artistic triumph, _Cromwell_ is more
important for one who wishes to understand the life-work of Carlyle and
all for which he stood. The emptiness of political theories and
institutions, the enduring value of character, are lessons which no one
has preached more forcibly. In his opinion the success of the English
revolution, the blow to tyranny and misgovernment in Church and State,
was not due to eloquent members of the Long Parliament, but to plain
God-fearing men, who, if they quoted scripture, did so not from
hypocrisy but because it was the language in which they habitually
thought. Nor could they build up a new England till they had found a
leader. It was the ages which had faith to recognize their worthiest man
and to accept his guidance which had achieved great things in the world,
not those which prated of democracy and progress. To make his
countrymen, in this age of fluent political talk, see the true moral
quality of the men of the seventeenth century--this it was which
occupied seven years of Carlyle's life and filled his thoughts. It was
indeed a labour of Hercules. Much of the material was lost beyond
repair, much buried in voluminous folios and State papers, much obscured
by the cant and prejudice of eighteenth-century authors. To recall the
past, Carlyle needed such help as geography would give him, and he spent
many days in visiting Dunbar, Worcester, and other sites. To Naseby he
went in 1842, in company with Dr. Arnold, and 'plucked two gowans and a
cowslip from the burial heaps of the slain'. A more important task was
to recover authentic utterances of Cromwell and his fellow workers, and
to put these in the place of the second-hand judgements of political
partisans; and this involved laborious researches in libraries. Above
all, he had to interpret these records in a new spirit, exercising true
insight and sympathy, to put life into the dry bones and to present his
readers with the living image of a man. He combined in unique fashion
the laborious research of a student with the moral fervour of a prophet.

Despite the strain of these labours Carlyle showed few signs of his
fifty years. The family were of tough stock; and the years which he had
spent in moorland air had increased the capital of health on which he
could draw. The flight of time was chiefly marked by his growing
antipathy to the political movements of the day, and by a growing
despondency about the future. People might buy his books; b