ment--that is, in the judgment of one man
who speaks considerately what he fixedly believes--we have the thought
of a wide, and above all, of a deep soul, which has expressed in fitting
words, the fruits of patient reflection, of piercing observation, of
knowledge many-sided and conscientious, of devoutest awe and
faithfullest love....

The clearness of the eye to see whatever is permanent and substantial,
and the fervour and strength of heart to love it as the sole good of
life, are, in our view, Mr. Carlyle's pre-eminent characteristics, as
those of every man entitled to the fame of the most generous order of
greatness. Not to paint the good which he sees and loves, or see it
painted, and enjoy the sight; not to understand it, and exult in the
knowledge of it; but to take his position upon it, and for it alone to
breathe, to move, to fight, to mourn, and die--this is the destination
which he has chosen for himself. His avowal of it and exhortation to do
the like is the object of all his writings. And, reasonably considered,
it is no small service to which he is thus bound. For the real, the
germinal truth of nature, is not a dead series of physical phenomena
into the like of which all phenomena are cunningly to be explained away.
This pulseless, rigid iron frame-work, on which the soft soil of human
life is placed, and above which its aerial flowers and foliage rise,
does not pass with him for the essential and innermost principle of all.
It is rather that which, being itself poorest, the poorest of faculties
can apprehend. As physical mechanism, it is that which is most palpable,
and undeniable by any, because it is that which lies nearest the
nothingness whence it has been hardly rescued, and is therefore, most
akin to minds in whose meanness of structure or culture, even human
existence might seem scarce better than nothingness. He knows, few in
our nation so well, that of a world of new machinery, the highest king
and priest would be the neatest clockwork figure. And in such a world, a
being feeling ever towards or somewhat beyond what he can weigh and
measure, and looking up to find above himself that which is too high for
him to understand, would be an anomaly as lawless and incredible as the
wildest fabled monster, the Minotaur or the Chimera, the Titan--the
Sphynx itself--nay a more delirious riddle than any that in dreams it
proposes to us.

On the other hand, neither is for him the solid, abiding, inexhaust