177

Natural Supernaturalism, and the measure of its truth 179

Two qualities flowing from his peculiar fatalism:--
(1) Contempt for excess of moral nicety 182
(2) Defect of sympathy with masses of men 186

Perils in his constant sense of the nothingness of life 188

Hero-worship, and its inadequateness 189

Theories of the dissolution of the old European order 193

Mr. Carlyle's view of the French Revolution 195

Of the Reformation and Protestantism 197

Inability to understand the political point of view 199

CARLYLE.

The new library edition of Mr. Carlyle's works may be taken for the
final presentation of all that the author has to say to his
contemporaries, and to possess the settled form in which he wishes his
words to go to those of posterity who may prove to have ears for them.
The canon is definitely made up. The golden Gospel of Silence is
effectively compressed in thirty fine volumes. After all has been said
about self-indulgent mannerisms, moral perversities, phraseological
outrages, and the rest, these volumes will remain the noble monument of
the industry, originality, conscientiousness, and genius of a noble
character, and of an intellectual career that has exercised on many
sides the profoundest sort of influence upon English feeling. Men who
have long since moved far away from these spiritual latitudes, like
those who still find an adequate shelter in them, can hardly help
feeling as they turn the pages of the now disused pieces which they were
once wont to ponder daily, that whatever later teachers may have done in
definitely shaping opinion, in giving specific form to sentiment, and in
subjecting impulse to rational discipline, here was the friendly
fire-bearer who first conveyed the Promethean spark, here the prophet
who first smote the rock.

That with this sense of obligation to the master, there mixes a less
satisfactory reminiscence of youthful excess in imitative phrases, in
unseasonably apostolic readiness towards exhortation and rebuke, in
interest about the soul, a portion of which might more profitably have
been converted into care for the head, is in most cases true. A hostile
observer of bands of Carlylites at Oxford and elsewhere might have been
ju