The last issue of
The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
The December issue is the shortest of the twelve, at only sixty pages. A title page and a table of contents, covering all twelve issues and putting each work into one of four categories — essays, tales, poems, and notices of books — were also included in this issue, adding two leaves and making for a complete forme during printing. The title page and table of contents were printed between pages 770 and 771, and that is where they are placed in this electronic edition. Most print copies available collect all twelve issues together, with the covers and advertisements removed and with the title page and table of contents moved to the front.
Akin to the pride men often take in their conceits and foibles, to the disparagement of their real worth, is the strange fatality by which many of our best writers have
longed after achievements most alien to their genius; so that we may say of none more emphatically than of the race of authors, happy are they who at once know their vocation and are enabled to
follow it. Sometimes fortunate chance has restricted their performance to that work of which they are truly masters, and we have been saved from *
VOL. I. 3 C
full of love notes”—“
There went an incense through the land one night”—“
O Lila, round our early love”—the war chorus of the Milanese, “
Who would drone on in a dull world like this”—and the warbling of the children sporting by the doorway, are fine enough to make the whole book worth reading. But there is nowhere action, variety, or character: where alone there is any effort towards dramatic effect, in the scene between Francisca and the Monk, it is a confessed failure.
Four years passed before the appearance of “with all the other parts omitted. Strong prepossession in his favour at once gave a certain currency to Mr. Dobell’s new volume, but it soon received a very
general sentence of condemnation. Many, following the guidance of the author’s friends, or led by that malicious chance which invariably directs a stray reader to the very worst
passages, got hold of the abominable pictures of war and pestilence, and, naturally enough, shut the book; others fell asleep in the middle of some speech, and forgot where to begin again; many
more valiantly read and read, and “found no end in wondering mazes lost.
” Yet, with all its want of taste, nay more, of common sense, ““The years they come and the years they go,” “If thou wouldst sleep, my babe,” “That I might die and be at rest, O
God!” “In the spring twilight,”
with many others; and cannot deny the imagination of true genius to the author of “is nothing, and means nothing other than has been told, far more plainly and therefore far better, long ago. The idea from which the plot
takes its rise—the desire to witness death in order to paint it,
is hideously unnatural, and almost justifies “Words, Words, Words!
” so true is it in tragedy,
Much of the meditation here is fantastic rather than profound: even the most passionate parts are often mere spasms. Balder rages like the red sparkling iron; he has no idea of the white heat
that glows in silence. We close the book with a feeling of fatigue, and think we would rather have some
“Remember politics is not poetry?
” Books like this, and the thoughts they suggest, do us
good, when we think too much of wars as games of chess, and the men who fight in them as pawns. They help us to remember that in all their checkered fortune they are indeed our fellows, linked to
the
What an ill-advised union of the sacred and the ludicrous have we here! Or this in the Gaberlunzie, while the hens cackle a!
blethrin grouse (!) the peewit fas and squeals.”
Our author is fond of refrains, and sometimes manages them artistically, and sometimes does not. This applies to his former books, but more especially to the volume before us; where, if there
are some beautiful verses that fall upon the ear ever and anon like the cadence of sweet bells, there are instances, too abundant, of repetitions without rhyme or reason, which entirely mar the
poems in which they occur. We conceive the true principle of a refrain is, that it be something: in itself both emphatic and musical, and which has a definite relation throughout, a mellowing or
an arousing influence on the whole poem. Wherever they have been adjudged successful, from the very earliest instances down to I love but you alone,
” in the “wolds” and “farewells” is appalling. There are others, which it is unnecessary to particularize, open to the same objection.
“How’s my boy?” gives one the painful impression of being meant to be particularly fine;—painful, for we confess never to have heard it read without
that
αναριθμον
γελασμα
which is the fit corrective of whatever is so unnatural and constrained. It is just such a parody
as Swift might have penned, in his sourest mood, to make mockery of the most holy affliction. We cannot attribute any such design to Mr. Dobell; but his insight is strangely at fault if he does
not know that affection is the first, and not the last, to catch at the approach of evil tidings;—the foremost to realize the full import of calamity. In some instances there is a
heaping up of words without adequate purpose, poems in fact which need not have been written. “
In nothing has our recent poetry and romance made a greater advance, as compared with that of the last generation, than in the truer and better light in which it represents all the gentler
features of humanity: most especially in the far higher position it assigns to woman and her influence. When we compare Tennyson with Dryden, in this light, or the “his brave brither fell,”
for she has a comfort, amid them all, in thoughts of his glory and “
“
Something in the “He loves and rides
away.
” Listen to this cadence in the address of the deserted one to her infant.
The luxuriant image of a lady swimming, in another stanza, almost makes us think of Spenser’s bathing nymphs.
And be all the birds to my ear.
The repetition here never palls, it is the lingering of so beautiful a note. The opening lines of “
The
We are tempted to ejaculate with that classic critic Jeames Yellowplush,
Again what is meant by “haze in haze pervolving as in glad release,
” or the whole passage about “the dry unjewelled
cup
” at the commencement of the same poem?—There is nothing that our author needs to bear more in mind than the necessity of plain speaking. It is hyper-criticism to
insist on every figure and phrase being self-contained; still, all good general effect comes out of lines in which the ordinary mass of thinking readers can at least see some sort of meaning. But
we had done with cavilling. “
Though there is much true portraiture in this volume, it partakes largely of the general subjective tendency of modern imagination; i.e., that which directs itself to express the opinions,
passions, and perplexities of the writer. Self-relinquishment has become rare in our lyrics: there is no trace of it in those pretended plays of which we have spoken; hence, in their perception of
this decay of the Drama, many are apt to doubt of the possibility of its restoration. But it has not yet quite died from amongst us. There are links remaining to connect the last fifty years with
more prolific periods. Coleridge and
Mr. MacDonald has divided his poem into five parts, having a very distant affinity to the five acts of the drop curtain, but each evolving some new phase, in the outward as in the spiritual history of his hero, and each prefaced by a sonnet, which is meant to serve as a sort of prelude or overture, giving as it were the moral of the successive chapters of life. There is a fine repose about them all; the first and third especially are wise and beautiful, but their connection with the main body of the work is hardly close enough.
The story is soon told. Julian, an Italian Count, loves Lilia, the daughter
Just such an one as would coil his thoughts too closely round his heart—a riddle hard to read; whose “Within and Without” would be apt to run far apart,
only to find their reconcilement, at length, in the blue zenith where contradiction is solved and romance and reality meet. So, in this first part, he lives with the monks, but apart from them;
their ways are not as his ways, nor is their religion, of symbols and formula, a thing to which he can square his dim majestic striving after communion with the Inscrutable. As if his eyes did pull his shoulders down,
This was not a confession that could well adapt itself to “our Holy Faith;”—it transcends the comprehension of the friendly monk who visits his cell.
“A good man,
” says Julian,
How many are there who pass through life unconscious of that “stony eye,” thinking they have solved the secrets of the universe because they have never approached to
an understanding of their perplexity. The mass, And seen the sphinx’s stony eye fixed on him.”
ut semper
, are wroth that he takes airs to himself and despises them—he is an Atheist at least, he hath a Devil surely.
His own account of this is rather different:
Visions of the past and future, beckonings of the outer world, come daily more and more to summon him away; he feels that cloisters “are not God’s nurseries
for his children.”
His friend Robert, with sore misgiving, connives at his escape; he goes “on into the dark,” companioned with his own glorious aspirations, that wondrous
as he seeks the God, who retires before him from peak to peak of inaccessibility. It is pleasant, in a play of so serious a cast, to find a description so graphic as that given here of
the old monks and their life. The picture of Stephen and his charitable delight in what he believes to be an unpardonable sin—“Well, one comfort is, it’s
damnation and no reprieve
”—shows that the author is not altogether devoid of humour. The good brothers are of the comfortable sort. The monastery is evidently one
of those which, if we can trust Mr. Froude, would have stood but
Leaving that “house of foolishness
,” Julian is shaken from his imperial dream by the cry of wrong; for he is to find that unfolding of the ideal he longs
for, as we all must, by contact with the real. There is not much in the rescue from “Nembroni,” except the flash of native ferocity that it calls forth. The action is vivid,
perhaps too much so. There is an abruptness, in some passages here, followed by over refinement in others: as Lilia’s dream of heaven, too serene for the hours following such intense
agitation, which indicates a slight want of art; but this soon passes, and we are interested in the scruples she feels regarding the violation of his monkish vows. The appeal of events rather than
argument settles the difficulty. Stephen has raised a hue-and-cry against them, and they escape together from a sudden pursuit. They row down a river with muffled oars, while Julian murmurs:
And then the part ends with three verses, rivalling in their tuneful sweetness, the Bugle song. Here are two of them:
It is, however, in the succeeding portion of the volume that the art of the dramatist is most eminent. The conception on which the whole action is grounded is that of two natures, each with
a greatness of its own, drawn towards each other by real sympathy, and yet estranged by a certain outward contrast. Hence doubt and jealousy, and its throng of cares; for the graceful ardent Lilia
cannot understand the love hidden far in Julian’s deep heart, while he grows daily more mistrustful of her confidence, and retires ever farther, in his communings, alone. This is a
subtle plot, which might have been mismanaged in a hundred ways. Mr. MacDonald has steered on the difficult course with the fidelity of the true poet’s instinct. Grant such a strange
union of dispositions, and, with one exception to be noticed, there is nothing unnatural in the evolution of the issue. Julian is hard to convince from the first:
Suspicion is the disease of self-consciousness, and again and again, with memories of the cloister, the old doubt comes up before him:
Foundation enough for a world of unhappiness, even if the calamities and privation of their mutual lot did not point the sting:
And again,
But he is wrong: Lilia thinks little of this, her complaint is only that his affection has become a duty; that he has grown cold as the glacier on the mountains
The lines in which, shortly after, she contrasts their natures, exhibit at once the apparent disparity between them, and two sorts of beauty for which the poem is distinguished.
Thus can two minds live on, looking daily into each other’s eyes for years, and yet, with a mysterious bar, more powerful than leagues of distance, compelling them to live
unknown, while the inner and the outer life remain irreconcilable. So Julian broods
So Lilia, still more wearily, toils on, looking at his deepening gloom, and seeing less and less beyond it,
“Oh take me, take me,
” to the last, “Kiss me harder, father, I am better now,
” she looks to him for shelter and
guidance. The whole intercourse between them is full of beauties. Among these, Julian’s version of the parable, and her prattle about it, is especially natural. His song about the
“little white Lily
” is a rare treasure for any child. The ramble by the graveyard too reminds us of those questions so early asked, which it takes the
searching of a lifetime to answer dimly.
There is perhaps something of a pretty conceit in the notion of the church growing out of the tombs, but this other allegory has a sense which stretches far. Lily has got a book of verses
in her hand, and cannot make out what it means. She peeps into it, holds it to her ear, rubs her hand over it, then puts her tongue on it—it is all of no use: but Julian, in his
deserted loneliness,
The author has shown considerable art in his management of the character of Lord Seaford. His words and thoughts—his songs, containing some of the most musical lines in the
volume, and, above all, the energy of his remorse, at the end, indicate a nature in which luxury has fostered much of self-indulgence, without removing the germs of higher things. He appreciates
Lilia’s spiritual as well as her actual beauty, and extends to all her tastes and interests the fulness of his sympathy. No wonder if, in the loneliness of her real and fancied exile,
she finds a growing pleasure in his society, and, if in answer to his love, so different in the warmth of its expression from the outward coldness of her own poor home, signs of a new fondness
begin to appear. She feels herself strangely confused, and does not know the heart-homage by which she is guarded till it is suddenly aroused, at the very crisis of danger, by one of those chances
which sway the mind aright. It were out of place in a drama founded professedly on a perplexing contradiction to press the rules of ordinary probability, but we confess that the flight of Lilia,
which so suddenly intervenes, is hardly explained by our previous knowledge. The lines quoted above, intimating some such thought, are evidently thrown in to facilitate the issue: but this is not
enough. Revulsion, however strong, from her own momentary faithlessness, would hardly have induced her to abandon the two she loved most to certain perplexity, and the possibility of so dread a
misunderstanding. After this the rest follows naturally, and our interest throughout the remainder of the sad tragedy is concentrated on the various phases of Julian’s anguish. howl Lilia in his ear.
” But the
beauty is to see how this gradually subsides, in the triumph of an all-reconciling love, and his longing, by day and night, is to search her out and bring her back to his forgiveness. The child
left with him is chief among the influences which soften his anger and console his grief. Valiantly he goes on, fighting the good fight, till at last the great work is complete, in the triumph of
humility and faith, and love. He is to blame, he says, he should have descended from his heights and walked in the valley with her long ago:
and when Lily too leaves him, weak and weary, and alone, his one thought is, “I’ll seek for her, my wife, until I die.
