Chapter V: Part 5

Carlyle's "Frederick the Great"[25] seems to us a badly written book. Let us consider the volume containing the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters. Nothing in these chapters is brought out clearly. When we have finished the book, the mind is filled with a confusion of vague images. We know that Mr. Carlyle is not bound to "provide us with brains" as well as with a history, but neither was he so bound in other days. Yet no such confusion was left after reading the "French Revolution." How brilliantly distinct was every leading event, every influential person, every pathetic or poetic episode, in that charmed narrative! Who can forget Carlyle's account of the "Menads," the King's "Flight to Varennes," the Constitutions that "would not march," the "September Massacres," "Charlotte Corday,"--every chief tragic movement, every grotesque episode, moving forward, distinct and clear, to the final issue, "a whiff of grapeshot"? Is there anything like that in this confused "Frederick"?

Compare, for example, the chapters on Voltaire in the present volume with the article on Voltaire published in 1829.

The sixteenth book is devoted to the ten years of peace which followed the second Silesian war. These were from 1746 to 1756. The book contains fifteen chapters. Carlyle begins, in chapter i., by lamenting that there is very little to be known or said about these ten years. "Nothing visible in them of main significance but a crash of authors' quarrels, and the crowning visit of Voltaire." Yet one would think that matter enough might be found in describing the immense activity of Friedrich, of which Macaulay says, "His exertions were such as were hardly to be expected from a human body or a human mind." During these years Frederick brought a seventh part of his people into the army, and organized and drilled it under his own personal inspection, till it became the finest in Europe. He compiled a code of laws, in which he, among the first, abolished torture. He made constant journeys through his dominions, examining the condition of manufactures, arts, commerce, and agriculture. He introduced the strictest economy into the expenditures of the state. He indulged himself, indeed, in various architectural extravagances at Berlin and Potsdam,--but otherwise saved every florin for his army. He wrote "Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg," and an epic poem on the "Art of War." But our author disdains to give us an account of these things. They are not picturesque, they can be told in only general terms, and Carlyle will tell us only what an eyewitness could see or a listener hear. Accordingly, instead of giving us an account of these great labors of his hero, he inserts (chapter ii.) "a peep at Voltaire and his divine Emilie," "a visit to Frederick by Marshal Saxe;" (chapter iii.) a long account of Candidate Linsenbarth's visit to the king; "Sir Jonas Hanway stalks across the scene;" the lawsuit of Voltaire about the Jew Hirsch; "a demon news-writer gives an idea of Friedrich;" the quarrel of Voltaire and Maupertuis; "Friedrich is visible in Holland to the naked eye for some minutes."

This is very unsatisfactory. Reports of eyewitnesses are, no doubt, picturesque and valuable; but so only on condition of being properly arranged, and tending, in their use, toward some positive result. Then the tone of banter, of irony, almost of persiflage, is discouraging. If the whole story of Friedrich is so unintelligible, uninteresting, or incommunicable, why take the trouble to write it? The _poco-curante_ air with which he narrates, as though it were of no great consequence whether he told his story or not, contrasts wonderfully with his early earnestness. Carlyle writes this history like a man thoroughly _blasé_. Impossible for him to take any interest in it himself,--how, then, does he expect to interest us? Has he not himself told us, in his former writings, that the man who proposes to teach others anything must be good enough to believe it first himself?

Here is the problem we have to solve. How came this change from the Carlyle of the Past to the Carlyle of the Present,--from Carlyle the universal believer to Carlyle the universal skeptic,--from him to whom the world was full of wonder and beauty, to him who can see in it nothing but Force on the one side and Shams on the other? What changed that tender, loving, brave soul into this hard cynic? And how was it, as Faith and Love faded out of him, that the life passed from his thought, the glory from his pen, and the page, once alive with flashing ideas, turned into this confused heap of rubbish, in which silver spoons, old shoes, gold sovereigns, and copper pennies are pitched out promiscuously, for the patient reader to sift and pick over as he can? In reading the Carlyle of thirty years ago, we were like California miners,--come upon a rich _placer_, never before opened, where we could all become rich in a day. Now the reader of Carlyle is a _chiffonier_, raking in a heap of street dust for whatever precious matters may turn up.

To investigate this question is our purpose now,--and in doing so we will consider, in succession, these two Carlyles.

I. It was about the year 1830 that readers of books in this vicinity became aware of a new power coming up in the literary republic. Opinions concerning him varied widely. To some he seemed a Jack Cade, leader of rebels, foe to good taste and all sound opinions. Especially did his admiration for Goethe and for German literature seem to many preposterous and extravagant. It was said of these, that "the force of folly could no further go,"--that they "constituted a burlesque too extravagant to be amusing." The tone of Carlyle was said to be of "unbounded assumption;" his language to be "obscure and barbarous;" his ideas composed of "extravagant paradoxes, familiar truths or familiar falsehoods;" "wildest extravagance and merest silliness."

