If to be imperfectly understood in his own day be any pledge to an author of immortality to come, Mr. Thackeray may be thought to have no small prospect of “life beyond the grave.” That the objects of his satire should so misunderstand him is natural, but it is strange that so many of the pure-minded and good should not have discovered how kind a heart, how deep a love of all that is true, sincere, unaffected and noble, what a fragrance of philanthropy lies beneath the often bitter leaves of Mr. Thackeray’s writings.

It is in this that we believe him to have been so much misunderstood, affording another instance of the truth how seldom in the first instance mankind judge righteous judgment, or, at any rate, by any other standard than the outward appearance. If it has been well said, “ Le monde n’a pas de longues injustices” it might equally well have been added, “ Bon Dieu, qu’elles sont grandes, tant qu’elles durent.”

Let Pitt Crawley lay trains for his aunt’s money, let him overreach his nephew, improve an honest empty-headed brother’s backslidings to his own advantage, pay clandestine court to his brother’s wife, who despises and deludes him, and neglect his own, who adores him, what then! Pitt is an accomplished diplomatist: he trims his character as he trims his nails, and the world judges of the one as it does of the other—both are rounded, polished, and decorous.

Let Barnes Newcome sneer at an old relation as a venerable washer-woman, in fact, sneer at everything; let him play the “languid puppy” at his club, and in his father’s sweating-room be the cold, sharp, energetic screw, the veriest curmudgeon; let him leave his own children, the children of a woman whom he has inveigled from an honest lover, to nakedness and starvation, and ply the cupidity of high-born parents to let his ambition rob his friend of a girl who loves that friend; after her marriage, by brutal and dastardly treatment, let him drive the miserable wretch to desperation, divorce, and irrevocable ruin, what then! Barnes Newcome inherits his father’s title, and becomes Sir Barnes; Sir Barnes is a member of Parliament; Sir Barnes lectures on the poetry of womanhood and the affections: “a public man, a commercial man, yet his heart is in his home;” he, too, has trimmed his nails,—we beg pardon, his character,—and the world is most graciously pleased to accept the homage paid by vice, accounting it for virtue. Then comes a bold and straggling hand, writing cabalistic lore—it lifts the pall, and a whited skeleton appears.

Sad and bitter lessons: sad to the spectator, bitter and galling to those who fall under the lash of the satirist. But why should a man’s lessons be all so bitter and sad? Is there no sunshine in the world? Is gloom perpetual and everlasting? Do clouds for ever engross the heavens? Is there no patch of blue to comfort mortal eyesight? Truly, there is both sunshine and gloom, both cloud and blue sky; but even as one painter most excels in fixing the frolics of light, so another’s heart will perchance (perforce?) be in the storm, or his life spent in depicting the grey sadness of the sky. What right have you or I to say—paint sunshine alone, or storms alone; what right to prevent an author from writing satire exclusively, or panegyric exclusively?

Not, indeed, that Mr. Thackeray is much given to croaking, any more than to panegyric. He seldom croaks, and when he does, it is with easy, artistic phlegm. One of his peculiar characteristics is the even-handed coldness with which he treats both sides of his subject, and all sides of his characters. And although in his last work, by a happy termination, he has departed from his usual severity as an artist, few novelists have been so felicitously cool, and rigidly impartial.

He leaves all real croaking to his readers:

“You pay your shilling, and take your choice. The famous little Becky puppet is uncommonly flexible in the joints, and wicked in the expression. The Dobbin figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner.”

But at the close of the fair he says:

Ah, Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire?—or, having it, is satisfied?”

Something like croaking, too, this; but only a sigh, expressive of the profound melancholy which comes over the manager of the performance, as he sits before the curtain on the boards, and looks into the crowd. And whoever sees with the author’s eyes must be melancholy for a while. “ All is not gold that glitters, ” is the maxim inscribed on every page of his writings. It pervades his plots—pervades his characters. Through “Vanity Fair,” “Pendennis,” and “The Newcomes,” from top to bottom of “Our Street,” whether we follow the Kickleburys up the Rhine, or watch the ball at the Perkins’s, the still small whisper of the author pervades the atmosphere: “Behold the tinsel.” A melancholy voice in the midst of an overwrought civilization; where every advantage has its disadvantage, every picture its reverse; where platters have insides, and two sides are to every question! Not they who talk most of money, and loudest about their interest, are most interested or greedy of lucre. Not they who prate of love and extol friendship, are most loving and true. Not they who raise their voices in loud appeal to justice, are most righteous and equitable. And yet some men are most generous, most noble, most disinterested, who are no less loud in profession than in action. Some can love deeply, very deeply, whose discourse of love is warm. Some will speak nobly of justice, who are most nobly just. As our author himself expresses it with two-edged irony:

“It does not follow that all men are

honest, because they are poor; and I have known some who were friendly and generous, although they had plenty of money. There are some great landlords who do not grind down their tenants; there are actually bishops who are not hypocrites; there are liberal men even among the Whigs, and the Radicals themselves are not all aristocrats at heart.”

What a chaos, men will say, and how can we ever walk straight?

From seeing the maxim so broadly written, that “all is not gold that glitters,” they go a step further, and too often say, “there is no gold at all, no friendship, no truth, no devotion; all is selfish, fickle, and insincere—all is dross, begilt and betinselled.” But here they forsake and calumniate their master. There is gold; but it is hard to find, lying often where men would fain not seek it. Then there is silver gilt, next best; and if that cannot be had, why then consult your purse, and try brass—brass electro-plated.

Do you see that lofty figure? It looks like a heroine; only Mr. Thackeray has no faith in heroines, hardly more so, in fact, than in heroes.* It is Miss Ethel Newcome, who, under a warmer and less artistic hand, would no doubt have grown to an extraordinary heroine, but under his, turns out little more than such a woman as most men have seen somewhere or other in their lives, even though they may not have had the entrée to the drawing-rooms of her chaperon and grandmother, Lady Kew, nor been admitted into the privacy of Sir Brian, her father. Ethel Newcome is one of the hundred girls every year, as the phrase is, on the market—a phrase which the veracious history before us will not, perhaps, bring into greater favour than it is. But, as Major Pendennis says to his nephew Arthur, whom Mr. Thackeray has selected as locum tenens in his new creation, Ethel

“is one of the prettiest girls out this

season, Lady Ann’s daughter, an exceedingly fine girl. I hear the young men say so,” continues the worthy major; “and nothing shows more how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is, worthy old Indian. His son could no more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal princesses. Mark my words: they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild oats, and they’ll marry her to him; or if not, to some man of high rank. His father, Walham, was a weak young man; but his grandmother, old Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old woman, too severe with her children, one of whom ran away, and married a poor devil without a shilling. Nothing could show a more deplorable ignorance of the world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make such a match as that with his cousin. Is it true that he is going to make his son an artist? I don’t know what the deuce the world is coming to. An artist! By gad, in my time, a fellow would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, or a pastry-cook, by gad.”

