measures injured what they were believed to be benefiting. This remarkable discovery in favour of general freedom put a fresh weapon into the hands of the democratic party; whose strength was still further increased by the unrivalled eloquence with which Rousseau assailed the existing fabric. Precisely the same tendency was exhibited in the extraordinary impulse given to every branch of physical science, which familiarised men with ideas of progress, and brought them into collision with the stationary and conservative ideas natural to government. The discoveries made respecting the external world, encouraged a restlessness and excitement of mind hostile to the spirit of routine, and therefore full of danger for the institutions only recommended by their antiquity. This eagerness for physical knowledge also effected a change in education; and the ancient languages being neglected, another link was severed which connected the present with the past. The church, the legitimate protector of old opinions, was unable to resist the passion for novelty, because she was weakened by treason in her own camp. For, by this time, Calvinism had spread so much among the French clergy, as to break them into two hostile parties, and render it impossible to rally them against their common foe. The growth of this heresy was also important, because Calvinism being essentially democratic, a revolutionary spirit appeared even in the ecclesiastical profession, so that the feud in the church was accompanied by another feud between the government and the church. These were the leading symptoms of that vast movement which culminated in the French Revolution; and all of them indicated a state of society so anarchical and so thoroughly disorganised, as to make it certain that some great catastrophe was impending. At length, and when every thing was ready for explosion, the news of the American Rebellion fell like a spark on the inflammatory mass, and ignited a flame which never ceased its ravages until it had destroyed all that Frenchmen once held dear, and had left for the instruction of mankind an awful

lesson of the crimes into which long-continued oppression may hurry a generous and long-suffering people.

The Three Great Movers of Society.

vancing, now receding, there is amidst its endless fluctuations one thing, and one alone, which endures for ever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralised by subsequent generations, absolved by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. All these have their different measures and different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. They pass away like a dream; they are as the fabric of a vision which leaves not a rack behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain; it is to them we owe all that we now have: they are for all ages and all times; never young and never old, they bear the seeds of their own life; they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; they are essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive, they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

The writings of MR CARLYLE are so various, that he may be characterised as historian, biographer, translator, moralist, or satirist. His greatest and most splendid successes, however, have been won in the departments of biography and history. The chief interest and charm of his works consist in the individual portraits they contain and the strong personal sympathies or antipathies they describe. He has a clear and penetrating insight into human nature; he notes every fact and circumstance that can elucidate character, and sionate earnestness till he reproduces the indihaving selected his subject, he works with pasvidual or scene before the reader, exact in outline according to his preconceived notion, and with marvellous force and vividness of colouring. Even as a landscape-painter-a character he by no means affects-Mr Carlyle has rarely been surpassed. A Scotch shipping town, an English fen, a wild mountain solitude, or a Welsh valley, is depicted by him in a few words with the distinctness and reality of a photograph.

In a great and comprehensive view, the changes in every civilised people are, in their aggregate, dependent on three things: first, on the amount of knowledge possessed by their ablest men; secondly, on the direction which that knowledge takes-that is to say, the sort of subjects to which it refers; thirdly, and above all, on the extent to which the knowledge is diffused, and' the freedom with which it pervades all classes of society. Mr Carlyle is a native of the south of Scotland These are the three great movers of every civilised-born December 4, 1795, in the village of Ecclecountry; and although their operation is frequently disturbed by the vices or the virtues of powerful individuals, such moral feelings correct each other, and the average of long periods remains unaffected. Owing to causes of which we are ignorant, the moral qualities do, no doubt, constantly vary, so that in one man, or perhaps even in one generation, there will be an excess of good intentions, in another an excess of bad ones. But we have no reason to think that any permanent change has been effected in the proportion which those who naturally possess good intentions bear to those in whom bad ones seem to be inherent. In what may be called the innate and original morals of mankind, there is, so far as we

are aware, no progress.