” She meanwhile
yearns to return, as the prodigal of old:
But when the late letter comes it is only that it may rest in the grave in which the mighty outworn spirit has taken up its rest. It is time for him to be gone, and he departs in the hope
of a nobler journey than this earth’s one, though not before his face, in its last smile, has been transfigured by a knowledge of her stainlessness.
Such is a bare outline of a Drama which, for loftiness of thought and intensity of purpose, we have not often seen surpassed. Faint though this sketch be, we have left ourselves little
opportunity for illustrating the minor features of the poem. Best viewed as
Dumb Love.
Of thoughts that choked the passages of sound,
Hurrying forth without their pilot-words;
Of agony, as when a spirit seeks
In vain to hold communion with a man;
Supplication.
But think not thou by one wild bound to clear
The infinite ascensions, more and more,
Of starry stairs that must be climbed, before
Thou comest to the Father’s likeness near.”
The Old Law and the New.
Beauty Surviving.
Thy sorrow is the husk that doth unfold
A gorgeous June, for which thou needst not strive.”
Seaford Sings.
Landscape Painting.
Live Well.
To such perchance the poet’s voice is given
To tell the mighty tale to other worlds.
But the grandest passages are those in which the magnificence of thought and imagery runs on continuously. Let any one, who wishes to have a better guarantee for the inspiration of the
writer than we have given him, read the lines which open with
3rd G. Did no one stop him?Bern. Stop him? I’d as soonno from any man. I would
We cannot leave this book without recording our personal admiration of the exalted and pure theology which pervades it. The whole is a grand sermon on the abundantly sustaining power of
confidence in one Omnipotent. Listen once more to Julian’s summary of life:
is, the living awful Truth.”
We have not said that this is a perfect poem; it is the high promise of one who has apparently not yet reached the fulness of his powers, from whom we hope for future dramas, as exalted and
yet more real; with less of monologue and more of action. There is an over refinement in the images here and there, which sometimes approaches to a conceit; see pearly and opal towe cannot order speech by reason of darkness,
”
as we utter our inarticulate hopes—each groping like a child:
Such dealing with the transcendent may indeed be defended by precedent of the two greatest names of two great nations. Dante, however, as yet stands alone in that dream which so grandly
sums up the theology of those chaotic middle ages, and the latter part of the Faust, which will live to see the end of all its imitators, is no picture of actual life, but a succession of
marvellous and magnificent phantasies. It is
The more of the sustaining spirit of the Eternal we can realize, in the affairs of common life, the better. The more the dramatist can show how the men and women who daily walk the earth,
live and move and have their being in the midst of immensity, the worthier is he of his high calling. But, be it as reverent as it may, the attempt to describe the inscrutable has ever an air of
presumption whether in painter or poet. Then it is that words seem feeble, in the impotency to express the feeling of infinity in the hearts of the lowliest. These are “things
too wonderful for us, which we know not,
” to be limned neither by mortal pencil nor mortal pen, which eye hath not seen nor ear heard; for which we must labour on, and wait
till the awful veil is rent in twain, and in the hour of revelation
I suppose my birth was somewhat after the birth of Sir Percival of Galles, for I never saw my father, and my mother brought me up quaintly; not like a poor man’s
son, though, indeed, we had little money, and lived in a lone place: it was on a bit of waste land near a river; moist, and without trees; on the drier parts of it folks had built
cottages—see, I can count them on my fingers—six cottages, of which ours was one.
Likewise, there was a little chapel, with a yew tree and graves in the church-yard—graves—yes, a great many graves, more than in the yards of many Minsters I have seen, because people fought a battle once near us, and buried many bodies in deep pits, to the east of the chapel; but this was before I was born.
I have talked to old knights since who fought in that battle, and who told me that it was all about an old lady that they fought; indeed, this lady, who was a queen, was afterwards, by her own wish, buried in the aforesaid chapel in a most fair tomb; her image was of latoun gilt, and with a colour on it; her hands and face were of silver, and her hair, gilded and most curiously wrought, flowed down from her head over the marble.
It was a strange thing to see that gold and brass and marble inside that rough chapel which stood on the marshy common, near the river.
Now, every St. Peter’s day, when the sun was at its hottest, in the mid-summer noontide, my mother (though
And what she worked at was two wings, wrought in gold, on a blue ground.
And as for what she sung, I could never understand it, though I know now it was not in Latin.
And she used to charge me straightly never to let any man into the house on St. Peter’s day; therefore, I and our dog, which was a great old bloodhound, always kept the door together.
But one St. Peter’s day, when I was nearly twenty, I sat in the house watching the door with the bloodhound, and I was sleepy, because of the shut-up heat and my
mother’s singing, so I began to nod, and at last, though the dog often shook me by the hair to keep me awake, went fast asleep, and began to dream a foolish dream without hearing, as
men sometimes do: for I thought that my mother and I were walking to mass through the snow on a Christmas day, but my mother carried a live goose in her hand, holding it by the neck, instead of
her rosary, and that I went along by her side, not walking, but turning somersaults like a mountebank, my head never touching the ground; when we got to the chapel-door, the old priest met us, and
said to my mother, “Why dame alive, your head is turned green! Ah! never mind, I VOL. I. 3 D
Then mass begun, but in the midst of it, the priest said out loud, “Oh I forgot,” and turning round to us began to wag his grey head and white beard, throwing his head right back, and sinking his chin on his breast alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each other, till the priest said, “Peter! it’s dragon-time now,” whereat the roof flew off, and a great yellow dragon came down on the chapel-floor with a flop, and danced about clumsily, wriggling his fat tail, and saying to a sort of tune, “O the Devil, the Devil, the Devil, O the Devil,” so I went up to him, and put my hand on his breast, meaning to slay him, and so awoke, and found myself standing up with my hand on the breast of an armed knight; the door lay flat on the ground, and under it lay Hector, our dog, whining and dying.
For eight hours I had been asleep; on awaking, the blood rushed up into my face, I heard my mother’s low mysterious song behind me, and knew not what harm might happen to her and me, if that knight’s coming made her cease in it; so I struck him with my left hand, where his face was bare under his mail-coif, and getting my sword in my right, drove its point under his hawberk, so that it came out behind, and he fell, turned over on his face, and died.
Then, because my mother still went on working and singing, I said no word, but let him lie there, and put the door up again, and found Hector dead.
I then sat down again and polished my sword with a piece of leather after I had wiped the blood from it; and in an hour my mother arose from her work, and raising me from where I was
sitting, kissed my brow, saying, I die.”
So I said, “Who is he, mother? he seems to be some Lord; am I a Lord then?”
“A King, if the people will but know it,” she said.
Then she knelt down by the dead body, turned it round again, so that it lay face uppermost, as before, then said:
“And so it has all come to this, has it? To think that you should run on my son’s sword-point at last, after all the wrong you have done me and mine; now must I work carefully, least when you are dead you should still do me harm, for that you are a King—Lionel!”
“Yea, Mother.”
“Come here and see; this is what I have wrought these many Peter’s days by day, and often other times by night.”
“It is a surcoat, Mother; for me?”
“Yea, but take a spade, and come into the wood.”
So we went, and my mother gazed about her for a while as if she were looking for something, but then suddenly went forward with her eyes on the ground, and she said to me:
“Is it not strange, that I who know the very place I am going to take you to, as well as our own garden, should have a sudden fear come over me that I should not find it after all; though for these nineteen years I have watched the trees change and change all about it—ah! here, stop now.”
We stopped before a great oak; a beech tree was behind us—she said, “Dig, Lionel, hereabouts.”
So I dug and for an hour found nothing but beech roots, while my mother seemed as if she were going mad, sometimes running about muttering to herself, sometimes stooping into the
Clink just then from my spade against iron; my mother screamed, and I dug with all my might for another hour, and then beheld a chest of heavy wood bound with iron ready to be heaved out of the hole; “Now Lionel weigh it out—hard for your life!”
And with some trouble I got the chest out; she gave me a key, I unlocked the chest, and took out another wrapped in lead, which also I unlocked with a silver key that my mother gave me, and behold therein lay armour—mail for the whole body, made of very small rings wrought most wonderfully, for every ring was fashioned like a serpent, and though they were so small yet could you see their scales and their eyes, and of some even the forked tongue was on it, and lay on the rivet, and the rings were gilded here and there into patterns and flowers so that the gleam of it was most glorious.—And the mail coif was all gilded and had red and blue stones at the rivets; and the tilting helms (inside which the mail lay when I saw it first) was gilded also, and had flowers pricked out on it; and the chain of it was silver, and the crest was two gold wings. And there was a shield of blue set with red stones, which had two gold wings for a cognizance; and the hilt of the sword was gold, with angels wrought in green and blue all up it, and the eyes in their wings were of pearls and red stones, and the sheath was of silver with green flowers on it.
Now when I saw this armour and understood that my mother would have me put it on, and ride out without fear, leaving her alone, I cast myself down on the grass so that I might not see its
beauty (for it made
But my mother wept softly above me, till I arose with a great shudder of delight and drew the edges of the hawberk over my cheek, I liked so to feel the rings slipping, slipping, till they fell off altogether; then I said:
“O Lord God that made the world, if I might only die in this armour!”
Then my mother helped me to put it on, and I felt strange and new in it, and yet I had neither lance nor horse.
So when we reached the cottage again she said: “See now, Lionel, you must take this knight’s horse and his lance, and ride away, or else the people will come here to kill another king; and when you are gone, you will never see me any more in life.”
I wept thereat, but she said:
“Nay, but see here,”
And taking the dead knight’s lance from among the garden lilies, she rent from it the pennon (which had a sword on a red ground for bearing), and cast it carelessly on the ground, then she bound about it a pennon with my bearing, gold wings on a blue ground; she bid me bear the Knight’s body, all armed as he was, to put on him his helm and lay him on the floor at her bed’s foot, also to break his sword and cast it on our hearth-stone; all which things I did.
Afterwards she put the surcoat on me, and then lying down in her gorgeous raiment on her bed, she spread her arms out in the form of a cross, shut her eyes, and said:
“Kiss me, Lionel, for I am tired.”
And after I had kissed her she died.
And I mounted my dead foe’s horse and rode away; neither did I ever know what wrong that was which he had done me, not while I was in the body at least.
And do not blame me for not burying my mother; I left her there because, though she did not say so to me, yet I knew the thoughts of her heart, and that the thing she had wished so earnestly for these years, and years, and years, had been but to lie dead with him lying dead close to her.
So I rode all that night for I could not stop, because of the thoughts that were in me, and, stopping at this place and that, in three days came to the city.
And there the King held his court with great pomp.
And so I went to the palace, and asked to see the King; whereupon they brought me into the great hall where he was with all his knights, and my heart swelled within me to think that I too was a King.
So I prayed him to make me a knight, and he spake graciously and asked me my name; so when I had told it him, and said that I was a king’s son, he pondered, not knowing what to do, for I could not tell him whose son I was.
Whereupon one of the knights came near me and shaded his eyes with his hand as one does in a bright sun, meaning to mock at me for my shining armour, and he drew nearer and nearer till his long stiff beard just touched me, and then I smote him on the face, and he fell on the floor.
So the king being in a rage, roared out from the door, “Slay him!” but I put my shield before me and drew my sword, and the old women drew together aside and whispered fearfully, and while some of the knights took spears and stood about me, others got their armour on.
And as we stood thus we heard a horn blow, and then an armed knight came into the hall and drew near to the King; and one of the maidens behind me, came and laid her hand on my shoulder; so I turned and saw that she was very fair, and then I was glad, but she whispered to me:
“Sir Squire for a love I have for your face and gold armour, I will give you good counsel; go presently to the King and say to him: ‘in the name of Alys des roses and Sir Guy le bon amant I pray you three boons,’—do this, and you will be alive, and a knight by to-morrow, otherwise I think hardly the one or the other.”
“The Lord reward you damoyzel,” I said. Then I saw that the King had left talking with that knight and was just going to stand up and say something out loud, so I went quickly and called out with a loud voice:
“O King Gilbert of the rose-land, I, Lionel of the golden wings, pray of you three boons in the name of Alys des roses and Sir Guy le bon amant.”
Then the King gnashed his teeth because he had promised if ever his daughter Alys des roses came back safe again, he would on that day grant any three boons to the first man who asked them, even if he were his greatest foe. He said, “Well, then, take them, what are they?”
“First, my life; then, that you should make me a knight; and thirdly, that you should take me into your service.”
He said, “I will do this, and moreover, I forgive you freely if you will be my true man.”
Then we heard shouting arise through all the city because they were bringing the Lady Alys from the ship up to the palace, and the people came to the windows, and the houses were hung with cloths and banners of silk and gold, that swung down right from the eaves to the ground; likewise the bells all rang: and within a while they entered the palace, and the trumpets rang and men shouted, so that my head whirled; and they entered the hall, and the King went down from the dais to meet them.