Where is the gold, and where the tinsel in all this? How much of both is there in Ethel, “seventeen years old, rather taller than the majority of women” (that is, a little below the average height of heroines), “of a countenance somewhat haughty and grave, but on occasion brightening with humour, or beaming with kindliness, quick to detect affectation and insincerity, impatient of dulness and pomposity.” Look at her “passing her hand gently over the softest of lips and chins, her face assuming a look of arch humour, as she thereby indicates her admiration of her cousin Mr. Clive’s moustache and imperial, while the blushing, bowing youth casts down his eyes before hers. She is more sarcastic now than she became when after years of suffering had softened her nature. Truth looks out of her bright eyes, and rises up armed, and flashes scorn or denial, perhaps too readily, when she encounters flattery, meanness, and imposture.” Surely this sounds something like gold; not of the heroic standard, perhaps, not the soft and tender metal seven times purified and refined, but still gold, with that amount possibly, of the indurating alloy sufficient to make it wear the stamp of sublunary life.

“And yet, if the truth must be told, this young lady is popular, neither with many men, nor with most women. The innocent youth who pressed round her, attracted by her beauty, are rather afraid, after a while, of engaging her. This one feels dimly that she despises him; another, that his simpering common-places (the delight of how many well-bred maidens!) only occasion Miss Newcome’s laughter. Young Lord Crœsus, whom all maidens and matrons are eager to secure, is astonished to find that he is utterly indifferent to her, and that she will refuse him twice or three times in an evening, to dance as many times with poor Tom Spring, who is his father’s ninth son, and only at home till he can get a ship and go to sea again. The young women are frightened at her sarcasm. She seems to know what fadaises they whisper to their partners, as they pause in their waltzes; and Fanny, who was luring Lord Crœsus towards her with her blue eyes, dropped them guiltily to the floor, when Ethel’s turned towards her;* and Cecilia sang more out of tune than usual; and Clara, who was holding Freddy, and Charley, and Tommy, round her, enchanted by her bright conversation, and witty mischief, became dumb and disturbed when Ethel passed her with her cold face; and old Lady Hookham, who was playing off her little Minnie, now at young jack Gorget, of the Guards, now at the eager and simple Bob Bateson, of the Cold-streams, would slink off when Ethel made her appearance on the ground: whose presence seemed to frighten away the fish and the angler.”

There may be more dross than gold, perhaps, in all this, and yet, reader, which will you choose?—to which award hearty sympathy?—to “the innocent dancing youth,” or to the



lofty Miss Newcome? To the simpering common-places of Lord Crœsus and the guilty blue eyes of Fanny, or to the full glance of Ethel’s cold eyes only “on occasion brightening with humour, or beaming with kindliness and affection?”

But, you say, is there no mean, no medium between haughtiness and wit on one side, and weakness and silliness on the other? Listen to the author: “Every advantage has its disadvantage. For every ounce of gold there are pounds of gilding. Every jewel has its counterfeit. The great Koh-i-noor itself served all practical purposes in imitation. Goodnature and weakness are (how often!) found together—how often convertible and mistaken. Overflowing tenderness is mistaken for weakness, and vacillation wears the look of kindness. Superiority and pride, like birds of a feather, flock together; and they, too, with the undiscerning, pass for the same.”

But, you ask, is it always so? No, certainly not. But, we apprehend, a satirist describes not the rule, but the exception; or, at any rate, what ought to be and generally will be found to be more or less the exception. For instance, what grosser mistake than to suppose Juvenal’s writings contain a faithful picture of the whole of Roman society! And all Mr. Thackeray’s characters, though less grossly so, are more or less exceptional, without being heroes or heroines. He describes the effects of overwrought civilization, in excess or defect of the golden mean of perfection—not so much the golden mean itself. All his writings, viewed in this light, are profoundly true; viewed as exact pictures of the whole state of society, they are at best but clever distortions. And this is one great source of the misapprehension under which both the author and his writings commonly lie. “He is a misanthrope,” says one—“A disappointed man,” says another, “and his characters and scenes are libels on human nature.” But is every novelist bound to describe the whole of human nature, for the especial behoof of Smith or Cavendish? Must every novelist be patent looking-glass maker to Cavendish and Smith, so that whoever else’s face is there, their own, so to speak, may be painted in the centre, a possession for ever? You are unreasonable, Cavendish, you are unreasonable, Smith; and if Mr. Thackeray, out of the continent of human nature, has chosen him a small principality of his own to describe, it is unjust of you to declare, through thick and thin, because it lies out of your corner, that he meant to describe that also, and has altogether failed. It is the West End chiefly that he describes, and not even the whole of that; but, so to speak, the part which is diseased by the reaction of the very laws of progress, which lead men lower down in the scale to improve under ordinary circumstances. It is that culminating part of the ancient tree, which is beginning to bleach and decay, while ever fresh and healthy branches are spreading and sprouting from below. In society, as in nature, there is constant action and reaction. Refinement, pushed to the limits of a particular phase, breeds degeneracy and torpor, and, as a consequence, the artificially begotten inferiority of some characters leads an opposite class of minds to exaggerate all their own claims to superiority, until they become or threaten to become vices. Thus the independent spirit of Ethel is made haughtier by the petty cringing and self-seeking of Fanny. The self-confidence of one man swells and frets at the sight of another’s vacillation. The modesty of Addison recoils and shrinks before the forwardness of Steel. “ Rien” says Montaigne, “ Rien ne me redresse tant dans



mon assiette, que de voir les défauts d’autrui.” And still more might the saying of Luther be applied, for civilization is like a drunken man on horseback—“prop her up on one side, and she falls over on the other.”

And if it be said that all this is nothing new—being, in fact, no more than Aristotle’s doctrine under a new dress, of the extremes which lie on either side of the golden mean, we may ask in Mr. Thackeray’s words:

“What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies; dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the human story do not love and lies too begin? So the tales were told ages before Æsop: and asses under lion’s manes roared in Hebrew; and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep’s clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when he first began shining; and the birds in the tree overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever since they were finches. Nay, since last he besought good-natured friends to listen once a month to his talking, a friend of the writer has seen the New World, and found the (featherless) birds there exceedingly like their brethren of Europe. There may be nothing new under and including the sun; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes, and quiet. And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so da capo.”