The desolation of countries and the slaughter of men are losses which never fail to be repaired, and at the distance of a few centuries every vestige of them is effaced. The gigantic crimes of Alexander or Napoleon become after a time void of effect, and the affairs of the world return to their former level. This is the ebb and flow of history-the perpetual flux to which the laws of our nature are subject. Above all this there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now ad90

fechan, in Annandale-a fine pastoral district, famous in Border story, and rich in ancient castles and Roman remains. His father, a farmer, is spoken of as a man of great moral worth and sagacity; his mother as affectionate, pious, and more than ordinarily intelligent; and thus, accepting his own theory that the history of a man's childhood is the description of his parents and environment,' Mr Carlyle entered upon the mystery of life' under happy and enviable circumstances. As a school-boy, he became acquainted with Edward Irving, the once celebrated preacher, whom he has commemorated as a man of the noblest nature.* From the grammar-school

The first time I saw Irving was six-and-twenty years ago [1809], in his native town, Annan. He was fresh from Edinburgh, with college prizes, high character, and promise: he had come to see our schoolmaster, who had also been his. We heard of famed professors, of high matters classical, mathematical-a whole wonderland of knowledge: nothing but joy, health, hopeThe last time I saw him was three months ago, in London. fulness without end looked out from the blooming young man. Friendliness still beamed in his eyes, but now from amid unquiet

593

true emphasis. There is a congruity in their proceedings which one loves to contemplate: he who would write heroic poems, should make his whole life a heroic poem.

of Annan, Carlyle went to Edinburgh, and studied at the university for the church; but before he had completed his academical course, his views changed. He had excelled in mathematics; and afterwards, for about four years, he was a teacher of mathematics-first in Annan, and afterwards in In 1825, marriage lessened the anxieties atKirkcaldy, Fifeshire, where Edward Irving also tendant on a literary life, while it added permaresided as a teacher. In 1818 he proceeded to nently to Mr Carlyle's happiness. The lady to Edinburgh, where he had the range of the Uni- whom he was united was a lineal descendant of versity Library, and where he wrote a number of John Knox-Miss Jane Welsh, daughter of Dr short biographies and other articles for the Edin-Welsh, Haddington. Mrs Carlyle had a small burgh Encyclopædia, conducted by Brewster. In property, Craigenputtoch, in Dumfriesshire, to 1821 he became tutor to Mr Charles Buller, which, after about three years' residence in Edinwhose honourable public career was prematurely burgh, the lady and her husband retired. terminated by his death, in his forty-second year, Edinburgh, Carlyle had published four volumes of in 1848. His light airy brilliancy,' said Carlyle, Specimens of German Romance (1827), and written 'has suddenly become solemn, fixed in the earnest for the Edinburgh Review essays on Jean Paul and German Literature. His Dumfriesshire stillness of eternity.' retreat he has described in a letter to Goethe:

Mr Carlyle in 1823 contributed to the London Magazine in monthly portions his Life of Schiller, which he enlarged and published in a separate form in 1825. He was also engaged in translating Legendre's Geometry, to which he prefixed an essay on Proportion; and in the same busy year (1824) he translated the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe. Mr Carlyle's translation appeared without his name. Its merits were too palpable to be overlooked, though some critics objected to the strong infusion of German phraseology which the translator had imported into his English version. This never left Mr Carlyle even in his original works; but the Life of Schiller has none of the peculiarity. How finely, for example, does the biographer expatiate on that literary life which he had now fairly adopted:

Men of Genius.

