lauded the most gigantic effort in history to establish a
government upon the system of human bondage. But all slavery will by and
by vanish like the tobacco-smoke of "Teufelsdroeckh." Part of the world's
best work will be the unceasing effort for its universal and perpetual
extermination; and posterity will honor those who labor for this
consummation as greater benefactors and workers than all the divinities
idolized by the author of _Sartor Resartus_ and the _Life of Frederic
the Great_.

While Carlyle's system does not appear to flatter humanity its effect is
of that character. He would make his readers believe that they are pure,
great, and capable beings like those deified by him. The adulation
being too great for many who peruse his pages, large numbers of readers
are led into dangerous vagaries. "The influence of Carlyle's writings,"
says an essayist, "and especially of his _Sartor Resartus_, has been
primarily exerted on classes of men most exposed to temptations of
egotism and petulance, and least subjected to anything above
them,--academics, artists, _litterateurs_, strong-minded women,
'debating' youths, Scotchmen of the phrenological grade, and Irishmen of
the young-Ireland school."[164] There are very many beside this
grotesque group, who exclaim, with one of his warmest admirers, "Carlyle
is my religion!" There are others again who say gratefully what John
Sterling wrote him in his last brief letter, "Towards me it is still
more true than towards England that no man has been and done like
you."[165]

The time has not yet come when men can awake from the spell of a charmer
like Carlyle. But the illusion will some day be dissipated, and many of
his readers in Great Britain and America will feel deeply and almost
despairingly that, in the original fountain of his teaching, there was
"a poison-drop which killed the plants it was expected to nourish, and
left a sterile waste where men looked for the bloom and the opulence of
a garden of God." It behooves those who idolize him to examine the image
before which they stand. He is a man of unquestioned boldness and some
originality, and no one of the present generation has greater power to
dazzle and bewilder the young. Happily, age brings with it the clearing
up of much of the obscurity of youth, and on the additional light of
increasing years we depend for the illumination of many a mind obscured
by his sentiments. The late R. A. Vaughan, a careful observer of t