And day by day the planets go their everlasting rounds. But if, because neither they nor the sun are new, Kepler had not observed and Newton generalized his observations, we should be without the laws of gravitation. And this, which is true of astronomy, may equally well be applied to human nature. No less than the former, the latter has laws, orbits, oscillations and eccentricities, which remain, even more than the heavens, man’s peculiar study and richest field of speculation—a field so far from having been exhausted by the curiosity of ages, although for ever lying next our feet, that, if compared with many a waste reclaimed but yesterday to science from barren observation, it will be found to have yielded a smaller proportionate harvest than any other realm of thought. Not that we need wonder at this, if we judge of psychology by the analogy of its correlative science physiology, in which the study of anatomy preceded that of organic life. Being at the centre ourselves, our looks are first turned towards the objects at the circumference. Another reason is the natural aversion felt by all men until a particular stage of thought arrives, to believe or even suppose that man as a living agent can be the subject matter of science. The idea seems fatalistic, and to interfere with their freedom. Man is his own last study. We speak here of the genuine scientific process, when man has been schooled by many blunders and failures to proceed methodically. Every one knows that at different times centuries have been spent in abortive efforts to discover “the essence,” “the philosopher’s stone,” etc. etc. First comes the dissection and rational survey of the dead and inanimate, next comes the analysis of that which lives and moves, last of all generalizations on the moving cause. So in Ethics, the critical and inductive theory of human action might naturally have been expected to come last of all in the scale of sciences; and so it has proved indeed, for it is yet in great measure to come. But however distant such an event may be, every fresh writer who stereotypes the society or any part of the society of his day, has bequeathed a valuable legacy to moral philosophy. As Copernicus to Kepler and Kepler to Newton; as Vesalius to Bichat and Bichat to Carpenter; such were Homer and the tragedians to Aristotle; and such Milton, Shakespeare,



and our novelists, let us hope may be to him who some day will discover the theory, if not of human, at least of British, gravitation. But in the meantime, it is interesting to note how the same phase of society and feeling is reflected in different minds; how the social oscillations—the great actions and reactions of class characteristics, normal and abnormal, find a kindred exposition under a garb outwardly most dissimilar, in minds apparently far as the poles asunder. Who, for example, at first sight would accuse Thackeray and Currer Bell of any connection? And yet, at the bottom, the present time is viewed by both much in the same light. Hitherto, in all highly civilized nations a time has come, when the machinery and scaffolding of civilization have threatened to overgrow the building itself; a time, when prudence threatens to choke goodness, cleverness to trample on simplicity, affectation to lord it over nature and even over art; when interest blinds justice, worldly wisdom petrifies the heart, and etiquette poisons comfort; a time when the letter seems likely to swallow up the law, means to usurp the place of ends, and rules to make a clean sweep of reason; when honours are more coveted than worth, riches than happiness, power than affection; when clothes are for character, and hollow praise for genuine love—a time rich in the “irony of fate.” Such in some respects seems to be our present phase. And far as Currer Bell and Thackeray seem apart, yet a deep hatred of this predominance of the husk over the kernel, of the letter over the spirit, of the essence over the accident, will, we think, be found to form the prevailing undercurrent of their works.

Jane Eyre by many has been looked upon as an immoral production, and Currer Bell as the treacherous advocate of contempt of established maxims and disregard of the regulations of society. Now this is precisely the fault which the Pharisees found with the teaching of the Saviour. Where indeed, we would ask, is the immorality of Jane Eyre, if not that, acting in the purity of her heart and the might of her integrity, she spurns the letter to give triumph to the spirit? Who are they, that prate of falling and make a sickening display of their humility, but those who gloat over human frailty, and, longing to fall, are for ever spreading the sterile couch of deprecation beforehand? Are there no strong hearts left? Because temptation has often triumphed, has singleness of purpose died out of the world, and may no one be calmly conscious of virtue to act and strength to resist? Jane Eyre is Currer Bell’s answer to the question—and, viewed as a contrast to the disgusting cant of immorality lurking beneath tawdry finery and mock humility, may be considered no unimportant contribution to the characteristic delineations of our time. Her situations are often extremely forced; she revels in the depiction of freedom; but after all, she makes will triumph over temptation, exalting the spirit over the letter, nor is there anything in her descriptions which betrays more than the intense aspirations of a powerful moral sense and the eager desire to raise the weak and neglected of the earth to the independence of mind, without which, virtue is but a shadow. The noble conduct of the women, who, through evil report and good report, in spite of sneers and fears, within the last few months, left the comforts of an English home to bear consolation and kindness and care to our wounded beneath an eastern sun—was in the true spirit of Jane Eyre.

We will quote the following passages from Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, with a view to illustration, and also to compare the peculiarities of their authors. Jane is governess in Mr. Rochester’s family. His wife is mad. He loves Jane Eyre, and has



just related to her the unfortunate circumstances, which in earlier life led him to contract an alliance with a woman he never did love.

Mind triumphs over matter, and Jane keeps her word and departs.

As a contrast in artistic performance, in spirit and in style, with this we compare the following picture from Vanity Fair.

“ ‘Rawdon,’ said Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the best in London): ‘I must have a sheep-dog.’ ”

“ ‘ A what?’ said Rawdon, looking up from an écarté table.

“ ‘A sheepdog!’ said young Lord Southdown. ‘My dear Mrs. Crawley, what a fancy! Why not have a Danish dog? I know of one as big as a came-leopard, by Jove. It would almost pull your Brougham. Or a Persian greyhound, eh? (I propose, if you please); or a little pug that would go into one of Lord Steyne’s snuff-boxes? There’s a man at Bayswater got one with such a nose that you might,—I mark the king and play,—that you might hang your hat on it.’

“ ‘I mark the trick,’ Rawdon gravely said. He attended to his game commonly, and didn’t much meddle with the conversation except when it was about horses and betting.

“ ‘What can you want with a shepherd’s dog?’ the lively little Southdown continued.

“ ‘I mean a moral shepherd’s dog,’ said Becky, laughing, and looking up at Lord Steyne.

“ ‘What the devil’s that?’ said his Lordship.

“ ‘A dog to keep the wolves off me,’ Rebecca continued. ‘A companion.’

“ ‘Dear little innocent lamb, you want one,’ said the Marquis; and his jaw thrust out, and he began to grin hideously, his little eyes leering towards Rebecca.

“The great Lord of Steyne was standing by the fire sipping coffee. The fire crackled and blazed pleasantly. There was a score of candles sparkling round the mantelpiece, in all sorts of quaint sconces, of gilt and bronze and porcelain. They lighted up Rebecca’s figure to admiration, as she sat on a sofa covered with a pattern of gaudy flowers. She was in a pink dress, that looked as fresh as a rose; her dazzling white arms and shoulders were half covered with a thin hazy scarf through which they sparkled; her hair hung in curls round her neck; one of her little feet peeped out from the fresh crisp folds of the silk: the prettiest little foot in the

prettiest little sandal in the finest silk stocking in the world.

“The candles lighted up Lord Steyne’s shining bald head, which was fringed with red hair. He had thick bushy eyebrows, with little twinkling bloodshot eyes, surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. His jaw was underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his lordship, broad-chested, and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ancle, and always caressing his garter-knee.

“ ‘And so the Shepherd is not enough,’ said he, ‘to defend his lambkin?’

“ ‘The Shepherd is too fond of playing at cards and going to his clubs,’ answered Becky, laughing.

“ ‘ ’Gad, what a debauched Corydon!’ said my lord—‘what a mouth for a pipe!’

“ ‘I take your three to two;’ here said Rawdon, at the card-table.

“ ‘Hark at Melibæus,’ snarled the noble Marquis; ‘he’s pastorally occupied too: he’s shearing a Southdown. What an innocent mutton, hey? Damme, what a snowy fleece!’

“Rebecca’s eyes shot out gleams of scornful humour. ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘you are a knight of the Order.’ He had the collar round his neck, indeed—a gift of the restored Princes of Spain.