Among these men are to be found the brightest specimens and the chief benefactors of mankind. It is they that keep awake the finer parts of our souls; that give us better aims than power or pleasure, and withstand the total sovereignty of Mammon in this earth. They are the vanguard in the march of mind; the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and the activity of their happier brethren. Pity that, from all their conquests, so rich in benefit to others, themselves should reap so little! But it is vain to murmur. They are volunteers in this cause; they weighed the charms of it against the perils; and they must abide the results of their decision, as all must. The hardships of the course they follow are formidable, but not all inevitable; and to such as pursue it rightly, it is not without its great rewards. If an author's life is more agitated and more painful than that of others, it may also be made more spirit-stirring and exalted: fortune may render him unhappy, it is only himself that can make him despicable. The history of genius has, in fact, its bright side as well as its dark. And if it is distressing to survey the misery, and what is worse, the debasement, of so many gifted men, it is doubly cheering, on the other hand, to reflect on the few who, amid the temptations and sorrows to which life in all its provinces, and most in theirs, is liable, have travelled through it in calm and virtuous majesty, and are now hallowed in our memories not less for their conduct than their writings. Such men are the flower of this lower world: to such alone can the epithet of great be applied with its

fire; his face was flaccid, wasted, unsound; hoary as with extreme age: he was trembling over the brink of the grave. Adieu; thou first friend-adieu while this confused twilight of existence lasts! Might we meet where twilight has become day !'-CARLYLE'S Miscellanies.

Picture of a Retired, Happy Literary Life.

In

CRAIGENPUTTOCH, 25th September 1828. You inquire with such warm interest respecting our present abode and occupations, that I am obliged to say a few words about both, while there is still room left. Dumfries is a pleasant town, containing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and to be considered the centre of the trade and judicial system of a district which posity. Our residence is not in the town itself, but fifteen sesses some importance in the sphere of Scottish activmiles to the north-west of it, among the granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through Galloway, almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock, our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly inclosed and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough-woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat, substantial dwelling; here, in the absence of a professional or other office, we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the roses and flowers of our garden; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us everywhere, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak nerves. This daily exercise, to which I am much devoted, is my only recreation; for this nook of ours is the loneliest in Britain-six miles removed from any one likely to visit me. Here Rousseau would have been as happy as on his island of St Pierre. My town friends, indeed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forebode me no good result. But I came hither solely with the design to simplify my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own ; here we can live, write, and think, as best pleases ourselves, even though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature. Nor is the solitude of such great importance; for a stage-coach takes us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our British Weimar. And have I not, too, at this moment, piled upon the table of my little library, a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and English journals and periodi cals-whatever may be their worth? Of antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where Agricola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. must let time work. But whither am I wandering? Let me confess to you, I am uncertain about my future literary activity, and would gladly learn your opinion

And so one

respecting it; at least pray write to me again, and speedily, that I may ever feel myself united to you.... The only piece of any importance that I have written since I came here is an Essay on Burns. Perhaps you never heard of him, and yet he is a man of the most decided genius; but born in the lowest rank of peasant life, and through the entanglements of his peculiar position, was at length mournfully wrecked, so that what he effected is comparatively unimportant. He died in the middle of his career, in the year 1796. We English, especially we Scotch, love Burns more than any poet that lived for centuries. I have often been struck by the fact that he was born a few months before Schiller, in the year 1759, and that neither of them ever heard the other's name. They shone like stars in opposite hemispheres, or, if you will, the thick mist of earth intercepted their reciprocal light.

in Burns.

