I am not going, let me say once and for all, to solve one of the insoluble problems, which, wherever the human intellect has been awakened, have perplexed the wise; I propose simply to consider, side by side, the efforts of two mighty geniuses to draw light from this darkness, to educe order out of this perplexity; geniuses themselves widely different, in ages which present more points of contrast than of similarity. We may perhaps venture to draw from their success and failure some hints for ourselves as to the limits of such enquiries, the spirit in which they should be pursued, and the nature of the results to be expected from them.

The struggle, of which this fable of Prometheus is the type, has been imagined, thought, and acted under many forms; but it was more than a chance sympathy which moved the young apostle of intellectual freedom to clothe his inspiration in the old Greek vesture; to catch the Æschylean fire across the gulf of time, and to hold it forth, heightened with his own, a beacon to the next aspirant in the Promethean festival.

Æschylus lived in the youth of Hellenic



freedom. He was a poet of Athens, when, suddenly released from pupilage, and led by heroes of her choice, she had quelled barbarian arrogance. He had fought at Marathon. How could he not glory in her strength? Was it not that which had nerved his arm, which “throbbed through all his pulses like a God’s,” whether he fought himself, or sang “the auspicious march of complete men?” Could there be misgivings, where freedom had so triumphed? yet if there was no misgiving, there was perplexity, and it was the very fact that theirs was a reasonable freedom, that made this possible. For while the sense of law, which in Sophocles gives rise to farther questionings, had as yet hardly taken an abstract shape; political emancipation had left the spell of the old religion as powerful as ever. A great mind, reverent in proportion to its love of truth and goodness; a poet, clinging to the past; a statesman, sympathizing in the practical difficulties of his countrymen, could not divest himself of this; least of all could the mind of Æschylus, with all its healthy vigour, so capable of impressions of vague awe.

There was no thought then of abandoning the old mythology; it was their heirloom from the past, and in it they had to read a present lesson. Now its most prominent features had come down to them from kingly times. The dynasty of Jove was but the mirror of a patriarchal monarchy. But to the Athenian of the age of Cleisthenes, the figure of a patriarchal monarchy had little meaning. As he listened to an Homeric recitation, the words “Father of Gods and men” might sound pleasantly to him; but in his ordinary mood, how could he think of Zeus as monarch and not as tyrant of the world? This was the meaning of that word monarch, which had been doubly branded on his life by Hellenic tyranny and Oriental despotism. How could Zeus be king, and not wish to govern all things by his own will? How a despot, and not fear, as he was feared by, all? How could he be a tyrant, and not surrounded by the fear and hatred of his ministers, the cry of the oppressed, and the defiance of the inextinguishable spirit of human freedom? It was this sense, that human reason must be free, mixed with religious awe for that which in some lights was a phantom of capricious power, which raised for the Greek those contradictions between reason and experience, morality and religion, which have been the arena of speculation in all ages; and which, even when only partly solved, as some of them never can be fully, not only clear the intellect, but give range to action.

But this was not all. Behind the Olympic dynasty there was dimly seen the groundwork of a yet earlier system, a cosmogony rather than a mythology, in which the powers of nature appeared, no longer in their pristine vividness, but in the distance, shadowy and grey with time. In the speculations which even then religious feeling did not prohibit, these aboriginal Pelasgic Gods might be played off against their successors; or the idea of succession might naturally suggest an usurpation; or, lastly, if the reign of Zeus had a beginning, might it not also have



an end? The element of uncertainty thus already introduced was counterbalanced, in the invariable craving of the mind for rest, by a notion which was peculiarly Greek; which is, in fact, a sort of impersonal abstraction of divine power. A blind fate was a consoling refuge from the caprice of an all-powerful will.

The sudden rise of Athenian freedom, and its triumph over despotism on the one side, on the other the old Homeric creed, co-existing with the remains of one still earlier; and fate, the dominant idea of the old Greek mind, must be all considered by us, if we would understand the position of Æschylus rightly. And we must add this consideration, that in interpreting his thoughts, we must of necessity use a language which would have been unfamiliar to him. It was not the Hebrew prophet only, who, in the questionings of his spirit, knew not all it signified; there is much too in the Greek, and above all in Æschylus, the least conscious and most suggestive of poets, which in order to make fully intelligible we must develop. I know that there is danger in this principle, if indiscreetly used, and I shall not attempt to rationalize the details of the mythology. I shall not even ask whether Io means the moon and Argus the starry heaven, or what else they may signify; nor seek to determine how much is meant to be symbolical, how much is merely accessory. There is enough in the story as it tells itself, to lead us to the poet’s meaning. Whatever significance had once been wrapt up in Io, was probably lost to him. It was enough for his purpose that her story was one of suffering, and that suffering at the hand of Zeus.

Neither shall I enquire whether the play had a political meaning. Even if it had, though this might somewhat modify our view, it is the speculative struggle which is revealed in it, rather than the immediate object, which would have an interest for us.

But had space permitted, I should have been tempted to dwell at some length on the dramatic power, which, in a plot so sublimely simple, Æschylus has so strikingly displayed. They are broad touches certainly, but each one is a masterstroke. He was no ordinary delineator of character, who could thus individualize for us not only the unattainable, yet human majesty of the Titan, and the servile, courteous bearing of the tyrant’s messenger, but old Oceanus, vacillating between friendship and timid duty (like the old men of Colonus, between routine and pity), and his daughters, like true women, sacrificing themselves, with uncalculating faithfulness, at the shrine of heroism.

Before going further, it will not be amiss, perhaps, to paraphrase the story:

“The god of fire, at the command of the king of heaven, rivets in a desert glen, by means of Strength and Force, his servile ministers, his kinsman, the wise author of human improvement. All nature groans together with the mighty sufferer, while the race of men, in the captivity of their benefactor, suffer the extreme of misery. But he endures, and resolutely defies the will of Zeus; revealing to those amazed at his hardihood the secret of his strength, the knowledge, namely, hidden from their abject minds, that even Zeus is subject to the inscrutable power of fate, and that a day shall come, when his tyranny over the human race shall be at an end. For these threats he is buried beneath the earth amid the war of elements, still confident, and destined to emerge at the fated period.”

Even this rude sketch makes it apparent, that we have here the interminable struggle of human will and reason against a divinely imposed necessity. We are promised that it shall be delivered some day, though not till bowed with myriad pains and woes; extricated, not by its own skill, but by



the might of destiny; which shall one day end the tyranny which now fills earth and heaven. The “Prometheus Unbound” of Æschylus is lost to us, and few losses of the kind are more to be regretted; for although the fragments which remain to us show only that, like the centre piece, it would have appeared to us disfigured by that mythological geography, which, however, for the hearers of Æschylus must have had so great a charm, much of it would doubtless have been interesting to all time. Yet it fortunately matters little, by what mythological artifice, whether, like Pindar, by the marriage of Thetis to a mortal, or by whatsoever other device, he obtained a reconcilement. The interesting point is, that the end was reconcilement and not victory, and of this we may be sure; for not only is it abundantly certain, that no representation at a religious festival of the final overthrow of Zeus would in that age have been perpetrated or endured; not only does the form of the myth elsewhere (by no means a strong reason in itself) sanction such a view, but the whole spirit of Æschylus, and the analogy of his other works, demands it.

It is the characteristic of the ancient poets, that they are not carried away by their own creations. They feel with them, they act in them, and yet they are above them. We are not to suppose that all the words of Prometheus or of Antigone are the words of the poet; they are the words which the highest type of human nature, when involved in given circumstances, naturally utters. “He who has his foot free,” the chorus or Oceanus, may give the truest admonitions, though himself of an inferior clay. So we cannot doubt that much of what Prometheus says, however any one would for the moment sympathize with it, must have savoured both to the audience and to the author of impiety; whereas the warnings of the trembling chorus, or of the aged time-server, however little calculated to give comfort, must have at least seemed true.

Again, when we think of the language in which Zeus is spoken of in other plays, we cannot suppose that the representation of him in the “Prometheus Bound” is not partly due to the sufferer’s own state of mind, or that in concluding the story something of that gnawing sense of wrong would not be cleared away. Lastly, the analogy of the Eumenides is of itself enough to prove that in the “Prometheus Unbound” of Æschylus, not victory but reconcilement was the consummation. As in that grand old drama the inutterings of the Furies gradually subside, and all ends in peace; so in this it would seem probable, not that the ways of Zeus were justified to men,—that could not be whilst they conceived of him as like themselves,—but that he would be represented as pacified; and the spirit of Prometheus, not as humbled indeed, nor broken, but satisfied, and acknowledging that in pain he had spoken hastily. How this was brought about we know not, except that the eternal agency of Fate determined it, and that it was effected by the hand of Hercules. It is indeed at best an uncertain shadow; but let us think, what must have been the loftiness, the serenity, I had almost said the faith of a mind, which, out of such materials could educe even the appearance of a balanced harmony, which through such clouds and darkness could, however dimly, see the end. Is there darkness in our own day, gloomier than this “twilight of the gods?” There is; or rather let us say, there was, for I would speak hopefully. When darkness dwells where light should be, it is deepened not only by contrast but by reaction. The darkness out of which Shelley groped for light was thicker than the haze through which Æschylus strained his vision; and in the Prometheus of Shelley, there is dreary darkness which cannot but be felt, far different from the calm though solemn



earnestness of the old Greek. Shelley could not act; he cried himself to sleep and dreamed; his dream was tinged by recent scenes and struggles. Oppression, bigotry, superstition, tyranny, on the one side; on the other, dark and terrible anarchy, scowled and strove till they destroyed each other, and a fair mirage was spread before his thirsting gaze. It was an avatar of the human intellect, heralded by imagination, as the day is heralded by the rosy arch of morning, spread above the hills.

I shall not attempt to interpret the particular images, or rather phantoms, which occur in this work of Shelley’s; but apart from any such enquiry this is clear, that the one bright spot in his universe, which gives life and brightness to all other things, and which he delights to think of as one day overspreading all, is human reason, perfected by endurance, and deified by love. We must not forget, that it is a work of imagination we are considering; traces occur in it of principles in Shelley’s mind, which we delight to think of as more abiding than the phantasmagoria with which it was then filled. Such is the assertion of an all-merciful Creator of all things good (who is, however, only introduced to contrast with the phantom of superstition), of the power of meekness, and of the original truth and loveliness of Christianity,—though so deformed by bigotry and superstition as to have become the object of his hatred and contempt. Yet, with whatever degree of pleasure we may dwell on these as earnests of possibilities with regard to the whole of Shelley’s mind, they do not enter in any intelligible way into the framework of this drama; as ideas, they are at least dormant for the time. His mind, his universe, is filled with the reflected radiance of his own intellect. The figures in the drama are the creations, or emanations rather, of this alone. Beautiful as they are, we miss in them that fulness of substance and breadth of outline, those deep sonorous voices, which in Æschylus give assurance of a dignified humanity. It is an abstract human nature that is presented to us,—heroic through endurance, divine through love,—yet an ideal so attenuated as to be beyond our sympathies. It is in truth beautiful, but most unsatisfying. We want something more than our own shadow in the cloud, though it have a halo round it, to lift us out of ourselves. The cloud must be pierced for us, and the daylight of our reason must suffer itself to be eclipsed. We know that intellectual progress, aided by philanthropy, must do much to refine and elevate the race; we can imagine a world in which it should be all in all, but it is not that world in which God has placed us.

Whether that bright meteor, the mind of Shelley, could ever have gathered substance from its own nebulous emanations; whether its eccentric whirlings could ever have steadied themselves into an orbit, is a question which has passed from the region of human hopes and fears. Its light was quenched before it had time to settle to an equal ray; but its course was ever upwards. It is harder for us to appreciate what we owe to Shelley, and to Coleridge, and other adventurous spirits of that time, than to see where they missed the mark, and where their aim was misdirected. Shelley’s Cassandra-like cry about the power of love, of however little practical effect, has proved the anticipation of a real revival of Christianity. His bitter outcry against priestcraft (which in its bitterness confounded good and bad) is being repeated nowadays, perhaps with little more discrimination, but with more effect, by a portion of the priests themselves. Who knows, if he might not have been a priest, had he lived now?

But in the allegorical treatment of the emancipation of the human race from evil, he is so far less reverent than the Greek, that he anticipated its accomplishment



as the result, not of the independent ordinance of a higher power, but of the self-working of an inherent energy.

Æschylus felt the need of something to counterbalance the exuberance of liberty. Shelley groaned for the vanity and vexation of spirit, to which, as he brooded over the failure of the French Revolution, all nations seemed to him to be in bondage. Each had an instinctive faith that the refuge he sought for must exist. Each found it for himself in an abstraction; but Æschylus in the abstraction of supernal power, Shelley in that of human freedom.

Bacon has an essay on the Fable of Prometheus, or the Statue of Man; towards the end of which the following grave words occur; “We must, therefore, with a sober and humble judgment, distinguish between humanity and divinity, and between the oracles of sense and the mysteries of Faith, unless a heretical religion and a commentitious philosophy be pleasing unto us.” It is a necessary caution, for human things are after all the shadows of divine; and intellectual idols are the most seductive. It is not the least suggestive feature in it that it bears the authority of the Father of Inductive Science.

There exists in some minds a joyous expectation that science is to regenerate the world; in others, scarce confessed perhaps, the apprehension, that in its progress religion will be overthrown. By far the majority of thinkers are in a state of struggle, longing for the emancipation of the human mind and will from the tyranny of vicious custom and from hurtful errors, from ignorance and wrong; and yet by this very longing for a day of freedom, feeling their powers of action hampered and confused. What are we to say to this? If science is doing much for us, is she to do all? Is faith to be supplanted by reason? Can the human intellect develop human perfection? This is the question, when clearly put, more common in our day than may at first be thought. I will not answer it, but I will point out one or two of the conditions to which reason must submit, if she would work truly, either for herself or for mankind.

I. She must consent to act; the true chain that binds her, the vulture that flaps and gnaws at her, is the vain aspiration after an ideal liberty. No sooner does she submit to her fetters than she moves freely. So contradictory may such truths appear when we express them, yet to no assertion is the assent of experience more undoubting.

II. She must acknowledge that the mass of mankind are incapable of receiving the truth in its highest form, and that science therefore, however valuable may be its indirect effects on life, cannot be the only teacher. Not the least instructive part of the parable, noticed by Bacon, though not by Æschylus or Shelley, is the tale that mortals, having received perpetual youth from heaven, tied it on the back of an ass, which Bacon interprets to be slow experience, and bartered it at the first well they came to for a draught of water.

III. “Let her know her place, she is the second, not the first.” He is the true philosopher, who with a most real reverence for God’s truth as it is revealed in nature and experience, combines a distinct and deeper reverence for yet higher objects,—the objects not of reason but of faith. Such reverence teaches us submission, even to the delay of knowledge. A little altering the line of Æschylus, we remember that human skill is weaker, not than necessity, but than the will of God. The true unbinding of Prometheus is not the triumph of reason, but the reconcilement of science and philosophy with religion. Hitherto their armies have been separated, if not opposed. There has been much impotent authority on the one side, much rebellious feeling on the other; let us acknowledge that in both there has been



much to blame. Yet, if greater blame lie on either side, surely they have more to answer for whose timid want of faith had thrown suspicion on the pursuit of knowledge. It was not unnatural, that each young giant in its turn, geology, ethnology, criticism, comparative mythology, should be eager to prove its weapons, even to presumption. But for the servants of the God of truth to shut their eyes to truth, to anathematize it or to explain it feebly away, this surely was unnatural. And yet they did it ignorantly, and we shall do little good by recalling old offences. Still they stand apart and frown as if no might could reconcile them. And indeed it is not Hercules, nor the intrinsic energy of science, that can do this, but the spirit of a higher wisdom. It would teach religionists, if they would be taught, that the phantom of superstition is the phantom of misguided fear; that the same God who has revealed Himself in the Bible, also reveals Himself in nature and in the mind of man; that science and philosophy also are not the enemies but the servants of God. It would teach the men of science and philosophy to know their calling, to feel their responsibility, and while they reverence the Supreme Intelligence as seen in the eternal laws of nature and of thought, to recognize also the deeper appeal to yet higher faculties and to more human feelings, which is made in the Christian revelation. The light of science and philosophy may be made subservient to this in many ways, may clear it from apprehension, may widen its application, and this surely is their noblest use. In themselves they reveal God to us as the mind of the world, or as its life, or as a power beyond, “in darkness whom we guess.” False religion holds up an imaginary phantom to our fears. It is reserved for Christianity to reveal Him to us as our Father in heaven, reconciling us and all things to each other and to Himself in our Deliverer, who is the Son of Man.

Of all our conceptions there is scarcely one more complex or less susceptible of precise definition than civilization. There is no unity observed in fixing on the principles and characteristics which constitute and limit it. While some, believers in the ultimate destiny of nations, take it to be a progression to better things, the process of attaining an ideal perfect state, others use it as a purely absolute term, a standard of humanity, reached or not reached at different periods; while not a few maintain that it cannot be applied without the union of the two ideas. We know that the old nations rose, advanced, and reached the limit of greatness to which the feeble, because false, means employed could tend, forgot the nobleness of further action, and having fulfilled their mission, came to nought; we know too that, since the dissolution of the Roman empire, from the ruins of which the new barbarian life took form, civilization, cherished by the invigorating influence of Christianity, after bursting through the obstacles that had hitherto impeded its advance, started afresh, and has been like an ever-widening stream, progressing, not without continual partial obstructions, now rapidly, now sluggishly, here in one part of its channel, here in another, and having for its goal an ocean, which we trust is no chaotic one. The highest civilization will be an union of moral, intellectual, and material greatness; these elements work naturally into one another, strengthening and modifying; but unless the last be totally subordinate in aim to the others, nay, unless it be considered



rather as an accident, the civilization attainable will be but a partial one; and it is to the practical ignoring of this truth that the downfall of the old kingdoms may be attributed. Taking then this system of civilization as the only one which can attain any degree of perfection, perhaps the best criterion that its principles are at work in a nation is the increasing value of human life evinced; this bears upon its face a semblance, though unreal, of being dependent upon mere material happiness. The more barbarous the nation the less regardful is it of human life: there is no instance of a savage tribe reaching so high an average of existence as a more civilized state, although it may possess isolated cases of longevity much greater than the latter; and this too is analogous to the intellectual life of nations; but it is collectively, and not by singular instances, that we must estimate a people’s civilization. Now an increasing regard for human life may be fairly taken as an evidence of civilization, inasmuch as it implies increasing absorption of the individual into the common interest; industry and economy in the governed, and wisdom in the governing class; and increasing security, not only from positive criminal violence, but also from causes the operation of which could only be stayed by unselfish motives. That there exists among us at present a vast preventible sacrifice of human life there is no doubt, and it is to the unapplied resources of science, and a wider knowledge of physiology, that we must look for the power of removing the causes. Of the multiform branches of sanitary economy we shall in this paper confine ourselves especially to an enquiry into noxious employments.

The extension of manufactures has doubtless produced additional wealth and capital, but that wealth does not of necessity increase the length of life is manifested by the returns of mortality for Manchester and other towns, contrasted with those from agricultural districts, in which latter we find the labourers, with half the amount of wages, reaching a much higher average of life than the workmen of the towns. Doubtless, machinery, when its appliances have been more fully developed, and its relations to man properly adjusted, will greatly lessen his physical sufferings; this, let us hope, is its Godlike final goal; but how far up to this time it has, directly or indirectly, aggravated or alleviated them, is a question of great intricacy. That unhealthiness in employment is a law of nature is contradicted by evidence of every kind, and it will be a happy thing for any one who may hold that notion to convince himself as early as possible of its entire fallacy. It is this, and other like objections, that have always been in the way of a right-minded social system, and are really but cowardly pleas for indifference. In a land boasting itself so unreservedly of its philanthropy, it is somewhat strange that there should exist a greater ratio of preventible deaths of this kind than in any other state; the duty of charity has become more abstract, and satisfied in a manner more mechanical than was once the case. I have heard the abominable assumption that this mortality is a wise provision of God, to prevent the overflow of population: to those who maintain this it has been put in a clenching manner, that a parish where life is precarious pays more poor-rates than its neighbours; but for their undeserved comfort it may safely be asserted, that a state of society, such as the total absence of these physical evils would imply, could not be behind-hand to discern and arrest any consequent social injury.

