nd a less of black
annihilation, and we must have systematic jurisprudence, with its
classification of caitiffs and its graduated blasting. Has Mr. Carlyle's
passion, or have the sedulous and scientific labours of that Bentham,
whose name with him is a symbol of evil, done most in what he calls the
Scoundrel-province of Reform within the last half-century? Sterling's
criticism on Teufelsdroeckh told a hard but wholesome truth to
Teufelsdroeckh's creator. 'Wanting peace himself,' said Sterling, 'his
fierce dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt, and imperfect
around him; and instead of a calm and steady co-operation with all those
who are endeavouring to apply the highest ideas as remedies for the
worst evils, he holds himself in savage isolation.'[3]

[2] _Latter-Day Pamphlets._ II. Model Prisons, p. 92.

[3] Letter to Mr. Carlyle, in the _Life_, Pt. ii. ch. ii.

Mr. Carlyle assures us of Bonaparte that he had an instinct of nature
better than his culture was, and illustrates it by the story that during
the Egyptian expedition, when his scientific men were busy arguing that
there could be no God, Bonaparte, looking up to the stars, confuted them
decisively by saying: 'Very ingenious, Messieurs; but _who made_ all
that?' Surely the most inconclusive answer since coxcombs vanquished
Berkeley with a grin. It is, however, a type of Mr. Carlyle's faith in
the instinct of nature, as superseding the necessity for patient logical
method; a faith, in other words, in crude and uninterpreted sense.
Insight, indeed, goes far, but it no more entitles its possessor to
dispense with reasoned discipline and system in treating scientific
subjects, than it relieves him from the necessity of conforming to the
physical conditions of health. Why should society be the one field of
thought in which a man of genius is at liberty to assume all his major
premisses, and swear all his conclusions?

* * * * *

The deep unrest of unsatisfied souls meets its earliest solace in the
effective and sympathetic expression of the same unrest from the lips of
another. To look it in the face is the first approach to a sedative. To
find our discontent with the actual, our yearning for an undefined
ideal, our aspiration after impossible heights of being, shared and
amplified in the emotional speech of a man of genius, is the beginning
of consolation. Some of the most generous spirits a hundred years ago
found thi