al being to the throne
of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and spiritual
stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny these rights,
or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at least
attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, without
compromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic or
socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man and
society mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrow
formulae that cramped the thought of the period which preceded ours have
been broken through. No one can pass from the hedonists and
individualists to Carlyle and Browning without feeling that these two
men are representatives of new forces in politics, in religion, and in
literature,--forces which will undoubtedly effect momentous changes
before they are caught again and fixed in creeds.

That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them is
indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at their
first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness and
Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day, _Sartor_ and
_Pauline_ were all but unintelligible. The general English reader could
make little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm of
literature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as its
originality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried
glance at the times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found
to lie in the fact that they strove to bring together again certain
fundamental elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest,
and which had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.

The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was narrowed
and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast on
the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come. England was given
up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did not

"Wait
The slow and sober uprise all around
O' the building,"

but

"Ran up right to roof
A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."[A]

[Footnote A:_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]

After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh,
which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves
in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led
the world out of the shadow of etern