Now a band of knights and of damoyzels went before and behind, and in the midst Sir Guy led the Lady
And I indeed noted the first band of knights and damoyzels well, and wondered at the noble presence of the knights, and was filled with joy when I beheld the maids, because of their great beauty; the second band I did not see, for when they passed I was leaning back against the wall, wishing to die with my hands before my face.
But when I could see, she was hanging about her father’s neck, weeping, and she never left him all that night, but held his hand in feast and dance, and even when I was made knight, while the king with his right hand laid his sword over my shoulder, she held his left hand and was close to me.
And the next day they held a grand tourney, that I might be proven; and I had never fought with knights before, yet I did not doubt. And Alys sat under a green canopy, that she might give the degree to the best knight, and by her sat the good knight Sir Guy, in a long robe, for he did not mean to joust that day; and indeed at first none but young knights jousted, for they thought that I should not do much.
But I, looking up to the green canopy, overthrew so many of them, that the elder knights began to arm, and I grew most joyful as I met them, and no man unhorsed me; and always I broke my spear fairly, or else overthrew my adversary.
Now that maiden who counselled me in the hall, told me afterwards that as I fought, the Lady Alys held fast to the rail before her, and leaned forward and was most pale, never answering any
word that any one might say to her, till the Knight Guy said to her in anger: “Alys! what ails you? you would have been glad enough to speak to me when King Wadrayns carried you off
shrieking, or that other time when the chain went round about you, and the faggots began to smoke
That maiden said that she turned round to him wonderingly, as if she had not caught his meaning, and that just for one second, then stretched out over the lists again.
Now till about this time I had made no cry as I jousted. But there came against me a very tall knight, on a great horse, and when we met our spears both shivered, and he howled with vexation, for he wished to slay me, being the brother of that knight I had struck down in the hall the day before.
And they say that when Alys heard his howl sounding faintly through the bars of his great helm, she trembled; but I know not, for I was stronger than that knight, and when we fought with swords, I struck him right out of his saddle, and near slew him with that stroke.
Whereupon I shouted “Alys,” out loud, and she blushed red for pleasure, and Sir Guy took note of it, and rose up in a rage and ran down and armed.
Then presently I saw a great knight come riding in with three black chevrons on a gold shield: and so he began to ride at me, and at first we only broke both our spears, but then he drew his sword, and fought quite in another way to what the other knights had, so that I saw at once that I had no chance against him: nevertheless, for a long time he availed nothing, though he wounded me here and there, but at last drove his sword right through mine, through my shield and my helm, and I fell, and lay like one dead.
And thereat the King cried out to cease, and the degree was given to Sir Guy, because I had overthrown
Then they told me, I was carried out of the lists and laid in a hostelry near the palace, and Guy went up to the pavilion where Alys was and she crowned him, both of them being very pale, for she doubted if I were slain, and he knew that she did not love him, thinking before that she did; for he was good and true, and had saved her life and honour, and she (poor maid!) wished to please her father, and strove to think that all was right.
But I was by no means slain, for the sword had only cleft my helm, and when I came to myself again I felt despair of all things, because I knew not that she loved me, for how should she, knowing nothing of me? likewise dust had been cast on my gold wings, and she saw it done.
Then I heard a great crying in the street, that sounded strangely in the quiet night, so I sent to ask what it might be: and there came presently into my chamber a man in gilded armour; he
was an old man, and his hair and beard were gray, and behind him came six men armed, who carried a dead body of a young man between them, and I said, “What is it? who is he?”
Then the old man, whose head was heavy for grief, said: “Oh, sir! this is my son; for as we went yesterday with our merchandize some twenty miles from this fair town, we passed by a
certain hold, and therefrom came a knight and men at arms, who when my son would have fought with them, overthrew him and bound him, and me and all our men they said they would slay if we did
ought; so then they cut out my son’s eyes, and cut off his hands, and then said, ‘The Knight of High Gard takes these for tribute.’ Therewithal they departed,
taking with them my son’s eyes and his hands on a platter; and when they were gone I would have followed them, and slain some of them at least, but my own people would not suffer me,
Then I thought I could win glory, and I was much rejoiced thereat, and said to the old man,
“Would you love to be revenged?”
But he set his teeth, and pulled at the skirt of his surcoat, as hardly for his passion he said, “Yes.”
“Then,” I said, “I will go and try to slay this knight, if you will show me the way to La Haute Garde.”
And he, taking my hand, said, “O glorious knight, let us go now!” And he did not ask who I was, or whether I was a good knight, but began to go down the stairs at once, so I put on my armour and followed him.
And we two set forth alone to La Haute Garde, for no man else dared follow us, and I rejoiced in thinking that while Guy was sitting at the King’s table feasting, I was riding out to slay the King’s enemies, for it never once seemed possible to me that I should be worsted.
It was getting light again by then we came in sight of High Gard; we wound up the hill on foot, for it was very steep; I blew at the gates a great blast which was even as though the stag should blow his own mort, or like the blast that Balen heard.
For in a very short while the gates opened and a great band of armed men, more than thirty I think, and a knight on horseback among them, who was armed in red, stood before us, and on one side of him was a serving man with a silver dish, on the other, one with a butcher’s cleaver, a knife, and pincers.
So when the knight saw us he said, “What, are you come to pay tribute in person, old man, and is this another fair son? Good sir, how is your lady?”
So I said grimly, being in a rage, “I have a will to slay you.”
But I could scarce say so before the old merchant rushed at the red knight
Afterwards they were going to set on me, but the red knight held them back, saying: “Nay, I am enough,” and we spurred our horses.
As we met, I felt just as if some one had thrown a dull brown cloth over my eyes, and I felt the wretched spear-point slip off his helm; then I felt a great pain somewhere, that did not seem to be in my body, but in the world, or the sky, or something of that sort.
And I know not how long that pain seemed to last now, but I think years, though really I grew well and sane again in a few weeks.
And when I woke, scarce knowing whether I was in the world or heaven or hell, I heard some one singing.
I tried to listen but could not, because I did not know where I was, and was thinking of that; I missed verse after verse of the song, this song, till at last I saw I must be in the King’s palace.
There was a window by my bed, I looked out at it, and saw that I was high up; down in the street the people were going to and fro, and there was a knot of folks gathered about a minstrel,
who sat on the edge of a fountain, with his head laid sideways on his shoulder, and nursing one leg on the other; he was singing only, having no instrument, and he sang the song I had tried to
listen to, I heard some of it now:
I fell back in my bed and wept, for I was weak with my illness; to think of this! truly this man was a perfect knight, and deserved to win Alys. Ah! well! but was this the glory I was to have, and no one believed that I was a King’s son.
And so I passed days and nights, thinking of my dishonour and misery, and my utter loneliness; no one cared for me; verily, I think, if any one had spoken to me lovingly, I should have fallen on his neck and died, while I was so weak.
But I grew strong at last, and began to walk about, and in the Palace Pleasaunce, one day, I met Sir Guy walking by himself.
So I told him how that I thanked him with all my heart for my life, but he said it was only what a good knight ought to do; for that hearing the mad enterprise I had ridden on, he had followed me swiftly with a few knights, and so saved me.
He looked stately and grand as he spoke, yet I did not love him, nay, rather hated him, though I tried hard not to do so, for there was some air of pitiless triumph and coldness of heart in
him that froze me; so scornfully, too, he said that about “my mad enterprise,” as though I must be wrong in everything I did. Yet afterwards, as I came to
know more, I pitied him instead of hating; but at that time I thought his life was without a shadow, for I did not know that the Lady Alys loved him not.
And now I turned from him, and walked slowly up and down the garden-paths, not exactly thinking, but with some ghosts of former thoughts passing through my mind. The day, too, was most
lovely, as it grew towards evening, and I had all the joy of a man lately sick in the flowers and all things; if any bells at that time had begun to
And as I walked I stooped and picked a great orange lily, and held it in my hand, and lo! down the garden-walk, the same fair damozel that had before this given me good counsel in the hall.
Thereat I was very glad, and walked to meet her smiling, but she was very grave, and said:
“Fair sir, the Lady Alys des roses wishes to see you in her chamber.”
I could not answer a word, but turned, and went with her while she walked slowly beside me, thinking deeply, and picking a rose to pieces as she went; and I, too, thought much, what could she want me for? surely, but for one thing; and yet—and yet.
But when we came to the lady’s chamber, behold! before the door, stood a tall knight, fair and strong, and in armour, save his head, who seemed to be guarding the door, though not so as to seem so to all men.
He kissed the damozel eagerly, and then she said to me, “This is Sir William de la Fosse, my true knight;” so the knight took my hand and seemed to have such joy of me, that all the blood came up to my face for pure delight.
But then the damozel Blanche opened the door and bade me go in while she abode still without; so I entered, when I had put aside the heavy silken hanging that filled the doorway.
And there sat Alys; she arose when she saw me, and stood pale, and with her lips apart, and her hands hanging loose by her side.
And then all doubt and sorrow went quite away from me; I did not even feel drunk with joy, but rather felt that I could take it all in, lose no least fragment of it; then at once I felt that
I was beautiful, and brave and true; I had no doubt as to what I should do now.
I went up to her, and first kissed her on the forehead, and then on the feet, and then drew her to me, and with my arms round about her, and her arms hanging loose, and her lips dropped, we held our lips together so long that my eyes failed me, and I could not see her, till I looked at her green raiment.
And she had never spoken to me yet; she seemed just then as if she were going to, for she lifted her eyes to mine, and opened her mouth; but she only said, “Dear Lionel,” and fell forward as though she were faint; and again I held her, and kissed her all over; and then she loosed her hair that it fell to her feet, and when I clipped her next, she threw it over me, that it fell all over my scarlet robes like trickling of some golden well in Paradise.
Then, within a while, we called in the Lady Blanche and Sir William de la Fosse, and while they talked about what we should do, we sat together and kissed; and what they said, I know not.
But I remember, that that night, quite late, Alys and I rode out side by side from the good city in the midst of a great band of knights and men-at-arms, and other bands drew to us as we went, and in three days we reached Sir William’s castle, which was called “La Garde des Chevaliers.”
And straightway he caused toll the great bell, and to hang out from the highest tower a great banner of red and gold, cut into so many points that it seemed as if it were tattered; for this was the custom of his house when they wanted their vassals together.
And Alys and I stood up in the tower by the great bell as they tolled it; I remember now that I had passed my hand underneath her hair, so that the fingers of it folded over and just lay on her cheek; she gazed down on the bell, and at every deafening stroke she drew in her breath and opened her eyes to a wide stare downwards.
But on the very day that we came,
And men came into knights’ gard till we had two thousand men in it, and great store of munitions of war and provisions.
But Alys and I lived happily together in the painted hall and in the fair water-meadows, and as yet no one came against us.
And still her talk was, of deeds of arms, and she was never tired of letting the serpent rings of my mail slip off her wrist and long hand, and she would kiss my shield and helm and the gold wings on my surcoat, my mother’s work, and would talk of the ineffable joy that would be when we had fought through all the evil that was coming on us.
Also she would take my sword and lay it on her knees and talk to it, telling it how much she loved me.
Yea in all things, O Lord God, Thou knowest that my love was a very child, like thy angels. Oh! my wise soft-handed love! endless passion! endless longing always satisfied!
Think you that the shouting curses of the trumpet broke off our love, or in any ways lessened it? no, most certainly, but from the time the siege began, her cheeks grew thinner, and her
passionate face seemed more and more a part of me; now too, whenever I happened to see her between the grim fighting she would do nothing but kiss me all the time, or wring my hands, or take my
head on her breast,
Till one day they made a breach in the wall, and when I heard of it for the first time, I sickened, and could not call on God; but Alys cut me a tress of her yellow hair and tied it in my helm, and armed me, and saying no word, led me down to the breach by the hand, and then went back most ghastly pale.
So there on the one side of the breach were the spears of William de la Fosse and Lionel of the gold wings, and on the other the spears of King Gilbert and Sir Guy le bon amant, but the King himself was not there; Sir Guy was.
Well,—what would you have? in this world never yet could two thousand men stand against twenty thousand; we were almost pushed back with their spear-points, they were so close together:—slay six of them and the spears were as thick as ever; but if two of our men fell there was straightway a hole.
Yet just at the end of this we drove them back in one charge two yards beyond the breach, and behold in the front rank, Sir Guy, utterly fearless, cool, and collected; nevertheless, with one stroke I broke his helm, and he fell to the ground before the two armies, even as I fell that day in the lists; and we drove them twenty feet farther, yet they saved Sir Guy.
Well, again,—what would you have? They drove us back again, and they drove us into our inner castle-walls. And I was the last to go in, and just as I was entering, the boldest and nearest of the enemy clutched at my love’s hair in my helm, shouting out quite loud, “Whore’s hair for John the goldsmith!”