peculiarly northern. That earnestness,' says Mr Hannay, 'that grim humour-that queer, halfsarcastic, half-sympathetic fun-is quite Scotch. It appears in Knox and Buchanan, and it appears fellow of Carlyle's told me that his favourite poem I was not surprised when a schoolas a boy was Death and Dr Hornbook. And if I were asked to explain this originality, I should say that he was a Covenanter coming in the wake of the eighteenth century and the transcendental philosophy. He has gone into the hills against "shams," as they did against Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives in a quieter age and in a literary position. So he can give play to the humour which existed in them as well, and he overflows with a range of reading and speculation to which they were necessarily strangers.' But at In this country residence Mr Carlyle wrote least one-half the originality here sketched, style papers for the Foreign Review, and his Sartor as well as sentiment, must be placed to the Resartus, which, after being rejected by several account of German studies. In 1837 appeared publishers, appeared in Fraser's Magazine, The French Revolution, a History, by Thomas 1833-34. The book might well have puzzled Carlyle. This is the ablest of all the author's the book-tasters' who decide for publishers on works, and is indeed one of the most remarkable works submitted to them in manuscript. Sartor books of the age. The first perusal of it forms a professes to be a review of a German treatise on sort of era in a man's life, and fixes for ever in his dress, and the hero, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, is memory the ghastly panorama of the Revolution, made to illustrate by his life and character the its scenes and actors. In 1838 Mr Carlyle collected transcendental philosophy of Fichte, adopted by his contributions to the Reviews, and published Mr Carlyle, which is thus explained: That all them under the title of Miscellanies, extending to things which we see or work with in this earth, five volumes. The biographical portion of these especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a volumes-essays on Voltaire, Mirabeau, Johnson kind of vesture or sensuous appearance: that and Boswell, Burns, Sir Walter Scott, &c.—is adunder all these lies, as the essence of them, what mirably executed. They are compact, complete, he calls the "Divine Idea of the World;" this and at once highly picturesque and suggestive. The is the reality which lies at the bottom of all character and history of Burns he has drawn with appearance. To the mass of men no such divine a degree of insight, true wisdom, and pathos not idea is recognisable in the world; they live surpassed in any biographical or critical producmerely, says Fichte, among the superficialities, tion of the present century. Mr Thackeray's practicalities, and shows of the world, not dream- essay on Swift resembles it in power, but it is ing that there is anything divine under them.'- more of a sketch. The next two appearances of (Hero Worship.) Mr Carlyle works out this theory Mr Carlyle were political, and on this ground he -the clothes-philosophy-and finds the world seems shorn of his strength. Chartism, 1839, and false and hollow, our institutions mere worn-out Past and Present, 1843, contain many weighty rags or disguises, and that our only safety lies in truths and shrewd observations, directed against flying from falsehood to truth, and becoming in all shams, cant, formulas, speciosities, &c.; but harmony with the 'divine idea.' There is much when we look for a remedy for existing evils, and fanciful, grotesque description in Sartor, but also ask how we are to replace the forms and institudeep thought and beautiful imagery. The hearty tions which Mr Carlyle would have extinguished, love of truth seems to constitute the germ of Mr we find little to guide us in our author's prelecCarlyle's philosophy, as Milton said it was the tions. The only tangible measures he proposes foundation of eloquence. And with this he unites are education and emigration, with a strict enthe' gospel of work,' duty and obedience. 'Labo-forcement of the penal laws. We would earnestly rare est orare-work is worship.' In 1834, Mr Carlyle left the 'ever-silent whinstones of Nithsdale' for a suburb of London-a house in the ' remnant of genuine old Dutch-looking Chelsea' -the now famous No. 5 Cheyne Row, in which he still resides. In 1837 he delivered lectures on German Literature in Willis's Rooms; and in the following year another course in Edward Street, Portman Square, on the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture. Two other courses of lectures-one on the Revolutions of Modern Europe, 1839, and the other on Heroes and Hero Worship, 1840—added to the popular- | ity of Mr Carlyle. It appeared, said Leigh Hunt, ' as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own intense reflections and experience.' This vein of Puritanism running through the speculations of the lecturer and moral censor, has been claimed as

desire to extend still more the benefits of education; but when Mr Carlyle vituperates the present age in comparison with the past, he should recollect how much has been done of late years to promote the instruction of the people. The next work of our author was a special service to history and to the memory of one of England's historical worthies. His collection of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations, two volumes, 1845, is a good work well done. "The authentic utterances of the man Oliver himself,' he says, 'I have gathered them from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires where they lay buried; I have washed or endeavoured to wash them clean from foreign stupidities-such a job of buck-washing as I do not long to repeat-and the world shall now see them in their own shape.' The world was thankful for the service, and the book, though large and