“Lord Steyne in early life had been notorious for his daring and his success at play. He had sat up two days and two nights with Mr. Fox at hazard. He had won money of the most august personages of the realm: he had won his marquisate, it was said, at the gaming-table; but he did not like an allusion to those by-gone fredaines. Rebecca saw the scowl gathering over his heavy brow.

“She rose up from her sofa, and went and took his coffee-cup out of his hand with a little curtsey. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I must get a watch-dog. But he won’t bark at you.’ And, going into the other drawing-room, she sat down to the piano, and began to sing little French songs in such a charming, thrilling voice, that the mollified nobleman speedily followed her into that chamber, and might be seen nodding his head and bowing time over her.”

But that the same spirit under the utmost difference of the outer garb, and the same hidden sympathy united the clergyman’s daughter and the man of the world, may perhaps be seen from the following passages.

These ideas under Mr. Thackeray’s pen assume the following shape:

“Shame! What is shame? Virtue is very often shameful according to the English social constitution, and shame honourable. Truth, if yours happens to differ from your neighbour’s, provokes your friend’s coldness, your mother’s tears, the world’s persecution. Love is not to be dealt in, save under restrictions which kill its sweet healthy free commerce. Sin in man is so light, that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed; while for woman it is so heavy, that no repentance can wash it out. Ah! yes; all stories are old. You proud matrons in your May-fair markets, have you never seen a virgin sold, or sold one? Have you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? Of a poor woman fallen more sadly yet, abject in repentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her? I pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gilding the hills round about, as the orchestra blows its merry tunes, as the happy children laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and smoke, and flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the most sinful? Is it poor

Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straightlace that grudges his repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that slinks away with poor little Ishmael in her hand: or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at her from my demure Lord Abraham’s arm?

”

And here it may not be out of place to point out a few particulars in which we conceive Currer Bell and Thackeray to agree and to disagree. Both satirize existing features of society; but Currer Bell, by describing what is not; Thackeray, by describing what is; the former by eliciting moral heroism from the depths of a nature apparently ordinary; the latter by divesting of heroism characters which might pass for heroic; the former by giving reins to an aspiration after plain unvarnished and inner truth of human action, which betrays her into exaggerations; the latter by coldly saying, “there is high life for you, such as it is; pick out the good and steer clear of the evil, if you can;”—a spirit which occasionally leads him in spite of his benevolence and artistic impartiality beyond the boundaries of irony and satire into indiscriminate cynicism.

We are told, for instance, that Hobson and Brian Newcome, so long as their mother, the old bankeress, was alive, contrived to sow their wild oats under the rose, in spite of her puritanical jealousy, but that when the old lady was gone, Mr. Hobson had no need any more of disguise, but took his pleasure. Fighting, tandems, four-in-hand, anything. All very proper. “But,” proceeds our author, “do not let us be too angry with Colonel Newcome’s two most respectable brothers, if for some years they neglected their Indian relative, or held him in slight esteem. Their mother never pardoned him, or at least by any actual words admitted his restoration to favour. For many years, as far as they knew, poor Tom was an unrepentant prodigal, wallowing in bad company, and cut off from all respectable sympathy.”

Coupling this with the fact of their own wild oats, the irony is sufficiently fair.

Thackeray continues his ironical defence. “Their father had never had courage to acquaint them with his more true and charitable version of Tom’s story. So he passed at home for no better than a black sheep.”

In short, they turned the small end of the glass to their own, the large end to their brother’s sins. “His marriage with a penniless young lady did not tend to raise him in the esteem of his relatives at Clapham. It was not until he was a widower, until he had been mentioned several times in the gazette for distinguished military service, until they began to speak very well of him in Leadenhall Street, where the representatives of Hobson Brothers were, of course, East India proprietors, and until he remitted considerable sums of money to England, that the bankers, his brethren, began to be reconciled to him.”

So far, this is all in the vein of impartiality, so peculiar to Thackeray; for, although the defence is to a great extent ironical, it is clear that he himself is ready to make some allowance for the circumstances. But unfortunately he does not stop there. His hand begins to shake a little, and his two-edged probe to cut both ways—as much in a wrong as in a right direction. “I say,” he continues, waxing more cold and cynical as he warms with his subject, “do not let us be hard upon the brothers. No people are so ready to give a man a bad name as his own kinsfolk; and, having made him that present, they are ever most unwilling to take it back again. If they give him nothing else in the days of his difficulty, he may be sure of their pity, and



that he is held up as an example to his young cousins to avoid. If he loses his money, they call him poor fellow, and point morals out of him. If he falls among thieves, the respectable Pharisees of his race turn their heads aside and leave him penniless and bleeding. They clap him on the back kindly enough when he returns, after shipwreck, with money in his pocket. How naturally Joseph’s brothers made salaams to him, and admired him, and did him honour, when they found the poor outcast a Prime Minister, and worth ever so much money, Surely human nature is not much altered since the days of those primeval Jews. We would not thrust brother Joseph down a well and sell him bodily, but—but if he has scrambled out of a well of his own digging, and got out of his early bondage into renown and credit, at least we applaud him and respect him, and are proud of Joseph as a member of the family.”

All this is too indiscriminate, and when applied to human nature at large savours of vulgar misanthropy. That relations should be unable to repress feelings of vexation at the sight of their own flesh and blood digging pits of private and family scandal, is surely not so very reprehensible. Nay, that their vexation should be greater in proportion to the proximity of the ties, would seem, indeed, to be the legitimate result of greater affection in the beginning. In high life, ties of blood are (God knows) often slender enough, but not so universally so, after all, judging by the prevalent outcry against nepotism. It is necessary to the well-being of society that black sheep should meet their deserts. But then comes the evil of the law—that the punishment is often altogether arbitrary, and that it so often falls on the wrong person. Over this Mr. Thackeray may well draw the edge of his razor. On the other hand, what would become of society, if the plan were reversed—if all men went mad after black sheep; if white sheep were as carefully tabooed; if to be in debt, to gamble and to drink and cockfight, drive tandem, seduce, be hail fellow well met, what if all this should become the gauge of excellence?

Mr. Thackeray may be the last man to defend such a state of things. Were it the rule, instead of the exception, we verily believe such is the temper of his mind, his love of liberty, his hatred of tyranny, assumption, extremes, absurdities, and usurpations of all kinds, that he would attack the tyranny of license as he now assails the tyranny of convention. But if it be not—and it is not the rule, neither are the cases set forth by Mr. Thackeray by any means the rule,—it behoves him the more to guard against leaving impressions on the minds of his readers which mar the good he would otherwise produce. The impression he too often leaves is that all respectability is a deception—the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual wickedness. “Why should we care for it, then; let us live and choose for our friends the ‘good fellows’ of life. Let us seek for heart. Intellect, industry, you see—self-command, the energy and thrift of Barnes, what are they, to the noble and irregular instincts of Clive? ’Gad, ma’am, ‘boys will be boys,’ and Barnes, who was never a boy, never was a man. He lived to die a villain; whereas Clive was a happy man, after all.” This, then, is one fault that we venture to find with Mr. Thackeray: that he draws the balance too much in favour of mere feeling and impulse.