At the hearing of which blasphemy, the Lord gave me such strength, that I turned and caught him by the ribs with my left hand, and with my right, by sheer strength, I tore off his helm
Yet thereby was I nearly slain, for they surrounded me, only Sir William and the others charged out and rescued me, but hardly.
May the Lord help all true men! In an hour we were all fighting pell mell on the walls of the castle itself, and some were slain outright, and some were wounded, and some yielded themselves and received mercy; but I had scarce the heart to fight any more, because I thought of Alys lying with her face upon the floor and her agonized hands outspread, trying to clutch something, trying to hold to the cracks of the boarding. So when I had seen William de la Fosse slain by many men, I cast my shield and helm over the battlements, and gazed about for a second, and lo! on one of the flanking towers, my gold wings still floated by the side of William’s white lion, and in the other one I knew my poor Love, whom they had left quite alone, was lying.
So then I turned into a dark passage and ran till I reached the tower stairs, up that too I sprang as though a ghost were after me, I did so long to kiss her again before I died, to soothe her too, so that she should not feel this day, when in the aftertimes she thought of it as wholly miserable to her. For I knew they would neither slay her nor treat her cruelly, for in sooth all loved her, only they would make her marry Sir Guy le bon amant.
In the topmost room I found her, alas! alas! lying on the floor, as I said; I came to her and kissed her head as she lay, then raised her up; and I took all my armour off and broke my sword over my knee.
And then I led her to the window away from the fighting, from whence
“Now, O Love, we must part for a little, it is time for me to go and die.”
“Why should you go away?” she said, “they will come here quick enough, no doubt, and I shall have you longer with me if you stay; I do not turn sick at the sight of blood.”
“O my poor Love!” And I could not go because of her praying face; surely God would grant anything to such a face as that.
“Oh!” she said, “you will let me have you yet a little longer, I see; also let me kiss your feet.”
She threw herself down and kissed them, and then did not get up again at once, but lay there holding my feet.
And while she lay there, behold a sudden tramping that she did not hear, and over the green hangings the gleam of helmets that she did not see, and then one pushed aside the hangings with his spear, and there, stood the armed men.
“Will not somebody weep for my darling?”
She sprung up from my feet with a low, bitter moan, most terrible to hear, she kissed me once on the lips, and then stood aside, with her dear head thrown back, and holding her lovely loose hair strained over her outspread arms, as though she were wearied of all things that had been or that might be.
Then one thrust me through the breast with a spear, and another with his sword, which was three inches broad, gave me a stroke across the thighs that hit to the bone; and as I fell forward one cleft me to the teeth with his axe.
And then I heard my darling shriek.
These English words translated from ancient Greek ones, nearly three thousand years old, do well symbolise the enterprise which the life of Thomas Carlyle has been devoted
to fulfil.
For the most true, the most complete view to take of him is this. A Great Man born in these years in Britain to be a Guide to British Men. Behind him lies the citadel of Unbelief, stormed in
his youth—the citadel which wore away the souls of so many heroes with long hopeless strivings: now he heads his fellow-countrymen, and seeks to lead them Home—through many
strange cities; over tempestuous seas of thought—to old forgotten Truth, to ancient Worth. Perverse many of them are, faithless, “devouring the Sun-God’s
kine
,” making sacred heavenly things mere food for their lusts: many fall by the way: may some yet reach Home! and there, with God-given strength, slaying dastards and idle
rioters, make this little Ithaca of ours fruitful in all good works in the coming time!
It is indeed hard to realize even the possibility of such a man being amongst us. He wears no crown, does not “walk abroad in yellow Drury Lane stage-boots and address us in
blank verse;
” has not even a pulpit to speak from, or an office to date from: he is a plain individual, dwelling in a corner of London, and writing
books,—apparently for the book-market; to many only a Name, to most not even that. The simple truth is enough to those who know what is the value of wise words. He is a Writer of
Books—of Biographies, Histories, Speculative Diatribes on the Philosophy of Life, Discourses on Modern Politics and Social Ethics; in all of some twenty volumes. These are his Works; the fruit of thirty years of public service; the work of the man’s life. They seem to occupy a wide and multifarious ground, these volumes, their very titles
indicate as much; but I find in them all one deep purpose, which asserts itself no matter what weight of facts is piled upon its back, nor what journeys into “the Eternities and
Immensities” it makes: which purpose is *
To know our own time,
” he has said, “and what it bids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us.
”
To “understand;” this is a word of large meaning, its very etymology suggesting much. To stand under a thing, to stand upon its foundations, and so
look forth into the world through its avenues—does it not demand a firm footing on its past, what we call its history? Certainly there is no process of attaining sure
knowledge respecting any matter like the historic one; the searching out and ascertaining how the matter “came to pass,” from what origin it sprung, through what forces
friendly and rude it has passed, and so been fashioned into the shape which now we see. If a man were inquiring only about a tree or stone, he would do best to study the history of that tree or
stone: and now how much more if he were inquiring about Men, and Societies of Men! For we, more than all else, are Sons of Time: not a word has been spoken this day, not a thing done, not so much
as a thought conceived, but was connected with what has been before, and is already connecting itself with that which will be. Mysterious truth, wide and deep as Human Existence! one well pondered
by Carlyle, felt by him to his heart’s core; pondered, felt, obeyed. For he has planted all his judgments of modern English facts on their history, especially his judgment of that great
and complex fact, the modern English character. And he uses history for a larger purpose than this immediate one; he reads in it, and in turn sets forth by it the Nature of Man, his noble powers
and
Reader, I would fain have you feel at the outset, what Carlyle’s conception of the value of history to the present time is; so different is it from any we are accustomed even to
hear of, so profound, so comprehensive, so identified with whatever awe, worship, knowledge, belief, belong to the man. Consider these three sayings of his: “History is the true Epic Poem, and universal Divine Scripture. “The History of England is “The Present is the meeting-place of two Eternities; and contains in it the whole Past and the whole Future.”
the Bible of the Nation; what part of it they have laid to heart, and do practically know for truth, is the available Bible they
have.
This last proposition at once affirms the infinite dimensions of History, and its glorious harvest of Counsel and Prophecy ever ready for gathering. But no less does it indicate the puny
reach, the tiny grasp of any hand to gather it—the history of only one man, and he the sorriest of mankind, is it not infinite?—unfathomable even to himself, fathomable to
the Omniscient alone? This too Carlyle knows well enough, and has confessed again and again, accepting it as a Truth to humble man’s pride of knowledge, but to inspire his efforts with
a purer and yet more ardent zeal. For to him who will seek, strength shall be given to find. And here, surely strength has been given, and in no common measure. For I find that Carlyle, scanning
the Past with intent to make it explain the Present, can compass the meaning of whole tracts of history; his eye, as it were inevitably, discerns the essential, fixes on those facts which animated
by the spiritual life of men fashioned and governed the old time, and yet live and work, and claim obedience in the new, though now in altered guise. Neither are they strange out of the way facts,
brought to light for the first time by rummaging amongst historical lumber-rooms; buthe
sees them, believes in them, cleaves fast to them, understands their divine significance. What light (for instance) does he throw upon the subject of Education, by showing that in the feudal times
it was always a training to be and to do something by a universal system of apprenticeship, to which instruction in the art of speaking and writing formed only the last and crowning process; or
upon the functions of Parliament, by reminding us that it was only a Counselling Body, not an Administrative one; and that in these later times we have a free press and Reporters in the gallery!
Often and often do I wonder at this his mighty power; some may call it intellectual insight; but it is in truth a moral quality of the highest order, for it arises from his pure single-mindedness
for the truth, his deep love and justice towards men, and his perfect submission to the appointments of God who directs the course of events here as elsewhere of old; in short, from his acceptance
of the law of “Might is Right,” understood in the sense which I explained in my first Chapter.
No less has Carlyle studied the present in itself, as now it meets his eye; and with the same principle for his guide: social arrangements, methods and practices of life, habits of thought,
such as come across our path every day, he has examined for himself, and would interpret them to us,—for the most part, very differently from the commonly received notions. A busy
curious eye has his been, and a most busy serious mind. Our England of to-day, with the strange teeming activity and many-sided life of its citizens—their institutions, new and old,
Church and Crown, Aristocracy and Democracy, Army and Navy; their dealings at home, in the colonies, and with other nations; their public “talking apparatuses,” in St.
Stephen’s, in
Moreover, in a way quite peculiar to himself, he manages to embody his observations in words; he cannot, indeed, as in his histories, follow the history and circumstances of individual men; but in speaking of classes, he always endeavours to conceive a member of the class, the life he would lead, the thoughts he would feel, the things he would see and hear and do, thus recalling to us, at every turn, the facts of the case; and this most of all, that in the midst of all these facts are living Men.
For his thought finds its home and supreme watch-tower (stand-point, as the Germans call it) in the conception of GOD and MAN; God, the Maker of all, the
righteous Ruler and Judge of all; Man, his creature and servant. To this let me add his conception of MEN: that they are a spiritual brotherhood; that wherever two men meet
together, above all when many men live together and form a Nation, a relation of mutual duty, various in form, one in essence, is appointed to each and all. Accordingly, it will be found that in
considering any one of the social problems, Carlyle fixes on the central facts in which dwells the secret of the matter, and practically asks himself this question: “What does
God mean by all this? what does He here require of men?
” These wondrous powers, resources—man’s power of life and death over his brother, his gift of
thought and speech—these divinely revealed arts of Writing, Printing; this hand so manifoldly cunning, this fruitful earth, this multiplying ofSuch being the Law, how are men fulfilling it?
” He is well aware that at best the fulfilment
must be an imperfect one; but he rigidly inquires whether the Law is recognized as one to be fulfilled, whether there is any attempt to fulfil it, whether it be a resolute, united, advancing
attempt, or otherwise. No outward splendour of result satisfies him. Peace and plenty, cotton and iron by the ton, books by the cartload, and all the external fruits of civilization, are, in his
opinion, good, as being the signs of a certain energy; excellent if used as accessory to spiritual worth, poisonous and accursed if held as substitutes for it. For if a poor suffering man, whom we
call ignorant, is often more truly blessed than a rich and prosperous one, why not a poor suffering Nation, more than a rich and prosperous Nation? Our English Nation is after all, an assembly of
Men, who are not bodies having souls, but souls having bodies; and Carlyle asks, “How fare the souls of men now-a-days; in what spirit do they live their lives? These social
arrangements, do they help the just life, constrain the unjust?
” And all his recommendations, even the plainly practical ones, have a like spiritual aim.
Now for the general results of his survey of England’s Past and Present. He sees, as every one must, that the course of human affairs has been here, as everywhere, one long
warfare. Here is the New, striving all it can to supplant the Old; and there, side by side with the New, is the Old, sturdily resisting, for it would fain live for ever, as it is, unchanged.
Neither comprehends the whole good; in both there is Might and Right, which shall be accomplished, utterly accomplished. All men, more or less, perceive this struggle, uniting men in a quiet steady progress; they are loth to quarrel even in words, and will not fight, except under extreme pressure; then they fight
as for life and death. On the other hand, the unwise (if they have their own way) choose a side, and are for fighting at once, if not by blows, then by words, and the un-wisest of all do nothing
but fight, or rather make show of fighting, they keep at perpetual loggerheads; whereby much time is lost, much well-doing and well-being missed—for a season. In England, what is the
Old, what the New, that are striving together? Briefly these, the Feudal Principle, and the Modern Principle. The Feudal principle is the principle of Social Order, old indeed and perpetual as
mankind, but then most fully realized in England: it made a Nation of us—gave us a Monarchy, an Aristocracy, a Law, a Church that overlooked all and inspired all; appointed fixed
positions, fixed duties to every class, and to each man; established men in authority everywhere, (with power to promote and power to punish,) in every profession, every trade, every household;
bound nobleman to king, workman to master, wife to husband, son to father, by permanent and sacred obligations. The world never saw such an organized society as was fashioned under its sway. In
those days a man, whatsoever his wrongs and miseries, could feel that he was a man and an Englishman; faith and loyalty were continually required of him, even to the giving away of life; treason
was the most detestable of crimes. This then was the gospel truth which old feudal England preached and practised, the gospel of social order; aye, and on the whole with a noble sincerity, a
sincerity as of religious duty. On the whole, kings were true kings,
But Feudalism was not to last for ever; nothing does last for ever. At all times it had its evils, its shortcomings and grievous abuses, and these not amended in time brought about its ruin.
It was an iron system, requiring very wise and brave men to administer; and such were not always forthcoming. The Church closed its eyes to fresh dawning truth, fell into superstition and
persecuted true men; Kings and Nobles, too many of them, sought their own pleasure and played the tyrant, whilst the many kept toiling, toiling on, spending life and labour for unworthy masters;
neither had they due liberty to think and speak and act, as new truths and capabilities stirred in them. In a word, the Old which has ever to take charge of the New did not take charge of it, and
so fell; but not to utter destruction—it did not deserve such fate, neither did it receive it. Much remained, and much even still remains. A first mighty European Rebellion called the
Reformation came, followed in England by Cromwell’s Rebellion to make the first good; both of them sorrowful, wasteful battle and victory, but most necessary; the issue of them “Thus in the middle of that poor calumniated Eighteenth Century, see once more! Long winter again past, the dead-seemingtendency of the world.