Causes of unhealthiness in employments are of two kinds: those which are peculiar and seemingly essential to different trades, and those which do not lie in their nature, but are at present accidental more or less to all, such as want of proper ventilation, deficiency of light, overwork, &c.

We could scarcely, perhaps, select a more flagrant example of an employment deleterious to the health, than the manufacture of lucifer matches. It appears that the fumes of the phosphorus, in which the workpeople are continually enveloped, act upon the teeth and bones of the lower jaw; the bones gradually die, and spongy excrescences grow upon them, and finally the whole or part of the jaw has to be removed, which, if indeed the sufferer survive the operation, is a disfigurement as horrible as any that can well be imagined. Notwithstanding this danger, many, who have been victims of this disease and recovered, return to their former employment. Is there no remedy for this? or are we continually to have the fearful consciousness of encouraging a trade, to the interests of which have to be sacrificed the beauty of the human face and the health of the human body? It was recently discovered by Herr Schrötter, of Vienna, that phosphorus may be prepared so as not to give off any deleterious fumes; nor does the change in the state of the phosphorus thereby produced affect at all the property made use of in the manufacture of the match, which would be a fatal objection to the remedy being adopted.* The chief obstacles to the introduction of the improvement are the increase of price which it would involve, and that spirit of routine which creeps over those occupations wherein little or no exertion of the intellectual faculties is required. “It is a very small matter,” says one. “I do not use a dozen matches in a year.” True, but the injustice done is injustice still, however divided among numbers, and the crimes of communities must receive their due as well as those of individuals. Is, then, denial of the article recommended? By no means, for many reasons; besides, the “amorphous” phosphorus has been tried, and we believe with entire success, by some employers, and the matches made with it are easily distinguished from the ordinary ones; “they are not luminous in the dark under 400°; they have no smell, are not liable to contract damp, and may be placed on a hot mantle-shelf without taking fire, and will keep for any length of time without change.”*

To take another case. Certain articles of cutlery are ground upon dry stones; hence, the air of the room in which the work is carried on, becomes filled with clouds of impalpable powder of steel and stone, which, being inhaled, passes into the lungs, and gives rise to pulmonary affections, and causes a general wasting of the frame. The remedy for this is simple; a thorough ventilation, together with a magnetized guard worn upon the mouth, which withholds the iron dust from passing into the throat. The neglect of this simple device prevents the workmen from seldom exceeding forty, and not often thirty years of age.†

There is no force in the excuse, that men are willing to engage in such employments, with the dangerous or absolutely destructive nature of which they are fully acquainted; and that no injustice can be argued for refusing to spend energy and money to remove evils of which no complaint is made. The skilled workman will always find great difficulty in changing his occupation without loss, and in the majority of cases is absolutely unable to do so; hence the cruelty of reducing him to



the alternative of starvation, or the wasting of his physical powers. Again, there are cases, as above exemplified, wherein skilled workmen have refused to avail themselves of the preventives afforded by science, because the dangers that they incur enhance the rate of wages; arguing, that if all the inconveniences of the employment be removed, such numbers will flock to engage themselves, that their monopoly will be destroyed, and their wages reduced to an ordinary level. What a monopoly is it! a monopoly of those who are willing to stake health and life against a few years of extraordinary prosperity. It is not likely that employers have so unsound a belief in the liberty of the workman, though it is almost impossible to suppose that the small immediate outlay requisite for the amelioration of the evil can have weight with any of them. We must remember, too, that the man who attempts suicide is punished, and that we who look on without doing our utmost to prevent it, are not unblameable; how much less so those who more or less abet him in it?

There are many other occupations, in which the dust or chips of the materials used exert an unhealthy effect, which is, however, obviated or lessened by a little precaution. The miller’s asthma is prevented by a reasonable system of ventilation; the inhaling of dusty particles by the mason, stone-breaker, and men of similar pursuits, is considerably arrested by allowing the growth of the moustache. There are others wherein a constrained position for a length of time produces constitutional disorders and general debility. In this respect the chief sufferers are tailors and shoemakers. Dr. Chambers‡ recommends to bootmakers the use of a table invented by Mr. Sparkes Hall, whereby they may get rid of the necessity of pressing the boot-tree against the stomach, the practice which so fearfully impairs their health; for tailors also various tables have been devised to enable them to keep their work sufficiently close to the eye without compelling the unnatural posture that deforms them. Dr. Chambers also censures the custom of compelling milliners to work in black material by gas or candlelight, whereby they contract ophthalmic diseases. The only reason for it is the assumption that smuts and smoke necessarily fly about from lights, which would irreparably damage other fabrics; the remedy for this is easy, but must be left to the charity of the employer.

These are a few examples of occupations, wherein noxious and poisonous influences are allowed to work unmolested, and where a little knowledge or skill and self-sacrifice would be a remedy, or, at all events, an amelioration; the list might be indefinitely extended, but we can only mention one other, and that because on a subject which should be dear to all Englishmen. Napoleon I. said truly: “Wherever timber can float, there you will find an English cruiser.” The sea indeed has been with reason our dearest household word for many ages; when, therefore, it should be our endeavour to emulate our past by using every means to ensure the success of our voyages, it is a sad reflection upon the present generation, that very many ships are sent to sea in an unseaworthy state, and insufficiently manned. It is difficult to say how far visions of gain have in each case been the cause of these defects; but, though a fearful charge to entertain against any man, it has been complained that the carelessness exhibited by some about the condition in which their ships sail, is owing to their consciousness



that, in case of wreck, the insurances effected upon them will clearly cover all loss. Independently of this sale of human life for gold, apart from this deliberate carelessness, there is quite enough for animadversion in the indifference that will not take the trouble to overlook the state of the ship and crew, and the ignorance of requirements exhibited by many of those whose first duty and ambition it should be to take all possible precautions. This evil has reached such a pitch, that, a short time back, a petition was presented to the Queen by British seamen against the law which obliges them to go to sea in unseaworthy vessels. It is not by such practices that we have obtained our present eminence in naval matters; that was reached in the manner in which men arrive at exalted positions of any kind, by making their work the best in their power, and by using the best means for attaining their object. If we neglect this principle, all the competition in the world will be incapable of retaining us in our position. It is our duty individually to discountenance, and by government to punish, this deception.

Let us now pass from employments which are deleterious in themselves, to those wherein the injury is accidental; and though not so direct and palpable, scarcely less dangerous. It is a fact of the deepest importance, that, in many districts of the metropolis, the poor reach but half the average of life attained by the higher classes, while in agricultural counties the labourers only fall short little more than ten years of the wealthy.* “The life of man is three-score years and ten;” even ten years out of a man’s short existence are much, but when from experience we find, at this late period of the world, that a very large portion of mankind attains an average of only a third of the life allotted by nature, the suspicion cannot help arising, that our means of civilization must be radically wrong. The extent to which those absolute necessaries for healthy existence, proper drainage and ventilation, are neglected, cannot be conceived by those who form their ideas of the habitations of the poor from what they see in passing along the lanes of a village, or the smaller streets of a town. Moreover, the revelations that have been made and are continually being made, accidentally or otherwise, disclose the fact, that often what are outwardly neat-looking houses, are nothing more than whited sepulchres, hiding, under an exterior of comfort, everything that can create pestilence and domestic misery. Doubtless a great stumbling-block to interference in these matters is the dislike and jealousy with which all uninvited intrusion and sympathy is regarded, the extravagant belief in “independence” held by Englishmen, even in the most wretched condition. But this should discourage no earnest-minded person, for there are sufficient devices to which he may resort, without semblance of encroachment. It is this want of comfort that drives so many to the warmth and more grateful aspect of the tap-room, where they more effectually demoralize their faculties and weaken their energies; nor is this neglect of self-reverence and restraint to be entirely attributed to ignorance and viciousness; too much may be traced to the exhaustion and apathy caused by overwork and other evils, incidental to trades, in which the rage of competition and avarice breaks through all ties of sympathy.

A characteristic of the English is that they can never persuade themselves that they are satisfied; we make everything too long, from our sermons and concerts to our school-lessons and manual labour. It is time that something definite be done to prevent the curses resulting from overwork. Within the last ten years the number of pauper



lunatics in England has increased nearly seventy per cent., and that almost entirely owing to this evil. Each day adds more than one to the number of victims; the curse is especially extending among needlewomen and others, where also the fear of debt and the sedentary character of the employment assist to wrench their natural powers.

Passing from overwork, let us advert to a still more universal abuse, the want of proper ventilation in crowded rooms. There is scarcely conceivable a more dangerous occupation than being one of a numerous audience in a large ill-ventilated building, like Exeter-Hall, for instance, and many of our theatres. As a proof of this, any one who takes the trouble may discover that the walls and pillars of the room begin after a time to reek and even stream with the breath that has been exhaled by the assembled multitude; and these gatherings, by temporarily deranging the systems of those present, predispose them for infection, and cause the spread of epidemics.

Crowding of workshops and rooms is as great a bane as any to the interests of the employed. The terrible grotesqueness of the description in Alton Locke of “Conscrumption Ward” affords a too true insight into the widespread system of slop-work tailoring and its results. Mrs. Gaskell also has done great service by putting into form scenes similar, though by no means so painful. It is a melancholy satisfaction that these things have received notice at length, when it was impossible for them to be strained to a greater intensity; it has at least proved this beyond dispute—that Englishmen have a love of order and a belief in work, which even starvation and neglect, mental and bodily, cannot altogether eradicate. Passing by, for want of space, many other incidental evils of like character, there is one to which I would draw particular attention, because so often viewed with indifference; I mean, the want of sufficient light. There is no influence more purifying from brooding humours and morbid impulses than this great element of our existence; it should be enjoyed as much as possible, and habitations should never be selected without a regard to it. There are numberless seemingly unaccountable complaints which experiment would show to be referable to this want.*

And now what hope of amendment do we rely upon? It must not be for a moment supposed that among employers there are not very many noble and good men who do all that lies in their power to render their employments healthy, and are willing to adopt any reasonable suggestion for further improvement. If this were not so, we might indeed despair; had we then spoken on the subject, it would have been in a far different spirit, and with our immediate aim somewhat modified. What we wish to impress upon the mind of the reader is the vast amount of misery and death brought about by preventible causes in employments, the efforts that have been made to lessen this amount, and the duty of all to imitate these attempts. It is a great step in the right direction that these things are beginning to be discussed. From habituation men become blind to the evil features of a system; but when they see that others, men who are often engaged in the same pursuits as themselves, regard them in a different light, they may be induced to avail themselves of neglected advantages, criticise their own apathy, and direct their energies rather to improvement than extension. There is plenty of opportunity and scope for each man to further the development of those agencies whereby the life of man is lengthened and made more full of happiness and content. All need not undertake the same portion of the duty;



for too sensitive minds would be unable to go through the heart-rending and disgusting scenes that must be faced and swept away before anything effectual can be achieved.

I confess that there are many causes for misgiving in this and other aspects of social life at present; but it is to be hoped that it is but a natural overstraining preparatory to a reaction. There is something ominous in the statistics showing the recent increase of crime, while the outcry thereupon and demand for explanations are, on the other hand, signs of a healthy spirit and active determination. It is wonderful how little we know really of some portions of the kingdom—of our mining districts, for instance, the inhabitants of which, one would suppose from our usual method of regarding them, were created to be food for laughter and merry jests to the rest of their countrymen. One distinction should never be lost sight of nowadays, that between order and routine. We are painfully conscious of the sacrifice that the latter has cost us of late: the spirit of it prevents all modification or laying aside of practices which do not answer the requirements of an enlarged knowledge and wider systems. It is, too, an easy explanation to one’s conscience that “What has done for to-day will surely do for to-morrow.” This is regarding the question in that selfish point of view which it is our purpose to reprobate. What has done for you to-day will perhaps do for you to-morrow; but is it so with those under you? is it not too often the case that there is a yesterday whose to-morrow is not similar, and that the place which was yesterday occupied by one, who has given way in the struggle, is to-day taken by a stranger? This makes no difference to you; the strange face is as good as the old one, and the strange hands perhaps as useful as the old ones: but there are others to whom it does make as great a difference as can be made. Consider this, and enquire of yourself whether it is not in your power in some degree



to prevent and abate this evil, being well assured of this, that indifference to others’ misery is a crime that cannot go unpunished.

Although it was late at night, nay, very early in the summer morning, Henry Radcliffe still lay upon his couch before the wide open window. His eyes were weary with watching the sweet stars slowly fade, and the heavy folds of his dressing-gown seemed to weigh him down with inexpressible languor; the thick blue curtains were loaded with the sweet night air, and such a spell rested upon the room that it required a strong effort for Henry to raise his head from his hand and rise slowly, with eyes on the stars all the while.

“Oh!” he sighed, “I would give worlds to know if she is true; I would be willing to die to prove her sincere.”

For he had seen Helen Musgrave as he had never seen her before. Hitherto her conduct to him had been as distant as possible, a cruel thing to an old friend like Henry; but he had been away for a time, travelling on the Continent; and now when he had returned, she greeted him warmly, and during the long summer days they spent together, her manner had been so kind, her behaviour so altered, that he was persuaded she must look on him as on no other man.

But the people in the village talked about Miss Helen strangely; they said Henry was by no means her first lover; that he was not the only one who had



been seen walking with her in the Hall gardens at twilight, talking gently; and they prophesied that he, like others before him, would suddenly leave the Hall on “urgent business.” Such rumours propagated by the servants at the Hall, and gradually working their way upwards in society, could not fail to reach the ears of Henry Radcliffe, but of course he professed not to regard, and to utterly disbelieve them: nevertheless, the unpleasant thought would recur, had she ever been to any one else what she was to him? and—worse still—had another ever been what he was to her?

True, he was not a declared lover, but she could not help seeing how he felt towards her; and she did see it, shamefully triumphing therein. For it pleased her selfish vanity that another should love her, though she was incapable of returning such love; so, as long as no one else divided her attention, she was extremely gracious to Radcliffe. Besides this, he was so vastly improved; a year’s travelling had wrought wonders, and her old playfellow returned to her, a man of polished manners and well-developed intellect. So she was very kind to him. By long experience she knew how most delicately to show her apparent preference for him, and she felt secure in her own marvellous beauty doing the rest. Her mother, a weak and foolish woman, left her entirely to her own will, though during Henry’s visit it had occurred to her that Helen was not behaving quite well to the man to whom she was engaged, in taking so much pleasure in all concerning another. For Helen really was engaged; she found it convenient to be so; it was something to fall back upon after she had won a new heart—to say that there was another whose claims were greater; to express surprise that it was not known, and with false blushes on her beautiful face, to declare that the reason for such kindness as she had shown, such confidence as she had placed. Of course she strove to conceal the fact from Radcliffe; she would not have her pastime broken in upon; and at the time Henry was so perplexed about her, she had been exerting all her arts of fascination for his entanglement.

The result of his self-examination was, that he loved her truly and well, and, poor fellow! that he was sure she was worthy of that love, and returned it! He would put his fate to the test; he would see what the next day should bring forth, when he would tell her of all he felt.

So he greeted her in the morning with a determination to find whether she really cared for him; and perhaps his anxiety was visible, for she tenderly enquired if he was ill, and in many ways testified her concern. He could not pretend to perfect health, for the agitation at his heart produced a throbbing headache; so saying that he thought a stroll in the garden would do him good, he asked her to walk with him; and she gladly (oh treachery, with smiles!) stepped with him through the wide-open window, and silently, slowly, walked across the lawn, through the pure sunshine, and on to the shade of the chestnuts.

Then she spoke at intervals, in a low tone, of the days when they were children together, and by the sweet voice in which she called up its remembrance, invested the old time with far



more delight than had ever belonged to it, making Henry feel as if he had never known her thoroughly till then; and thinking the time was come, he broke forth into a strain of most passionate love. His voice did not rise; it rather sank with the tenderness of his feeling, and at first his speech was confused. Then gathering strength, but not enough to look at her, he went on, telling of his boyish love which she had slighted, of this love of his manhood which—but she stopped him with a quick gesture, and, raising his eyes, he saw her standing before him, pale and calm, with the sunlight falling through a gap in the trees on her fair hair, and trembling with the leaves over her beautiful neck, fading then, and leaving him in deep shadow. He would have spoken again, but again she stopped him, still pitilessly calm; then while he watched her, the sunlight brightened to intensity on her golden head, and a smile came to her eyes, as she said lightly:

“Oh Henry! have you not heard? did they not tell you about Charles Forster? I am engaged to him. You have often met him here.”

But she saw the love going from his face in scorn for her unfaithfulness, so she strove to regain his heart. Sadly she drooped her eyes towards hands folded on her bosom, and letting her bright curls fall as a veil, she stood before him, saying nothing, leaving the beautiful sight to move him.

But when he spoke it was in an altered tone, his soul was full of sorrow for the man whom she was so cruelly deceiving; and she was surprised, almost alarmed, that the first words he uttered were not of himself, but of Charles Forster. All tenderness was gone from his tone; he spoke to her gravely, almost sternly, of her deceit, pleading the cause of her lover as though he himself were in no way concerned, and ended by entreating in a voice shaken with earnestness, that for the love of Heaven she would leave the game she was playing, and be true to herself and her future husband.

Then, turning, he left her standing, looking after him, like a beautiful enchantress at a victim, which, by some charm more potent than her own, has escaped from her spells. But he did not once turn round, so she ran back across the lawn into the house.

Henry would not go to the Hall again; so he wrote to Mrs. Musgrave, saying he was going to London that day. She was much perplexed, and asked Helen if she could account for his sudden departure, but was only more astonished at her daughter’s indifference; so after weakly upbraiding her with giving offence to an old friend, she rambled off to some other subject.

Meanwhile Henry proceeded at once to London, to his home, and he felt, as he was borne swiftly along, as if he had trusted even more of his happiness than he had known to that one venture, and now it was all gone. He could not tell his father, a man of business, what had happened; he would only have been laughed at for his folly in falling in love with such a flirt as Helen Musgrave; and his mother was dead, so he shut that secret up in the storehouse of his heart, to be looked at by himself alone. True, he had one friend, Richard Merton, who was dearer to him than all others, and to whom he had been used to tell his whole soul; but more than a year was gone by since they had parted, and few letters had passed between them, because of Henry’s constant change of residence, and he could not tell whether the old love would return as warmly as ever. Would his friend be the same to him? He could not tell; for a year ago they had boasted to each other that no love more earthly than that of virtue and beauty should ever be their ruling passion. So he said: “None but myself may know of this, and alone will I combat my grief.”

But one love remained to him even yet, that of Art, and now he resolved



to give up himself to that, to live for it, and maybe to die for it. So the first evening he returned home he told his father that there was something he must say to him; but the old man, divining from his steadfast face some grave and important thing, said—

“Not to-night, my son; but in the morning I will hear what you have to say; to-night we will only talk together over the time you have been away.”