But to others, and especially to the younger men, this new writer came, opening up unknown worlds of beauty and wonder. A strange influence, unlike any other, attracted us to his writing. Before we knew his name, we knew _him_. We could recognize an article by our new author as soon as we opened the pages of the Foreign Review, Edinburgh, or Westminster, and read a few paragraphs. But it was not the style, though marked by a singular freedom and originality--not the tone of kindly humor, the good-natured irony, the happy illustrations brought from afar,--not the amount of literary knowledge, the familiarity with German, French, Italian, Spanish literature,--not any or all of these which so bewitched us. We knew a young man who used to walk from a neighboring town to Boston every week, in order to read over again two articles by Carlyle in two numbers of the Foreign Review lying on a table in the reading-room of the Athenæum. This was his food, in the strength of which he could go a week, till hunger drove him back to get another meal at the same table. We knew other young men and young women who taught themselves German in order to read for themselves the authors made so luminous by this writer. Those were counted fortunate who possessed the works of our author, as yet unpublished in America,--his "Life of Schiller," his "German Romance," his Review articles. What, then, was the charm,--whence the fascination?

To explain this we must describe a little the state of literature and opinion in this vicinity at the time when Carlyle's writings first made their appearance.

Unitarianism and Orthodoxy had fought their battle, and were resting on their arms. Each had intrenched itself in certain positions, each had won to its side most of those who legitimately belonged to it. Controversy had done all it could, and had come to an end. Among the Unitarians, the so-called "practical preaching" was in vogue; that is, ethical and moral essays, pointing out the goodness of being good, and the excellence of what was called "moral virtue." There was, no doubt, a body of original thinkers and writers,--better thinkers and writers, it may be, than we have now,--who were preparing the way for another advance. Channing had already unfolded his doctrine of man, of which the central idea is, that human nature is not to be moulded by religion, but to be developed by it. Walker, Greenwood, Ware, and their brave associates, were conducting this journal with unsurpassed ability. But something more was needed. The general character of preaching was not of a vitalizing sort. It was much like what Carlyle says of preaching in England at the same period: "The most enthusiastic Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep describing how it should and might be preached; to awaken the sacred fire of faith is not their endeavor; but at most, to describe how faith shows and acts, and scientifically to distinguish true faith from false." It is "not the Love of God which is taught, but the love of the Love of God."

According to this, God was outside of the world, at a distance from his children, and obliged to communicate with them in this indirect way, by breaking through the walls of natural law with an occasional miracle. There was no door by which he could enter into the sheepfold to his sheep. Miracles were represented, even by Dr. Channing, as abnormal, as "violations of the laws of nature;" something, therefore, unnatural and monstrous, and not to be believed except on the best evidence. God could not be supposed to break through the walls of this house of nature, except in order to speak to his children on some great occasions. That he had done it, in the case of Christianity, could be proved by the eleven volumes of Dr. Lardner, which showed the Four Gospels to have been written by the companions of Christ, and not otherwise.

The whole of this theory rested, it will be observed, on a sensuous system of mental philosophy. "All knowledge comes through the senses," was its foundation. Revelation, like every other form of knowledge, must come through the senses. A miracle, which appeals to the sight, touch, hearing, is the only possible proof of a divine act. For, in the last analysis, all our theology rests on our philosophy. Theology, being belief, must proceed according to those laws of belief, whatever they are, which we accept and hold. The man who thinks that all knowledge comes through the senses must receive his theological knowledge also that way, and no other. This was the general opinion thirty or forty years ago; hence this theory of Christianity, which supposes that God is obliged to break his own laws in order to communicate it.

But the result of this belief was harmful. It tended to make our religion formal, our worship a mere ceremony; it made real communication with God impossible; it turned prayer into a self-magnetizing operation; it left us virtually "without God and hope in the world." Thanks to Him who never leaves himself without a witness in the human heart, this theory was often nullified in practice by the irrepressible instincts which it denied, by the spiritual intuitions which it ridiculed. Even Professor Norton, its chief champion, had a heart steeped in the sweetest piety. Denying, intellectually, all intuitions of God, Duty, and Immortality, his beautiful and tender hymns show the highest spiritual insight. Still it cannot be denied that this theory tended to dry up the fountains of religious faith in the human heart, and to leave us in a merely mechanical and unspiritualized world.

Now the first voice which came to break this enchantment was, to many, the voice of Thomas Carlyle. It needed for this end, it always needs, a man who could come face to face with Truth. Every great idol-breaker, every man who has delivered the world from the yoke of Forms, has been one who was able to see the substance of things, who was gifted with the insight of realities. Forms of worship, forms of belief, at first the channels of life, through which the Living Spirit flowed into human hearts, at last became petrified, incrusted, choked. A few drops of the vital current still ooze slowly through them, and our parched lips, sucking these few drops, cling all the more closely to the form as it becomes less and less a vehicle of life. The poorest word, old and trite, is precious when there is no open vision. We do well continually to resort to the half-dead form, "till the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts."

But at last there comes a man capable of dispensing with the form,--a man endowed with a high degree of the intuitive faculty,--a born seer, a prophet, seeing the great realities of the universe with open vision. The work of such a man is to break up the old formulas and introduce new light and life. This work was done for the Orthodox thirty years ago by the writings of Coleridge; for the Unitarians in this vicinity, by the writings of Thomas Carlyle.