” With the utmost energy of hopefulness and helpfulness he bids the good Strength good speed. No one
has said such eloquent truth of Steam-engines as he, not even Tennyson; nor of Literature, nor Education, nor Colonization, nor of Democracy itself. The following passage is but a sample:
its evangel to the brute Primeval Powers,
which listen and obey: neither is this small. Manchester, with its cotton-fuz, its smoke and dust, its tumult and contentious squalor, is hideous to thee? Think not so: a precious
substance, beautiful as magic-dreams, and yet no dream but a reality, lies hidden in that noisome wrappage; a wrappage struggling indeed (look at Chartisms and such like) to cast itself
off, and leave the beauty free and visible there! Hast thou heard, with sound ears, the awakening of a Manchester, on Monday morning, at half-past five by the clock; the rushing off of its
thousand mills, like the boom of an Atlantic tide, ten thousand times ten thousand spools and spoodles all set humming there—it is perhaps, if thou knew it well, sublime as a
Niagara, or more so. Cotton-spinning is the clothing of the naked in its result; the triumph of man over matter in its means.
On the other hand, none can accuse Carlyle of being blind to the peculiar evils which mark our time, gathering round our good things, New and Old, battening on them, corrupting and perverting their very life. These he has probed to the very bottom (for the eye that knows and loves good, does it not know evil and hate it?); he has seen them, named them, put his finger upon them, proclaimed them, and denounced them enough, writing whole books against them.
In his opinion the vice of our time is even this; that the Old and the New stand aloof from each other. The New takes not counsel of the Old, but goes its own wayward headlong course,
The ancient Shepherds of the people, what are they doing? A Royal Majesty exists, but sits in Buckingham Palace there, treated as a noble prisoner, not looked to as supreme ruler; royal
Georges deserved no better! An aristocracy still keeps its titles: Dukes there are, and Earls and Lords, but such are no longer Leaders (Duces) or Strong Men (Yarls) or Law-wards: they live
ornamental lives, riding in Rotten Row, shooting grouse, making speeches in Parliament, upholding Corn Laws: bailiffs manage the estates, and collect the rents which they spend,
“not working, but only receiving the wages of work.
” The Church still stands, but how different from what it should be, from what it once was! No longer is
it to Englishmen the great home of Truth and truthful men; no longer has it power to guide, boldness to reprove, warmth of heart to inspire; no longer does it teach, does it even wish to teach?
What cares your Prime Minister, your Birmingham operative for what is said in the church? most probably he seldom goes there. Meanwhile the Church receives its wages. King, Aristocracy, Church
have in great measure abandoned all claim to governing the Nation; they leave that to the Parliament, and the Official Ministry. Here therefore we look for some noble purpose and solid strength;
we find what? Still weakness, dilettantism, insincerity. Not the best men in England, here, far from it; men unfit for the places, men who neither can or will do the work; loud talkers most of
*
From these idle incompetent Shepherds Carlyle looks to the Flock, and a sorrowful shameful sight he sees. Behold! England ceasing to be a Nation of Men, threatening to become a horde of
beasts that seek to satisfy the wants of the hour. The ancient thought of Duty has given place to Competition, greedy competition for mere lucre and fame, every one shoving his neighbour,
huckstering with him, coveting his share of the provender, not loving him, but only keeping truce with him. In the crowd are hidden some of our best and greatest, or refusing to join it, they
stand aloof, idle or mutinous. Loyalty and obedience reign no more in men’s hearts: they even seem to be disappearing from the language. Rulers are disliked, despised, thought
unnecessary bores, to be got rid of at the earliest possible opportunity. Even the plainest teachings of Nature are set at nought; in Birmingham, in Manchester, you will find hundreds of girls,
not twenty years of age, living apart from their parents—they earn their own livelihood honestly at the loom, shall they not be free? Then for English honesty, how much of that remains?
Reality gives place to show; scarce a thing that you buy, but it is probably adulterated, or got up flimsily for the market, though it is sold to you for good ware, and lauded by all manner of
advertisements and shopman’s puffing. In all classes except the lowest, who daily come in contact with reality, but most of all in the highest quarters, Cant stares you in the face,
cant religious,
Silent patience, silent hope, steady joy in steady endeavour, these too are sadly rare: a passion for change seems distracting our whole existence, change of rulers, change of system, change of residence, change of work, change of amusement. Instead of daily duties faithfully performed, we have (unless Hunger compels to work) speculations on the theory of the universe, philanthropic excursions, controversies, benevolent, pragmatical talk. Speech and thought, divorced from action, have become enemies to it; floods of base eloquence block up whole thoroughfares of work; a self-consciousness, morbid and miserable, withers up the will of many young souls. Moreover, the Devil, serpent as he is, lubricates his victims, before he swallows them. So much Evil amongst us calls itself good, even fancies itself good! False gospels are preached abroad, and gain the widest credence: amongst which may be specified these two: the Gospel of Laissez Faire, which would tell men that they want no guidance, and the mother Lie of Equality, which would make out one man to be as good as another. Thus taught, thus Willing to believe, Vanity stalks on every highway and byeway, crying, “Look at us, how handsome we are;” then rushes into black despair. For alas, Life is no longer known to be sacred, beautiful, not even believed to have ever been so; a trust in Mechanism has effaced the belief in God and Man. Lastly, beneath all these, and lowest of all, tosses unrestingly, a foul sea of Death,—gin-drinking, brutal sensuality, starvation, and horrors which one need not name.
It is quite impossible to limit these statements properly, it is vain even to attempt to do so. Every reformer (the prophet Isaiah himself) desiring to represent with due energy the
iniquities VOL. I. 3 E
Such “great confusion” Carlyle sees; and he knows whither it is tending. Has he not studied the French Revolution? That was the issue of like evils not a hundred years
ago. England has not yet come to that pass, one would hope is some way off it, and may yet avert the catastrophe; but England is under the same law of catastrophes. “Good Heavens!” exclaims Carlyle, “will not one French Revolution and Reign of Terror suffice us, but must there be two? There will be two, if needed; there
will be precisely as many as are needed. The Laws of Nature will have themselves fulfilled.
Now it is well to be shown these tragic facts, and the tragic fate that awaits them; welcome should he be in this age or in any other who can see
The wise fool’s prophecy, quoted above, concludes thus:
Even so: progress must be in the simple way appointed from the first, and no other. Such is Carlyle’s belief and
counsel.
For first and foremost he sets before us this old truth, that there is a God in the midst of us. Those who have at all reflected on the condition of European and English thought, will know
that this ancient fact stood and still stands in much need of proclaiming: and Carlyle’s service in so proclaiming it will be best understood by considering the history of Belief during
the last hundred and fifty years. It is a familiar piece of knowledge how far gone in atheism were all cultivated minds in Europe during the last century; and that a change for the better has
since been brought about. It is most interesting to see how the change came to pass. For literature’s share, Carlyle says that the impulse came from Goethe, Richter, and other great
German writers. Doubtless too the old faith was in part kept continually alive by the impressive scenes of life and death, by the moving influence of household affections, and the echoes left
murmuring by the earlier voice of the Christian Church. But it seems to me that Belief was chiefly restored by the heaven-given impulse to look upon outward Nature. Men were sick of the
hypocrisies and baseness of their kind; and they turned away from a world, which it seemed God *
no truth, do no good at all. He, Carlyle, carries this Truth of Truths in his heart, and in his right hand: with dauntless courage he has looked upon
Real Life with it, public, as well as private, the homeliest work, Terrible in the divine economy of human life, and how man has not only to suffer it, but to execute it; suffer
it patiently as a solemn right, and execute it resolutely as a solemn duty; Carlyle has made known to England, that had deeply forgotten it. It seems to me that he has in effect spoken the whole
book of Deuteronomy over again, applying it to modern affairs. For this (amongst other things) distinguishes him from other preachers: he does apply universal truths to existing men and things. He
insists that a Belief in the Divine Government is not to be put on once a week, when a man thinks of his “soul,” but to be cherished as the law of his life: it shall be the
working faith of the Member of Parliament, the Author, the Cotton-Lord, the retail tradesman in their daily business: and he calls on them, not indeed by name, but by class
to make it so, telling them plainly some points in which they disregard it. And if he avoid for the most part the purely theological dialect, and speaking in homelier terms, call them fools and
blockheads who set at nought the plainest Fact and Facts of their existence (what he terms Laws of Nature), it is not out of irreverence, but rather that he may induce others to consider all real
intelligence and knowledge as religious, and for this directly practical reason, that he knows how far theology is removed from our ordinary habits of thought and practice,
From this truth that God is our Lawgiver and Judge follow all else; some of the leading corollaries Carlyle has insisted on, exhibiting how they are broken, not occasionally only, but as it
were systematically; and adding wise practical suggestions for their restoration to the government of our life. Surely among the first corollaries is this,—that there be Honesty in
thought and word and work of every kind. And there is no symptom of Modern Life, which so grieves and so incenses Carlyle as our Dishonesty, our Insincerity. So few try to look to the heart of any
matter, and to the whole of it, resolving to speak the truth concerning it, and do the right; all but a few are content to learn the mere hearsays of it, to repeat them and follow them. So much
lip-service, so much eye-service! People in every class, even those in the highest offices, “Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young Britishman, thou that art now growing to be something: not a Stump Orator, if thou canst help it. Appeal not to the vulgar, with its
long ears and seats in the Cabinet; not by spoken words to the vulgar; hate the profane vulgar and bid it begone. Appeal by silent work, by silent suffering if there be no work, to the
gods, who have nobler than seats in the Cabinet for thee! Talent for Literature, thou hast such a talent? Believe it not, be slow to believe it! To speak, or to write, Nature did not
peremptorily order thee; but to work she did. And know this: there never was a talent even for real Literature, not to speak of talents lost and damned in doing sham Literature, but was
primarily a talent for something infinitely better of the silent kind. Of Literature, in all ways, be shy rather than otherwise, at present! There where thou art, work, work; whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it,—with the hand of a man, not of a phantasm; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and exceeding great reward. Thy words, let them be few and
well-ordered. Love silence rather than speech in these tragic days, when, for very speaking, the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man; and hearts, in this loud babbling, sit dark
and dumb towards one another. Witty—above all, oh be not witty: none of us is bound to be witty, under penalties; to be wise and true we all are under the terriblest penalties! “Brave young friend, dear to me, and A double-distilled Lie; the second power of a Lie.
” Carlyle under these circumstances recommends Silence, yea,
even from good words, Silence and Work. A recommendation which must seem new, and painful to most hearers. Listen to these wise, sad, and touching words.
known too in a sense, though never seen, nor to be seen by me,—you are, what I am not, in the happy case to
learn to be something and to do something, instead of eloquently talking about what has been and was done and may be! The old are what they are, and
will not alter; our hope is in you. England’s hope, and the world’s, is that there may once more be millions such, instead of units as now. Macte; i
fausto pede. us
with pity and incredulous astonishment!”*
Next Carlyle sets forth the sacred character of all true Work. The very bulwark of his unfailing hope for England is that England is an Industrial Nation—her sons still
“ “Two men I honour, and no third. First the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man’s. Venerable to me is
the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned,
besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly
entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was
not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: “A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty;
endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this by act or word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are
one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor “Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for
the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. splinters of the old Harz rock;
” and one of his chief efforts has been to make this fact recognized at its due worth, and to inspire all Working Men with
a true conception of their calling. “The Practical labour of England,” he says in one place, “is very audibly, though very inarticulately as yet, the one
God’s Voice we have heard in these two atheistic centuries. But we, with our gross Atheism, hear it not to be the Voice of God to us, but regard it merely as a Voice of earthly
Profit-and-Loss. . . .”
All labour is sacred, because it is the will of God that men should work. That it is material labour, mere working with iron and cotton and the like
does not alter its essence: the hand is a sacred gift: is Worship; the poorest day drudge should
know it and rejoice! The sublime thought of Duty; the nobleness and blessedness of being “a servant to many;” the strength, sincerity, courage, and peace of mind which
faithful work demands, and in its turn imparts, are unweariedly proclaimed by him; while he denounces and laughs at the Gospel of Mammonism as a Midas-eared folly—“a
shabby Gospel; the shabbiest of gospels.
” And if he can thus reverence work of the lowest kind, far more so does he reverence work of the higher. He who would guide the
bodies and souls of men, is no other than a Priest, let him acknowledge the fact or no; a Priest of Righteousness and Truth; with what solemn thoughts should the *
thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.