After his father had left him, Henry sat up late, but time fled quickly, and whether he would or no, his memory was busy with the last few days, and his heart was troubled; but he was quite sure he did not love Helen Musgrave now; that dream was gone, and for ever; and, as he thought of her, he saw more clearly, as it stood out in relief against the character with which his imagination had invested her, the pitiful meanness of her conduct. Still he felt that the place she had occupied in his heart was empty; there was a cold aching, instead of warm love; he thought the void could never be filled. He tried to pour into it all his love for his father, for his dead mother, but in vain; the chasm remained. So he determined not to think of her more than as she must flash across his mind from time to time; he would never again devote to her all his thoughts, as he was doing now. Before he in this way extinguished the last spark of hope in his heart, a thought came which made him cover his face with clasped hands. If there had been only human obstacles in the way, if, after struggling through many difficulties, he might have found her waiting for him, pure and good as he once thought her, nothing should have separated them. But—oh! she was not worthy; so he resolutely shut the door of his heart against her.

The next morning, entering his father’s study, he looked so ill as to excite anxiety, but he imputed it to the fatigue of travelling, and quietly took a chair opposite his father. Mr. Radcliffe began, “I have something to tell you, my son, and take this the earliest opportunity of doing it. I am happy to say—” but this almost interrogatively—“I am very happy to say, that I believe you have quite conquered the silly notions you had when I last spoke to you on this subject. Of course you know what I mean; in short, Henry, my boy, I want to tell you that it is my particular desire that you should commence studying for the bar.” This was said hurriedly, and was the opening of the flood-gates to Mr. Radcliffe’s eloquence; for he instantly began an harangue on all the advantages which must accrue from such a proceeding, and talked so long and to such purpose, that he regretted not having chosen that profession for himself. Then, having dilated on all his prospective blessings, he turned to his son for an answer. But none was forthcoming, not till Henry was unable any longer to see the joy which the old man both felt and showed; for he would make sure to himself that, as his son gave no answer, he had no objection to raise. Still unwilling to dash all this to the ground, Henry hesitated, but at last, taking courage from the object in view, he spoke resolutely and slowly, telling his father he was in no way changed from the time when they had spoken together on the subject last: and, speaking with real affection, he told how he grieved to disappoint the hopes of such a father, but persisted that he durst not so far contradict the impulse within him as to comply with this wish. He said, “I can be nothing but an artist; I am fit for nothing else; whatever else I may do I should bury my talent; and remember the fate of the servant who hid his lord’s money.”

Mr. Radcliffe looked up, and all the love for his son stormed his heart; looking at him there, so pale and sad, he yielded. Is was a mighty effort; it



was no mean thing to see his only child, for whom, ever since he was a little one on the knee, he had cherished a private though great ambition, throwing himself away as he thought; it was no slight sacrifice to bring his ambition down till its widest scope was the happiness of his child.

And Henry appreciated all this; and his love for his father was increased tenfold as he saw the effort made for his sake, till, by a strange contradictory influence, he felt almost inclined to throw away all except the hope of pleasing his father; but he durst not. Rising, he walked across the room, holding out his hand; it was grasped firmly, and Henry, stooping down, kissed the hand he felt then to be to him the dearest in the world.

But it was many months before he could gather strength to begin the course he had marked out for himself, and then it was with much mistrust and little ambition, only with intense love and earnestness, that he began the life, and took upon himself the name, of an artist.

He had met his old friend again, and found him daily more worthy to be loved, yet no word of the greatest trouble of his life ever passed between them. He knew not why, except that it might be from an indescribable feeling that Merton was concealing from him some like scene in his own life with a jealous care. So from this thought his love for his friend grew more tender, and often, looking into those earnest eyes, he thought he saw reflected his own trouble and struggles. Another thing, too, bound them closely together; Richard was of so delicate a frame of mind and body, that Henry’s manhood seemed needed for them both, and from that circumstance there was a very gentle feeling between the two. One evening, standing with his hand on the lock of his friend’s room, he paused, listening to the rich tones of that familiar voice; for from the dusk there came to his ears, words which had often wandered through his heart, but to which he could never have given such utterance.

• In the greatest battle of his life
• Man stands by himself alone;
• No hand save his and the foe’s to the strife,
• No heart to beat high but his own.

• Yet the war goes on right desperately,
• And whether he stand or fall
• Himself and God alone may see
• Till the judgment day of all.

The low chanting ceased as he opened wide the door, and stood in the gloaming, before the brother of his heart.

Another time, when walking with an old friend, Roger Mackenzie, he was greatly pained by hearing him say Richard Merton was looking ill, and he was the more grieved, because it put a fear of his own into words; so he tried to persuade himself and his companion that it was only a slight paleness, consequent on a head-ache a week before. Nevertheless, he could not banish a troubled feeling, which made him inclined to go at once to Merton, and he smiled at himself as he found that he wanted to be sure of his safety! So he quickly turned his footsteps towards his friend, and reaching him, found indeed that he looked ill, but the paleness vanished in a flush of joy, and they stood long together with hands firmly clasped.

Henry and Richard and his sister, had been play-fellows when children, and now when they were grown up the intimacy was as great, so that Radcliffe and Joanna Merton were like brother and sister, and often looked back to their childhood with peculiar pleasure.

“You remember Mary Stanfield, who used to be our constant companion;” said Joanna, “she is come to stay with me, and now we shall all four be together again, only more like one family than before, because we shall not be separated so often.”

“But,” said Roger Mackenzie, “will you not reckon me among your old friends, Jonnie? I have known you nearly as long.”

Jonnie said, “No, they were complete without him,” and rose hastily to meet Miss Stanfield, who was entering the room. She was a young girl of eighteen, looking even younger, and she greeted Henry as though very glad to see him again. In a short time they all felt as if they had never lost sight of one another. Joanna told Henry that Mary had spent six months with her, soon after his going abroad, and that she had returned home with her for two or three more. “But,” she said, “I find I can scarcely live without her, so I have persuaded her to come back to me. I cannot get on with my music, or anything alone; and as for the mornings with Richard, they are desolation itself.”

“Yes, indeed,” said her brother, “we missed you very much, Mary; Jonnie is so wild without you.”

“What do you read with them then?” asked Radcliffe.

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” answered Joanna, “nothing but dull history, and a variety of things about which I understand nothing; and then endless music, drawing, and poetry. Now I hate poetry, so I always leave them at that part of the morning; and when I am alone you see there is no one to fill my place, so I have to stay; therefore that is another reason for me to be glad Mary is here.”

Roger smiled as he thought of Richard and Mary on the bright summer mornings; and Henry, meeting his glance, derived therefrom an idea which rendered him doubly grave for the rest of the evening. He thought he saw in his friend’s gaze an additional shade of earnestness as it fell upon Mary, and he noticed her sweet eyes cloud with sorrow as they lighted upon Richard’s pale face.

It was a hot July morning, and Mary and Joanna were alone in a large room, looking towards the south. Joanna, seated in the clear sunlight, looked bright and beautiful as the day, but Mary’s face was grave even to sadness as she stood in the shade of the heavy purple curtains. Turning over some music, she spoke—“It is time for your brother to come and hear us play these duets; I wonder he is not here.”

“Oh, never mind, I hope he wont come. Do you know, Mary, it seems as if he was your brother too. Doesn’t it?” she added, raising her eyes from the book she was reading to Mary’s face.

“I do not think so, he is too far above me for that; almost more like a very kind master,” said she musingly.

“Well, I must leave you to receive him then; I have sinned already in spending so much of this glorious day in the house.” And throwing down her book, she sprang through the large open window, and fled along the terrace, with her long fair curls glowing in a blaze of splendour.

Mary sat down to the piano, and began dreamily striking a few rich chords with her right hand, while the other hung listlessly by her side, like a lily drooping in the heat. Presently Merton knocked at the door—an act specially demanded of him by Joanna—and Mary arose to greet him. He looked ill, but this was now only too usual; his face also was very grave, but she was so accustomed to that, she said nothing.

After they had talked for a while about the beauty of the morning, Mary said, “Shall I sing for you, as Joanna is away, and we cannot have the duets?”

“Yes, do,” he said; and sitting down, she seemed to sing in that rich voice of hers an accompaniment to the Midsummer morning; those low sweet notes were the sunshine and the shadow in music. He said nothing, but with a quiet, grave smile, arose; she also left her music, and turning to him, spoke.

“I have heard from home this morning, and must leave you next week.”

“I am very sorry,” said Richard, cutting a pencil for her.

“So am I, but mamma wants me now, and remember, I have been with you two months.”

“Two months! No, Mary, not so long as that!”

“Yes, indeed; have they not gone quickly?”

“Very.”

And an additional shade of gravity stole over Richard’s face; he was a great contrast to his little pupil as she stood beside him. He was sitting with his head bent down, apparently examining her pencils, so low that his face was hardly visible. From the white lids and pale complexion, however, it was easy to imagine the blue eyes fixed so determinedly on his fingers; but the crown of rich brown curling hair gave the colouring wanted for the beautiful picture. She was standing by him, looking over his shoulder, and, though her complexion was darker, she looked much brighter than he: her hair was a deep brown, looking almost black in shadow, but with a golden bloom on it, when, as now, the sunlight glanced over her head.

Merton started up.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I had forgotten you were standing; pray take this seat.”

“No, thank you, I will go to Jonnie now,” and she slowly stept out on the broad terrace, with her dark eyes drooped in the intense light, and the rich colour in her face so transparent in the sun, that the life-blood seemed fairly beating in her smooth cheeks no less than in the heart which throbbed so wildly under the small hand.

But Richard followed her only with his eyes, and, when her slight figure passed from his sight, he slowly rose and left the room, as the sun was hidden by a thick cloud. Leaving word that he had gone to see Radcliffe, and should not be home till evening, he passed out into the hot road. A short time, and he was with his friend, who had already been long at his easel; so, not to disturb him, he asked to look at a number of drawings lying on a small table.

“Certainly,” said Radcliffe, “they are only sketches of scenes and people I saw abroad, and so perhaps more interesting to me than you.” But it was not so; for an hour passed in silence, Henry absorbed in painting, and Richard looking at the little pictures, or rather at one. He had cast aside a number of sketches, now of a tree, now of a tower, a beautiful statue, or a shattered column; and when Henry turned to speak, he was seated with his head wearily leaning on his hand, and his eyes dreaming over a small water-colour of an Italian girl. It struck Henry now for the first time, why that face had seemed familiar to him, it bore a strong resemblance to Mary Stanfield; therefore, appearing not to have seen his friend, he said carelessly,

“I wish you would rid me of a few of those; indeed, if you will take all the heads I shall be glad, for they are not nearly so powerful in recalling scenes as the landscapes, for which I know you care little.”

Then there was silence again.

In the evening the friends sat together in Henry’s studio, by the light of the fire, talking of things which had happened during Radcliffe’s absence. After a while Merton said,

“You, my dear fellow, are then really an artist, you have actually begun your career.”

“Yes,” said Henry with gravity, “but with little ambition; at present I do not even dream of success.”

“But why not?” broke from Richard almost impetuously; then, sadly—“You have your life before you, and strength to devote to the task; it is not as if, like me, you carried about with you the constant idea of death: for, Henry, I can no longer keep it to myself, I feel, I know, I shall never live to



see the fulfilment of any one of my hopes. Do you not remember how my brother William died this time two years of consumption? and you cannot have forgotten how it was said that the same undeveloped disease was the reason of my marvellous likeness to him as he lay without life. I talk to you thus calmly about it, because for myself I have fought the fight and won the victory; I have given up my brightest hope for this life, but I cannot help looking forward for you.”

Henry was silent, he could not use common-place expressions of affection, and sympathy would have been utterly out of place; it was not wanted. But he felt then, from the suffering he had gone through, that some dream of his friend’s had been alike ruthlessly broken. Not in the same way perhaps, but notwithstanding the different means the end was the same; neither of them would ever live to call the woman whom he had loved best in the world his wife.

So when he did speak it was in a low voice; and, falling in with the humour of his friend, he would not speak sadly of the great change which was before him, but only hopefully of the happiness beyond, if he should at last reach that heaven for which it had been the object of his life to be prepared.

And the friends became doubly endeared to each other, because they felt such times as the present would rarely come again. After a while they talked of other things, and that subject was not again alluded to, except at parting, in the lengthened pressure of hands, which felt as though they could never separate.

But after Merton’s departure, Henry sat again by the fire; and the remembrance of their early friendship was very vivid in his mind: then he thought of the time when that friendship had grown into love, almost insensibly, but very surely. It had been during a tour among the Lakes which they had taken together; and he thought with pain now, how they had talked of the long future, looked for so naturally. And then he wondered what the unknown years would bring to him. Sorrow surely; joy perhaps. Victory? but he could not answer that question yet. Months passed on; Mary Stanfield went home, but Jonnie stayed with her brother, who to all eyes was rapidly wasting away. Radcliffe’s life was a very quiet one; he had not yet attained to such celebrity that his name should be on the lips of any but his friends; but to them he was very dear. The struggle that had taken place was over, and he saw on looking back, the slough from which he had escaped. He knew that a while ago his heart was bitter against the whole world, and that for the sake of one he would have denied any good to all: because one woman had shown him only evil, he would have drawn therefrom a cruel inference. And he shuddered to think of all to which it would have led; dark misanthropy and scepticism. And besides greater things, it would have shut against him the doors of Art; for his sullied soul could never have comprehended the great field of purity and delight wherein he now walked, a monarch. So he rejoiced, and went on his way rejoicing and strengthened.

What time he could, he spent with Merton, and that did him great good; for from his friend fell unconsciously, day by day, lessons which strengthened him to bear with all endurance the burden he carried.

Both bore a heavy sorrow; both felt it, but neither spoke to his brother for fear of adding a straw’s weight more to the burden he saw to be almost too much already.

But at last one night, when Merton had been ill a long time, and Henry was sitting by his bedside talking to him, there came a sudden pause.

Each knew what it meant; delicacy for the other had placed a barrier between



them on one subject only, but even that must be removed before the perfect communion of their souls should begin, never to end.

It was evening; the sun had set as their great hopes had done before, and the two were silent.

Merton lay back on his pillow, his pale face looking unutterably lovely, because of the slightness of the veil which hid his pure soul: and as Radcliffe looked at him, he felt the void in his heart fill almost to breaking with love and sorrow for his first friend.

So he spoke, feeling it was expected of him, and without any preface, told his friend of all the dreams once his, and the rough awakening. Even after this lapse of time, he could not say anything against her; and if he could, he durst not in the presence of one whom he thought so far above all human passions. So he did not notice, while he went on telling of the war and the victory, the calm face growing troubled, as it lay looking upwards, nor that the bright head turned round from him and hid itself; he was too much absorbed in his own sufferings, which seemed to him told for the first time, and by some one else, yet meeting with a wondrous sympathy from him; for, as he had never let the secret pass his lips before, they formed themselves with difficulty to the words. By degrees he came to the point where he had awakened, to know that he was on the brink of a precipice; but he spoke diffidently of the Kind Hand which had shown him the evil, and the Great Cure, for he felt that his friend must know all this so much better than himself. Then he went on, till he told of the daybreak, and how he had walked in light ever since; with sometimes a cloud of human sin or sorrow obscuring it, but always passing away. Then he suddenly stopped: “Oh Richard, Richard!” for the thin figure on the bed was shaken by a tempest of sobs, which still continued, while Radcliffe said again,

“Oh Richard, Richard, don’t!”

And throwing himself on his knees by the bedside, with one hand he took away the two thin ones so tightly clasped together against the face, while with the other he drew the bowed head to his breast, and hid it there, for he would not look on it.

After a while the sobs ceased, but still he would not speak, only gently caressed the hands that were powerless now. He was startled to hear Merton break the silence first, in a voice free from any trace of the emotion so lately there. Henry was awed as he listened to a story utterly unexpected. While he listened he rose, and slowly, from the impulse of love within him, drew his friend quite into his arms, and still without looking at his face, held him closely, as though they should never part. For Richard was telling of a love in comparison with which his own was nought; it was so wholly self-sacrificing. It seemed Merton had loved Mary well ever since his brother’s death, when she had been the one to soothe him and point out a hope which might sustain him for his life. At first he had indulged in all the dreams love gave; nay, he was sure now they had been well founded, for he knew she had loved him. Then came the knowledge that the Destroyer had marked him for his own; the certainty that Death was undermining with unerring hand the foundation of his yet young life. And he had framed a resolution worthy of a martyr. She should never know. He would not allow himself the unutterable blessing of her love for the short time of his life, because of the grief that would be hers when he was gone. So he had resolutely drawn back even the little way already advanced, and had quietly endured the pain of seeing her also withdraw with (he knew it) a feeling of shame for having ventured so far. Ah! that was the worst; that she should reproach herself for unwomanly conduct, when none ever had surer



ground whereon to build. Then faintly smiling, he said,

“But it may not seem much sacrifice to you, for I have been a thousandfold rewarded, even here on earth, by a love far beyond that of father, mother, brethren, or wife, and by that great sorrow have been taught a thing I shall never forget, and the joy of which shall endure for eternity.”

And thus they talked,

• “Until the night,
• Descending, fill’d the little room,
• Their faces faded from the sight,
• Their voices only broke the gloom.”

And when they ceased, it was as though an Angel spoke to them.

Soon after this Richard died. He left word with Jonnie to give Mary his Bible, in which he first wrote with a firm hand, “For my dear little Pupil,” for so he had taught her to consider herself, knowing then everything else would soon vanish.

But he made Henry promise never to lose sight of her, and told her himself one day (for she was with them again at his wish), half playfully, half in earnest, but withal fully meaning it, that he delegated his office to Henry, and she must think of him in future as she now thought of her present instructor.

She told him with tears she never could.

Jonnie seemed by the trouble brought upon her to improve wonderfully, (though Mary was ever in advance) and her true nature was so called forth that it would never hide again beneath the veil of nonsense and waywardness wherewith she used to delight to tease her friends.

Roger Mackenzie felt this, and one day, a year after her brother’s death, told her that he had loved her from the first; so she gave him her hand, for her heart was his already.

Meanwhile Radcliffe, after his second loss greatly troubled, still followed the profession he had struggled for through every difficulty. His name was abroad in the world, but his early sorrows had calmed the nature that would otherwise have delighted in fame. Mary was proud of her friendship with him, “he was so good,” she said. She often thought that, in dying, Merton had let the mantle of his gentle spirit fall on Henry, and therefore loved him the more.

Their friendship began even before Richard’s death, and he had been made happy by knowing it would continue.

In course of time, Mary married one who would have been worthy of her, even in his eyes; and her simple and sweet character became fully developed by many trials, for hers was a lot even more clouded than most. Her husband died on the first anniversary of their wedding day, and she and an infant son returned to her father’s house.

One day, when he was quite an old man, Radcliffe stood before his easel trying to recall a face which troubled him, because it flitted continually before him without becoming clear and distinct.

So he sought to catch it during one of its momentary flashes; and as it grew beneath his fingers, a little boy who stood by him cried out with delight at its wonderful beauty: and then Henry knew that he had gathered together the best emotions of the only three women he had known well, and personifying them, had caused even the child at his side to shout for joy.

Henry kept this picture for himself, but after his death, when servants entering found him lifeless before it, it was sold with others; and though a great delight to all, never did half the good to any that Henry Radcliffe got in painting it.

It will perhaps be best to state definitely at the outset what is the object I propose to myself in this article, and what is the method I shall pursue for the attainment of it. We English are perpetually making our boast of Shakespeare. Perhaps, of all our authors, not even omitting Bacon, his name is oftenest on our lips and on our pens. But (with the exception of a few plays, well known, though not even these critically, and rather from stage representation than from private reading,) I apprehend the large majority of us know not much more of the great dramatist than of the great philosopher. Accordingly, we have thought that a welcome service might be done many of our readers if a few plays (especially such as have been more than ordinarily neglected, with less than the usual excuse for such neglect,) were recommended



to them by a careful, and somewhat lengthy, analysis. I think it is running a very slight risk to make the assertion, that few of my readers are well acquainted with “Troilus and Cressida;” while to some, not improbably, this will be literally a first introduction. Yet, little known as it is, it deserves to rank only below those dramas which, by universal consent, are acknowledged Shakespeare’s greatest. Its characters are drawn with the true creative power which makes them move before us like living men and women. Some whole scenes are of quite first-rate excellence; while the play throughout abounds in passages of the highest poetry, both emotional and reflective.