This was the secret of the enthusiasm felt for Carlyle, in those days, by so many of the younger men and women. He taught us to look at realities instead of names, at substance instead of surface,--to see God in the world, in nature, in life, in providence, in man,--to see divine truth and beauty and wonder everywhere around. He taught that the only organ necessary by which to see the divine in all things was sincerity, or inward truth. And so he enabled us to escape from the form into the spirit, he helped us to rise to that plane of freedom from which we could see the divine in the human, the infinite in the finite, God in man, heaven on earth, immortality beginning here, eternity pervading time. This made for us a new heaven and a new earth, a new religion and a new life. Faith was once more possible, a faith not bought by the renunciation of mature reason or the beauty and glory of the present hour.

But all this was taught us by our new prophet, not by the intellect merely, but by the spirit in which he spoke. He did not seem to be giving us a new creed, so much as inspiring us with a new life. That which came from his experience went into ours. Therefore it might have been difficult, in those days, for any of his disciples to state what it was that they had learned from him. They had not learned his doctrine,--they had absorbed it. Hence, very naturally, came the imitations of Carlyle, which so disgusted the members of the old school. Hence the absurd Carlylish writing, the feeble imitations by honest, but weak disciples of the great master. It was a pity, but not unnatural, and it soon passed by.

As Carlyle thus did his work, not so much by direct teaching as by an influence hidden in all that he said, it did not much matter on what subject he wrote,--the influence was there still. But his articles on Goethe were the most attractive, because he asserted that in this patriarch of German literature he had found one who saw in all things their real essence, one whose majestic and trained intelligence could interpret to us in all parts of nature and life the inmost quality, the _terza essenza_, as the Italian Platonists called it, which made each itself. Goethe was announced as the prophet of Realism. He, it should seem, had perfectly escaped from words into things. He saw the world, not through dogmas, traditions, formulas, but as it was in itself. To him

"the world's unwithered countenance
Was fresh as on creation's day."

Consider the immense charm of such hopes as these! No wonder that the critics complained that the disciples of Carlyle were "insensible to ridicule." What did they care for the laughter, which seemed to them, in their enthusiasm, like "the crackling of thorns under the pot." Ridicule, in fact, never touches the sincere enthusiast. It is a good and useful weapon against affectation, but it falls, shivered to pieces, from the magic breastplate of truth. No sincere person, at work in a cause which he knows to be important, ever minds being laughed at.

But besides his admirable discussions of Goethe, Carlyle's "Life of Schiller" opened the portals of German literature, and made an epoch in biography and criticism. It was a new thing to read a biography written with such enthusiasm,--to find a critic who could really write with reverence and tender love of the poet whom he criticised. Instead of taking his seat on the judicial bench, and calling his author up before him to be judged as a culprit, Carlyle walks with Schiller through the circles of his poems and plays, as Dante goes with Virgil through the Inferno and Paradiso. He accepts the great poet as his teacher and master,[26] a thing unknown before in all criticism. It was supposed that a biographer would become a mere Boswell if he looked up to his hero, instead of looking down on him. It was not understood that it was that "angel of the world," Reverence, which had exalted even a poor, mean, vain fool, like Boswell, and enabled him to write one of the best books ever written. It was not his reverence for Johnson which made Boswell a fool,--his reverence for Johnson made him, a fool, capable of writing one of the best books of modern times.

This capacity of reverence in Carlyle--this power of perceiving a divine, infinite quality in human souls--tinges all his biographical writing with a deep religious tone. He wrote of Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Burns, Novalis, even Voltaire, with reverence. He could see their defects easily enough, he could playfully expose their weaknesses; but beneath all was the sacred undertone of reverence for the divine element in each,--for that which God had made and meant them to be, and which they had realized more or less imperfectly in the struggle of life. The difference between the reverence of a Carlyle and that of a Boswell is, that one is blind and the other intelligent. The one worships his hero down to his shoes and stockings, the other distinguishes the divine idea from its weak embodiment.

Two articles from this happy period--that on the "Signs of the Times" and that called "Characteristics"--indicate some of Carlyle's leading ideas concerning right thinking and right living. In the first, he declares the present to be an age of mechanism,--not heroic, devout, or philosophic. All things are done by machinery. "Men have no faith in individual endeavor or natural force." "Metaphysics has become material." Government is a machine. All this he thinks evil. The living force is in the individual soul,--not mechanic, but dynamic. Religion is a calculation of expediency, not an impulse of worship; no thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of man to his invisible Father, the Fountain of all goodness, beauty, and truth, but a contrivance by which a small quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a much larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. "Virtue is pleasure, is profit." "In all senses we worship and follow after power, which may be called a physical pursuit." (Ah, Carlyle of the Present! does not that wand of thine old true self touch thee?) "No man now loves truth, as truth must be loved, with an infinite love; but only with a finite love, and, as it were, _par amours_."

In the other article, "Characteristics," printed two years later, in 1831, he unfolds the doctrine of "Unconsciousness" as the sign of health in soul as well as body. He finds society sick everywhere; he finds its religion, literature, science, all diseased, yet he ends the article, as the other was ended, in hope of a change to something better.

