The Project Gutenberg EBook of Latter-Day Pamphlets, by Thomas Carlyle

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Title: Latter-Day Pamphlets

Author: Thomas Carlyle

Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #1140]
Release Date: December, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS ***

Produced by Ron Burkey

LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS.

by Thomas Carlyle

But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night. Birds
of darkness are on the wing; spectres uproar; the dead walk;
the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt make the
Day dawn!--JEAN PAUL.

Then said his Lordship, "Well. God mend all!"--"Nay, by
God, Donald, we must help him to mend it!" said the other.--
RUSHWORTH (_Sir David Ramsay and Lord Rea, in 1630_).

CONTENTS.

I. THE PRESENT TIME

II. MODEL PRISONS

III. DOWNING STREET

IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET

V. STUMP-ORATOR

NO. I. THE PRESENT TIME. [February 1, 1850.]

The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir of all the
Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Future, is
ever a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comes with new questions and
significance, however commonplace it look: to know _it_, and what it
bids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day,
sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;--amid the
bustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which
if we cannot read and obey, it will not be well with us! No;--nor is
there any sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same,
which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin which
our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"--which we, with our
light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now
is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of
these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere
current semblances of these. This is true of all times and days.

But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools are arrested
to ask the meaning of them; few of the generations of men have seen
more i