For the accomplishment of our purpose, it seems to me that the most suitable method will be a mere analysis of the drama itself; and I shall therefore confine myself almost exclusively to the actual text; and I warn such as require a dissertation on the genius of Shakespeare, or a comparison of him with other dramatists, or of “Troilus and Cressida,” with other dramatical or poetical productions, that they must seek elsewhere. I think, however, that the text of this single play will furnish more than enough matter for the few pages which I can devote to it. I shall not shrink from such questions as arise naturally, if not necessarily, from the text, as the difference between Homer’s and Shakespeare’s treatment of the dramatis personæ, and the anachronism by which Greek and Trojan warriors are brought before us as Mediæval knights. But these I shall handle as briefly as possible, only at such length as is absolutely requisite for my purpose. Again, I shall not pretend to analyze every scene. “Troilus and Cressida,” however grand and beautiful in many parts, is yet, it must be confessed, far from perfect; having in it much that, with the purer manners of the present age, had best be passed over in silence, or with as little notice as may be. I allude, I need not say, far more to the character of Pandarus than of Thersites. Thersites is very coarse; but all he says may be read. No reader will get harm from it. But I own Pandarus is to me a very painful blot on the whole play; and I cannot understand why Shakespeare did not represent the love of Troilus and Cressida, so truthful and trustful in Troilus, without the introduction of any such character at all. One only reason occurs to me, the unworthiness of Cressida; but this sounds to me a very poor defence. Yet, let it be observed, that there is no immorality in the portrayal of Pandarus. Immorality in a writer consists in representing virtue as vice ought to be represented, or vice as virtue; in making virtue hateful, contemptible, undesirable; vice tempting, seeming worthy of our honour or love. Such a writer was Byron. Such poems as The Giaour,



Lara, even Childe Harold in parts, but above all Don Juan, are emphatically immoral, the more dangerously so the more refined they are; their legitimate tendency, if not their conscious aim, being, to make virtue loved less and vice more. But in Pandarus (and this will apply to all similar characters in Shakespeare,) we have, it is true, the mirror held up to nature, vice shown her own features, with the utmost freedom, with far more freedom than I, in these days, am prepared to advocate. But the mirror is a level one, its light is a dry light; there is no transformation of the features, no turning of ugliness into beauty; the portrait is a genuine, most unflattering one; and the wretched Pandarus goes off the stage finally, as he has come on and gone off previously, not so much with our hatred as with our disgust and unmitigated contempt. Best, I think, had he never come on at all; but since Shakespeare has introduced him, let us be sure we observe how hateful and contemptible he has made him. In consequence of this freedom of language, chiefly in these two characters, Thersites and Pandarus, I shall be compelled to take very little notice of the former, and none at all, if possible, of the latter; (though I would remark that there is much in Thersites genuinely comic; no little practical philosophy too, though of the cynical sort;) and this, with other reasons, (as the narrowness of my limits, &c.) will oblige me to select only the most striking and important scenes. This will naturally give an inadequate idea of the whole, in one sense too favourable, the scenes selected being for the most part the finest; while, on the other hand, all really excellent plays cannot afford the loss of a single scene, however seemingly unimportant.

Now, one of the first things that will catch the reader’s attention in “Troilus and Cressida” is the Mediævalism which he will find pervading it, at once, in the incidents, in the sentiments, in the language and in the characters. This bears testimony to the theory of Carlyle (Heroes and Hero Worship,—The Hero as Poet,—a lecture which those who have not read it will do well to read) that Shakespeare was the exponent of the civil life, as Dante of the religious life, of the Middle Ages,—an epoch in Shakespeare’s time ready to pass away, but still lingering, waiting to be recorded by him, and so kept alive for future generations. To take instances from “Troilus and Cressida;” first in the incidents. The single combat between Hector and Ajax is of a thoroughly Mediæval spirit. A challenge is sent from Hector, “impatient of the dull and long-continued truce,” (though we have just read that Ajax “ yesterday coped* Hector in the battle,”) who will maintain with his lance, his lady to be fairer and truer than any of the Grecian ladies.

• “If there be one among the fair’st of Greece,
• That holds his honour higher than his ease,
• That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril;
• That knows his valour and knows not his fear;
• That loves his mistress more than in confession
• With truant vows to her own lips he loves,
• And dare avow her beauty and her worth,
• In other arms than hers—to him this challenge.
• Hector, in view of Trojans and of Greeks,
• 10Shall make it good, or do his best to do it,
• He hath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,
• Than ever Greek did compass in his arms,
• And will to-morrow with his trumpet call,
• Midway between your tents and walls of Troy,
• To rouse a Grecian that is true in love:
• If any come, Hector shall honour him;
• If none, he’ll say in Troy, when he retires,
• The Grecian dames are sun-burn’d, and not worth
• The splinter of a lance.”

The classical reader should compare this joust with the combat between Menelaus and Paris, in the third book of the Iliad, to observe the points both of similarity and of dissimilarity. The



passage I have quoted illustrates also both the Mediæval tone of sentiment and the chivalrous phraseology of this play. As a farther illustration of the former, I make one quotation, out of many, that at once offer themselves—from this same third scene of the first Act.

• “ Æneas. How may
• A stranger to those most imperial looks,
• Know them from eyes of other mortals?

• Agam. How?

• Æneas. Ay;
• I ask that I might waken reverence,
• And bid the cheek be ready with a blush,
• Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
• The youthful Phoebus.
• Which is that god in office, guiding men?
• Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?

• Agam. This Trojan scorns us; or the men of Troy
• Are ceremonious courtiers.

• Æneas. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm’d,
• As bending angels; that’s their fame in peace:
• But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,
• Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove accord,
• Nothing so full of heart.”

As a parallel to this last, I cannot forbear quoting Henry the Fifth’s address to his soldiers before Harfleur, in an age separated by no great space from the culminating point of chivalry in England:

• “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
• As modest stillness and humility:
• But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
• Then imitate the action of the tiger:
• Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood;
• Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
• Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
• Let it pry through the portage of the head
• Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it,
• 10As fearfully as doth a galled rock
• O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
• Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.
• Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide;
• Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
• To his full height!”

It is true this is the right spirit for a soldier in all ages; I make the quotation only to show that, as a fact, Shakespeare, in his description of the Trojans, had in his mind the warriors of the Middle Ages.

Mediæval phraseology teems everywhere in “Troilus and Cressida;” for instance, in the passages already quoted. I may now, therefore, pass on to the dramatis personæ, several of which we shall find fashioned closely after the Mediæval model. Troilus, Hector, Æneas, and Ulysses, are all true knights. In particular, Troilus and Ulysses are almost ideals; the one the youthful knight, whose place is the field and his lady’s bower; truthful, simple-hearted, fearless, constant in love:

• “ A true knight;
• Not yet mature, yet matchless; firm of word;
• Speaking in deeds, and deedless in his tongue;
• Not soon provoked, nor, being provoked, soon calm’d;
• His heart and hand both open, and both free:
• For what he has, he gives, what thinks, he shows;
• Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,
• Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath:
• Manly as Hector, but more dangerous;
• 10For Hector, in his blaze of wrath, subscribes
• To tender objects; but he, in heat of action,
• Is more vindicative than jealous love.”

Ulysses is portrayed far more as Homer has portrayed him; yet is he none the less mediæval; the warrior-statesman,—fit alike for the field and the council; knowing fear as little as Troilus, but withal cautious, prudent, as prompt to plan with his brain as ready to strike with his hand; his days of “loving” past; but yet, feeling a genuine knightly sympathy with the “love” of a younger knight. At first this reads strangely to more than classical scholars, to all who know anything of the tale divine of Troy, whether from Homer, from Pope, or from Lempriere.

Our poet seems to have taken strange liberties with his dramatis personæ; the whole play appears an anachronism.



Indeed, if Shakespeare aimed at being a translator (however paraphrastic) of Homer, he has signally failed. The godlike son of Thetis has little of the god in him, except personal courage (the most common of good qualities), and that doubtful virtue, love of honour. No choice of a glorious life with an early death before inglorious length of days; he lies idle in his tent, partly in sullen anger, partly because of his love for one of Priam’s daughters,—killing the time with caricatures of his brother chieftains, till piqued out of his proud indolence by Ulysses. No chasing of Hector three times round the walls of Troy, after slaughter of innumerable Trojans; the Trojan hero is not slain at all by him, but by a troop of Myrmidons, and that when his shield and helmet have been laid aside. Ajax, of all the Grecians in strength and valour second only to Achilles, is here a mere “valiant ignorance,” a very butt, the laughingstock, not only of Nestor and Ulysses, and Diomed, but also of the “fool,” Thersites.

Diomed, the vanquisher of Ares and Aphrodite, is a male flirt, though shrewd, and bold, and ambitious enough. In the character of Thersites there is one thoroughly mediæval touch, the immunity of “fools” treatment very different from that which he receives from Ulysses in the second book of the Iliad. Of a truth no translator of Homer is Shakespeare here; the same events, the same actors; yet with how great a difference! We must look upon this play then, as standing independent of Homer and the classics; another page in that book of human nature, in which Homer and the ancient poets also wrote; that human nature which in its essentials was the same in the days of Homer and the days of Shakespeare, which is the same also in our days. No antiquarian either is our countryman, seeking to reproduce the manners and speech and costume of days gone by; but a poet, striving to set before his spectators and readers life-like characters which shall affect them with love or hatred, with joy or sorrow, not unlike the men and women living round them, however ancient and foreign the names they bear. This is the vocation of the poet, who lives only in and for his own age; if to this, when taking his subject from ancient times, he can add correct costume and phraseology and manners, he at the least approves his learning; but, if for these he sacrifices anything of the life of the characters themselves, if they move and speak with ever so little less freedom and naturalness, because of their antique and unfamiliar dress and language, his spectators and readers will think the price paid for the antiquities too dear, and wish the paraphernalia away, that they may see more closely and truly the working of the heart and mind within. Poetry, like art, is of no time and no country; manner and costume are only accidents, utterly trifling in comparison of that which is the essential, the very soul, of both, the interpretation and eduction of man’s spiritual nature, which like them is the same in all times and in all nations. Therefore, though I approve of plays being put on the stage with all practicable historical accuracy, yet, to take a current and well-known example, I think the apparatus with which Mr. Kean has produced King Henry the Eighth (at the best not well adapted for representation, from its want of a plot), so far from setting it forth and adorning it,—like a too gaudy dress, rather overlays and conceals it, almost usurps its place. Indeed, the withdrawal of the fifth Act (which in the representation was little else than a mere show), would seem to be a sign that Mr. Kean has some suspicion of this himself.

Our play being named “Troilus and Cressida,” we naturally expect these two to be the principal characters, and their history to constitute the plot. Their story is told chiefly in three scenes, Act iii. Sc. 2, Act iv. Sc. 4, Act



v. Sc. 2, which I have little doubt nearly all readers will find the most interesting of all. Side by side with this main plot runs another, the reconciling of Achilles with his countrymen, which is effected by Ulysses, and results in the death of Hector.

The first scene opens with Troilus armed, but, unmanned by his love for Cressida, longing to unarm; an ignoble and unchivalrous kind of love, unworthy of so true a knight as Troilus afterwards shows himself to be; but his love has not yet been declared, and does not know itself returned; and so, engrossed by its own hopes and fears, cannot as yet do its proper work of inciting to great deeds, which may ennoble both the lover and the loved.

In the third scene we are introduced to the Grecian camp, to a conference of the chieftains, though lacking the greatest warrior of them all, Achilles. Indeed, it is the want of him, which, with the evil example set by his withdrawal to the rest of the army, is the main cause of their present ill success.

This scene is chiefly admirable for that which, as I have already observed, prevails throughout the play, the grandeur and beauty of the speeches. In accordance with the aim stated at the commencement of this essay, I shall make quotations at some length, as well from this scene as from others, frequently introducing them, as it needs must be, without any comment. I cannot begin better than with the following:

• “ Agamem. Why then, you princes,
• Do you with cheeks abash’d behold our works;
• And think them shames, which are indeed nought else
• But the protractive trials of great Jove,
• To find persistive constancy in men?
• The fineness of which metal is not found
• In fortune’s love; for then the bold and coward,
• The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
• The hard and soft, seem all affin’d and kin:
• 10But in the wind and tempest of her frown
• Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan
• Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
• And what hath mass or matter, by itself
• Lies, rich in virtue, and unmingled”

The like strain is pursued by the “venerable” Nestor, and the subject is then taken up by Ulysses, who dwells on the evils of disorder, want of system (how applicable in these our own days!) and the excellence and utility of order, of “degree.” The whole speech is worthy of the most attentive examination; I quote the following as a sample:

• “Take but degree away, untune that string,
• And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
• In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
• Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
• And make a sop of all this solid globe:
• Strength should be lord of imbecility,
• And the rude son should strike his father dead:
• Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong,
• (Between whose endless jar justice resides)
• 10Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
• Then everything includes itself in power,
• Power into will, will into appetite;
• And appetite, a universal wolf,
• So doubly seconded with will and power,
• Must make perforce a universal prey,
• And, last, eat up himself.”

Then he paints a most vivid picture of the amusement with which Achilles whiles away the time in his tent, with his friend Patroclus:

• “The great Achilles,—whom opinion crowns
• The sinew and the forehand of our host,—
• Having his ear full of his airy fame,
• Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
• Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus
• Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
• Breaks scurril jests,
• And with ridiculous and awkward action,
• (Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,)
• 10He pageants us. Sometimes, great Agamemnon,
• Thy topless deputation he puts on;

---

• At this fusty stuff
• The large Achilles on his press’d bed lolling
• From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;
• Cries, Excellent! ’tis Agamemnon just!
• Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,
• As he being ’drest to some oration.



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• That’s done, as near as the extremest ends
• Of parallels; as like as Vulcan and his wife:
• 20Yet good Achilles still cries, Excellent!
• ’Tis Nestor right! Now play him me, Patroclus,
• Arming to answer in a night alarm.
• And then forsooth the faint defects of age
• Must be the scene of mirth; to cough and spit,
• And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
• Shake in and out the rivet; and at this sport
• Sir Valour dies; cries O, enough Patroclus!
• Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all
• In pleasure of my spleen.”

Presently a trumpet sounds, and Æneas enters, bearing Hector’s challenge, which is warmly taken up, the general himself and the aged Nestor each declaring himself Hector’s opponent, if none else come forward; to which Æneas chivalrously exclaims—

• “Now heavens forbid such scarcity of youth!”

Ulysses sees at once that this challenge, though general in its terms, points specially at Achilles, and from it conceives a plan to pique his pride, and bring him back to their ranks, by playing off Ajax against him, and setting him to fight Hector.

• “No, make a lottery;
• And by device let blockish Ajax draw
• The sort ^* to fight with Hector. Among ourselves
• Give him allowance for the better man,
• For that will physic the great Myrmidon,
• Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall
• His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends.”

The second scene of the second act takes us to “a room in Priam’s palace,” where the Trojan princes are debating whether they shall accept the terms just proposed by the Greeks, to raise the siege upon the restoration of Helen. Hector and Helenus are for giving her up: Troilus would retain her, for the sake of his father’s honour. Hear how enthusiastically he speaks of her:

• “It was thought meet
• Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;

In the midst of this a shriek is heard, “Cry, Trojans, cry!” and the royal prophetess—a true prophet, but, like so many other true prophets, not believed till too late—rushes in “raving.” Let the reader observe how differently her entrance is received by Troilus and by Hector. Troilus, whose advice has been the contrary of what he knows her warning will be, exclaims, “Tis our mad sister.” But Hector says, “It is Cassandra,” Cassandra, the beloved and inspired of Phoebus Apollo. Her wild bursting in upon the debate must be grand indeed as represented on the stage.

• “ Cas. ( within.) Cry, Trojans, cry!

• Priam. What noise, what shriek is this?

• Troil. ’Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.

• Cas. ( within.) Cry, Trojans!

• Hector. It is Cassandra.

• [ Enter Cassandra, raving.

• Cas. Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes,
• And I will fill them with prophetic tears.

• Hect. Peace, sister, peace.

• 10 Cas. Virgins and boys, mid-age, and wrinkled elders,
• Soft infancy that nothing canst but cry,
• Add to my clamours! let us pay betimes
• A moiety of that mass of moan to come.
• Cry, Trojans, cry! practise your eyes with tears!
• Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;
• Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.
• Cry, Trojans, cry, a Helen, and a woe!
• Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go!”

The discussion is renewed after her departure, and Paris joins in it, of course in favour of the retention of his wife.

• “Can it be
• That so degenerate a strain as this
• Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?



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• There’s not the meanest spirit on our party
• Without a heart to dare, or sword to draw,
• When Helen is defended; nor none so noble,
• Whose life were ill bestow’d, or death unfamed,
• Where Helen is the subject; then I say,
• Well may we fight for her, whom we know well
• 10The world’s large spaces cannot parallel.”

The Mediæval spirit again; very different from the language in which she is often spoken of in the Iliad, in which Diomed too speaks of her in this very play. The debate ends as we might have foretold: it is decided to keep Helen; Hector, after having delivered his “opinion in way of truth,” that she should be restored to her husband, allowing his love of battle to carry him over to the other side, like many another man in ancient and in modern times. I am unwilling to pass over the next scene without remarking with what exquisite humour Ajax is played upon by his brother chieftains, till at last he makes that sublimely absurd request to old Nestor

• “Shall I call you father?”

I will now pass on to the second scene of the third act, which I am sure most readers will find more interesting than any we have yet examined. Here Troilus and Cressida mutually confess their love, and plight their troth, troth most religiously to be kept by Troilus with true knightly faith, but very soon to be broken by Cressida. I think already her coquetry and inconstancy peep out; not that I doubt her sincerity, but it is far from being of that entire trustfulness and self-forgetfulness which is the glory of the love of Troilus, the essence of all true love. Her “confession” has in it some appearance of “angling for the thoughts” of her lover; and her self-defence, “Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love,” sounds not unlike the voice of conscience. But she is really in love with the simple, truthful hero, and has no thought yet of playing him false. The reader must study the scene for himself: it is one of the most beautiful in all Shakespeare. I will merely make two quotations, the first a speech of Troilus, while he is waiting for Cressida.

• “I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.
• The imaginary relish is so sweet
• That it enchants my sense; what will it be
• When that the watery palate tastes indeed
• Love’s thrice-reputed nectar? death, I fear me;
• Swooning-destruction; or some joy too fine,
• Too subtle-potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness
• For the capacity of my ruder powers:
• I fear it much; and I do fear besides,
• 10That I shall lose distinction in my joys;
• As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps
• The enemy flying.”

Cressida confesses her love thus:

• “ Cres. Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart.
• Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day
• For many weary months.

• Tro. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

• Cres. Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord,
• With the first glance that ever—pardon me—
• If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
• I love you now; but not, till now, so much
• But I might master it:—in faith, I lie;
• 10My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
• Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
• Why have I blabbed? who shall be true to us,
• When we are so unsecret to ourselves?
• But, though I loved you well, I woo’d you not:
• And yet, good faith, I wish’d myself a man;
• Or that we women had men’s privilege
• Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue;
• For in this rapture I shall surely speak
• The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,
• 20Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
• My very soul of counsel: stop my mouth.”