These two articles may be considered as an introduction to his next great work, "Sartor Resartus," or the "Clothes-Philosophy." Here, in a vein of irony and genial humor, he unfolds his doctrine of substance and form. The object of all thought and all experience is to look through the clothes to the living beneath them. According to his book, all human institutions are the clothing of society; language is the garment of thought, the heavens and earth the time-vesture of the Eternal. So, too, are religious creeds and ceremonies the clothing of religion; so are all symbols the vesture of some idea; so are the crown and sceptre the vesture of government. This book is the autobiography of a seeker for truth. In it he is led from the shows of things to their innermost substance, and as in all his other writings, he teaches here also that sincerity, truthfulness, is the organ by which we are led to the solid rock of reality, which underlies all shows and shams.

II. We now come to treat of Carlyle in his present aspect,--a much less agreeable task. We leave Carlyle the generous and gentle, for Carlyle the hard cynic. We leave him, the friend of man, lover of his race, for another Carlyle, advocate of negro slavery, worshiper of mere force, sneering at philanthropy, and admiring only tyrants, despots, and slaveholders. The change, and the steps which led to it, chronologically and logically, it is our business to scrutinize,--not a grateful occupation indeed, but possibly instructive and useful.

Thomas Carlyle, after spending his previous life in Scotland, and from 1827 to 1834 in his solitude at Craigenputtoch, removed to London in the latter year, when thirty-eight years old. Since then he has permanently resided in London, in a house situated on one of the quiet streets running at right angles with the Thames. He came to London almost an unknown man; he has there become a great name and power in literature. He has had for friends such men as John Stuart Mill, Sterling, Maurice, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Thackeray, and Emerson. His "French Revolution" was published in 1837; "Sartor Resartus" (published in Frazer in 1833, and in Boston in a volume in 1836) was put forth collectively in 1838; and in the same year his "Miscellanies" (also collected and issued in Boston in 1838) were published in London, in four volumes. "Chartism" was issued in 1839. He gave four courses of Lectures in Willis's rooms "to a select but crowded audience," in 1837, 1838, 1839, and 1840. Only the last of these--"Heroes and Hero-Worship"--was published. "Past and Present" followed in 1843, "Oliver Cromwell" in 1845. In 1850 he printed "Latter-Day Pamphlets," and subsequently his "Life of Sterling" (1851), and the four volumes, now issued, of "Frederick the Great."

The first evidence of an altered tendency is perhaps to be traced in the "French Revolution." It is a noble and glorious book; but, as one of his friendly critics has said, "its philosophy is contemptuous and mocking, and it depicts the varied and gigantic characters which stalk across the scene, not so much as responsible and living mortals, as the mere mechanical implements of some tremendous and irresistible destiny." In "Heroes and Hero-Worship" the habit has grown of revering mere will, rather than calm intellectual and moral power. The same thing is shown in "Past and Present," in "Cromwell," and in "Latter-Day Pamphlets," which the critic quoted above says is "only remarkable as a violent imitation of himself, and not of his better self." For the works of this later period, indeed, the best motto would be that verse from Daniel: "He shall exalt himself, and magnify himself, and speak marvelous things; neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, but in his stead shall he honor the God of Forces, a god whom his fathers knew not."

Probably this apostasy from his better faith had begun, before this, to show itself in conversation. At least Margaret Fuller, in a letter dated 1846, finds herself in his presence admiring his brilliancy, but "disclaiming and rejecting almost everything he said." "For a couple of hours," says she, "he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind." "All Carlyle's talk, another evening," says she, "was a defence of mere force,--success the test of right; if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks; find a hero, and let them be his slaves." "Mazzini was there, and, after some vain attempts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me, 'These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'"

As this mood of Mr. Carlyle comes out so strongly in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," it is perhaps best to dwell on them at greater leisure.

The first is "The Present Time." In this he describes Democracy as inevitable, but as utterly evil; calls for a government; finds most European governments, that of England included, to be shams and falsities,--no-government, or drifting, to be a yet greater evil. The object, he states, is to find the noblest and best men to govern. Democracy fails to do this; for universal balloting is not adequate to the task. Democracy answered in the old republics, when the mass were slaves, but will not answer now. The United States are no proof of its success, for (1st) anarchy is avoided merely by the quantity of cheap land, and (2d) the United States have produced no spiritual results, but only material. Democracy in America is no-government, and "its only feat is to have produced eighteen millions of the greatest _bores_ ever seen in the world." Mr. Carlyle's plan, therefore, is to find, somehow, the _best man_ for a ruler, to make him a despot, to make the mass of the English and Irish slaves, to beat them if they will not work, to shoot them if they still refuse. The only method of finding this best man, which he suggests, is to _call for him_. Accordingly, Mr. Thomas Carlyle _calls_, saying, "Best man, come forward, and govern."

The sum, therefore, of his recipe for the diseases of the times is SLAVERY.