Another fault we may be excused for pointing out before we proceed to close this article with the more agreeable and congenial task of dwelling on some of the excellencies by which, in our opinion, the author of “The Newcomes” is pre-eminently distinguished



as a writer of fiction. We have said that he seldom croaks; he is too much a man of the world—he is too well schooled in the different sides of social pictures to take things otherwise than coolly and philosophically. But he cannot, we think, be exonerated from moralizing to an undue extent. It would seem as if it were the result of the impatience of a writer not caring to be at the trouble of dramatizing his sermon. Thackeray seems to cling to his moral reflections as tenaciously as Walter Scott did to his descriptions. Both are exquisite of their kind, and the reflections infinitely more interesting than the descriptions. But where a writer has unequalled powers of putting men in action, his fame as a novelist will be just in proportion as he himself consents to retire from the scene.

It is urged against Thackeray and Currer Bell, that, in different ways, they both covertly undermine principle, to give unlimited license to feeling. But what is principle? Principle, to me, is feeling regulated; to you, feeling suppressed. And yet life, after all, is but feeling—feeling of some kind or another—from the cradle to the grave! If you unduly fetter and cramp it, you are answerable for one of three things: its corruption and degeneracy, or its violent explosion, to the detriment of bystanders; or else its decay and death. “All is not gold that glitters.” All is not respectability that bears the name. There is real and genuine respectability; and there is its figment and phantom to terrify the weak, to grieve the good, and to amuse the bad. We execrate practical jokers, who trifle with the fears of the unsuspecting, and ought we to defend the infinitely greater mischief of those who tamper with the tenderness of their neighbours, either because they are too supine to distinguish between virtue and vice, or because they make their own standard that of the world; or finally, because they cannot or will not separate the rule from the paramount reason? Men are not made for rules, but rules are made for men. We are not to be happy for the good pleasure of society, but society is for the “good pleasure” and best happiness of man. If not, oh that we had wings, and might fly to the desert! Why should we not all have as much, instead of as little, happiness as we may? And if my neighbour’s views or character are deficient, and he ruthlessly interferes with and poisons my happiness, shall I not murmur? No doubt he who would get on without any rules at all, might as well contend against maps, triangles, compasses, and in short, the whole fabric of civilization. But, on the other hand, who could maintain that a map is a substitute for a landscape, or that to love a sunset is the feeling of a madman, because sunsets are not found in maps? If nobody ever went beyond the tether of a rule, we should all stand still, and the state of the world be stereotyped in imperfection. Ore implies dross; refining, refuse; labour, some degree of waste: but so long as there is a healthy preponderance of gold, refinement, and effort after excellence, so long may we be well satisfied that we are not at a stand-still. It is not that we should relax the code of discipline and framework of society for the comfort of one or more individuals, but that by an enlightened study of the reason we should raise the spirit of the rules by suitable improvements, or by an enlarged and liberal interpretation. Has not the whole current of our national progress been against unjust and illiberal restrictions, founded, not in the nature of things, but in the intolerance of men? And so within the bosom of society, the sooner we get rid of the hateful priestcraft and druidism of a spurious respectability the better, and the greater praise to those who lend their talents to the task.

In conclusion, what is the moral and purpose to be derived from the



writings before us? To be what we are, to say what we think, and daily to strive that what is best shall please us more and more: such are the lessons which Mr. Thackeray’s writings seem calculated to convey.

And yet, if we do so, shall we be happy?

Alas! the world is in embryo still, a chaos of paradox and repugnancy. You must not only be humble—you must seem so; you must not only be loving, sincere, unselfish, you must appear to be unselfish, loving, and sincere. What follows? Let me but “seem,” then, “to be,” shall take its chance. Why should I rack my brain for the essence, when the appearance is so short a cut to comfort? Why court the simple eloquence of truth, when meretricious affectation and fine talking, which is pleasing intoxication to myself, and dust in the eyes of my audience, will serve every rational purpose? And if I cannot say from my heart, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men,” how easy it is to say it with my lips, by aping the shibboleth of party.

Ah, reader, have you any experience, and have you not discovered how to seem is as everything, to be, as nothing? Do not half the people in the world act as though they thought that to seem happy is far more important than to be so?—to seem pious even greater than to be good?

But courage! Truth is in the nature of things, as sparks fly upwards, as the drops fall down. Men do not love evil and shamming for evil and shamming’s sake. Who would compass by foul means what he can by fair? Do we not all run riot after seeming goods? Wherein we pursue goods, we are good; wherein they are but seeming goods, it is our ignorance. Let us but overcome that ignorance, and so let us more and more leave the tinsel and burrow for the gold, detest affectation and cling to the truth, eschew the shadow and clasp the reality.

Towards the end of my last chapter I insisted on the necessity of understanding the Past time before passing sentence on it, and that the only way to do so effectually was to migrate thither in spirit, and follow the men as they lived and worked, see as they saw, and feel as they felt, and, above all, seek affectionately through all difficulties and contradictions, for the good inherent in them, as for the very heart and substance and inspiring power of either man or work; and I gave a few examples of what Carlyle, thus looking, had seen, and thus seeking, had found in his special province of history the last two centuries; how he had taught us to form a braver, truer, and far happier judgment than the common one, of such men as Voltaire, Byron, Goethe, and other men of the time who left their mark behind them. I now wish the reader to acknowledge that this method of Carlyle’s is but the due following of “Might is Right” as the universal law, and to accept it as true of all history; of the history of all Action no less than of Opinion, through all the strange, eventful fortunes of men and nations hitherto. Let him acknowledge that all thought which has had a lasting influence on Belief, has had along with its error, a measure of truth or Divine Might exactly proportionate to its actual effect: that all work, likewise, that has stood the test of time, and all relations of authority amongst men, which have been in anywise permanent, must have