The next scene prepares woe for Troilus, woe and shame for Cressida. Antenor has been taken prisoner: her father, Calchas, demands the fulfilment of a promise made him by the Greek chieftains, the ransom of his daughter, now to be exchanged for Antenor. The claim is granted, and Diomed is commissioned to effect the exchange. But



now we have arrived at the crisis of the minor plot, and the scheme of Ulysses for bringing back Achilles is to be tried. The chieftains proceed to his tent, in front of which he is standing with Patroclus; by the advice of Ulysses, the others slight him, even insult him: Ulysses is to come last by himself, reading, in the expectation that the indignant warrior will demand of him the reasons for so sudden and galling a charge. It is almost impossible for this scene to be excelled, whether we regard the delineation of character or the excellence of the speeches, considered by themselves: it is a perfect treasury of knowledge of human nature, and what I will call practical philosophy.

• “ Achil. What, comes the general to speak with me?
• You know my mind: I’ll fight no more ’gainst Troy.

• Agam. What says Achilles? would he ought with us?

• Nest. Would you, my lord, ought with the general?

• Achil. No.

• Nest. Nothing, my lord.

• Agam. The better.

• [ Exeunt Agamemnon and Nestor.

• Achil. Good day, good day.

• 10 Men. How do you, how do you?

• [ Exit Menelaus.

• Achil. What, does the cuckold scorn me?

• Ajax. How now, Patroclus?

• Achil. Good morrow, Ajax.

• Ajax. Ha?

• Achil. Good morrow.

• Ajax. Ay, and good next day too.

• [ Exit Ajax.

• Achil. What mean these fellows? know they not Achilles?”

To my mind this short dialogue is a more convincing proof of the dramatic power of its author than whole scenes of mere fine speeches. Then the indignant complaint bursts from the wounded spirit of Achilles,

• “What, am I poor of late?
• ’Tis certain, greatness once fallen out with fortune,
• Must fall out with men too. What the declined is,
• He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
• As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
page: 288  
• Show not their mealy wings but to the summer;
• And not a man, for being simply man,
• Hath any honour; but honour for those honours
• That are without him; as place, riches, favour:
• 10Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
• Which, when they fall, as being slippery standers,
• The love that lean’d on them as slippery too,
• Do pluck down one another, and together
• Die in the fall.”

But now Ulysses passes by, and to him, as had been anticipated, the other applies. Observe the difference in the address of Ulysses, full of respect, even of reverence,

• “Now, great Thetis’ son,”

Great son of a goddess. Ulysses easily effects his object of bringing Ajax into comparison with Achilles, and shows the latter the evil consequences, not only to the Greek army, but also recoiling on himself, of his proud, wayward idleness.

• “O heavens, what some men do,
• While some men leave to do!
• How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,
• While others play the idiots in her eyes!
• How one man eats into another’s pride,
• While pride is fasting in his wantonness!”

Let all proud, wayward, self-willed geniuses, doing nothing because they see nothing great enough for them to do, or because society is not sufficiently ready to acknowledge and honour their greatness, lay to heart and diligently ponder and profit by this admonition of the wisest of the Greeks. Then follows a speech, to surpass which we shall in vain look, in Shakespeare or in any other writer, the equal of which we shall right seldom find. I could most earnestly desire that every reader had it by heart, and trust that it is well known to many; but I venture to quote it almost entire, sure that those who are unacquainted with it will only be thankful to me for having introduced it to their notice, and that those who are already acquainted with it



will be very willing to read it once more.

• “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
• Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
• A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
• Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d
• As fast as they are made; forgot as soon
• As done. Perséverance, dear my lord,
• Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang
• Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
• In monumental mockery. Take the instant way:
• 10For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
• Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
• For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
• That one by one pursue. If you give way,
• Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
• Like to an enter’d tide, they all rush by,
• And leave you hindmost;—
• Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
• Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
• O’errun and trampled on. Then what they do in present,
• 20Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours.
• For Time is like a fashionable host,
• That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
• And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
• Grasps-in the comer. Welcome ever smiles,
• And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek
• Remuneration for the thing it was;
• For beauty, wit,
• High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
• Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
• 30To envious and calumniating time.
• One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin,—
• That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
• Though they are made and moulded of things past;
• And gives to dust that is a little gilt,
• More laud than gilt ( gold?) o’er dusted.
• The present eye praises the present object.”

I cannot forbear quoting still further from Ulysses a passage interesting as coming from an Elizabethan poet, in those times, so soon to pass away, when the sovereign of England was a real, almost an absolute, monarch.

• “The providence that’s in a watchful state
• Knows almost every grain of Plutus’ gold;
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• Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps;
• Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
• Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
• There is a mystery (with whom relation
• Durst never meddle) in the soul of state;
• Which hath an operation more divine
• Than breath or pen can give expressure to.”

Ulysses now, like a true master of policy, departs, leaving his advice to digest itself in the mind of his auditor.

We will pass on to the fourth scene of the fourth act, the parting of Troilus and Cressida. A trite, a very, very trite story, but never told more beautifully than here. I do not know what to write about it, except to advise all to read it many, many times: detached quotations can give but the most inadequate idea of it, indeed scarcely any idea of it at all, as is the case with all good dramatic scenes. One thing I will remark upon, that it seems to me that Cressida is already prophetic of her own inconstancy, when in reply to her lover’s “expostulation,”

• “Be thou but true,”

she interrupts him with,

• “I true! how now? what wicked deem is this?”

I think one who was really confident of her truthfulness would not have been so hasty to defend herself where no charge was brought. She should have known that such exhortation implied no distrust of her, but rather was a sign of her value to her lover, and of doubt of himself,—that he was not, and could not, be worthy of her.

In the next scene she is brought by Diomed to the Grecian camp, to the presence of the Grecian chieftains, where her coquetry and levity display themselves at once, and meet with a most appropriate rebuke from Ulysses, who, with his keen insight into character, discerns hers at a glance. Agamemnon “salutes her with a kiss,” whereupon Ulysses, divining her inclination, recommends that she be “kissed in general:” when his turn comes,



instead of availing himself of his privilege, he begins the following word-skirmish with her.

• “May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?
• Cres. You may.
• Ulyss. I do desire it.
• Cres. Why, beg then.
• Ulyss. Why then, for Venus’ sake, give me a kiss

When Helen is a maid again, and his, ( Menelaus’.)

• Cres. I am your debtor; claim it when ’tis due.

• Ulyss. Never’s my day, and then a kiss of you.”

The single combat between Ajax and Hector is now fought; and, as Troilus has come with his brother to the Grecian camp, he prevails upon Ulysses to conduct him to the tent of Calchas, whither we will at once follow them. I think most readers will agree with me in pronouncing this (Act v. Sc. 2.) the finest and most interesting scene in the whole play; that it is the most effective on the stage (though I have never seen the play performed) I have not a doubt.

Again let me warn the reader that no extracts can in any way do justice to a dramatic scene; in particular, such as this must be read, still better witnessed on the stage, if well performed: but I will do what I can, however little, towards enabling him to understand and appreciate it.

The time is night; the place, before Calchas’ tent in the Grecian Camp, under the wide heaven: Diomed enters first, bearing a torch, and presently to him Cressida from her father’s tent. Meanwhile Troilus and Ulysses come on, and take up their stand at a little distance from the tent; and after them the “bitter fool,” Thersites,—no unimportant addition he. With this arrangement of the dramatis personæ we may well look for something grand; and indeed we shall not be disappointed. Poor Troilus! His first words are,

• “Cressid come forth to him!”

In those words the whole story is told: she is false. What simple words they are; yet of what infinite and terrible meaning. I have space only to remark briefly upon the general bearing of the actors in this scene; they are drawn with more than the hand of a consummate dramatist; as we read, they are living men and women to us, and we feel vividly the awful woe of Troilus, his stunned bewilderment of grief, at the faithlessness of her whom he had trusted absolutely, which makes him for a while doubt his very eyes and ears. Throughout he is lost in astonishment, in horror; he scarcely hears the admonitions of his companion, who with difficulty restrains his violence from openly bursting forth; though while Cressida is in his sight, his emotions can take shape only in broken exclamations. Where all is perfect, it seems idle to make selections; yet one or two instances of the marvellous truthfulness with which this character is delineated in this scene, I will venture to bring forward. Cressida whispers Diomed, upon which Ulysses says to Troilus:

• “You are moved, prince: let us depart, I pray you,
• Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself
• To wrathful terms: this place is dangerous;
• The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.”

How many a dramatist, of great excellence too, would have put some rant about contempt of danger into the lover’s mouth; but what writes he who knew the human heart as no other dramatist has ever known it? Troilus does not even hear his monitor; he is staring at his false mistress and her paramour, totally absorbed in them; he has ears and eyes and attention for them only; and so says nothing about contempt of danger, but exclaims only:

• “Behold, I pray you.”

Let the reader realize this; let him see that false woman whispering her false new lover; her true lover gazing upon them, scarcely believing, though he cannot doubt: and I think he will agree with me that here we have a



better proof of dramatic power than even Ulysses’ grand speech:

• “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back.”

When she withdraws, her lover and his companion stand awhile in silence. Picture them, reader, standing in the vast silent night, with the bright, solemn stars, to the Greek verily divine, “Diana’s waiting-women,” gazing quietly down upon them as they gaze for ever upon all men. How does Troilus stand? Perhaps still staring at the tent where Cressida—no, not Cressida, but she who once seemed to be Cressida, has so lately been; perhaps with his eyes wandering about in vacancy, because of the deep, inexplicable working of his soul. By his side the wisest of the Greeks—the wisest and the kindest, for truly and most gently does he sympathize with the desolate lover, whose world he has seen destroyed. There they stand for some minutes, with not a word spoken by either; till, as was natural, the patience of Ulysses, much enduring though he be, is the first to fail under this, and he breaks the sad silence:

• “All’s done, my lord.”

But Troilus is still tongue-tied, and he answers only, “It is.” The very natural question follows, “Why stay we then?” And now the flood-gates of the lover’s heart are burst open, and his deep, unfathomable thoughts seek some relief in words; not burning yet, but—O strange human heart—subtle, sophistical—the reason playing at trying to confute the senses, well knowing all the while that it is but an idle game. And yet surely that was not Cressida; no, for Cressida was true; surely not Troilus’s Cressida; some phantasm of her—Diomed’s Cressida. Yes, a phantasm; and for long, weary years, the world shall have many shadows for him; be often full of them—one huge shadow itself: for Cressida was the truest thing in the world, and she has proved false, and that gives a problem, very easily, though not satisfactorily, solved. What remains for him now? What, but to seek Diomed—hated with a hatred as unutterable as was the love for Cressida—to find him and slay him? For now the burning words have come; no more subtle word-spinning, but intense, furious, yet unalterable passion, reaching its climax in that heart-broken cry, “O Cressid!”—no, not Cressid; it is only the old habit that makes him call her by that dear name; not Cressid, now, but “ false Cressid! false, false, false!”

There is one thing in the conduct of Ulysses I think well worth calling attention to, both because it might escape the notice of many readers, and because, though it may seem a trifling matter, yet it really displays his character very significantly. This is the manner in which his pity for Troilus shows itself. If the reader will examine, he will find that, as in the third scene of the third act, he greeted Achilles as “great Thetis’ son;” so here he frequently calls Troilus, “my lord,” and “prince;” and that not till towards the middle and at the close of the scene. This respectful address, I believe to be his mode of displaying his sympathy for the Trojan; for to a man so deep-seeing as Ulysses sorrow is sacred, especially the sorrow that has fallen undeservedly upon a noble mind.

Thersites does not say much; but it would have been a loss, indeed, had we been without this bitter “fool” to be a spectator of the sin on the one hand, and the woe on the other; taking great delight therein, yet with the moral sense within him speaking out plainly through the thick covering of misanthropy.

No less admirably drawn is Diomed; a perfect master of that ignoble art of winning the fancies, if not the love, of weak women, so accurately described by one, doubtless himself a proficient in the same.

• “Not much he kens, I ween, of woman’s breast,
• Who thinks that wanton thing is won by sighs,



Column Break



• What careth she for hearts, when once possessed?
• Do proper homage to thine idol’s eyes,
• But not too humbly, or she will despise
• Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes:
• Disguise even tenderness, if thou art wise;
• Brisk confidence still best with woman copes;
• Pique her and soothe in turn, soon passion crowns thy hopes.”

Childe Harolde, c. ii. st. 34.

Poor Cressida is no match for his bolder mind and colder heart; to him it is little, if at all, else than mere amusement, a slight interlude in the game of war: but to her it cannot but be much more than this: her love, her truth, her good name, are the stake for which she plays, and which she is sure to lose, and she cannot but feel much in earnest in such a hazard. Yes, poor Cressida, I say (though I cannot really pity her), at the best but a passionate girl, she is here sunk below contempt: her very paramour despises her; the “fool” jeers her. She appears no more in the play, and so departs with all our hatred and contempt unmitigated, rather aggravated by the miserable defence in her last speech.

The main interest of the drama is now over, though the concluding scenes, like all Shakespeare’s battle scenes, are grand; and must be stirring, indeed, in representation. Troilus singles out Diomed in the field, hunting him for the sleeve which he wears in his helmet—the sleeve given by Troilus to Cressida, and by her to Diomed. He is not successful, however; even loses his horse, which his rival sends to his mistress; yet he does “mad and fantastic execution,” charges both Ajax and Diomed at once, wins the praise of his brother Hector,

• “Yea, Troilus! O well fought, my youngest brother,”

And when Hector is slain, solemnly devotes himself to avenge his death.

• “Hector is gone!
• Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?
Sig. VOL. I. X
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• Let him that will a screech-owl aye be called
• Go in to Troy, and say there—Hector’s dead!
• There is a word will Priam turn to stone,
• Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
• Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word,
• Scare Troy out of itself. But march, away;
• Hector is dead; there is no more to say.
• 10Stay yet;—you vile, abominable tents,
• Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,
• Let Titan* rise as early as he dare,
• I’ll through and through you. And, thou great sized coward,
• No space of earth shall sunder our two hates:
• I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,
• That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thoughts.
• Strike a free march to Troy! with comfort go:
• Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.”

So ends (or rather so ought to end, leaving out that hateful last speech of Pandarus, which however may be regarded as an epilogue) this magnificent play; a play, I grant, with many defects; with harsh constructions and inaccuracies; with far worse than these, much that, to our ears at least, sounds coarse, not only in Thersites, but also



in Ajax; even the love of Troilus and Cressida indulging in the unlawful sensual enjoyment; worst of all, the character of Pandarus, all notice of which, in my analysis, I have avoided. Yet with all these defects and offences, such as none but the master-dramatist could have written; worthy of the author of Hamlet and Macbeth, ranking only below his very greatest: containing some scenes absolutely unexcelled, characters that seem like so many actual men and women; and, not least, to some readers possibly best of all, so much poetry, both impassioned and philosophical, as alone would stamp it as the production of none but one of the first of poets.

Well pleased shall I be if this rude analysis shall cause any to turn to the play itself; and, if such good result should follow, I may before long examine after the same fashion another play, not better known than this, and as little deserving of such neglect, that we may in this Magazine do something, however little, towards making the great name of Shakespeare more than a shadow and a sound to so many of his countrymen.

In our first Chapter we examined Carlyle’s Faith. We have now to consider his Work.

His Work naturally separates itself into two divisions, according to its subject-matter, as that is Past or Present. On the one hand there is History; on the other what I should like to call Modern Political Economy, or Modern Politics, if my readers



would understand that it has little or no relation to statistics, or whigs, or tories. Each of these subjects is necessarily blended very intimately with the other, the judgment of the past illuminating the present, and the knowledge of the present reflecting light back upon the past. For the two periods are but one continuous reach of the great river called Human Work, which—notwithstanding sudden turns here and there, (to be duly accounted for, when we learn the dip of the ground,) turns and windings, so that the current seems wandering at chance, or running backwards, or lawlessly overflowing its banks, yet flows onwards, onwards with indivisible life and sure singleness of purpose towards its appointed end. This would appear so in some measure, let whoso will speak to us of these two sections of time, but it is especially the case when Carlyle is interpreter; for he is one of those who know that the Universe, as the Maker of it, is One, and that “the Present contains the whole Past and the whole Future.” The result of which is, that his Belief is penetrating, comprehensive and self-consistent, such, as it appears to me, has belonged to no one who has tried the same task as he. He has chosen for his high argument to justify the ways of God to men, not by coining dreams of the inconceivable, as Milton did, but by expounding complex terrestrial facts; the very facts which men have recorded with modern pens and paper, or such as we ourselves may read in the columns of The Times, and look upon in the streets of London.

In this number, I can hope only to say something about the substance and method of his work in History—“The Lamp for the Old Years.”

By taking a bird’s-eye view over the ground in which Carlyle has worked, it may be seen that he has, in various detached operations, sketched for us the history (a very incomplete one of course) of the European Era, which may be called our own. There are a few Essays on earlier subjects in the Hero-Worship, and a life of Dr. Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay, in the Miscellanies, written to show how his favourite principle holds true of all human work in all times and places; and the Life of Abbot Samson is narrated in “Past and Present,” by way of contrast to our modern method of governing; but almost the entire bulk



of his histories will be found to relate to the European Era, which commences with the Puritan movement in the seventeenth century, (or more properly with the Reformation,) and which is still running and to run, its work being by no means yet completed. The great feature of this time is, that it is emphatically one of Change. Much has died a natural death, or been put an end to; much has been born into new active life; but the New is not yet master of the field, the Old disputes every inch of ground, and the Order and Harmony which are to issue as the crowning result, (for we will not despair of our destiny,) are yet in the blue distance of the far future. The Era of the Sword has gone by, and an Era of Tools has come; Feudalism has given place to Popular Government, and Belief, like the dying dolphin, is assuming the strangest uncertain hues. But as yet there is no peace, but only strife. Industry is not yet organized, but is divided against itself, man against man, master against master, and masters against men; Popular Government is a squabble, in Parliament between party and party, out of Parliament between class and class, rather than Government by the Wisest; and who shall say that the Faith of the European Common Wealth is One, as it has been, and as it once again (for Europe is now a spiritual commonwealth for ever,) shall surely be? All our dearest interests are thus tempestuously tossing to and fro; but of these, Belief is certainly the most important, because it includes all the rest, and the fortunes of it have been as eventful as any in these two hundred years. Its first phase was Puritanism, when a resolute attempt was made to put in effect God’s written Word in every department of social life; its next, the Materialism and Atheism of last century; and now one would fain hope, a gospel is stirring, which shall combine the virtues of both, the intense devoutness of the first with the fullness of knowledge and breadth in practice of the second. We are much concerned to know about all these things; for here, whether we choose to think of it or not, is a battle going on, with the mastery of a European Future for the conquerors. We all live, have opinions and act, are soldiers on the battlefield, and have to choose our side—again whether we think of it or not. It is better that we should think of it! That we should understand the purpose of the battle, and choose the right side, lest haply we be found fighting against God. Perhaps Carlyle may help us to choose well, and then inspire us to fight manfully for the right. At any rate, in these volumes are to be found what is the earnest conviction of one deeply-thinking man respecting the quarrel, and the part taken in it by many eminent persons, about whom the intelligent portion of the population, as if by general consent, seems anxious to know the truth.