If labour be thus a Duty, and blessed, what is Idleness? An accursed thing, over which God’s judgment is inevitably impending. Again, “the terrible” is not
wanting; it exists surely enough, though men forget it, disregard it, deny it—gathering, gathering, drawing nigher and nigher; one day it comes. Of the English
Aristocracy, the Dukes, and the Lords, the idle Churchmen and the Fine Gentlemen, and the moneyed men, who “do no work, but only take the wages of work
,”
Carlyle can speak no smooth things: they are living on their capital, the reverence won for their order by the heroic work of men gone by—and the capital is running out. Those men were
true noblemen, these men are not true noblemen, they are only called noblemen; they are knaves, traitors to their post; not happy even now, for they are dying of ennui,—and in the day
of reckoning?
The English Aristocracy get a fair warning in “ “Out of the loud-piping whirlwind, audibly to him who has ears, the Highest is again announcing in these days: ‘Idleness shall not be.’ God has said it, man
cannot gainsay. Ah, how happy were it, if he, this Aristocrat Worker, would see a notice to quit,
” despite all their parchment titles, but not always, as thus:
*
his work and do it! It is frightful, seeking another to do it for him. Guillotines, Meudon Tanneries, and half a million men
shot dead, have already been expended in that business; and it is yet far from being done. This man too is something; nay, he is a great thing. Look on him there: a man of manful aspect;
something of the ‘cheerfulness of pride’ still lingering in him. A free air of graceful stoicism, of easy silent dignity sits well on him; in his heart, could we
reach it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice, true human valour. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an incumbrance in the Present; perish disastrously out of the
future! From no section of the Future would we lose these noble courtesies, impalpable yet all-controlling; these dignified reticences, these kingly simplicities;—lose aught of
what the fruitful Past still gives us token of, memento of, in this man. Can we not save him:—can he not help us to save him! A brave man he too; had not undivine Ignavia,
Hearsay, Speech without meaning,—had not Cant, thousand-fold Cant within and around him, enveloping him like choke-damp, like thick Egyptian darkness, thrown his soul into
asphyxia, as it were extinguished his soul, so that he sees not, hears not, and Moses and all the Prophets address him in vain.”
As an example of another manner, take this from the “The foul sluggard’s comfort: ‘It will last my time.’ Thou foul sluggard, and oven thief (
Faulenzer, ja Dieb
)! For art thou not a thief, to pocket thy day’s wages (be they counted in groschen or in gold thousands) for this, if it be for anything, for watching on thy special
watch-tower, that God’s City (which this His World is, where His children dwell) suffer no damage; and, all the while, to watch only that thy own ease be not
invaded,—let otherwise hard come to hard as it will and can? Unhappy! It will last thy time, thy worthless sham of an existence, wherein nothing but the Digestion was real, will
have evaporated in the interim; it will last thy time: but will it last thy Eternity? not last thy time (mark that also, for that
also will be the fate of some such lying sluggard); but take fire, and explode, and consume thee like the moth!”*
Black men also live under the Law of Labour; is it true that our emancipated “If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West Indian Islands, for the benefit of all mankind, then I say neither
will the Powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit; but sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground: him and all that
partake with him,—perhaps in a very terrible manner. For, under favour of Exeter Hall, the “terrible manner” is not yet quite extinct with the Destinies in
this Universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory now or henceforth. No; the gods wish besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products
be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies:—infinitely more they wish, that manful industrious men occupy their West Indies, not
indolent two-legged cattle, however ‘happy’ over their abundant pumpkins. Both these things, we may be assured, the immortal gods have decided upon, passed their
eternal Act of Parliament for: and both of them, though all terrestrial Parliaments and entities oppose it to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the
spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other methods avail not, be compelled to work.
Or, alas, let him look across to Haiti, and trace a far sterner prophecy! Let him by his ugliness, idleness, rebellion, banish all White men from the West Indies, and make it all one
Haiti,—with little or no sugar growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous
jungle,—does he think that will for ever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rose-pink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men
sent by the Laws of the Universe, and inexorable Course of Things; men hungry for gold, fierce as old Buccaneers were;—and a doom for Quashee which I had
rather not contemplate!
Of the Wages of Labour Carlyle has “The Wages of every noble Work do yet lie in Heaven or else nowhere . . . . . Nay, at bottom, dost thou need any reward? Was thy aim and life-purpose to be filled with good
things for thy heroism; to have a life of pomp and ease, and be what men call ‘happy’ in this world, or in any world? I answer for thee deliberately, No. The whole
spiritual secret of the new epoch lies in this, that thou canst answer for thyself, with thy whole clearness of head and heart, deliberately No! “My brother, the brave man has to give his Life away. Give it, I advise thee;—thou dost not expect to *
†
sell thy Life in an adequate manner? . . . .
Give it like a royal heart; let thy price be Nothing: thou hast then, in a certain sense, got All for it!
“Selfsttödtung,” Self-annihilation,
Such in the main are the truths which this wise and noble-hearted Teacher has addressed to Englishmen, as the ground-work of a better individual practice: pushing this truth home to this
class, that truth home to another class, as the need of each requires. Before we go on to consider his Social Philosophy, and the applications of it, it is well for us to know that this Greatheart
can, on, opportunity, give a kind wise word to an individual pilgrim. The following letter found its way into Chambers’ Edinburgh Magazine, having been addressed to some Scotch student,
who had applied for advice about “reading.” It will serve also as an example of the admirable sound sense, which marks all Carlyle’s thinking and speaking, even in
his most enthusiastic moods. “Some time ago your letter was delivered me; I take literally the first half hour I have had since to write you a word of answer. It would give me true satisfaction could any
advice of mine contribute to forward you in your honourable course of self-improvement, but a long experience has taught me that advice can profit but little: that there is a good reason
why advice is so seldom followed; this reason, namely, that it so seldom, and can almost never be, rightly given. No man knows the state of another; it is always to some more or less
imaginary man that the wisest and most honest adviser is speaking. “As to the books which you—whom I know so little of—should read, there is hardly anything definite that can be said. For one thing, you may be strenuously
advised to keep reading. Any good book, any book that is wiser than yourself, will teach you something,—a great many things, indirectly and directly, if your mind be open to
learn. This old counsel “Another thing, and only one other I will say. All books are properly the record of the history of past men—what thoughts past men had in them, what actions past men
did: the summary of all books whatsoever lies In conclusion I will remind you, it is not books alone, or by books chiefly, that a man becomes in all points a man. Study to do faithfully whatsoever thing in your actual situation, there
and now, you find either expressly or tacitly laid to your charge; that is your post: stand in it like a true soldier. Silently devour the many chagrins of it, as all human situations have
many; and see you aim not to quit it without being all that
Dear Sir,
*
is for you the wonderfullest, beautifullest—what is your true element and province, and be able to
profit by that. True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. But here also, you are to discriminate carefully between true desire and false. The
medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. It is
very true; and flimsy desultory readers, who fly from foolish book to foolish book, and get good of none, and mischief of all—are not those as foolish, unhealthy eaters, who
mistake their superficial false desire after spiceries and confectionaries for their real appetite, of which even they are not destitute, though it lies far deeper, far quieter, after
solid nutritive food? With these illustrations I will recommend Johnson’s advice to you.there. It is on this ground that the class of books specifically named History can be safely recommended as the basis of all
study of books—the preliminary to all right and full understanding of anything we can expect to find in books. Past history, and especially the past history of one’s
own native country, everybody may be advised to begin with that. Let him study that faithfully; innumerable inquiries will branch out from it; he has a broad-beaten highway, from which all
the country is more or less visible; there travelling, let him choose where he will dwell. Neither let mistakes and wrong directions—of which every man in his studies and
elsewhere, falls into many—discourage you. There is precious instruction to be got by finding we are wrong. Let a man try faithfully, manfully to be right, he will grow daily
more and more right. It is at bottom the condition on which all men have to cultivate it at least required of you. A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading. They are a growing kind
of men that can wisely combine the two things—wisely, valiantly, can do what is laid to their hand in their present sphere, and prepare themselves for doing other wider things,
if such lie before them.
“I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Carlyle.
“Chelsea, 13th March, 1843.”
Carlyle’s Social Philosophy may be summed up in that single strange word Hero-Worship. I would recall the reader’s recollection to the true meaning of the term, and to
the universal fact on which it is founded. The term implies then (and it is a signal instance of Carlyle’s magnificent power of naming) that there are Heroes, that is,
men sent by God into the world superior in gifts to other men about them; and that such are to be worshipped, that is, treated according to their worth, promoted to rule over others, and be
loyally, religiously obeyed by them. Carlyle affirms this to be the Law of Human Fellowship, implying all the spiritual truths of Existence, and embracing in its governance (of
weal or woe) the whole practical life of Men in all ages. The fate of any Society he would say, lies in the measure of their fulfilment of this Law. So far as it is obeyed, so far will men and
their endeavours prosper, and be encouraged in a better obedience of it by blessings high and
Is not the truth of the Law visible in this one fact, that every Nation became such, by making to itself a Government, and cannot exist as a Nation without maintaining a Government? Carlyle
adds, “Kosmos is not Chaos simply by the fact, That it is governed.
” An observation which is strictly to the point, because his principle rests on the fact of
the affinity of the human nature to the Divine. If a Nation must be governed, then by whom? Man is a Spirit: the wise, therefore, and the strong, and the brave, must be Rulers; they shall rule,
they shall be got to rule; under these shall be others; and under these again others and others, and so downwards to the last man. The Nation shall (if possible) be One. And then what is true
Governing? It is directing, and if need be, compelling others to do their duty, that is to fulfil to the utmost the powers that belong to them, and the powers that are in other
men, and in the rich bounties of the material world. We can admit no lower definition than this; a true reading of experience and circumstance by the light of an earnest purpose will determine the
right measure of constraint and the right measure of freedom, and the means to secure such on each occasion. True Obedience is an exact correlative to true Governing:
This will do for our statement of the Theory of Government. The reader will notice at once, that it is the theory of Martial Law; it is indeed no other! Men are Men, that is the great fact; wheresoever they are, and whatsoever they do, there is but one system of managing them:—all special modifications in practice are of a quite secondary consideration. Meanwhile let a thought, one deep thought be given, to the absolute meaning, and perpetual use of the word “Duty” in these organized Professions. “On duty,” “in discharge of his duty,” “do your duty, Sir,” are phrases that startle strangely the landsman’s ear, when he treads the Quarter-Deck (Her Majesty’s) of a Seventy-Four!
The first business of every Government is obviously to punish open wrong-doers, murderers, thieves, swindlers, and the like, to instruct them by grievous pain (as is God’s method) to offend no more, and if need be, take their life away, (God’s method also,) and so relieve the land of their baneful presence.
England on the whole has done her duty well in this department, and it is well with her accordingly; but Carlyle sees lax notions, and theories set on foot by a godless philosophy and a
foolish Philanthropism, threatening to weaken our purpose, and divert our attention from more important matters. He has done his best to oppose all such theories. This is “I take the liberty of asserting that there is one valid reason, and only one,his
theory of Punishment.
revancher
oneself upon them, and pay them what they have merited: this is for evermore intrinsically a correct, and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man. Only the excess of it is
diabolic; the essence I say is manlike, and even godlike—a monition sent to poor man by the Maker himself . . . . My humane friends, I perceive this same sacred glow of divine
wrath, or authentic monition at first-hand from God himself, to be the foundation for all Criminal Law, and Official horse-hair-and-bombazeen procedure against scoundrels in this world.
This first-hand gospel from the Eternities, imparted to every mortal, this is still, and will for ever be, your sanction and commission for the punishment of human scoundrels. See well,
how you will translate this message from Heaven and the Eternities into a form suitable to this World and its Times. Let not violence, haste, blind impetuous impulse, preside in executing
it; the injured man, inevitably liable to fall into these, shall not execute it: the whole world, in person of a Minister appointed for that end, and surrounded with the due solemnities
and caveats, with bailiffs, apparitors, advocates, and the hushed expectation of all men, shall do it, as under the eye of God who made all men. How it shall be done? This is ever a vast
question, involving immense considerations . . . How the judge will do it?
Murderers and robbers are not the only “scoundrels” who deserve punishment. The obstinately idle person deserves punishment; to compel him to work, and to punish him,
if he refuses to work, is an absolute kindness to him, an absolute duty towards him; as we say his right. Carlyle applies this with utter rigour and impartiality. He would have the West Indian
Negroes, that now stand idle, “eating pumpkins” and letting the sugar-crops “Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the State so many days of service. Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also, without
fail, shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labour. The State has plenty of waste soil; but the State will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The State
wants sugar from these Islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these Islands, and must have it.