been then and there rightful in the main. Is permanence, then, the test of worth in work, and in a world where nothing is permanent? Yes! it is a very helpful test, though it requires, no less than any other, a wise mind to apply it. For does a thing last among men, maintaining itself against all enemies? Then it is a sign that many men are at least reconciled to it, do suffer it to remain, tacitly approving of it; that experience satisfies it; that in short it must have or have had some solid foundation, some alliance with real fact, which means justice and truth. It must be a good thing, and not a bad thing. This is true; and yet let any Order show in the strivings of its birth or the plenitude of its power, or the decay of its age, any symptoms of oppression or other vice, which man, “drest in a little brief authority,” is at all times apt to yield to, and the modern Leveller will condemn it as an unjustifiable tyranny from the beginning! Thus, have we not seen in America, that “land of Anarchy plus the Street-constable!” a rebellion against the primeval law of the subjection of women to men, which Fact has justified all over the world for six thousand years and upwards?—a rebellion which one may prophesy will be temporary only. And if this be so of an authority, the form of which is of necessity perpetual, and therefore present as well as past, and of the most simple natural kind, it is no wonder that condemnation is hurled far and wide with the utmost assurance against systems of authority now past and gone, which we cannot so easily see the good of, now that their virtue is all diverted into other channels, and their names are labelled with the vices that produced their downfal. The old dog is hanged, and has a bad name, and now he only scents the gale. Nevertheless, could the old dog’s history be truly known, we should most likely find that once he was a useful servant to men, obedient to them, victorious for them; and most surely these old authorities and institutions did once sustain themselves by the might of their usefulness, which was their present rightfulness, and by that only, and were by no means mere stupid legalized tyranny. The compulsion we abhor in them was for the most part only a martial law, very needful for martial times, all society being “in a state of surge,” as our French neighbours call it; and the relation between men so created and preserved was in the main a just one.* Thus, as Carlyle has shown, the Feudal Barons were in their day the right rulers of England; the Pope at Rome was the right ruler of Christendom; the white Englishman was, nay is, the proper master of the Jamaica negro. The title of their authority was Might, but it was a good and true title, a God-given one: the injustice of their practice was but weakness, and in time their ruin. For by the self-same law, what is unjust cannot last. Feudal Serfdom had to go; Roman Papacy had to go; Black Slavery had to go, men enduring their wrongfulness no longer; and alas! in the hurry and rage of the change, much good went with them for the time. Each of these institutions carried with it order, organization, and left but a sorry substitute in its room. There is a penalty on Injustice! Might is Right still.

These are but three examples; an



infinite number remains behind. Carlyle always accepts both voices of the Past, the condemning as well as the approving; the rising and the setting sun; the summer and the winter of all human things.

It is important to insist upon the Law of “Might is Right” applying to many acts that at first sight seem acts of brute force only. Violence! it is a word full of painful significance; and one must admit that history abounds in examples of violence which were simply crimes. Nevertheless, we ought to know that the Eden-gift of physical strength is a right noble one, given to man to do his master service; that there is a true Right residing in the Might of it. Does Robert Burns do wrong with his plough to the “wee modest, crimson-tipped flower” or the “brown, timorous Beastie?” Or does London, being carnivorous, commit thereby a thousand daily crimes? The ploughman’s trade and the butcher’s are, I think, both lawful and manly. These examples are beyond all gainsaying; but violence to men? This too is surely often a duty, and, rightfully performed, belongs to the true heroic class of human deeds, is sometimes truly sublime. Because it then implies a stern conquest of self, not of self-centred passions, but of the first impulses of noble, brotherly affections; because reverence for God and His laws claiming preference to regard for men, has then to manifest itself in visible and terrible action. Such is Penal Justice, a perpetual necessity for men and nations. To forward it, to honour it when done, is the duty of all; Nature herself teaching this, as by faithful instinct even the child reveres his father’s sword, and the maiden heart ever loves the soldier: but to execute it—this is emphatically the duty of Men, true and strong and brave. This is a very old truth, but modern philanthropism would fain deny it, and Exeter Hall, not content with thinking Penal Justice a sorrowful, would persuade us that it is a degrading, work. But Carlyle despises such effeminate philosophy, which would make the Past as gloomy as it makes the Present feeble. He will honour Penal Justice, whensoever it has been done, and moreover, (what is for our present purpose more important,) howsoever done; whether with solemn order, or fiercely, savagely, even with much accompanying crime. For he will always judge according to the substance, and not by mere external incidents. And as the everlasting essence of Penal Justice is War, so in every society its primary form has been open War—War with its savagery and misery and wastefulness, and thousandfold individual injustice, which, if we condemn utterly, we do very foolishly. Looking at it in a broad and manful way, as Carlyle has done, not losing our nerve at the sight of human suffering, or our judgment in intemperate indignation for wrong, we may say that war was a necessary means to win that beautiful result now visible in all European Societies, pre-eminently in England; visible, and yet so seldom thoughtfully noticed—Peace in our streets. Warfare there still remains, even in England, but now a better warfare; temperate and just, orderly, solemn, and beautiful in the sight of men, drawing to the side of right all good men, and finding every year fewer and worse, (who are also weaker) adversaries; so that instead of lawless revenge by private club and dagger, we have a Code of Law, Courts of Justice, and just judges; instead of a fierce, greedy soldiery, a few civil persons in blue; (brave warriors none the less!) instead of headlong massacre or torture at the stake, an “improved drop” at Newgate, with a chaplain in attendance.

What a progress! What a miserable faith to conceive that this result has been won by chance, or worse, is the upshot of mere contending evils! “Might is Right” saves us from such a doleful misbelief, and points out the truth that the continuous fighting of those old Feudal Barons did at heart mean this, “Let there be Justice; let there be war against the unjust man!” A right worthy maxim for men in all times and places. I am not aware that any modern writer, except Carlyle, has insisted upon this, as the very key to the history of that and other fighting times. I am sure that none will do justice to the terrible as well as the happier labours of the past, unless he begin by believing that wherever an enduring good has been produced, good men and good deeds have had the making of it. The application of this principle to National History, has a much wider field than that which we should call Criminal Justice. For let it be duly considered, that robbery and murder are not the only punishable crimes, though the mechanism of human law chiefly touches these, but all social vices, all violation and neglect of public duty, especially that of strict truthfulness and faithful activity, are punishable, and are inevitably punished; and that this is the true significance of all great Revolutions. As enduring facts, these Revolutions first justify themselves; on closer inspection, they prove to be acts of Justice. At first lawless, terrible, rudely yet undoubtedly penal, afterwards they develope into order new forms of social combination, and in their season bring forth good works of men. Thus was ushered in a Roman Republic, a Roman Empire, a British Constitution, and many other notable national conditions. Such also was the French Revolution, the frightful incidents of which are yet all too pre-eminent in our memory; its ultimate results are still unknown to us; but thus much, as Carlyle has shown, is certain, that it was a penalty upon the misrule and neglect of long years, the death-doom of institutions whose work was done. It, too, was in the main just. Sixty years is too short a distance to give us the right view of this mighty movement as a whole; and we are too apt to judge of it by details, such as the September Massacres: and even of these we judge too harshly, by not considering sufficiently that eternal mystery of human fellowship, whereby the children are visited with the sins of their fathers, and each has to bear his brother’s burden, as well as share in his blessings; and by forgetting that when masses of men are striving together for life and death, discriminating justice is impossible. That the Septemberers did a most brutal, cowardly, and wicked deed, is a conclusion which none can miss, and which Carlyle in nowise questions; on the contrary he directly affirms it: but he insists on the other hand, that an approximation to due retributive justice is practicable only under the sanction of custom and the security of order, and that the Septemberers had none such to guide or restrain them: they were the untaught and much-wronged mob of the St. Antoine; they knew only that they had enemies, and that those enemies were in their power; if they destroyed them, did they not, even in that mad hour, extemporise “a tribunal of wild-justice?” I cannot condemn Carlyle for dwelling upon this, as many have done—even his friend Sterling—far otherwise; it is to me one more emphatic proof of his god-like strength and candour of judgment, which can grasp the most tremendous movements of conflicting good and evil, and do justice to all. Weaker minds act in some sort like the Septemberers: in their fear they massacre whole multitudes of the past.