In his Essay on Luther, (in the Hero-Worship,) Carlyle describes the life and character of the man, who ushered in the New Era, by declaring that the ancient Papacy had become a lie, and must go. In his “Cromwell,” the triumph of the Puritans under Oliver over an unwise monarch, and an intolerant Church, and the birth of the Industrial Classes to power; in his “French Revolution,” and the four volumes of the Miscellanies, the work of Destruction and Emancipation which was commenced by the French Encyclopedists, Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau, and which culminated in the conflagration known as The Revolution; and lastly, the Rebuilding Work of the German “Architectonic” Thinkers, Schiller, Schlegel, Novalis, Richter, and, above all, Goethe. These are the four great movements of the Time, no child’s play, or tavern brawls, but tremendous realities, with a divine purpose in them, each one of them decisive, progressive; all intimately connected with one another, and determinant



of much in the world’s destiny. And their history will lie chiefly in the lives and works of the Leaders; for it was they who commanded and guided other men, and so directed the course of events; they were the Captains of their Time. On such, therefore, Carlyle bestows his chief study, but he joins with them other men, important in their influence, or at least characteristic in their aspect. Burns and his prophet songs of Faith; Johnson, who made a valiant stand to retain the Old, until the last drop of virtue should be wrung from it; Scott, who at the moment, when High Life was sick of its very existence rejoiced himself, and refreshed thousands with romance and cheerful story of the ancient Past, that manful and glorious Warrior Age, and with pictures of his native Highlands, where Nature, old as Creation, young as To-day, spoke of a whole world of majesty and loveliness, as an ever-living reality; Napoleon, who preached in decisive manner to France and thence to Europe, the gospel of “La Carrière ouverte aux talens,” “the Tools to him who can use them,” the essence of true Democracy; Cagliostro, the King of Liars, fit portent of a decaying time; Byron, the poet of despair, Irving, the preacher of unreal phantasies, both victims of the Babylon in which they lived; honest Elliot the Radical and Corn Law Rhymer—these and others: and now it is reported that the history of the great Frederic of Prussia is on the anvil.

Such has been the specific historical work of Carlyle. A great part of it in the form of Magazine Articles! But notwithstanding this fragmentary form, the reader will do well to consider it as a Whole, for such it intrinsically is. An incomplete whole, it is true, but like an unfinished bust, a record of the most worthy features, and suggestive of the rest. Carlyle, alone of all men, who have written upon this Modern Era, has, so far as I can judge, really comprehended it as a whole, and made out a consistent and intelligible story of it; an achievement which, considering what a complex contradictory Era it has been and is, so altogether novel in the world’s history, I must reckon to be a quite solitary feat in literature. Others, and their name is Legion, (for we all know what a scribbling time this has been and is,) have recorded and criticised several detached portions, but for the most part in terms of extravagant praise or censure; all the quarrels of the time exploding incessantly in literature, and leaving the heretics and the orthodoxicals, the new batteries and the old buttresses, enveloped in smoke and bespattered with mire. Accordingly, except here and there where a gleam of true insight may shine out, the whole drama of two centuries long appears a perfect hubbub, an omnium gatherum of the strangest conflicting phenomena, without connection and without purpose, of which the result only is manifest, our present condition, and that too is a hubbub like the rest. What relation those men of the past bore to us, except that they were our grandfathers, once or several times removed, or what we are to do for those who come after us, except to be their fathers and grandfathers, and provide for the present necessities of the day and year, the encomiasts and denouncers cannot tell us, or tell us something incredible. Of the true character and ministry of the Shepherds of the People in those generations we knew next to nothing, until Carlyle discovered them to us, and many know next to nothing still. Cromwell was a ‘fanatical hypocrite’, Voltaire a detestable Atheist, Scott a pleasant writer, Byron a genius, but a licentious moral-desperado, and no better; Napoleon a mere State-Pirate, and those German Philosophers cloudy condemnable Free-Thinkers, Goethe especially, a man not to be made out, but selfish, heartless, something of a Sorcerer, and certainly a Sceptic. Such are, at least, the popular notions, by no means utterly extinct. And surely most



unhappy notions! That so many, nearly all who practically governed the world all this time, were bad men, some of them entirely bad, is a mournful belief. It would seem as if the world were abandoned to the Evil One, and it were now his turn to be King. But in fact, such a theory is incredible. These are notions only and not convictions: people know that these men did something, which was not for the hour only, and secretly they admire them for it; nor can any man admire without in some sort reverencing, and even loving, for deep in every heart lies the belief quite ineradicable, that the world is a true world, not the Devil’s at all, that falsehood cannot flourish here for long, and greatness, which is not a transient show, must be goodness. Life would be otherwise impossible! How Carlyle has satisfied this secret craving of Faith, by exhibiting the meritorious character and services of these famous persons, I have already suggested in the sketch given of the History of the Period with its chief events and men; several of his judgments I shall presently once and again refer to, in order to illustrate his principles of Historic criticism; the rest I must leave for the reader to study in the originals, here only stating Carlyle’s witness of two, but those the most important, Goethe and Oliver Cromwell.

Carlyle, who has studied the Modern Literature of the Germans more reverently and affectionately than perhaps any other living man, pronounces it the Higher Literature of Europe, meaning thereby, that it has attained those secret truths which are needful to guide the lives of men in this time, and shall guide them before very long. Jean Paul he loves, the poet of content and purest joy; Schiller, the chivalrous hearted; Novalis the mystic, devoutest of men; but above all he reverences the royal Goethe; Goethe he calls “The Wise Man,” Goethe he calls his spiritual father, Goethe he honours with such devotion as only his own rich heart can give. It is pleasant to think that these two were permitted to recognise one another (though with seas between) as Master and worthy disciple, while they were both alive: and how the Old man received, on his last, last birthday, from friends in England, (fifteen chosen ones of whom Carlyle was chief,) a ring, that ancient token of faithful love, graven with the mystic symbols of human duty and divine all-surrounding law. Goethe must, I think, on that day have thanked God for His gift of life.*

What Goethe was—a man and a German? Yes, and therefore most certainly not without his faults, by which accordingly he is for the most part estimated in this Land of Respectability. On these, however, it is not necessary here to say anything, as whatever they were, they were not the essential part of Goethe; nor need I insist upon his literary talent, which every boarding-school now teaches to have been supremely great, but only upon the Priest-like office which he fulfilled for his countrymen and for Europe. Of this let Carlyle speak, for he knows; and let us listen to a few words from that sublime Hymn of Praise for the Departed, which he entitles “Death of Goethe.” ( Misc. iii.90.) “A Wise Man came into the world with clearness of vision and greatness of soul, to accomplish this old high enterprise, amid these new difficulties, yet again: A Life of Wisdom. Such a man became, by Heaven’s pre-appointment, in very deed the Redeemer of his time. Did he not bear the curse of the time? He was filled full with its scepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions, till his heart was like to break: but he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly by word and act showed others that come after how to do the like. Honour to him



who first ‘through the impassable paves a road!’ Such, indeed, is the task of every great man, nay, of every good man, in one or the other sphere, since goodness is greatness, and the good man, high or humble, is ever a martyr and ‘spiritual hero that ventures forward into the gulf for our deliverance.’ The gulf into which this man ventured, which he tamed and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly all others lie included, The whole distracted existence of man in an age of Unbelief. Whoso lives, whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely, in that mad element, may yet know, perhaps too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the Chosen Man of our time who could prevail in it, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as belongs to no other.

Beautiful, beautiful is this, and true.



He must be a sceptic indeed, or can know but little of our time, who fails to see in these words, and the many other noble and wise things in this “Death of Goethe,” how profound is Carlyle’s devotion, and on what good reason founded. Is there not here testimony to the hallowed work Goethe has wrought in one heart, prophesy of what he may, what he surely shall do for many?

Gervinus has said that Goethe carried to the utmost the Philosophy of Life needful for our time, and that it now only remains for others to repeat what he has said, and reduce it to practice in every province of work. This seems to me a profound saying, and to be greatly confirmed by observing what Carlyle, Goethe’s chief disciple, has done. For his devotion has been of a truly practical sort, not admiration only, but faithful service. He has accepted the Master’s message, and believed; and for him there is no longer wearying Inquiry, paralysing Doubt, about his own destiny and that of the universe, but calm assurance, firm speech, and resolute action. A translation of Wilhelm Meister (executed very early in life), the Wander-jahre and The Tale; several elaborate criticisms of Goethe, both man and works, which we find in the Miscellanies, these are among Carlyle’s offerings, and these first made Goethe known in England. But Carlyle has done much more than this, for he has put the faith he has received into a new and emphatic form, and published it again and again in most earnest, most eloquent, most cheerful, very readable English, and the principles of judgment which Goethe taught him he has applied in the most daring and successful manner to the external life of men in the Past and in the Present, doing for Social Life and Action what his Forerunner did for Individual Thought. A Hero-Worship due, and duly, most nobly fulfilled! It is beautiful to watch how the work of a Great Man grows; how this faith of Goethe, which he himself in his own stormy time could only apply to private Thinking and to Art and Literature, has already developed itself into a Political Creed, to serve which one man at least would slay or be slain with the readiest good-will, and which must some day “fashion Acts of Parliaments,” and dictate in the columns of newspapers, and do many other wondrous things we know not yet. Was it not so also with the work of a Higher than Goethe? The Christian Gospel first purified the hearts of a few poor fishermen; it has since given Law to Empires. It is thus that God educates and governs mankind.

To Goethe Carlyle is most loyal, as to a Great Man who has lived in his own time; as, indeed, every one should be most loyal to the living Great ones, for to this end were they given us: and our highest duty lies in paying them their due, as also our most fatal sin is in denying it. But much as Carlyle honours the Thinker or Priest, the instinctive passion of his soul is for doughty man, the Practical Doer, or Captain of Men banded in associative work; above all for the Believer, Warrior, King, names awful to every ear—lovely only to the brave. As all these he honours Oliver Cromwell.

If any thought can work mechanically in the brain, it may be said that Carlyle found Oliver out by “Might is Right”—found him out. The Puritan Movement was indeed a conflict of Mights; the Might of believing men on one side, the might of Systems old and venerable on the other; and the Systems went down, falling as it were in a single day, before the breath of men. Great, too, were the fruits of the struggle, Social Freedom, Social Industry and Peace, the chief blessings and pride of England to this hour. Here then Carlyle looked, we may well guess, for a hero, and found one in Oliver Cromwell. His discoveries he has given to us in four volumes, in which all the authentic words uttered



by Cromwell’s tongue and pen found extant, are collected and edited so that “thick-eyed England” may read and understand. As no volunteer in the public service, but farmer for forty years in the fen country, then as Captain, Colonel, General, active and faithful as all these, and lastly as a ruler of commanding power, who would have his authority obeyed, and his country do her duty abroad, we already knew Oliver; but we thought this compatible with his being a hypocrite, and what we call a bad man. We ought to think so no longer, either in this, or any case. Oliver’s true character is now plain to us, an indisputable glorious unity, such as there have been few in time. What we knew before is all confirmed; the life of it, the how and the when, the constancy and patience, and cruel difficulty of it, are all set forth, for whoso will to see it. Those lightning strokes of his are no longer the hasty blows of passion, but the necessary means to execute a single-minded public purpose, and his success seems not so much extraordinary as inevitable. Now whether fanatical or not, this man appears to have been a Puritan of godly speech from his early manhood to his dying day; his first letter to Mr. Story shows this; so does every public document, every private letter to his own family; so does that last divine death-bed prayer for his country: it is only our own want of earnestness, our own feebleness of faith, that make us fancy that such language could not have been true. He also appears a very plain-spoken man on all occasions: in his first despatch to the Speaker after that bloody business of Tredah, he carefully states the fact of putting the garrison to the sword, and his reasons for the same, not repenting of it at all: and when he has ejected one Parliament in a summary way, and determines to call a Parliament of his own, his summons and opening speech announce clearly enough the true character of the matter; “I, Oliver, thought this thing necessary, and did it.” Strange, too, he appears a man of true tolerance, and royal courtesy; strangest of all, a man of affectionate heart, really loving his wife and children, and friends, somewhat tenderly, and being beloved in turn by them. All this he appears, and much more; the total of it, a most brave and just man, who feared God. Carlyle relates how, before going to Scotland, Cromwell held counsel of Ludlow, whom he had marked as a fit man for Ireland, to go and second Ireton there.

“He testified the great value he had for me, Ludlow; combatted my objections to Ireland; spake somewhat against Lawyers, what a tortuous, ungodly jungle English Law was; spake of the good that might be done by a brave and good man; spake of the great Providences of God now abroad on the earth; in particular, ‘talked for almost an hour upon the hundred and tenth Psalm,’ which to me, in my solid, wooden head, seemed extremely singular! Modern readers, not in the case of Ludlow, will find this fact illustrative of Oliver. . . . . . In such spirit goes Oliver Cromwell to the Wars, ‘A god-intoxicated man,’ as Novalis elsewhere phrases it. I have asked myself, if any where in Modern European history, or even in Ancient Asiatic, there was found a man practising this mean World’s affairs with a heart more filled by the Idea of the Highest? Bathed in the Eternal Splendours—it is so he walks our dim Earth: this man is one of few. He is projected with a terrible force out of the Eternities, and in the Times and their arenas there is nothing that can withstand him. It is great—to us it is tragic; a thing that should strike us dumb! My brave one, thy old noble Prophecy is divine; older than Hebrew David; old as the Origin of Man;—and shall, though in wider ways than thou supposest, be fulfilled!”

In Carlyle’s opinion Oliver is the last and the highest example in English



History of a true Governor, who knew his duty and did it, who spoke truly and acted bravely, “who fed his people with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power.” It is very instructive to see how Cromwell made use of other men, and how he acted on the conviction that success was only to be won by employing good men, “who made some conscience of what they did.” In one of his Speeches (iv. 223), he gives the history of his Ironsides, “who were never beaten;” and in a letter written during the beginning of the Civil War, we find the following: “I beseech you be careful what Captains of Horse you choose, what men be mounted; a few honest men are better than numbers. If you choose godly, honest men to be Captains of Horse, honest men will follow them; and they will be careful to mount such. . . . I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call ‘a Gentleman,’ and is nothing else. I honour a Gentleman that is so indeed!” (i. 224.)

As the record of the man who got England through her great climacteric, these volumes should be very precious to us: and indeed I must reckon them the most valuable piece of English History, which as yet we possess: but they are serviceable at this time chiefly for this, that they add to the reader’s Belief. They convince him, (is there not much need for his conviction?) that War and Politics may be made, just because in fact they are a sacred work, that the true Philosophy of State is to get good men for rulers at whatsoever cost, and the true Philosophy of Life is no other than that which is to be found in the Puritan watchword, ‘Fear God, and keep your powder dry.’

I have chosen the judgments upon Goethe and Cromwell for examples, because they illustrate Carlyle’s own belief respecting the duty of a Man to himself and to others; and because to the English literary world they were both nothing short of discoveries. But to any reader of Carlyle it is well known that these and other findings are not like those of any common historical pearl-diver, and that Carlyle’s work is of a different kind from ordinary historical work, altogether something new and wonderful, not only in its decisions, which are as convincing as they are surprising, but in its form and spirit, which haunt and startle and waylay. So that we may well ask, Whence is this? How is it, that he can make the old dead Past a new and beautiful, and living Wonder-land? We are helped to answer this by the Essays which he himself has written on the nature of History and Biography, and by the many friendly expositions of deep things, which occur from time to time in his narrative—little wayside shrines and wells of holy water, whither the reader turns to worship and refresh himself for the journey. The reason we may say, is that he writes as a Poet about Poetry. As a Poet! Alas to minds brutalized by the Comus-wand of modern unbelief, this sounds a flat condemnation; for to them Poetry is either nothing, or else a traitor to Truth, a dream of the Imagination far removed from fact; their own life they feel to be not Poetry but dull Prose, and they conceive human life to have been always so. Consequently they reject Carlyle’s Work as untrue. But there are others who know that Poetry is only the highest science, and that the Poet is the person appointed to see for us, and to help us to see, to penetrate through the shell of appearances, and reach the divine meaning that lies within: whether the phenomenon be stock or stone, or that wonder of wonders, which includes all others, the History of Men. Such will welcome this recommendation; such will, or perhaps already do know how well in this case it is due. For Carlyle, approaching his subject with the conviction



that this is God’s world, and that the Past is “a true Epic Poem, and universal Divine Scripture,” has gazed into it most reverently and lovingly, and has read its “open secret,” which is the Law of manifold God-given Force, and so has set himself to follow it in some of its most glorious and some of its most secret workings among men. His conclusions, as those of the Imagination always do, seem quite irresistible, to be intensely, absolutely true. One main reason for this is, that Carlyle, true Poet as he is, has seen as the primal Reality, that the Universe, though made up of Fact, is nevertheless a Mystery, and rests on a thousand Mysteries, ever inexhaustible, unfathomable, now as hitherto and always. The Mysteries of Life and Death, Time and Eternity, Good and Evil, Prosperity and Adversity, the unity of Man, the unity of Men, and the infinite Nature of all things: Carlyle has taken counsel of such, and has for them a feeling of intense wonder, guided and restrained by a power of masculine thought which sees their practical office and relation to men. And this too is one chief secret of that fascinating interest, which glows in his narratives. He himself wonders that such things should have been; such an infinite number of chances meeting thus and thus, such vicissitudes, such a miraculous drama going on in one little corner, and a whole miraculous world outside!

All historians (and in one sense each of us is an historian, having certainly an opinion, and most likely a tongue about yesterday and yesterdays) profess to speak of Men, but for the most part they do not speak of Men, that is, of infinite creatures having mysterious souls in them, but only of superior machines doing certain things. They speak chiefly of events, of battles, sieges, commerce, court-intrigues, and the like; of the human life, underlying and involved in all these, they take little account. This is the temper of shallow men in all times, but it is quite characteristic of our own. Educated in atheism and materialism, we believe in things only, care for things only, treating as quite subordinate the bodies and souls of men, even our own. Thus blindly do we exist and work, seeking for gold, not human affection, clamouring for measures and not men, finding in railways and steam-engines the progress of the species. Of course this powerfully acts on our opinion of the Past, and breeds as much injustice there as here. One conclusion we immediately form is, that men were worth little who were not as highly civilised as ourselves, that is, who had not the steam-engines and railways, the Police force, and the Morning Newspapers. Another consequence is, that if any act foreign to our own experience be recorded, we practically do not believe it to have been the work of men of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. We should have acted so differently! Could we have spoken the words of David, or have worshipped Odin as our Deity, or sung Psalms on a bloody battlefield, or joined in the September massacres? Impossible! and so we pass on unbelieving—thinking those who did these things translated, or fanatics, or brutes, or what not, unheeding that they were men. But Carlyle’s spirit is utterly different from this of modern history and modern life. He believes in the Past; cares for men, and writes of men. “History is but the essence of innumerable biographies,”—biographies of men, each of whom had a quite infinite nature within him, a whole heaven and a whole hell, and, do what he might, nevertheless continued a Man. “That men should have worshipped their poor fellowman as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate objects, and fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe: all



this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men made as we are did actually hold by and live at home in.” “The Seventeenth Century did exist: it was once an actual flesh and blood fact with colour in its cheeks, with awful august heroic thoughts in its heart, and at last with steel sword in its hand!” “Marat once slept in his cradle like any other child.” It is easy for us to say we believe this, but very hard to do so practically—harder than it was for Antonio to believe Shylock, when he said, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” for he saw his Shylock, but we do not see ours; ours is wrapt in the cere-clothes of the Past, a mere mummy. And yet a true glimpse of him is so indispensable! Truly a Poet is needed to image for us those departed ones; and right welcome should one such be, one who has himself seen (with the inward eye) and believed, can speak to us as an eye-witness, so that we too may see and believe. Such a Poet is Carlyle. His Lamp is greater than Aladdin’s in thaumaturgic power. It summons up the men of the Past, and behold, now we see them, as once they were in life, enacting over again the deeds of which the old Almanacks drowsily prose. We see them, and the world in which they lived, and may we not also see what most of all we desire, the spirit in which they acted? Surely thus, rather than by any amount of dissection and labelling of motives and deeds according to rule ——“One day, in the latter end of August, John Felton, a short swart Suffolk gentleman, of military air, in fact a retired lieutenant of grim serious disposition, went out to walk in the eastern parts of London. Walking on Tower Hill, full of black reflections on his own condition, and on the condition of England, and a Duke of Buckingham holding all England down into the jaws of ruin and disgrace—John Felton saw, in evil hour, on some cutler’s stall there, a broad sharp hunting-knife, price one shilling. John Felton, with a wild flash in the dark heart of him, bought the said knife, rode down to Portsmouth with it, where the great Duke then was; struck the said knife, with one fell plunge, into the great Duke’s heart. This was on Saturday, the 23rd of August. Felton was tried, saw his wild flashing inspiration had been not of God, but of Satan. It is known he repented: when the death sentence was passed on him, he stretched out his right hand, craved that this too, as some small expiation, might be first stricken off, which was denied him, as against law. He died at Tyburn.”——John Felton, though hanged at Tyburn, is now in a sense alive again: we learn from this what manner of man, inward as well as outward, he was, and, above all, feel that he was a reality and no phantom-name, and so may judge him a just judgment. But I find it is so with all whom Carlyle speaks of. He shows us the men and the spirit that was in them: Richter, and his soul of pious joy; Johnson, and his brave patient heart; Cromwell, guided by faith and matchless fortitude; the French Sansculottes, intoxicated with revolutionary rage; these, and many another, at his bidding we recognise as brother-men, who, though in different circumstances from ourselves, had yet the same problem to work out, the problem of Living—a very difficult one.

