ectric--as though some old
Benedictine rose from the dead and began to preach in the crowded
streets of a city of factories. Have we yet, after fifty years of this
time of tepid hankering after Socialism and Theophilanthropic
experiments, got much farther than Thomas Carlyle in his preaching in
Book IV. on "Aristocracies," "Captains of Industry," "The Landed," "The
Gifted"? What truth, what force in the aphorism:--"To predict the
Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the
Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled; effaced, and what is worse,
defaced!"--"Of all Bibles, the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this
'Bible of Universal History'"--"The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is
ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World." What new
meaning that phrase has acquired in these fifty years! "Men of letters
may become a 'chivalry,' an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood."
Well! not men of letters exactly: but perhaps philosophers, with an
adequate moral and scientific training. Here, as so often, Carlyle
just missed a grand truth to which his insight and nobility of soul had
led him, through his perverse inability to accept any systematic
philosophy, and through his habit to listen to the whispering of his
own heart as if it were equivalent to scientific certainty. But the
whole book, _Past and Present_, is a splendid piece and has done much
to mould the thought of our time. It would impress us much more than
it does, were it not already become the very basis of all sincere
thought about social problems and the future conditions of industry.

Of the _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches_ (1845) we have already spoken,
as the greatest of our author's effective products, inasmuch as it
produced the most definite practical result in moulding opinion, and a
result of the highest importance. But it is not, as we have seen, a
work of art, or even an organic work at all, and it cannot compare in
literary charm with some other of the author's works. We do not turn
to the _Cromwell_ again and again, as we do to the _French Revolution_,
or to _Sartor_, which we can take up from time to time as we do a poem
or a romance. Many of the great books of the world are not read and
re-read by the public, just as none but special students continually
resort to the _Novum Organum_, or the _Wealth of Nations_. For similar
reasons, the _Cromwell_ will never be a favourite book with the next
century, a