The second pamphlet is called "Model Prisons," and the main object of this is to ridicule all attempts at helping men by philanthropy or humanity. The talk of "Fraternity" is nonsense, and must be drummed out of the world. Beginning with model prisons, he finds them much too good for the "scoundrels" who are shut up there. He would have them whipped and hung (seventy thousand in a year, we suppose, as in bluff King Harry's time, with no great benefit therefrom). "Revenge," he says, "is a right feeling against bad men,--only the excess of it wrong." The proper thing to say to a bad man is, "Caitiff, I hate thee." "A collar round the neck, and a cart-whip over the back," is what he thinks would be more just to criminals than a model prison. The whole effort of humanity should be to help the industrious and virtuous poor; the criminals should be swept out of the way, whipt, enslaved, or hung. As for human brotherhood, he does not admit brotherhood with "scoundrels." Particularly disgusting to him is it to hear this philanthropy to bad men called Christianity. Christianity, he thinks, does not tell us to love the bad, but to hate them as God hates them. According, probably, to his private expurgated version of the Gospel, "that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven, whose sun rises only on the good, and whose rain falls only on the just."

"Downing Street" and "New Downing Street" are fiery tirades against the governing classes in England. Mr. Carlyle says (according to his inevitable refrain), that England does not want a reformed Parliament, a body of talkers, but a reformed Downing Street, a body of workers. He describes the utter imbecility of the English government, and calls loudly for some able man to take its place. Two passages are worth quoting; the first as to England's aspect in her foreign relations, which is quite as true for 1864 as for 1854.

"How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her sword of sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid Catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword) to see how they will like it. Hercules-Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody!"

Or see the following description of the sort of rulers who prevail in England, no less than in America:--

"If our government is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Fling an orange-skin into St. James Street, let the man it hits be your man. He, if you bend him a little to it, and tie the due official bladders to his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded pole in his hand, and will, with straddling, painful gestures, float hither and thither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while, till he also capsize, and be left floating feet uppermost,--after which you choose another."

Concerning which we may say, that if this is the result of monarchy and aristocracy in England, we can stick a little longer to our democracy in America. Mr. Carlyle says that the object of all these methods is to find the ablest man for a ruler. He thinks our republican method very insufficient and absurd,--much preferring the English system,--and then tells us that this is the outcome of the latter; that you might as well select your ruler by throwing an orange-skin into the street as by the method followed in England.

Despotism, tempered by assassination, seems to be Carlyle's notion of a good government.

The pamphlet "Stump-Orator" is simply a bitter denunciation of all talking, speech-making, and writing, as the curse of the time, and ends with the proposition to cut out the tongues of one whole generation, as an act of mercy to them and a blessing to the human race.

Thus this collection of "Latter-Day Pamphlets" consists of the bitterest cynicism. Carlyle sits in it, as in a tub, snarling at freedom, yelping at philanthropy, growling at the English government, snapping at all men who speak or write, and ending with one long howl over the universal falsity and hollowness of mankind in general.

After which he proceeds to his final apotheosis of despotism pure and simple, in this "Life of Frederick the Great." Of this it is not necessary to say more than that Frederick, being an absolute despot, but a very able one, having plunged Europe into war in order to steal Silesia, is everywhere admired, justified, or excused by Carlyle, who reserves his rebukes and contempt for those who find fault with all this.

That, with these opinions, Carlyle should have taken sides with the slaveholders' conspiracy against the Union is not surprising. His sympathies were with them; first, as slaveholders, secondly, as aristocrats. He hates us because we are democrats, and he loves them because they are despots and tyrants. Long before the outbreak of the rebellion, he had ridiculed emancipation, and denounced as folly and evil the noblest deed of England,--the emancipation of her West India slaves. In scornful, bitter satire, he denounced England for keeping the fast which God had chosen, in undoing the heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke. He ridiculed the black man, and described the poor patient African as "Quashee, steeped to the eyes in pumpkin." In the hateful service of oppression he had already done his best to uphold slavery and discourage freedom. And while he fully believed in enslaving the laboring population, black or white, and driving it to work by the cart-whip, he as fully abhorred republicanism everywhere, and most of all in the United States. He had exhausted the resources of language in vilifying American institutions. It was a matter of course, therefore, that at the outbreak of this civil war all his sympathies should be with those who whip women and sell babies.

How is it that this great change should have taken place? Men change,--but not often in this way. The ardent reformer often hardens into the stiff conservative. The radical in religion is very likely to join the Catholic Church. If a Catholic changes his religion, he goes over to atheism. To swing from one extreme to another, is a common experience. But it is a new thing to see calmness in youth, violence in age,--to find the young man wise and all-sided, the old man bigoted and narrow.

We think the explanation to be this.

Thomas Carlyle from the beginning has not shown the least appreciation of the essential thing in Christianity. Brought up in Scotland, inheriting from Calvinism a sense of truth, a love of justice, and a reverence for the Jewish Bible, he has never passed out of Judaism into Christianity. To him, Oliver Cromwell is the best type of true religion; inflexible justice the best attribute of God or man. He is a worshiper of Jehovah, not of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees in God truth and justice; he does not see in him love. He is himself a prophet after the type of Elijah and John the Baptist. He is the voice crying in the wilderness; and we may say of him, therefore, as was said of his prototype, "He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing, for a season, to rejoice in his light,"--but not always,--not now.