The conduct of all Revolutionists must be judged in the same large way, those of modern times not excepted.

Carlyle also fearlessly applies the principle of “Might is Right” to the case of National Conquest: surely a dark subject in these days. The Mechanical Morality which so paralyzes faith, thought, and action, and the selfish tyrannous cowardice, which would make the whole world work in chains, for fear of mischief, here as elsewhere are all too predominant, preventing us from knowing the truth of National Duty, and making that great province of the Past, called International History, a barren waste for us, the record of mere crime and misery. But it is a false and narrow notion, this modern one, that Nations have no concern with one another, except that of passing the commercial money-bag in the most convenient way: they are a Brotherhood of men founded upon Justice, wherein the element of crime, and with it the element of punishment, cannot be wanting. Punishment, and as with individuals, not only for the palpable wrongs of external violence, but for national evil of every kind—most surely for evil not-doing as well as for evil-doing. Nay, further, to those who look upon the wide world with its glorious resources as given to mankind to make the most of it, and who know that mankind ought to make the most of it, that each nation owes to itself and to others a quite infinite duty, a right of Conquest immediately discloses itself. Happy indeed for that Society, which has made for itself a Law; where the warfare and the conquest are of a quiet regulated kind, where Justice can be done by formal judgment, and from day to day, not in bloody assizes once a century; where each man and each company of men are appointed to their proper place and work by lawful authority, and there protected. But what if there be no law? For one thing there will be much unhappiness; perpetual warning by terror and sorrow to haste and make a law; but meanwhile the unwritten Divine Law of Justice does most surely exist, most surely through all confusions it shall work, and shall ever choose for its instrument the supreme might of men; failing the sceptre for its minister, it shall choose the sword. It is a painful, but withal a glorious truth, that Nations have hitherto been managed by Sword Law. As yet there has been no International Law worthy of the name; the Papal supremacy in the medieval times and the Press in our own, are the nearest approximations to it, but provisional merely, and very arbitrary and ineffectual: after many centuries, a few commercial rules, and a few fighting laws, “rules of the ring,” have got established, and that is all. So that if on the one hand War has been a constant crime, most wasteful and miserable (as I most fully admit, but cannot here enlarge upon), it has no less been a constant duty. If we would understand History we must acknowledge this, and remember too the cruel temptations, difficulties, necessities of warfare: we shall then form a judgment of the old warrior-ages and warrior-nations very different from the sweeping condemnations which modern philanthropy pronounces, as it sits in its comfortable cathedra, which was once won by the sword, and is still hedged round visibly or invisibly with protecting bayonets. In all seriousness I would say that the savage who thought it all right that nation should war against nation, is nearer the truth than we who think it all wrong. The world is not a prison, all its inhabitants felons, and its history a mere Newgate Calendar: far otherwise! Justice must always carry a sword in its right hand; and this Exeter Hall Theory is in truth an abnegation of Justice; neither is it so humane, as it thinks: it was once the faith of a Robespierre! And yet I will not altogether quarrel with the narrowness of modern theories, but only with the vain arrogance of them. As to the ancients was given a narrow but intense belief that they might execute



their peculiar work of War, so to the most of us a limited vision is given that we may execute with singleness of mind our work of peaceful Industry. Enough, if we do that well; and let wiser men govern us in the present, wiser men interpret for us the fierce drama of the past; the wisest that can be found, for such are needed. The work of the true historian ranks in difficulty and glory among the very highest.

The a priori method is one way of attaining a right conclusion upon the ‘thousand wars of old;’ of still greater force is the retrospective one, that looks from the eminence of the present, over the road which has led hither. Think upon the Divine work of human progress which has been realized in the world, upon the fruit which 6000 years bear to-day; just think upon it, reader—and then ask yourself, “How has this come to pass?” War, you will find, you cannot help finding, has had a great hand in it. Conquest has been a mighty uniter of men, a great cultivator, a great preacher, everywhere a right arm of truth and knowledge and order; commerce of cotton and books is quite a modern contrivance, once impracticable, unknown. By Conquest were nations first formed, by conquest Empires have been built up; conquest has hitherto been a chief fact, a ruling influence in the history of mankind. And yet, we are told, this is altogether wrong, and the glories of human achievement have been the winnings of mere banditti robbery; Satan lording it over his heritage, directing the course of the world, and strangely, to a good end! Really such a theory is a libel upon God and the Devil! It is a mere mistake; it is incredible; a thinking man must not, dare not, believe it. If these conquests will not square with our formal notions of Justice, why, we had better see if we cannot enlarge our definition of justice, and make it agree more nearly to the law of the world; or better still, know that no definition can be complete; cease defining, therefore, and try seeing and considering.

Such thoughts as these are perpetual in Carlyle’s writings, he has enforced them very grandly in some chapters of the tractate called ‘Chartism,’ a book now out of print, but which, it is to be hoped, will not long continue so, for it is one of the wisest and most instructive that he has written. I extract two passages:

“M. Thierry has written an ingenious book, celebrating, with considerable pathos, the fate of the Saxons fallen under that fiercehearted Conquistator, Acquirer or Conqueror, as he is named. M. Thierry professes to have a turn for looking at that side of things; the fate of the Welsh too moves him; of the Celts generally, whom a fierce race swept before them into the mountainous nooks of the West, whither they were not worth following. Noble deeds, according to M. Thierry, were done by these unsuccessful men, heroic sufferings undergone; which it is a pious duty to rescue from forgetfulness. True, surely! A tear at least is due to the unhappy; it is right and fit that there should be a man to assert that lost cause too, and see what can still be made of it. Most right;—and yet, on the whole, taking matters on that great scale, what can we say, but that the cause which pleased the gods has, in the end, to please Cato also? Cato cannot alter it; Cato will find that he cannot at bottom wish to alter it. Might and Right do differ frightfully from hour to hour, but give them centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical. Whose land was this of Britain? God’s, who made it, His, and no others, it was, and is. Who of God’s creatures had right to live in it? The wolves and bisons? Yes they; till one with a better right showed itself. The Celt ‘aboriginal savage