One datum in this problem always was, as it always is, an uncertain Tomorrow, and a ‘Day-after-Tomorrow’ very uncertain. Hope and Fear were then as now, really part of Human Life; and in troublous times, when there were only breakers ahead, we may be sure were both terribly busy, urging to the strangest acts just for the need of the day, or even hour. We



may be sure of this, yet how often do we utterly forget it; accounting Cromwell a plotter for the Crown from a boy, and passing other foolish, unjust sentences! I quote the following to show how Carlyle takes it into his reckoning. “What shall be done with King Louis? . . . . A King dethroned by insurrection is verily not easy to be disposed of. . . . . We will remark here that this business of Louis looks altogether different now, as seen over Seas, and at the distance of forty-four years, from what it looked then in France, and struggling confused all round one. For indeed it is a most trying thing that same Past Tense always; so beautiful, sad, almost Elysian-sacred, ‘in the moonlight of Memory,’ it seems; and seems only. For observe, always one most important element is surreptitiously (we not noticing it) withdrawn from the Past Time: the haggard element of Fear! Not there does Fear dwell, nor Uncertainty, nor Anxiety; but it dwells here; haunting us, tracking us; running like an accursed ground-discord through all the music-tones of our Existence;—making the Tense a mere Present one! Just so it is with this of Louis. Why smite the fallen? asks Magnanimity, out of danger now. He is fallen so low, this once high man; no criminal or traitor, how far from it; but the unhappiest of Human Solecisms; whom if abstract Justice had to pronounce upon, she might well become concrete Pity, and pronounce only sobs and dismissal! So argues retrospective Magnanimity; but Pusillanimity, present, prospective? Reader, thou hast never lived, for months, under the rustle of Prussian gallows’ ropes; never wert thou portion of a National Sahara Waltz, Twenty-five millions running distracted to fight Brunswick! Knights Errant themselves, when they conquered Giants, usually slew the Giants; quarter was only for other Knights Errant, who knew courtesy and the laws of battle. The French Nation, in simultaneous, desperate dead-pull, and as if by miracle of madness, has pulled down the most dread Goliath, huge with the growth of ten centuries; and cannot believe, though his great bulk, covering acres, lies prostrate, bound with peg and pack-thread, that he will not rise again man-devouring; that the victory is not partly a dream. Terror has its scepticism; miraculous victory its rage of vengeance.” ( Fr. Rev. iii.98.)

Again, Man does not live alone; is there not Society, human Fellowship? There it was, and there it is—a mystery; yet an undeniable, ever-present fact—beautiful, wonderful, the very city of God, the home and workshop of men—the Poet cannot forget it. Carlyle sees it, feels it, penetrates its secret, follows its subtle operations, as I find no other historian doing. Is there any one but himself, who could have felt to such purpose, that ten centuries went to the making of Dante; that Catholicism and chivalry ruled in Shakespeare’s heart; that Cromwell is the political author of Modern Liberty and Industry; that the spirit of John Knox found its way into Walter Scott, is the strength of David Hume’s invincible Logic, of all Scotch thriftiness and cannyness; and that now David Hume, though his name be a bye-word as a Philosopher, is virtually the Intellectual Pontiff of Orthodoxy itself? And Carlyle loves Human Fellowship; honours it as the crowning work of God, and reveres the bonds which unite men into families and nations, as His most sacred ordinances, the centres round which all human Duty grows.

If his work lies chiefly, as every historian’s must, with the doings of Public men, so that he has but little scope for showing his tenderness for the sweet affections of home,or his rollicking sympathy



with social merriment (wherein Shakespeare is so supreme); yet opportunities will now and then present themselves in his histories, and then come words, few perhaps, but pregnant, genuine, out of a full heart, often most beautiful and touching. Abbot Samson’s gratitude to his old friends; Oliver’s care for his old mother, and hers for him; Fanny Cromwell’s difficulties in love; the faithful devotion of Louis Quinze’s daughters to their wretched father dying of the smallpox: these and many others, are touched with a most loving hand. In the Biographies, this poetry of private life, both grave and gay, is quite the prevailing topic; and in the Sartor, the chapters called Genesis, Idyllic and Romance, equal anything I know in literature, in their sweetness and depth of feeling for these primary relationships which come straight from Heaven.

If the ties of the family are thus precious and beautiful in his sight, scarcely less are the ties of that larger family which we call a Nation. To him a Nation is a living unity with a work to do, and a divine Law to obey. That Work is the Ordering of Human Life, the teaching and governing of men; and requires in practice a system of wise Ruling and faithful Obedience, which will be complete and efficacious just so far as it tends to interpenetrate the whole of Society, to embrace every man, and direct every province of work. And the Law, Carlyle, loving concrete words which express Truth in living form, calls Hero-Worship. That no talent be wasted, but the Thinker be everywhere sought out and made the doer, or the teacher of doers, and be reverently obeyed, this he says is the Law of a Commonwealth. It is the secret of all National well-doing recorded in the past, of all mighty and enduring works, Roman Laws, English Polities, Christian and other religions, the appointed means to make men do their duty, which includes all other blessedness. The last and worthiest example, which the world has witnessed, on a great scale, is the Feudal Period, which Carlyle describes in his Past and Present. Here in England we had real Kings for supreme Governors, and for their counsellors and right-hand men, a chivalrous Norman Nobility on the one hand, and on the other a Christian Church open to all; and we had a Saxon people that felt the duty of obedience. Whereby this was done, that every man was outwardly bound to those around him by some human relationship, by some appointed duty of faithful service in which love was possible; and in every parish there was a Lord, a Spiritual Pastor and a Church. Perhaps when we think of this organization, of its completeness and beauty, of the faith, the wisdom, the valour, the patient endurance, the resolute justice and all manful virtue which were required that it might be accomplished and maintained; and of the many pious and useful lives, which were led under its shelter, we shall think no praise too high for those who wrought it out, and agree with Carlyle in esteeming above all others, the true Captains of working men. Hence, at any rate, his zealous admiration for Abbot Samson, for Oliver Cromwell, for Mirabeau and Danton. These men could command, and did. But as we know, in very different times, and with very different results. Carlyle has had to labour chiefly in the recent Past, and there unfortunately he finds no wise government, no great governors to study. Two centuries ago we entered upon a splendid inheritance; but we have been living since on the decaying nobleness of the elder Order, the Feudal and Ecclesiastical System, and we have left our new mighty acquisitions, Literature and Practical Labour, to shift for themselves. The National Work has not been done. The State has not done its duty, nor the Church hers. And the consequence has been the saddest waste of human talent, everywhere thought



without action and action without thought; and, if we look below the surface, disorder and rebellious discontent on all hands. We have had (at least in Home-work) no great doers, but only a multitude of little doers, as at Manchester and Birmingham, struggling with much sorrow to make some poor substitute for true Order serve them; and the greatest and most interesting amongst us have been onesided men, Soldiers and Secular Magistrates, as Napoleon and Frederick of Prussia, or else Rebels, some fighting terribly in confused masses with pikes, as the French Revolutionists, others fighting solitary with pens, as Voltaire, Byron, and all the chief men of Intellect down to the present day. It is such that Carlyle has had to judge—Rebels, most of them:—and taking each by each, he has had to say: “This Man was a member of a Nation, but the Nation did not do its duty to him, did not appoint him to his fitting place and work, and there govern him or obey him;—and now what did he do? Did he possess his soul in patience, and rest contented with his lesser task, labouring incessantly to do that? If so, he has done well, perhaps right well. Or did he give way to fruitless indignation and despair; in the hour of victory forget mercy? If so, he has done ill, but there is much excuse for him. In any case much pity is due, as for one whose right hand was maimed, the fullness of whose task was marred.” It is evident how just is this consideration, and yet it is so seldom adequately weighed. At best, people try to make allowance for what they call “hard circumstances,” forgetting that these “hard circumstances” were at bottom nothing else than the injustice of fellow men, and were felt to be so. Was there not in those French Revolutionists a burning sense of wrong? And can we wonder at their revenge?

These latter days are indeed full of confusion, and mournful shipwrecking of noble gifts, yet let none think that God has abandoned his world, and that there have been no worthy men amongst us. Surely there have been such; though their shortcomings, their misdoings, be only too painfully evident. For evil is not wanting at any time, or in any man; the task is always to find the good within and above the evil. But how do this, how find your good men, or heroes? Carlyle always says, that to perceive heroism one must be a bit of a hero oneself. The proverb and the world says, “A hero is no hero to his valet.” True, answers Carlyle,—“To the valet soul;” but to the heroic soul, which can see the secret greatness which the Great one wears everyday, and which is indefeasible, he will be a hero still, in spite of all defects, greater far than he shows to the staring world far off. Is not this absolutely true? The eighteenth century, nearer by a hundred years than ourselves to the Feudal Era, could see nothing in it but barbarous ignorance, barbarous superstition and cruelty, but the band of true Seers granted to Europe in this nineteenth century have seen for themselves and revealed to others, what a noble, noble Period that Feudal Era was, what an Era of Faith and Work it was; how the Spirit of Duty, of Worship, of Truth, of Order, of Loveliness, of complete Manfulness was struggling victoriously against utter Disorder, and all which that includes, and what a heritage of precious things it bequeathed to us, some of which we have improved and perfected, others which like swine, we have trodden under foot. And on the other hand consider what a Living Great one is? The populace will burst forth into uncontrollable shouting when a Nelson embarks before them; but to the faithful friend who has followed him through a hundred fights and knows what Nelson is, Nelson is Saint Nelson, God’s own favoured son, the very symbol of divinity! There are Heroes yet. Let it be granted therefore that the first



condition to discover this truth of Heroism is to have a reverent open mind. Before you look through your historic telescope open your eyes! Believe that there is something to be seen, then perhaps it shall be given you to see it. Thus the reason why Carlyle has found such glory even in these last two centuries, is that he is convinced that human Nobleness was there; and his soul of admiration passionately craving for a fit object has sought and has found. Nor is his tribute a blind and thoughtless one—that was for other ages; Carlyle is true to his own, and he has joined all the patience of modern scrutiny, the fulness of modern knowledge to the old spirit of Belief, the conscientious intellect of a man to the submissive trust of a child.

Beginning therefore in this spirit, there is always help for us to tell us which way to look. For this period has been a busy one for pens and paper, and many histories have been written by men of more or less intelligence, recording what they deemed worth remembering of the things they saw and heard. Of these those histories are for facts the most valuable which are contemporaneous, but being so to speak extemporaneous too, they are apt to be mistaken in judgment. For the greatest is not always he who makes the most noise in his own time, especially if the time be a Quack Era, as surely this Modern one has been, when the many being without guidance run after Impostors who are only the Archfools of mankind. That crowd yonder may be gathered round the door of a dropsical Mother Southcote. But may it not on the other hand be gazing at a true St. George conquering the very Dragon? It may; for both are attractive spectacles. Time however, which is shaken by a hand divine, sifts all things, and in due number of years, the false, the unworthy perishes from memory, but of the worthy somewhat at least remains firmly recorded, all men feeling that so it ought to be. Recorded, therefore, it is, for after generations to consider; but how? Perhaps by a wise grateful man, even a sacred poet, perhaps by a dull chronicler who knows only that a great thing has been done, and finds that So and So has been concerned in the doing of it. In any case, it is probable that the men who make a figure in historical books (that time-process of which I spoke having taken place), are well worth considering, for their life has not been an idle one; they have been Doers. Here, in short, in this company are to be found what heroes or quasi heroes the times have produced. By no means, however, is the judgment commonly entertained of such men to be relied on, especially if their conduct be tarnished by some conspicuous evil deeds, or their work has been a fighting one, when the sword is sure to be bloody, and most likely notched too, perhaps altogether broken. For, in the first place, critics of an inferior order love to find fault and pass hanging sentence; it is an easy thing to do, and an exercise of authority that gratifies their vanity; and in the next, historians infected with the mechanical morality of our time are apt to judge men as if they were holding tribunal in some court of temporal (i. e. temporary) Justice, and in so doing act on principles altogether false to their office. A Court of Justice, such as those that sit in Westminster Hall, has to decide not on a man and the whole of his life in their relation to the infinite divine laws, but upon some particular action of his, as it conforms or not to certain determinate human rules. Such a court, moreover, has to do its business quickly; it therefore avoids all collateral issues, sternly refusing to hear anything not immediately connected with the fact at stake. As Macaulay somewhere truly says, “It is no set off for a soldier charged on the Police List with being drunk and disorderly, that he helped to win the battle of Waterloo.” Well, with this method in the



Police Court one can find no fault; it is necessary, altogether reasonable and right. Only don’t think that here and thus you have final judgment of any man. For such judgment, if considered complete, is not just, but cruelly unjust; it is bearing false witness. It is the sign of a vulgar mind, of an immoral, not a moral one, and of a mind therefore wholly incapacitate for dealing with history, to go sentencing in this fashion. Such a mind, if consistent, would reject the sun for its spots, would loathe every human body, because it has the seeds of death in it; and every human soul, because its taint of sin is visible without spectacles. Do we not all walk abroad with the doom of death in our countenances (even in a child’s fair brow you may read prophecy of coming wrinkles)? Do we not sin every day, and even in our noblest acts? Judged by this standard, no one is worthy of admiration. David, a man after God’s own heart, would be classed for ever with the ordinary creatures of the Newgate Calendar; Shakespeare’s memory would be cut for his highly improper language; Bacon be held the meanest of mankind, because he took bribes; Turner a mere miser, because he was parsimonious in his shillings; and Nelson no hero, because an adulterer. No, the historian and critic of men (which last every one is, let him care to do his duty as such or not) must form his decision on larger grounds. He must strive to learn all he can concerning a man, his natural endowment, his circumstances, and all their interdependent operations; if time forbids that, he must at least weigh all he knows; and at all times he must take for his model no lower than Him who knows all things, and judges just judgment. Above all, the historian must, by viewing the good work actually accomplished, seek for and lovingly consider what good there was in the person to be judged, for there lies his real character, the divine and fruitful part of him; and thither tend the peculiar temptations to which he is liable. Thus, and in no other way, can the conduct of any man be comprehended. Sympathy with excellence, therefore, is the condition of true insight into human character; a truth often said before, but which must be said here over again, because it is in modern practice so much forgotten: the reader will find it universally applicable. Nay, if I may make a surmise, he has perhaps already applied it to an interesting case in his own experience, not without satisfaction. Has he not thought of some mortal maiden (who surely has her little faults)—“They don’t know how beautiful, how good she is: they don’t love her as I do!” The reader, I think, is likely to be right, but at any rate it may be asserted that, to attain to any wise judgment of mankind, it is needful to keep the condemnation of faults, and even crimes, strictly subordinate to the appreciation of good and true things. Now in this respect Carlyle seems to me to stand high among the historians of all time. In delineation of character, few English authors have as yet excelled, because the bulk of English literature dates in a period when the knowledge of “how divine a thing is man,” had fallen into oblivion, and all insight deeper than the surface was thereby rendered impossible; a few writers of the Elizabethan age can be named, of whom our Catholic-hearted Shakespeare is supreme; he does justice to every kind of character he represents, whether hero or knave (Bardolph, for instance, the degraded tippler and thief, predestinate to the gallows—when we learn how he wishes he were with his old comrade, Sir John, “wheresome’er he is, whether in heaven or in hell,”ss do we not at once comprehend his whole character and history, his friendly social nature, temptations, depravities and all, and even feel a regard for poor Bardolph?) but since his time what other man? a few perhaps, but even



those have a narrow range. Now I do not wish to compare two men so unlike as Shakespeare and Carlyle, but only to affirm that Carlyle, in the far harder province of reality, and a past reality, brings with him a noble quality of candour and justice, such as we find so subtly, so admirably exhibited by Shakespeare. He too has a generous and great heart, and can find room in it more or less for all men, for men of very opposite nature, some of them not a little repulsive at first sight. His anger he reserves for the Present, where reformation is yet possible, and the first need is to cast out the evil spirit from amongst us; of the Past, whose work is done and is unchangeable, he will speak faithfully, most faithfully, but with that charity which rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth. He is just to men. Even Count Cagliostro will, I think, hardly quarrel with his sentence, “wheresome’er he is.” Carlyle can with all sincerity give praise to so many different kinds of men. Boswell and the Doctor, Novalis and Voltaire, Monk Samson and George Fox, Jean Paul and Byron, Goethe and Cromwell, Napoleon and the Quaker Cotton Lord: in all these he can find virtue, and know that the virtue of each was friendly to the other, and conspiring to the same end, nay, that fundamentally all good is the same. He is a chronicler, like honest Griffith, who will keep men’s honour from corruption (is it not God’s honour too?), who, with religious truth and honesty, will teach us to honour men, even those whom we should most have hated living. There are those French Revolutionists, reeking with the blood of Massacre, to whom at first nought but horror and indignant reprobation seem due. Much horror is due, but something else besides. “Their crimes,” says Count Montalembert, “are travestied with a revolting buffoonery.” O Count Montalembert! not until you have first measured the wrongs of the French people, and looked upon their crimes with the eye of those who did them, and seen how in their fury they thought them just; not until you have considered the utter sincerity of those men, their death-defying patriotism, and the good they did, by giving a death-wound to your depraved aristocracy and your false Church, can you judge those savage countrymen of yours in any wise justly. Carlyle has done this, and his judgment is just. Again there are Voltaire and Diderot, men utterly repugnant to his own character, men as irreverent, unbelieving, superficial, as he is reverent, believing, profound: Carlyle can forgive them (what a great divine word is that Forgive!) for he knows the Atheism and moral anarchy of their time; and across all their narrow dogmatisms, and the evil of their life and precept, he can observe and value not only their keen intellectual qualities, but their sincerity, truthfulness, self-consistency almost heroic, and the good service they wrought for their time and ours. They laboured, he says, to advance knowledge of every kind, except the highest, they swept away much oppressive superstition, they struck iron into the heart of Superstition itself; and thus, and by the beacon light of their melancholy Atheism, the inevitable issue of a Mechanical Logic, which they had to follow (for no better guidance was given them), they have helped us to new wisdom, to a new and wiser Piety. (See the Essays on Voltaire and Diderot, Misc. vol. ii. and iii.) There is Rousseau too. Carlyle sees his Sentimentalism, his Egoism, and the insufficiency of his Contrat Social, none more surely; but he pushes these aside to mark his passionate strivings after Truth in his spiritual Wilderness; and writes thus in the Sartor: “What are your historical facts, still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a man, above all mankind, by stringing together bead-rolls of what thou namest Facts? The man is the spirit



he worked in, not what he did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then your blockhead studies not their meaning, but simply, whether they are well or ill-cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral. Still worse is it with your bungler; such I have seen reading some Rousseau with pretences of interpretation, and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent of Eternity for a mere poisonous Reptile.” ( Sartor, 219.) In the Hero-Worship Rousseau’s character is considered at length.