Carlyle does not, indeed, claim to be a Jew, or to reject Christ. On the contrary, he speaks of him with very sincere respect. He seems, however, to know nothing of him but what he has read in Goethe about the "worship of sorrow." The Gospel appears to him to be, essentially, a worship of sorrow. That Christ "came to save sinners,"--of that Carlyle has not the faintest idea. To him the notion of "saving sinners" is only "rose-water philanthropy." He does not wish them saved, he wishes them damned,--swept into hell as soon as convenient.

But, as everything which is real has two sides, that of _truth_ and that of _love_,--it usually happens that he who only sees _one_ side at last ceases even to see that. All goodness, to Carlyle, is truth,--in man it is sincerity, or love of reality, sight of the actual facts,--in God it is justice, divine adherence to law, infinite guidance of the world and of every human soul according to a strict and inevitable rule of righteousness. At first this seems to be a providence,--and Carlyle has everywhere, in the earlier epoch, shown full confidence in Providence. But believe only in justice and truth,--omit the doctrine of forgiveness, redemption, salvation,--and faith in Providence becomes sooner or later a despairing fatalism. The dark problem of evil remains insoluble without the doctrine of redemption.

So it was that Carlyle, seeing at first the chief duty of man to be the worship of reality, the love of truth, next made that virtue to consist in sincerity, or being in earnest. Truth was being true to one's self. In this lay the essence of heroism. So that Burns, being sincere and earnest, was a hero,--Odin was a hero,--Mohammed was a hero,--Cromwell was a hero,--Mirabeau and Danton were heroes,--and Frederick the Great was a hero. That which was first the love of truth, and caused him to reverence the calm intellectual force of Schiller and Goethe, soon became earnestness and sincerity, and then became power. For the proof of earnestness is power. So from power, by eliminating all love, all tenderness, as being only rose-water philanthropy, he at last became a worshiper of mere will, of force in its grossest form. So he illustrates those lines of Shakespeare in which this process is so well described. In "Troilus and Cressida" Ulysses is insisting on the importance of keeping everything in its place, and giving to the best things and persons their due priority. Otherwise, mere force will govern all things.

"Strength would be lord of imbecility,"--

as Carlyle indeed openly declares that it ought to be,--

"And the rude son should strike his father dead,"

which Carlyle does not quite approve of in the case of Dr. Francia. But why not, if he maintains that strength is the measure of justice?

"Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong
(Between whose endless jar justice resides)
Should lose their names and so should justice, too.
_Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And, last, eat up himself._"

Just so, in the progress of Carlyle's literary career, first, force became right,--then, everything included itself in power,--next, power was lost in will, and will in mere caprice or appetite. From his admiration for Goethe, as the type of intellectual power, he passed to the praise of Cromwell as the exponent of will, and then to that of Frederick, whose appetite for plunder and territory was seconded by an iron will and the highest power of intellect; but whose ambition devoured himself, his country, and its prosperity, in the mad pursuit of victory and conquest.

The explanation, therefore, of our author's lapse, is simply this, that he worshiped truth divorced from love, and so ceased to worship truth, and fell into the idolatry of mere will. Truth without love is not truth, but hard, willful opinion, just as love without truth is not love, but weak good-nature and soft concession.

Carlyle has no idea of that sublime feature of Christianity, which shows to us God caring more for the one sinner who repents than the ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. To him one just person deserves more care than ninety-nine sinners. Yet it is strange that he did not learn from his master, Goethe, this essential trait of the Gospel. For Goethe, in a work translated by Carlyle himself, distinguishes between the three religions thus. The ethnic or Gentile religions, he says, reverence _what is above us_,--the religion of the philosopher reverences _what is on our own level_,--but Christianity reverences _what is beneath us_. "This is the last step," says Goethe, "which mankind were destined to attain,--to recognize humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, as divine,--nay, _even on sin and crime to look not as hindrances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of what is holy_."

On sin and crime, as we have seen, Carlyle looks with no such tenderness. But if he does not care for the words of Christ, teaching us that we must forgive if we hope to be forgiven, if he does not care for the words of his master, Goethe, he might at least remember his own exposition of this doctrine in an early work, where he shows that the poor left to perish by disease infect a whole community, and declares that the safety of all is involved in the safety of the humblest.

In 1840, when he wrote "Chartism," Carlyle seems to have known better than he did in 1855, when he wrote these "Latter-Day Pamphlets." _Then_ he said:--

"To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissible manner made away, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith."

Of Ireland, too, he said:--

"We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centuries of injustice to Ireland." "It is the feeling of _injustice_ that is insupportable to all men. The brutalest black African feels it, and cannot bear that he should be used unjustly. No man can bear it, or ought to bear it."

This seems like the "rose-water philanthropy" which he subsequently so much disliked. In this book also he speaks of a "seven years' Silesian robber-war,"--we trust not intending to call his beloved Frederick a robber! And again he proposes, as one of the best things to be done in England, to have all the people taught by government to read and write,--the same thing which this American democracy, in which he could see not one good thing, has so long been doing. That was the plan by which England was to be saved,--a plan first suggested in England in 1840,--adopted and acted on in America for two hundred years.