He would have the idle Irish Peasantry regimented and compelled to work (at making roads, &c.) He congratulates the English Peasantry on the passing of the New Poor Law, which withholds out-door relief to able-bodied persons. No Work, no Recompence, is a just law! Lastly, he would like to see the law applied to—the idle Aristocracy! Daring Man! But since he sees as yet no practical means of enforcing it with them, he is content with insisting that the principle does apply, and must be made good in practice, if possible. The longer the delay to apply it, the worse will be the final issue, for all parties, but especially for the idle Aristocrats.
All “Yes, that institution of the country did actually exist in Paraguay; men and workmen saw it with eyes. A most remarkable, dishonest persons must be taken charge of by Authority in the same stern way, and compelled to cease from their dishonesty. Those adulterating tradesmen, and false bad
workmen, which now populate our great cities, should have the Law in some shape brought to bear upon them, as in better English times, by those excellent institutions the Guilds. Carlyle lauds Dr.
Francia, the late dictator in Paraguay, among other things for this, that he erected his “Workman’s Gallows.”
*
†
Shall not other false men, false public Speakers, Teachers, Doers, the whole tribe of Quacks have the Law brought against them? It would be well, if possible; but as yet it is not possible.
There is no fit Machinery ready for coping with such a vast, complex, and difficult matter. There is not even any sure general Belief to make a foundation for the Law. As yet we can only restrain
by Law such palpable falsity and swindling as the wizard Harrison’s. Carlyle sees quite plainly that a Free Press, and a free license of public speaking are at present altogether
necessary, and must be for a longer period than he can anticipate; these therefore he would leave quite uninfringed. Moreover he knows that no Law would be enough; and that nothing will be enough
except professional organization and the influence and action, private and public, of True Men. To this end, therefore, he exhorts all to discountenance Quacks, of whatsoever rank and dignity, and
to help one another by what means they have, to degrade them, especially by the silent mode of scornful neglect, and by faithful adherence to true men in authority and out of authority. It is
because all classes bow down the knee to false gods, and sham heroes, that he calls this an Unheroic age. Think of Hudson the Railway King, a bloated gambler, promoted from Company to Company,
lauded in newspapers, fźted and banqueted—even subscriptions raised for a Statue to his honour; and at this moment such a man is Member of our Parliament! Carlyle thus distinguishes the
Heroic from the Unheroic Age: “Sure enough in the Heroic Century, as in the Unheroic, knaves and cowards, and cunning greedy persons were not wanting,—were, if you will, extremely abundant. But the
question always remains, Did they lie chained, subordinate
Summing up, I would say that this conception of the duty of just and true men to wage war against the unjust and the untrue is quite invaluable at the present day. It enlarges and
ennobles the whole character of Social life; declaring good men appointed to be fellow-workers with God in all his dealings with mankind, in executing his judgments upon the disobedient no less
than in fulfilling his blessings upon the obedient, and thus it imparts to us a Morality complete and manful; in particular it establishes on the most clear and authoritative basis the penal
province of Government, showing how even in this lower and sorrowful department Government is no human institution for mere secular ends, but of a truth holy, divine. Moreover it forms a key to
unlock the strange secrets of the Past, the Present and the Future. Viewed by the light of this truth Revolutions and Conquests are seen to be under the dominion of divine law; and their real
nature becomes plain. Both are strictly punishments. A Revolution is the punishment of the most unjust men in the State, those who have abused or neglected their high trust; a Conquest is the
punishment of a Nation unjust to itself or to other Nations. Thus Carlyle defends all successful Revolutions and all successful Conquests; their succeeding (you must judge this word largely) is a
clear proof in God’s own writing of Fact, that they were in essence a performance of His Will and *
†
So much for the Penal Department of Human Affairs. A business at all times indispensable and sacred, and yet, what is now to be remarked, the lowest and least portion of the business. On the whole, it is wise to have as little as possible to do with what is not good; if it hinders us, we will push it out of our way, make an effort to reclaim it, trample it
under foot—but at any rate press on ever and ever to the Good; for there our true work lies. In developing the Good, especially the good nearest us, in organizing it
and directing it, must our main effort lie, and thence will come our true harvest. This sounds true, and it is true, in all matters, from the self-education of a single man, to the government of a
whole nation or commonwealth of nations; a truth to be known and perpetually followed. Any wide departure from it, especially any systematic departure from it, is a mistake, a criminal folly. And
thus Carlyle (as he would warn individual minds against morbid consciousness of their own faults, and urge them to direct their better powers to action) warns England against expending her
strength in Philanthropic excursions in favour of a struggle between sham kings and mere ballot-box anarchy.
”
In these views Carlyle is plainly at utter variance with public opinion. In a voice of most passionate sorrow he urges that England is perishing from want of Government, that with a plethora
of wealth and appliances all the noble elements of her new strength are running to anarchic waste and riot, daily worse and worse, her Literature, her Practical Labour, her Commerce, her annual
increase of Men; and worst of all the Souls of her children are perishing in blind mistrust of one another, in covetousness, hardness of heart, in savage and miserable isolation. On the other hand
Public Opinion sounds a perpetual Paean: congratulates itself in having got rid of tyrants in Politics and Religion, of mean Patrons in literature, of foolish meddlers in Trade, and in a thousand
matters boasts of its Freedom, demanding more and more freedom, less and less Government: Poets and Rhetoricians spout of the Happy Era, so
” Further
that “Such guidance is worse than none! Leave us
alone of your Guidance; take your wages and sleep! Let all things alone; for Heaven’s sake meddle ye with nothing!across all democratic turbulence, clattering of ballot-boxes and infinite sorrowful jangle, this at bottom is the wish and prayer of all hearts, here and now, as everywhere
and at all times. Give me a leader; a true leader, not a false sham leader; a true leader, that he may guide me on the true way, that I may be loyal to him, and follow him, and feel that it is
well with me.
” In short that the real, though quite inarticulate demand of the Age is for a strong Government of Wise Men, if possible of the Wisest.
This explanation appears most satisfactory, to be the true one, and the only true one, really reaching the heart of the matter. For observe on what it is founded: on a belief in God and
Given a world of knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action
”—by complicated machineries of mutual checks.
The sorrowful results of which are beyond all calculation; one of the worst being that the general mind is so imbued with the notion, and so hardened to the results as to fancy that all is
going on as it should, even the manifest evils of pauperism, chartism, money worship, quack worship, separation of class from class and man from man, being no other than what we must expect,
considering what poor human nature is. Before all things therefore Carlyle would awaken the country to a sense of its true condition; he would say to Englishmen, “Know that these
”are evils; and resolve to amend them, every one of you; begin at once, begin to-day. By misconduct they have come upon you, and are growing every hour;
by worthy conduct, by heroic effort they can be redeemed; they must, they shall, as God lives.
The Mottoes to his Latter-day Pamphlets exhibit the fulness of his terrible conviction, but no less the burning energy of his faith and exhortation; and they break out afresh in almost every
page. “But as yet struggles the twelfth hour of the Night. Birds of darkness are on the wing; spectres uproar; the dead walk; the living dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt make the
Day Dawn! Then said his Lordship, ‘Well, God mend all!’—‘Nay, by God, Donald, we must help him to mend it!’ said the
other.”—
“We must help.” Every man in the land may help. For those in high station are not the only ones to blame for these national confusions, let no Radical think this: men
in all classes are to blame, “Shoe-black as well as Sovereign Lord;
”—every unworthy dishonest life has contributed its share, even every unworthy
act. Hence Carlyle’s perpetual effort to raise the standard of individual morality, and the character of individual practice. We must have a Nation of Heroes, he has said, before we can
have a right Hero-Worship again. Is there one who would be a true Patriot? Let him begin by reforming himself. Let him fulfil his own post, whether small or great, with faithful
single-minded diligence, with true obedience towards his appointed superiors, true reverential care towards his appointed inferiors: already he is a wise Conservative, a wise Reformer, for the
very sight of him is an encouragement to all good men. And now, whatsoever he thinks or says or does further will be more likely to be sincere and to be right; and to be recognized as such by
other men. For a further duty he has; the duty of helpfulness to others. This too let him fulfil, striving with all his powers to this end, that each man be in the place which God the Maker has
fitted him. Here, Reader, you and every one may do good service! Can you not pray that this shall be more and more so; nay, in your little circle of home-friends, can you not
bear witness to good men and good deeds, and wise methods, and so cultivate a spirit of right reverence around you? Some too have wider influence; votes and patronage.
However it is not by individual efforts alone, but by co-operative efforts duly systematized, that this National Work of getting each man to his proper place, is to be done. Carlyle dwells
constantly on the necessity of Organization. Not indeed an Administrative Reform Association spouting duties to those above him, and prescribed duties to those below him. Who shall be above, who below in this arrangement? That is the vital question, for the
answer to it comprehends all else; among others this most important one, the method of promotion. In the French army, it is said, every private carries a Field Marshal’s baton in his
knapsack. That is as it should be; as it should be always, whether the army be one of fighters or workers. Here is a brave private tried and found faithful and able, make a Sergeant of
him!—a brave Sergeant; then make him a Captain; and so on. And observe how this is to be done effectually; in this way and this alone—by having Overseers themselves
clear-sighted and able, who know a good man when they see him, and would fain honour him; by having such and trusting them with powers of promotion. Make Napoleon your
field-marshal, and what an army he will make for you! Competition, Popular Influence; these have their advantages, and they are not excluded from a system based on Sovereignty; they are only
rightly limited, rightly directed by it. Men will indeed compete for honours and increase of pay; let them do so, but they shall now look to receive such at the hand of just responsible men, as a
reward for public service, not from irresponsible men as the reward of private service. And in due time a better feeling than any desire of pleasant things shall find a place, and even become
common, self-sacrificingadvise not to command. “Voting” Carlyle has thoroughly examined, and knows what it is worth. It is an expression of opinion, which may be right, or
may be wrong. If wrong, what values it, even if the voting be twenty thousand strong? England has much to learn on this head.
Do not fear, Reader, that all this implies mere Tyranny! It implies due Liberty, and no more than due. If we have right men to command us, they will make right laws, and give us right
freedom. You and I, if we commit murder, are liable to be taken and hanged. Is that a hardship? It is a blessed protection to you and to me, and to our country. And in all things
is it not a privilege to obey those wiser than ourselves, to do what they command, and abstain from what they forbid? In such obedience lies true Freedom, and the best happiness given to man.
Least of all fear that Carlyle or any one is potent enough to revive obsolete unjust restraints in democratic England;
For Carlyle, feeling deeply the need of many wide and far reaching changes in Society, and vehemently urging that we lose no time in beginning them, is yet utterly opposed to hasty violent
measures. The impatience, the love of change, the self-indulgent frowardness, which so marks the whole modern mind (not the so-called Radical only), finds no favour with him. He calls it the
spirit of Nomadism, Nomadism which is inhuman, apelike; sees that it is day by day debasing the character of all our work, from legislation down to house-building, and lower, sapping the strength
of individual will, and everywhere loosening the bonds between man and man; it is the very minister of Chaos! He advocates Permanency, persistence, continuity, as the condition, not only of
present order, but of all sure progress. Surely England, of all countries, has the least need to begin over again! With all her anarchies, she has yet noble authorities everywhere extant, some of
them venerable and beloved for ancient services, some strong in present activity, all more or less powerful; let them take charge of the New Work, now all disordered, for it is
their duty, their mission: the many look to them to perform it, and will yet rally round them, and help them, by loyal obedience. Parliament, Prime Ministers, Landed Aristocracy, Masters of
Factories, Masters of Households, Leading men in every Profession, the rich and the educated,—the chief business lies with them! Carlyle is for everywhere supporting
and extending existing order: taught by study of faithful Governments, terrible Revolutions, and much meditation on the nature of Man and Society, he is a Conservative, because he is a Reformer.
Moreover, he would impress upon “Happy he who has found a master;—and now, farther I will say, having found, let him well keep him. In all human relations
permanency is what I
advocate; nomadism, continual change, is what I perceive to be prohibitory of all good whatsoever. Two men that have got to cooperate will do well not to quarrel at the
first cause of offence, and throw up the concern in disgust, hoping to suit themselves better elsewhere. For the most part such hope is fallacious; and they will on the average not suit
themselves better, but only about as well;—and have to begin again bare, which loss often repeated becomes immense, and is finally the loss of everything, and
of their joint enterprise itself. will at last ‘gather moss,’ and yield some verdure and pasture.”*
It is evident how this Law of “permanency” prescribes also that all great changes should, if possible, be effected gradually, even changes that carry with them
immediate advantage. Most persons, I suppose, would admit this, but the modern practice is directly otherwise. In one of the
It remains only to indicate how Carlyle applies these principles to the chief political and social problems now before England. Space forbids me to do more than just suggest them, either in his words or my own.
