l Chronicle_ was taken as a text for the exposure of
modern evils. They may be regarded as expositions of the doctrine
implicitly set forth in the _French Revolution_. Carlyle was a "radical"
as sharing the sentiments of the class in which he was born. He had been
profoundly moved by the widely-spread distresses in his earlier years.
When the yeomanry were called out to suppress riots after the Peace, his
sympathies were with the people rather than with the authorities. So far
he was in harmony with Mill and the "philosophical radicals." A
fundamental divergence of principle, however, existed and was soon
indicated by his speedy separation from the party and alienation from
Mill himself. The Revolution, according to him, meant the sweeping away
of effete beliefs and institutions, but implied also the necessity of a
reconstructive process. _Chartism_ begins with a fierce attack upon the
_laissez faire_ theory, which showed blindness to this necessity. The
prevalent political economy, in which that theory was embodied, made a
principle of neglecting the very evils which it should be the great
function of government to remedy. Carlyle's doctrines, entirely opposed
to the ordinary opinions of Whigs and Radicals, found afterwards an
expositor in his ardent disciple Ruskin, and have obvious affinities
with more recent socialism. At the time he was as one crying in the
wilderness to little practical purpose. Liberals were scandalized by his
apparent identification of "right" with "might," implied in the demand
for a strong government; and though he often declared the true
interpretation to be that the right would ultimately become might, his
desire for strong government seemed too often to sanction the inverse
view. He came into collision with philanthropists, and was supposed to
approve of despotism for its own sake.

His religious position was equally unintelligible to the average mind.
While unequivocally rejecting the accepted creeds, and so scandalizing
even liberal theologians, he was still more hostile to simply sceptical
and materialist tendencies. He was, as he called himself, a "mystic";
and his creed was too vague to be put into any formula beyond a
condemnation of atheism. One corollary was the famous doctrine of "hero
worship" first expounded in his lectures. Any philosophy of history
which emphasized the importance of general causes seemed to him to imply
a simply mechanical doctrine and to deny the efficacy of th