of Europe,’ as a snarling antiquarian names him, arrived, pretending to have a better right; and did, accordingly, not without pain to the bisons, make good the same. He had a better right to that piece of God’s land; namely, a better might to turn it to use; a might to settle himself there, at least, and try what use he could turn it to. The bisons disappeared; the Celts took possession and tilled. For ever, was it to be? Alas, For ever is not a category that can establish itself in this world of Time. A world of Time is, by the very definition of it, a world of mortality and mutability, of Beginning and Ending. No property is eternal but God the Maker’s; whom Heaven permits to take possession, his is the right; Heaven’s sanction is such permission—while it lasts; nothing more can be said.—p. 73. Conquest, indeed, is a fact often witnessed; conquest, which seems mere wrong and force, everywhere asserts itself as a right among men. Yet, if we examine, we shall find that, in this world, no conquest ever could become permanent, which did not withal show itself beneficial to the conquered, as well as to conquerors. . . . . How can-do, if we will well interpret it, unites itself with shalt-do among mortals; how strength acts ever as the right arm of justice; how might and right, so frightfully discrepant at first, are ever in the long run one and the same—is a cheering consideration, which always in the black tempestuous vortices of this world’s history, will shine out on us like an everlasting polar star. Of conquest, we may say, that it never yet went by brute force and compulsion; conquest of that kind does not endure. Conquest, along with power of compulsion, an essential universally in human society, must bring benefit along with it, or men, of the ordinary strength of men, will fling it out. The strong man, what is he, if we will consider? The wise man; the man with the gift of method, of faithfulness and valour, all of which are the basis of wisdom; who has insight into what is what, into what will follow out of what, the eye to see and the hand to do; who is fit to administer, to direct, and guidingly command; he is the strong man. His muscles and bones are no stronger than ours; but his soul is stronger, his soul is wiser, clearer,—is better and nobler; for that is, has been, and ever will be, the root of all clearness worthy of such a name. Beautiful it is, and a gleam from the same eternal polestar visible amid the destinies of men, that all talent, all intellect is in the first place moral; what a world were this otherwise!”—p. 38.

It will, I am sure, be manifest how much this law (or universal fact) of “Might is Right,” faithfully considered, justifies and clears up in History; how it will emancipate the modern reader from the tyranny of likings and mislikings, rightly called prejudices, and require him to consider the facts of each case thoroughly; how it will help him to understand the rough doings of Goths and Romans and Moors, and the other grim conquerors, of whom the annals of every kingdom bear record. And to those men in old time he will thereby do justice. Remembering how, till the last few centuries, what a warring world this has been, I do not see how it is possible to escape the conclusion that the noblest nations have been the conquering nations, and that their leaders, must, despite all blemishes, be reckoned among the noblest and best men; Joshua, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Mahomet, our own William the Conqueror, and the rest. Nay, modern times shall not be altogether excluded. Robert Clive, for instance, founder of our Anglo-Indian Empire, what was he? It may be worth while to examine. What India was in the beginning



of last century; and what India is now, most persons have some notion of. A country has been redeemed from the anarchy of decay, rendered comparatively a garden of order, and is now full rich in future promise. The result is accepted by the tacit consent of all sensible men. But can Truth account Clive “a just man?” Clive, it may well be thought, felt in that day, that the time was come when the fruitful land of Bengal and its many thousand inhabitants should be no longer misruled by a Surajah Dowlah, or by other plainly incompetent wicked men like him; felt deeply, very deeply,even if unconsciously, that his wise and strong countrymen, the English, ought to have it for theirs; felt what a Joshua or an Oliver Cromwell would have expressed in the words, The Lord has delivered it into our hands. Now, under these circumstances, with the goal clearly in view, Clive is in too great a hurry to arrive there, and meanwhile thinks that all is fair against lying Hindoos, and so he hatches a secret conspiracy, forges a treaty,and employs other scandalous artifices, of which Macaulay tells us; finally, he conquers gloriously on the plain of Plassey. Shall we call this man a mere liar and unjust robber? By no means. These lies and base trickeries were all avenged upon him and us; as Macaulay rising into high truth, emphatically says, they really hindered our success; and for Clive himself, while we condemn these crimes, let us say that he was nevertheless a wise, brave, and just man, who, in the main, saw God’s will concerning India, and did it.—Again, almost as I write, the kingdom of Oude is being annexed to our Indian possessions. Is this too just? The Times and the English public seem to think it is; but is it because the Nabob broke his written word given fifty years ago? Such an answer will satisfy no one. Dimly, yet certainly (as is our English fashion), it is here felt, that the Right is our Might. We can govern the people of Oude as they should be governed, and we ought! We are called to do it.

It is easy to understand how such a principle as “Might is Right,” applied to individual and National conduct, must sound to many most unjust, most immoral: and it must be admitted that it always has been, and will always be, very liable to abuse,—as, indeed, God’s gifts always are; and the highest faculties and truths the most of all. Yet, fairly judged, it is but an extension of Law and Duty to include all the fiercer efforts and convulsions of Life; an assertion, that in the strangest fiery confusion, as well as in the known and quiet and beaten road, there abides the presence of Divine Law and Human Duty. The negative commands of the Decalogue are good, their plain meaning sufficient for the daily life of the Israelites or English citizens; but for an invasion of Canaan, an invasion of India? and yet these too shall be lawful and right. And the practical danger of accepting, at Carlyle’s teaching, a principle of action and judgment superior to all codes of law, and even all spoken systems of morality, reduces itself to its proper limits, if we take into account that Carlyle, on the other hand, perpetually insists upon the claims of human law, its sacredness, its true divine authority; again and again affirming, that walking in the beaten path, patient obedience to constituted authority, thorough performance of proximate and common duties, is what is appointed to almost all men at all times; and that the right fulfilment of these is the only qualification to understand and accomplish other loftier, wider enterprises, which will, from time to time, reveal themselves as needful to be attempted. At the present moment, Carlyle’s counsel to England is more than any man’s, an exhortation to do home duties; and his counsel to every Englishman is to begin by reforming himself. I mention this, in order to anticipate natural objections:



but if England be for the present condemned for its evil deserts to those minor tasks, and yet be saved from the terrible necessity of attempting mighty ones, while unfit for them, (as France was at the end of last century); narrow notions of duty cannot explain the grand epic homicidal Past. That had to be transacted by men single-minded in their fierce purpose; it can be judged truly only by men as brave as they, and wiser than they. “Tea-table Morality” has there no place; at best it is fit only for modern tea-tables, there to keep comfortable and decorous routine; and thus let us allow it performs a useful function. It is wholly unfit to deal with the great men and great things of the earth, because it cannot understand how closely divine deeds and the worst crimes approach one another in outward aspect. At tea-tables, the taking away of life is murder; the seizing of goods is stealing; the notion of order is, that matters should be quite comfortable to all parties. The Execution of Charles, the assumption of supreme power by Oliver Cromwell, are mere lawless horrors; cover your eyes and shriek! But Carlyle can face these horrors, because he is a true man. With a daring so peculiarly his own, that I call him “bravest of the brave” in literature, he loves to ponder over the wondrous phenomena which attend great men in epochs of change; loves to contemplate the path of these children of might as of a flaming sword; and above all, when the hero, asserting his God-given right, has not only to break through the trammels of routine, but with steeled heart goes forth to fight and to conquer rebellious men. Oliver is a man whom he delights to honour, let pedantry, maudlin philanthropy, Tea-table Morality, and coward minds say what they will. And thus he writes touching Oliver’s self-election to the throne of England. “Power? Love of power! Does ‘power’ mean the faculty of giving places, of having newspaper paragraphs, of being waited on by sycophants? To ride in gilt coaches, escorted by the flunkeyisms and most sweet voices—I assure thee it is not the Heaven of all, but only of many! Some born Kings I myself have known, of stout natural limbs, who in shoes of moderately good fit, found walking handier; and crowned themselves, almost too sufficiently, by putting on their own private hat, with some spoken or speechless,