First as to Supreme Government. Carlyle declares that Parliament is altogether unfitted to perform the work of Governing the country, which it has usurped. A body of six hundred and fifty
men, chosen by popular suffrage, debating with open doors and reporters in the gallery, is by the nature of things unfit to elect the Executive Ministry, to dismiss it at will, and determine
absolutely what shall, and what shall not be the Law of the Land. Parliament’s proper function is to be the Organ of Public Opinion, not of Sovereignty, to inform and advise the
Executive, not dictate to it. Within such limits Parliament with its debating is of the greatest use; though even here it has a rival and a superior in the Free Press. What Parliament and the
Country wants is the Kingly element, which during the last two hundred years has lost not only its wrongful, but its rightful and beneficent powers. The Prime Minister is now the virtual King; let
his hands be strengthened! Carlyle makes the following proposal for a beginning. “That Secretaries under and upper, that all manner of changeable or permanent servants in the Government offices shall be selected
without reference to their
power of getting into Parliament;—that in short the Queen shall have power of nominating the half-dozen or half-score officers of the Administration, whose presence is thought
necessary in Parliament, to official seats there, without reference *
VOL. I. 3 F
Following in the same direction, Carlyle insists that the Political Reform now wanting is a complete purgation and reconstruction of our Public Offices. Promotion by Seniority, needless
formalities, obsolete routines, useless offices, and the whole array of circumlocution and red-tapery must cease; the work really needful to be done must be redefined, and appointed; and above
all, an altogether new class of men got enlisted in the public service, if possible, the very best and ablest in all the land, gathered thither from every rank, and section of British men. This
great work, Carlyle says, should be undertaken by some “Esoteric” man, some Prime Minister of experience in these departments; though besides experience he must have
inflexible courage! Writing in 1851, Carlyle chose Sir Robert Peel as the most honest and brave man we had, and the most fitted by official experience for the task; and to him he made a noble
appeal in these
Army and Navy too must be reformed in like manner; and real Work “The New Downing Street, I foresee, when once it has got its a strenuously organized Idleness
” (what a mighty
phrase!), might be a valuable Industrial Regiment, enclosing, draining, tilling waste lands, doing manifold labour and good service: and the Navy, is it not a floating Bridge made to our hand to
carry over our superfluous population to other shores? Further, Carlyle hints that we may ultimately get rid of a standing army. He writes:
Industrial Regiments organized, will make these do its fighting, what fighting there is; and so
save immense sums. Or indeed, all citizens of the Commonwealth, as is the right and the interest of every free man in this world, will have themselves trained to arms; each citizen ready
to defend his country with his own body and soul,—he is not worthy to have a country otherwise.
Turning to Colonial Affairs for a few paragraphs, he illuminates the whole subject. We must keep our Colonies, not basely abandon them, as some suggest; they are entrusted
to us by God and our ancestors; and may be a bond of strength to the Mother-Country, which no money can measure. But we must govern them better. Choose well your Governors, give them due power,
and keep them at their posts; and it will be well with the Colonies and the Mother-Country too.
As for Foreign Affairs, Carlyle recommends a great reduction of business in that direction. The state of the European Continent is such, so bereft of nobleness and real strength, that it is waste to interfere on one side or the other, either in the war of party against party, or nation against nation. England had better avoid all quarrels with such unworthy folk, and concentrate her energies on her own peculiar work which is so pressing to be done.
Her Work lies at home! Government Reformed or Reforming must once more take charge of the People, especially of those lying stranded, idle, ignorant. Foremost comes Education. Thus much
Carlyle says, should be done and could be done: A Schoolmaster sent into every village, and every Englishman taught the blessed mystery of reading and writing; Religion meanwhile being cared for
(besides by all existing methods) by choosing good and dutiful men for Teachers. Then besides and along with Education, Government must take a direct share in the Organization of Labour. Crowds of
idle paupers, attached to no master and to no work, but begging, starving, costermongering, spreading around them pestilence bodily and spiritual, might be gathered together—by fair
invitations, and failing that, by stern compulsion,—straightway organized into compact “Industrial Regiments,” and set to help the Soldiers in making fruitful the
waste plains of England, Scotland and Ireland. Such might become faithful, useful men! Listen to what Carlyle says might follow from this simple, necessary, and most practicable measure: “Wise obedience and wise command, I foresee that the regimenting of Pauper Banditti into Soldiers of Industry is but the beginning of this blessed process, which will extend to
the topmost heights of our Society; and, in the course of generations, make us all once more a Governed Common-wealth, and
Civitas Dei, if it please God! Waste-land
Industrials succeeding, other kinds of Industry, as cloth-making, shoe-making, plough-making, spade-making, house-building,—in the end all kinds of Industry whatsoever, will be
found capable of regimenting. Mill-operatives, all manner of free operatives, as yet un-regimented, nomadic under private masters, they, seeing such example and its blessedness, will say:
‘Masters, you must regiment us a little; make our interests with you permanent a little, instead of temporary, and nomadic; we will enlist with the State otherwise!’
This will go meet (so to speak) and coalesce,
and there be no unregimented worker, or such only as are fit to remain unregimented, any more.”*
Another task, which the State might undertake with incalculable benefit to all, would be the construction and management of an effective system of Emigration. We think the vastness of our
population a curse to us, and so it is, but it might be a blessing. “Overpopulation? If this small western rim of Europe is over-peopled, does not everywhere else a whole vacant Earth, as it were, call to us, ‘Come and till me, come
and reap me!’ Can it be an evil that in an Earth such as ours there should be new Men? Considered as mercantile commodities, as working machines, is there in Birmingham or out
of it a machine of such value? Good Heavens! a white European Man, standing on his two legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is
worth something considerable, one would say!
Since these words were written in 1840, (and Carlyle had preached the same doctrines several years before in
,) we have indeed had an Emigration, but how conducted and with what results! The history of California shows plainly enough the outcome of Laissez-Faire;—foul greedy gambling
ending in mutual rapine and murder. In our own Colonies, whither the Emigrants have flocked, there has been and still is, anarchy, and brutal gambling enough; neither can these be altogether
checked by any Government at present; but Government need not encourage them by turning Emigrants brought out *
†
These three,—Education, Pauper-Organization, Emigration, are clearly works most pressing to be begun, and manfully prosecuted: behind them are others, an infinite number of others, some known to us, most altogether unknown; speaking generally, we may say that Government must once more look upon itself as the Head of the Nation, and help all the members of the Body Politic (the Professions and Social orders) to do each their share of the work; not indeed doing it for them, but enfranchising, guiding and restraining one and all.
For as Central Action or Supreme Sovereignty is thus so eminently needed, so is Local Action or Deputy Sovereignty: each is necessary to the other, and to the well-being of the
Common-Wealth. In the medieval state you had indeed a King for Sovereign Lord, vested with royal powers, but no less had you an Aristocracy, and all manner of authorities, Ecclesiastical,
Municipal, Professional, each governing some band of associated men. Whereby, as we may remember, there came to pass a beautiful Theory of universal Loyalty from man to man through all the grades
of society, and a practice more or less general of the same. Why should not this be once again, and in a wiser, larger shape, fitted to our own times? Why should there not be “The main substance of this immense Problem of Organizing Labour, and first of all of Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand
practically in the middle of it; by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie potentially
extant in those two Classes, who are to obey such enactments. A Human Chaos, “But it is my firm conviction that the ‘Hell of England’ will a
Chivalry of Labour? Carlyle says, A Chivalry of Labour must and shall be; and that to begin it and further it and fashion it, is a task laid on the Industrial Classes themselves. Above
all, on the Masters of Workmen, the present “Captains of Industry:” these he would teach to follow after Duty instead of Gain; he exhorts them to quit their gross
mammon-worship, to recognize their Workmen, not as “hands” only, but as Men, as living human souls, that cannot be satisfied with cash, paid ever
The same principles are applicable to almost all Professions at the present day: for except the clerical and military, every pursuit is given up to a base tyranny of Competition, wasteful
of useful talent, baneful to noble morality. But there is one Profession, which of all others is the most anomalous and anarchic, which is the Literary one. Naturally enough Carlyle has bestowed
especial thought upon this, his own Order, if Order it can be called. He can suggest no plan for its organization, but organized in some way, he says it ought to be—a work for several
generations, but strictly possible, most desirable to be done. In Literature lies the future Church of England: already it is a virtual Priesthood, it must be made an actual one! The reader will
find Carlyle’s own remarks on this most interesting subject in the chapter of the in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it: order never can arise there.cease to be that of ‘not making money;’ that we shall
get a nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven! I anticipate light in the Human Chaos, glimmering, shining more and more; under manifold true signals from without That light shall
shine. Our deity being no longer Mammon—O Heavens, each man will then say to himself: ‘Why such deadly haste to make money? I shall not go to Hell, even if I do not
make money! There is another Hell I am told!’ Competition, at railway-speed, in all branches of commerce and work shall then abate:—good felt-hats for the head, in
every sense, instead of seven feet lath-and-plaster hats on wheels, will then be discovered! Bubble periods, with their panics and commercial crises, will again become infrequent; steady,
modest industry will take the place of gambling speculation. To be a noble Master, amongst noble Workers, will again be the first ambition with some few; to be a rich Master only the
second. How the Inventive Genius of England, with the whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers shoved somewhat into the back-grounds
One other example and only one I will give of his power of grappling with Social Problems, his solution namely of the Negro Question. It may be gathered from what I have already stated that
he regrets the Emancipation Act of 1834 as a hasty measure, and advocates an immediate return to a system of partial compulsion. No man should, in his opinion, be allowed to live an idle life at
his own pleasure, least of all the black man, constitutionally prone to indolence; neither should any be driven to work by the necessity “If the Black gentleman is born to be a servant, and, in fact, is useful in God’s creation only as a servant, then let him hire not by the month, but by a very much
longer term. That he be ‘hired for life’—really here is the essence of the position he now holds! Consider that matter. All else is abuse in it, and this
only is essence;—and the abuses must be cleared away. They must and shall! Yes; and the thing itself seems to offer (its abuses once cleared away) a possibility of the most
precious kind for the Black man and for us.”so restore
Industry: the end of that would be “a Black Ireland!” What is needed is a just relation of Master and Servant put into effective practice. And clearly the Master must be the
Anglo-Saxon and the Servant the Negro; not otherwise at all. Carlyle continues:
He gives the same advice to the Americans. Keep Slavery, but make it just. Unnecessary cruelties (all real cruelty), violations of natural ties; all this might and should be firmly
suppressed by supreme and local governments; wages (small perhaps but yet wages) should be given the Black men, and true human treatment, including teaching and other things. In fact a whole Code
might be formed for the regulation of duties between Masters and Slaves; Carlyle suggests these two provisions as very necessary; 1st. That Slaves be unjust Slavery, no unjust thing can last.
Reader! I know not whether these *
A true Lamp for the New Years! And yet I would warn any reader not to look upon these books, which are levelled at the Present Time (that the inarticulate worth of England yet reaches down to the foundations;
” but such are comparatively rare, and too vague to carry persuasive strength
with them; so that it requires all the reader’s candour (unless, indeed, he remember to what spirit the writer always addresses himself), to infer that Carlyle, as in his earlier
writings, still affectionately searches for good, still joyfully sees and esteems its might. Especially since on the other hand his denunciations of evil sweep like huge drag-nets through and over
all Society, as if the Spirit of Wrath claimed every man and thing for its lawful prey!
And I must admit that in these political discourses there is some Spiritual Pride. But I would advise the reader to forgive, and if possible forget this, and receive with joyful sympathy the noble hopefulness, which may be gathered from the entire works. Assuredly there is that spirit in them which can send a man forth into the world rejoicing, laughing, pitying, loving, reverent of all good, abhorrent of all evil, ready to do and suffer with a brave heart all that shall be given him.
He would err greatly, utterly, who should infer that Carlyle has turned misanthrope in his latter days. Not so at all. Seek him in narrative, and he is the same generous Carlyle, almost as
of old. The “
<hi rend="c">THE</hi>
<lb/>
<hi rend="c">OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE</hi>
<lb/>
<hi rend="c">MAGAZINE</hi>
<lb/>
<hi rend="c">FOR 1856.</hi>
UNIVERSITIES.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LONDON:
BELL AND DALDY, FLEET STREET.
1856.
yet so faithful and entirely credible; what a kindly judgment of persons and things! Right welcome are those pleasant landscape pictures of Llanblethian, Hampstead, Herstmonceux; and very beautiful
the sympathy shown with the character of Sterling’s mother, a true gentle woman, with Sterling’s wife, with the good Quaker friends at Falmouth, and many others! Even for
Sterling’s father, the Thunderer of the Times, who must have seemed at first a sworn enemy, an “Organic Quack and Dealer in Hearsays,” Carlyle expresses a hearty
regard, and thinks him a very honest Towards me it is still more true than towards England, that no man has been and done like you.
”
With these solemn words echoing in my own heart, I here bid you, reader, a final farewell.
THE END.