two elements in the German influence; a sort of pretty
playing with terror and a solemn recognition of terrorism. The first
pointed to elfland, and the second to--shall we say, Prussia. And by
that unconscious symbolism with which all this story develops, it was
soon to be dramatically tested, by a definite political query, whether
what we really respected was the Teutonic fantasy or the Teutonic fear.

The Germanisation of England, its transition and turning-point, was well
typified by the genius of Carlyle. The original charm of Germany had
been the charm of the child. The Teutons were never so great as when
they were childish; in their religious art and popular imagery the
Christ-Child is really a child, though the Christ is hardly a man. The
self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the
unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but
merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is
infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent fear.
Carlyle marks exactly the moment when the German child becomes the
spoilt child. The wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism
always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but
is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. Panic hardens into
pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism.

Carlyle, the most influential English writer of that time, marks all
this by the mental interval between his "French Revolution" and his
"Frederick the Great." In both he was Germanic. Carlyle was really as
sentimental as Goethe; and Goethe was really as sentimental as Werther.
Carlyle understood everything about the French Revolution, except that
it was a French revolution. He could not conceive that cold anger that
comes from a love of insulted truth. It seemed to him absurd that a man
should die, or do murder, for the First Proposition of Euclid; should
relish an egalitarian state like an equilateral triangle; or should
defend the Pons Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone
who does not understand that does not understand the French
Revolution--nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold
these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But
though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence
for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled
most men from the Revolution was the one thing t