But just as love separated from truth becomes cruelty, so _truth_ by itself--truth _not_ tempered and fulfilled by love--runs sooner or later into falsehood. _Truth_, after a while, becomes dogmatism, overbearing assertion, willful refusal to see and hear other than one's own belief; that is to say, it becomes falsehood. Such has been the case with our author. On all the subjects to which he has committed himself he closes his eyes, and refuses to see the other side. Like his own symbol, the mighty Bull, he makes his charge _with his eyes shut_.

Determined, for example, to rehabilitate such men as Mirabeau, Cromwell, Frederick, and Frederick's father, he does thorough work, and defends or excuses all their enormities, palliating whenever he cannot justify.

What can we call this which he says[27] concerning the execution of Lieutenant Katte, by order of old King Friedrich Wilhelm? Tired of the tyranny of his father, tired of being kicked and caned, the young prince tried to escape. He was caught and held as a deserter from the army, and his father tried to run him through the body. Lieutenant Katte, who had aided him in getting away, having been kicked and caned, was sent to a court-martial to be tried. The court-martial found him guilty not of deserting, but of intending to desert, and sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. Whereupon the king went into a rage, declared that Katte had committed high treason, and ordered him to be executed. Whereupon Carlyle thus writes:--

"'Never was such a transaction before or since in modern history,' cries the angry reader; 'cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones; like----' Or, indeed, like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, but not that alone."

In other words, Carlyle cannot make up his mind frankly to condemn this atrocious murder, and call it by its right name. He must needs try to sophisticate us by talking about "the doings of the gods." Because Divine Providence takes men out of the world in various ways, it is therefore allowable to a king, provided he be a hero grim enough and "earnest" enough, to kick men, cane them, and run them through the body when he pleases; and, after having sent a man to be tried by court-martial, if the court acquits him, to order him to be executed by his own despotic will. A truth-telling Carlyle ought to have said, "I admit this is murder; but I like the old fellow, and so I will call it right." A Carlyle grown sophistical mumbles something about its being like "the doings of the gods," and leaves off with that small attempt at humbug. Be brave, my men, and defend my Lord Jeffreys next for bullying juries into hanging prisoners. Was not Jeffreys "grim" too? In fact, are not most murderers "grim"?

We have had occasion formerly, in this journal, to examine the writings of another very positive and clear-headed thinker,--Mr. Henry James. Mr. James is, in his philosophy, the very antithesis of Carlyle. With equal fervor of thought, with a like vehemence of style, with a somewhat similar contempt for his opponents, Mr. James takes exactly the opposite view of religion and duty. As Carlyle preaches the law, and the law alone, maintaining justice as the sole Divine attribute, so Mr. James preaches the Gospel only, denying totally that to the Divine Mind any distinction exists between saint and sinner, unless that the sinner is somewhat more of a favorite than the saint. We did not, do not, agree with Mr. James in his anti-nomianism; as between him and Carlyle, we think his doctrine far the truer and nobler. He stands on a higher plane, and sees much the farther. A course of reading in Mr. James's books might, we think, help our English cynic not a little.

God is the perfect harmony of justice and love. His justice is warmed through and through with love, his love is sanctified and made strong by justice. And so, in Christ, perfect justice was fulfilled in perfect love. But in him first was fully revealed, in this world, the Divine fatherly tenderness to the lost, to the sinner, to those lowest down and farthest away. In him was taught that our own redemption from evil does not lie in despising and hating men worse than ourselves, but in saving them. The hard Pharisaic justice of Carlyle may call this "rose-water philanthropy," but till he accepts it from his heart, and repents of his contempt for his fallen fellowmen, till he learns to love "scoundrels," there is no hope for him. He lived once in the heaven of reverence, faith, and love; he has gone from it into the hell of Pharisaic scorn and contempt. Till he comes back out of that, there is no hope for him.

But such a noble nature cannot be thus lost. He will one day, let us trust, worship the divine love which he now abhors. Cromwell asked, on his death-bed, "if those once in a state of grace could fall," and, being assured not, said, "I am safe then, for I am sure I was once in a state of grace." There is a truth in this doctrine of the perseverance of saints. Some truths once fully seen, even though afterward rejected by the mind and will, stick like a barbed arrow in the conscience, tormenting the soul till they are again accepted and obeyed. Such a truth Carlyle once saw, in the great doctrine of reverence for the fallen and the sinful. He will see it again, if not in this world, then in some other world.

The first Carlyle was an enthusiast, the last Carlyle is a cynic. From enthusiasm to cynicism, from the spirit of reverence to the spirit of contempt, the way seems long, but the condition of arriving is simple. Discard LOVE, and the whole road is passed over. Divorce love from truth, and truth ceases to be open and receptive,--ceases to be a positive function, turns into acrid criticism, bitter disdain, cruel and hollow laughter, empty of all inward peace. Such is the road which Carlyle has passed over, from his earnest, hopeful youth to his bitter old age.

