounder than one of your own sausages; and will never vote for or promote any talent, except what talent or shamtalent has already got itself voted for !'We here cut short the Indicator; all readers perceiving whither he tends."-P. 39. now In the chapter, also, on Democracy, we have notions expressed upon fiberty which would make little impression— would be very distasteful to any audience assembled for the usual excitement of political oratory. "Liberty! the true liberty of a man, been called by all the newspapers a "But truly, as I had to remark in the fighting institution is still so young! Fresh complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this fighting man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being, while so much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty semblance, a clothes'-suit, and highest king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's blanket-here still is a reality! "The man in horse-hair wig advances, promising that he will get me justice;' he takes me into Chancery law-courts, into decades, half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and does get me-dis. appointment, almost desperation; and one refuge that of dismissing him and his justice' altogether out of my head. For I have work to do; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing with other men about the exact wages of my work: I will work cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery lawsuit in my heart. He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul. O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he gets orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact, and not a shadow. Alive in this year Forty-three, able and willing to do his work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre rope match to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances, have all changed and again changed; but the human battle-engine, in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. "Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection-this of successfully killing one another? Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding, and regimenting, you can make of men. These thousand straight-standing, firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat, and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition . of potential activity; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they? Multiform regged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets-an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmil. But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you have made them this! Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining, and commanding among men. Let no man despair of Governments who look on these two sentries at the Horse-Guards! -P. 349. Passages there are in the work which a political agitator might be glad enough to seize on; but, upon the whole, it is very little that Radicalism or Chartism obtain from Mr Carlyle. No political party would choose him for its champion, or find in him a serviceable ally. Observe how he demolishes the hope of those who expect, by new systems of election, to secure some incomparably pure and wise body of legislators-some aristocracy of talent! "We must have more wisdom to govern us, we must be governed by the wisest, we must have an aristocracy of talent! cry many. True, most true; but how to get it? The following extract from our young friend of the Houndsditch Indicator is worth perusing At this time,' says he, while there is a cry every where, articulate or inarticulate, for an aristocracy of talent, a governing class, namely, what did govern, not merely which took the wages of governing, and could not with all our industry be kept from misgoverning, corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce with us-it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an aristocracy is! Do you expect, my friends, that your indispensable aristocracy of talent is to be enlisted straightway, by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general population; arranged in supreme regimental order; and set to rule over us? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out of chaff, from the twenty-seven million British subjects; that any ballot-box, reform-bill, or other political machine, with force of public opinion ever so active on it, is likely to perform said process of sifting? Would to heaven that we had a sieve; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or ne plus ultra of machinery, devisable by man that would do it! "Done, nevertheless, sure enough, it must be; it shall, and will be. We are rushing swiftly on the road to destruction; every hour bringing us nearer, until it be, in some measure, done. The doing of it is not doubtful; only the method or the costs! Nay, I will even mention to you an infallible sifting-process, whereby he that has ability will be sifted out to rule amongst us, and that same blessed aristocracy of talent be verily, in an approximate degree, vouchsafed us by-and-by; an infallible siftingprocess; to which, however, no soul can help his neighbour, but each must, with devout prayer to heaven, help himself. It is, O friends! that all of us, that many of us, should acquire the true eye for talent, which is dreadfully wanting at present. "For example, you, Bobus Higgins, sausage-maker on the great scale, who are raising such a clamour for this aristocracy of talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart of yours, chiefly in very fact pay reverence to? Is it to talent, intrinsic manly worth of any kind, you unfortunate Bobus? The manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did you ever reverence him; did you so much as know that he was a manly man at all, till his coat grew better? Talent! I understand you to be able to worship the fame of talent, the power, cash, celebrity, or other success of talent; but the talent itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay, what is it in yourself that you are proudest of, that you take most pleasure in surveying, meditatively, in thoughtful moments? Speak now, is it the bare Bobus, stript of his very name and shirt, and turned loose upon society, that you admire and thank heaven for; or Bobus, with his cash-accounts, and larders dropping fatness, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony chaise, admirable in some measure to cer tain of the flunkey species? Your own degree of worth and talent, is it of infinite value to you; or only of finite-measurable by the degree of currency, and conquest of praise or pudding, it has brought you to? Bobus, you are in a vicious circle, rounder than one of your own sausages; and will never vote for or promote any talent, except what talent or shamtalent has already got itself voted for !'We here cut short the Indicator; all readers perceiving whither he now tends."-P. 39. In the chapter, also, on Democracy, we have notions expressed upon liberty which would make little impression— would be very distasteful to any audience assembled for the usual excitement of political oratory. "Liberty! the true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the right path, and to walk thereon-to learn or to be taught what work he actually was able for, and then, by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing the same! That is his true blessedness, honour, 'liberty,' and maximum of well-being,-if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waistcoat, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, by brass collars, or in whatever milder or sharper way, lay hold of him when he is going wrong, and order and compel him to go a little righter. O! if thou really art my senior-seigneur, my elder-Presbyter or priest,-if thou art in very deed my wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to 'conquer' me, to command me! If thou do know better than I what is good and right, I conjure thee, in the name of God, force me to do it; were it by never such brass collars, whips, and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices! That I have been called by all the newspapers a free man,' will avail me little, if my pilgrimage have ended in death and wreck. O that the newspapers had called me slave, coward, fool, or what it pleased their sweet voices to name me, and I had attained not death but life! Liberty requires new definitions.". P. 285. "But truly, as I had to remark in the meanwhile, the 'liberty of not being oppressed by your fellow-man,' is an indispensable, yet one of the most insignificant fractional parts of human liberty. No man oppresses thee-can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shown. True; from all men thou art emancipated, but from thyself and from the devil! No man, wiser, unwiser, can make thee come or go; but thy own futilities, bewilderments, thy false appetites for money- Windsor "Georges and such like! No man op |