Carlyle fulfilled for many, during these years, the noble work of a mediator. By reverence and love he saw what was divine in nature, in man, and in life. By the profound sincerity of his heart, his worship of reality, his hatred of falsehood, he escaped from the commonplaces of literature to a better land of insight and knowledge. So he was enabled to lead many others out of their entanglements, into his own luminous insight. It was a great and blessed work. Would that it had been sufficient for him!

BUCKLE AND HIS THEORY OF AVERAGES[28]

We welcomed kindly the first installment of Mr. Buckle's work,[29] giving a cursory account of it, and hinting, rather than urging, the objections which readily suggested themselves against theories concerning Man, History, Civilization, and Human Progress. But now it seems a proper time to discuss with a little more deliberation the themes opened before us by this intrepid writer,--this latest champion of that theory of the mind which in the last century was called Materialism and Necessity, and which in the present has been re-baptized as Positivism.

The doctrines of which Mr. Buckle is the ardent advocate seem to us, the more thoroughly we consider them, to be essentially theoretical, superficial, and narrow. They are destitute of any broad basis of reality. In their application by Mr. Buckle, they fail to solve the historic problems upon which he tries their power. With a show of science, they are unscientific, being a mere collection of unverified hypotheses. And if Mr. Buckle should succeed in introducing his principles and methods into the study of history, it would be equivalent to putting backward for about a century this whole department of thought.

Yet, while we state this as our opinion, and one which we shall presently endeavor to substantiate by ample proof, we do not deny to Mr. Buckle's volumes the interest arising from vigorous and independent thinking, faithful study of details, and a strong, believing purpose. They are interesting and valuable contributions to our literature. But this is not on account of their purpose, but in spite of it; notwithstanding their doctrines, not because of them. The interest of these books, as of all good history, derives itself from their picturesque reproduction of life. Whatever of value belongs to Mr. Buckle's work is the same as that of the writings of Macaulay, Motley, and Carlyle. Whoever has the power of plunging like a diver into the spirit of another period, sympathizing with its tone, imbuing himself with its instincts, sharing its loves and hates, its faith and its skepticism, will write its history so as to interest us. For whoever will really show to us the breathing essence of any age, any state of society, or any course of human events, cannot fail of exciting that element of the soul which causes man everywhere to rejoice in meeting with man. He who will write the history of Arabians, Kelts, or Chinese, of the Middle Ages, the Norman Sea-kings, or the Roman Plebs, so that we can see ourselves beneath these diverse surroundings of race, country, and period, and see that these also are really MEN,--this writer instantly awakens our interest, whether he call himself poet, novelist, or historian. In all cases, the secret of success is to write so as to enable the reader to identify himself with the characters of another age. Great authors enable us to look at actions, not from without, but from within. When we read the historic plays of Shakespeare, or the historic novels of Scott, we are charmed by finding that kings and queens are, after all, our poor human fellow-creatures, sharing all our old, familiar struggles, pains, and joys. When we read that great historic masterpiece, the "French Revolution" of Carlyle, the magic touch of the artist introduces us into the heart of every character in the motley, shifting scene. We are the poor king escaping to Varennes under the dewy night and solemn stars. We are tumultuous Mirabeau, with his demonic but generous soul. We are devoted Charlotte Corday; we are the Gironde; we the poor prisoners of Terror, waiting in our prison for the slow morning to bring the inevitable doom. This is the one indispensable faculty for the historian; and this faculty Mr. Buckle so far possesses as to make his page a living one. It is true that his sympathy is intellectual rather than imaginative. It is not of the high order of Shakespeare, nor even of that of Carlyle. But, so far as it goes, it is a true faculty, and makes a true historian.

Yet we cannot but notice how the effectual working of this historic organ is interfered with by the dogmatic purpose of Mr. Buckle; and, on the other hand, how his theoretic aim is disturbed by the interest of his narrative. His history is always meant to be an argument. His narrations of events are never for their own sake, but always to prove some thesis. There is, therefore, no consecutive narrative, no progress of events, no sustained interest. These volumes are episodes, put together we cannot well say how, or why. In the seventh chapter of the first volume we have a graphic description of the Court life in England in the days of Charles II., James II., William, and the Georges, in connection with the condition of the Church and clergy. From this we are taken, in the next chapter, to France, and to similar relations between Henry IV., Louis XIII., Richelieu, and the French Catholics and Protestants. We then are brought back to England, to consider the protective system there; and once more we return to France, to investigate its operation in that country. Afterward we have an essay on "The State of Historical Literature in France from the End of the Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century," followed by another essay on the "Proximate Causes of the French Revolution." Many very well finished biographic portraits are given us in these chapters. There are excellent sketches of Burke, Voltaire, Richelieu, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Bichat, in the first volume; and of Adam Smith, Reid, Black, Leslie, Hutton, Cullen, Hunter, in the second. These numerous biographic sketches, which are often accompanied with good literary notices of the writings of these authors, are very ably written; but it is curious to remember, while reading them, that Mr. Buckle thinks that, as history advances, it has less and less to do with biography.