There are also Burns and Byron, both men of high worth, fallen into evil days that could not, would not, guide them, men too sincere and brave for their generation, who could not live comfortably as the world of Pharisees about them lived, and had not strength to live by themselves, warring single-handed against an ungodly universe, and so sought a refuge in delirium and self-indulgence. They fell; but not without a struggle. “Granted,” says Carlyle, “the Ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy, he has not been all-wise and all-powerful; but to know how blame-worthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.” ( Misc. i.316.) This method is the only just one, and there would be little need of insisting on it, were it not that it is so antagonistic to the received habits of Modern Thought. There is a Tea-table Morality, which finding its great or even its little laws broken (the clipping of an h is enough in some circles), pronounces the culprit’s doom at once, and is cruelly, fatally unjust. Such a Morality is mechanical only, and though indispensable, is at best negative, superficial, partial; taken as complete, it is most false. For then it denies what is Divine in man, and bids us look for what is evil only in others and in ourselves. It seems so sure a test, and so fair, so proper, so “highly respectable,” but it is false, mean, accursed, very miserable, utterly un-Christian, coming of that beam which is in our own eye, now so very wooden. Oh seek a truer Morality! Love and worship the True and Good, and you will find it.

This is but the mask of Virtue, and marks the penultimate stage of Spiritual Unbelief, threatening, (for a Mask is intolerable for long,) to pass into the ultimate one of undisguised depravity. It is the work of the Devil himself, that “divider and accuser of men,” as Mr. Maurice* truly says. And courage! for the Devil is at no time wanting in enemies, and here in Carlyle he has a stout one. Carlyle’s endeavour in all his historical writings has been to apply a manly and divine morality, which through whatsoever confusion and evil shall recognise what is good, and honour it; and so endeavouring, he has found, even in the last distracted century, mankind to be in very truth a holy brotherhood, the beloved children of the Most Highest. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!”

If there is a Mechanical Morality, there is also a Mechanical Religion. This requires, not only of its own circle, but of all men in its own time, and in all previous ages of the world, a religious belief identical in form with its own, and condemns all dissidents as impious wretches who have done and can do nought good—are they not unbelievers? A most monstrous irreligion, denying the first principle of all religions, and especially the Christian Religion, denying the handiwork and presence of God! A blasphemy, which it would be quite shocking to think of, did we not know that no brother-man really believes it, even the worst of those that profess it practically denying it every day of their lives. Still the theory is so put forth, and I believe has a larger number of disciples in our own country



(enlightened England!) than in any other. Ancient Socrates, ancient Mahomet, sweet young children, Roman Catholics, Chinese, all men and women, except a small fraction of Jews long ago, and a small fraction of Christians now; in short, ninety-nine hundredths of the human race are made an anathema, pronounced the property of the Devil in this world, and even in the next. How any man can sleep quietly on his pillow with such a theory inside his head is a wonder! Against so blind and dismal a notion, Pharisaism of the worst kind, Carlyle wars with his whole soul, and yet not bitterly—he is too wise for that, but with noble humour, which is but Truth smiling in its strength, and with such brave assertion as this: “Are not all true men that live, or ever lived, soldiers of the same army; enlisted under Heaven’s captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one another, fight not against the enemy, but against ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimitar, Thor’s strong hammer smiting down Jötuns, Luther’s battle-voice, Dante’s march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host.” ( Hero-Worship,189.) No narrower shall be our communion of Saints.

Again, how touching and true is Carlyle’s vindication of the beloved friend of his youth, Edward Irving the preacher! The Elegy, or whatever else that “Death of Irving” may be called, is but four pages long, but they are most precious pages. I would sooner lose Milton’s Lycidas than lose that little excerpt from Fraser’s Magazine, which is saying much. For the thoughts are as noble as Milton’s, the faith and sorrow as devout, and which cannot be said of Milton’s, the words are all true.

The following little story, told in Lewes’s Life of Goethe, is an example of a different manner, but of a like purpose, and is worth more than a smile.—At a party in Berlin, Carlyle was present, and much was said by the company of Goethe’s irreligion. Carlyle



kept silence for a while (great in that too); then at length interposed: “Meine Herren, did you ever hear the story of the man who abused the Sun, because it wouldn’t light his cigar?”

Here the Editor (and perhaps the reader), cries Enough for this month; so, though having somewhat more to say on this “Lamp for the Old Years,” I reserve it for another time.

Late in the summer, or you may call it early in the autumn, a few years ago, I was making, unaccompanied, a pedestrian tour in the north-west of France. One of the first places I visited was Amiens, where I arrived on the afternoon of a bright sunny day. I almost immediately went to the Cathedral, in which I spent an hour and a half before dinner at the Table d’Hôte. Knowing very little about the technicalities of architecture, I will not attempt to give a description of the church, but will only say that I had never seen such entire loveliness in all my life. Since that time I have seen many cathedrals, in Germany and Italy, as well as in France, some of which are perhaps to be placed before this at Amiens; but it still remains in my memory with a peculiar tenderness,—something like the first love of childhood, which the loves of manhood can never efface. Almost immediately after the Table d’Hôte I returned to it. By this time the sun had set, and the short twilight rapidly died away. The Cathedral was to me now a totally different place from what it had been in the broad sunshine. I had examined it carefully and minutely before dinner, and thus I now had a considerable knowledge of its details, which were every moment becoming dimmer and dimmer, one after another fading



altogether out of my sight. And now the influence of the place stole over me, growing stronger and stronger as the darkness increased. While I could see the rose windows, and could make out distinctly the tracery and the stained glass—the exquisite figures of the stone carvings in the choir aisles—the stilted arches of the apse, and the carving of the stalls—the building had been so beautiful that I felt no awe of it, nothing graver than love. I even took pride in it as a glorious work of man, nay, felt vain myself that I was a man also, like those who had planned and built this miracle of beauty. But, in the solemn twilight, in the deepening darkness, I saw farther and more truly; I saw it as a house of God, and all my pride was bowed down, and I was filled full of awe and humility. I paced up and down the aisles: I passed chapel after chapel, kneeling before which I could dimly see hundreds of people, scattered throughout the vast space. I walked softly, almost on tiptoe, fearing to disturb them, and feeling some shame, or, at the least, regret, that I was not praying with them. I passed the awful light in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament: the painted glass was faintly illumined, adding to the solemnity, with its pure holy colour. Light after light came out in the immense expanse; the feet of French people, walking with more familiarity in their own accustomed church than I, a stranger, echoed from time to time. Every now and then the shutting of a door reverberated with a hollow but musical sound, and, scattering the stillness for a moment, the next moment made it still deeper. And for a few minutes I heard voices chaunting, far off, I knew not where; perhaps in a Lady Chapel attached to the Cathedral. They were scarcely audible; heard, even so faintly, only because of the depth of the silence. The magic of their sweetness is beyond all power of words to tell. In the hope of hearing them better, I sat down on one of the many rush-bottomed chairs in the nave, looking up towards the choir. They soon ceased, but I still sat, looking through the rood-screen, at the apse, of which I could see very little distinctly now. I did not care much for that; so well had its details been impressed on my memory; though at times it was painful to distinguish so little, the grandeur and extent so overpowered me and weighed me down. The night darkened, and still I sat or walked. The people present went away gradually, and fewer and fewer came in their stead, till at length I could see no one in the whole church. I did not know what time it was, having no watch with me, and not having heard a clock strike. I guessed it was about nine, and I expected that the Cathedral would soon be closed; but I was loth to leave it until the very moment when the doors should be shut. I waited, as it seemed, about a quarter of an hour, without seeing any one, or hearing any human sound. So, comforting myself with the intention of returning in the morning, and going into the choir, and up into the triforium, and the tower and spire, I walked with reluctant steps to the south door, by which I had entered. It was fast; so I went to the door at the west end, but found that closed too. Upon this I walked to the north, but was greatly disconcerted to find the entrance there blocked up. With much quicker steps I went back to the west door and tried



it again; shook it, pushed it, examined it as minutely as I could in the darkness—but all in vain. With increased trepidation I returned to the south door, trying to calm myself by the thought, that it was the one most likely to be open, and that I had tried it at first somewhat carelessly. I examined it more carefully than even the west door, but equally in vain. I was now really alarmed; so I walked, somewhat slowly, round the whole church, looking out keenly and anxiously for another door. I walked completely round twice, but found no exit; there were only the doors leading to the towers. There was no longer room for doubt; I was shut up in the church by myself. I can scarcely tell what was my first feeling on this discovery. Often the first emotion on the reception of startling news is almost the very worst representative of the multiplicity of feelings which it will afterwards from time to time occasion. Intelligence, the effect of which has been strong upon one for years afterwards, in the various phases of anger, grief, remorse, regret, at the time of receiving it, has left me almost as it found me—with the mind, doubtless stunned by the suddenness of the blow—only a little flurried, and unable to think consecutively, and this excitement rather giving pleasure than pain.

And so this night I cannot say what feeling was predominant when I first discovered that I was shut up alone in so awful a place. Which came first? Was it terror, or a sort of sentimental pleasure, or resolution, or simple regret? I cannot tell; for a few seconds perhaps none at all very strongly or decidedly; or rather all were absorbed in, or more or less mixed with, surprise. But very soon they came, and for many long hours they stayed, feelings of such strength and acuteness as I have rarely experienced at other times even for a few minutes. My first thought was to try to sleep, both in the hope of thus passing the time in unconsciousness, and because I was very much tired. I placed three chairs side by side and lay down upon them. I had slept soundly many a time on a bed as hard; but I had not calculated upon the cold, which, when I came to keep still, I found intense.

After an interval of two or three years I cannot pretend to describe accurately the many mental phases which succeeded one another during this long night, the exact order in which they came, the strength with which they possessed me, least of all the precise length of time which they lasted. But there is much that I can recal with entire certainty, that I shall never forget till the day of my death. Some of these many feelings I will endeavour to describe, without any attempt at accurate chronology or minute analysis. My first emotion on finding that I could not go to sleep, was simple terror, which the sense of the darkness, while I had my eyes shut, had commenced. When a boy,—having been an imaginative and somewhat solitary child, reading much, and playing chiefly by myself—I had been a helpless prey to the fear of spirits—ghosts, hobgoblins,—all but fairies—and with not much love of them; and perhaps still more to the horror of the physical accompaniments of death. But, when I was fourteen years old, I began to attempt to control this terror, and had since so perseveringly excluded from my observation and reflection fearful sights and thoughts, that for the most part I held it in complete abeyance. But it was the safety rather of one who flies, and escapes for the time, than of one who fights and overcomes once and for ever. I felt, I feel even now, that if I were suddenly brought before some very terrible thing—I say it with full belief—I even fear I should go mad. So now, all alone in darkness, in what seemed the dead of night, though probably it was not ten o’clock, in a place so fearful as a church, with the dead beneath my feet, and with spirits appearing to hover all round me—all the



old fear and horror rushed back upon me, and seized me wholly, utterly powerless against them. The skeletons rose from beneath the stones—thin, white ghosts glided before me; the fiends in the tympanum, and from under the feet of the saints, thronged into the church, and menaced me; the gargoyles followed them, and played uncouth antics all about me, on the floor, in the triforium, in the stalls—mowing and grimacing at me. I heard their hideous half-human cries distinctly, mingled with the rattling of the bones of the skeletons. In a few minutes, after the first shock, Reason came to my aid. I need not record her arguments, everybody could guess them, and everybody, like myself, would have found no relief from them. Presently Imagination succeeded her, with a little more success—telling me that I was not in a common church, with a graveyard round it, but in a glorious Cathedral, the centre, as it were, of the living town; that the dead, who lay beneath my feet, were not ordinary men, but heroes and saints, buried here as a great honour and privilege, sanctified themselves, and adding sanctity to their resting-place; that above the fiends stood angels and holy men, treading upon them in triumph. These thoughts somewhat mitigated my fear, but were far from charming it altogether away.

But now that it had once been checked, I summoned up all my resolution to keep it down. I looked out boldly into the darkness, and tried to fill up the details of the architecture, as I had seen them in the daylight. In such a multitude of beauties it is hazardous to say what had most impressed and delighted me; but if I were to select anything, it would be the stone-carvings in the aisles of the choir, representing, on one side the history of St. John the Baptist; on the other the history of a Bishop, I presume a Bishop of Amiens. I had been particularly struck by the calm pure beauty of some of the faces; and now, standing before these carvings in the darkness, I tried to recal those countenances, to still the tumult of my dread by their heavenly repose. They came out from the blankness, but with partial distinctness; after a little while passing off into foul and ugly faces, of demons and wicked men, which increased my fright.

Upon this I attempted to realize the performance of Mass in the Cathedral. I had not yet heard Divine service in France, and had but a very vague conception of the grand and beautiful music which in a little while I heard in the Cathedrals of Beauvais, Chartres, and Rouen. I had heard the Roman Catholic service performed a few times in England, and had been greatly impressed by its splendour and pathos; but I had no idea how the Mass and Vespers, as celebrated in these French churches, range rapidly through every variety of feeling;—now a solemn simple Gregorian chaunt, presently a solo on the organ, bowing the hearer prostrate with its pathos;—now organ and choir bursting out in a loud song of triumph, as if for some victory just won over the powers of evil, which anon subsides into a strong but melodious strain of calm joy, like the angels singing in their undisturbed bliss of eternity. Accordingly, I guided myself chiefly by the remembrance of Mozart’s Requiem, which I had heard performed at Exeter Hall; but both from this circumstance and from the influence of the darkness, my mass became a Service for the dead: the organ played a mournful prelude; I heard the sorrowful De Profundis sung by bass voices to a Gregorian chant; then a priest intoned words which I could not understand, till suddenly it seemed that the whole choir of the church was filled with a huge orchestra and chorus, which thundered forth with stern sublimity, as I had actually heard in the Dies Iræ of the Requiem, that fearful cry of self-condemned humanity:

• “Quantus tremor est futurus,
• Quando Judex est venturus,
• Cuncta stricte discussurus!”

As I have said before, I cannot pretend to accuracy in this account, and accordingly I do not know whether what I am about to describe came next in order or not. I set myself to work to call back the times in which the Cathedral was built, and to summon up before me its builders and its earliest congregations. I knew nothing of its history, except that its date might be placed generally in the thirteenth century. I knew also very little of the Middle Ages; but I could not help knowing enough to picture vague figures of bishops and priests in rochet and cope, knights in chain armour, crusaders with the cross on their left shoulder, among them the holy Louis with his beautiful, devoted face, and his companion in arms, our own Edward, with his loving brave wife Eleanor, and, by association, the Lion-hearted king, the most stalwart of them all, whose very name passed into a word of terror among the Saracens.

I saw also the masons at work on the statues, while others of the guild painted the frescoes; and in the midst of them the architect himself, whose name I knew not, whose name, it may be, the world is equally ignorant of, such is the caprice of fame; the chief designer of this grandeur and beauty, but himself a workman like the rest, a master mason. I saw him carving a statue in the tympanum, the Virgin Mary, whose face grew beneath his hands with such pure loveliness as I had never seen in face before, either in art or in actual life. And next him was a young man, who perhaps was his favourite pupil, placing a female saint on the back of a devil, which was already fixed up in the porch, crouching down helplessly, though with defiance in his looks; but before the saint’s feet could be set upon him, he leapt down from his place, and gambolled into the church; and, oh horror! he was followed by a host of devils and gargoyles; and the stern knights and sad priests rose from their graves, skeletons with armour and robes dangling and folding about them, making the night hideous beyond endurance.

All my courage was beaten down; I rushed to the west door; I shook it with all my force, I struck it with both my fists, I hurled my weight frantically against it, but no answer came, except hollow reverberations, after which the stillness deepened tenfold. It was beyond the power of man to bear; I shrieked aloud! fool, fool that I was, who could hear me? only frightful echoes of my own voice mocked the wild cries of my senseless anguish.

Then my frantic violence suddenly gave way, but only to a quieter kind of despair, and I burst into tears, sitting down on the tomb of a knight that is placed at the west end. But by this time fortunately I had become very sleepy, and despite the cold I fell into a doze, which came to me at first as a most welcome relief. But soon my terror pursued me into my sleep, and brought up before me visions which I had not seen since I was a boy, lying ill of sick headache. It seemed that I was in someplace unutterably vast, which at one time appeared the Cathedral, at another time vaster even than the earth itself. But huge as it was, it kept pitilessly growing on every side, higher, deeper, wider; I say pitilessly, for there was a personality in the inanimate objects of my dreams, which was perhaps their greatest torment. Then I felt myself in the presence of awful, cold beauty,—inexpressibly lovely, but with no love for me. It was as if some old friend had proved false, or as if I had hitherto mistaken my own nature, and aimed at that which was too high for me. How miserable, how degraded I felt! I could see the beauty, but could not feel it,—at least not as I had felt it of old, when it was almost unmixed delight to me; but now I could only feel fear, not mere awe of it, and I had



lost a power which I had thought would never leave me,—which seemed my life, my essence, my very self.

Then I was standing in the midst of friends, and we were together, talking softly and tenderly; but suddenly, in a second, I stood, I know not how carried thither, on an island, alone,—of immense size it seemed, with a limitless ocean rolling round it,—yet, far off, at an infinite distance, I could see myriads of men and women, in the world, and could catch, how faintly and mournfully, the hum of their voices as they talked together. What agony of desolation! Separated from all for ever, to be a far-off spectator of men, a listener to the sound, the sound only, of their voices! I awoke starting, and opened my eyes, but only upon the intolerable blackness. Like a solid wall it stood round me on every side. I seemed in the heart of a rock, of a mountain; buried, but in worse than a tomb, with its cold obstruction of earth; buried in darkness, in darkness which might be felt, which closed me in, and would not let me stir. I lay motionless, in an agony of stillness; for I felt myself, for a few seconds, literally unable to move.

I was still very sleepy, and probably passed great part of the night in a state of drowsiness; but the cold, which, while it cruelly eat into my body, yet in some measure befriended me by drawing off my attention from my mental suffering, would not permit me to sleep, or even to stand still long together. Motion on the one hand diverted my fear; but on the other hand it had its peculiar terrors. It was while I was moving that the fear of the darkness was the greatest. It seemed to present an impassable barrier to my advance; sometimes it seemed itself to advance against me, threatening to devour me: at times it was full of all horrible things, but generally it was mere void blankness, more fearful, I think, than even when it seemed alive with demons and foul beasts. But yet greater was the dread of passing the doors that lead to the towers. The terror, yet fascination, of these was beyond description. I had rarely gone up into towers, and they were as yet a mystery to me: a belfry was as strange and dreadful a place to me as a vault. But to this was now added the immense height of the Cathedral: I felt the well-known longing to throw myself down from it, and it seemed as if, in the utter darkness, could I have ascended the tower, and got on to one of the parapets, I could not have resisted the spell. I say as I walked by those doors I was in positive alarm for my life: my will was thoroughly weakened, quite broken by terror, agitation, and want of sleep: I had no power to prevent myself from passing by the doors, neither could I make head against the desire of entering one of them and mounting to the parapet. In this agony, one thought alone comforted me; the belief, the almost certain assurance, that the doors would be locked. So, half with this expectation, to put an end to my fascination, half in obedience to it, I tried the locks. Thank God! it was as I had expected; they were fast. And thus the long hours went on, and still the darkness continued. I could stretch my account to much greater length by waiting till memory should give substance and continuity to those shadowy fragments which are now floating in my mind. I might tell how strangely the symbolical character of the Gothic architecture affected me, though I knew little of the symbolism; at one time relieving me by engaging my mind in an attempt to understand its meaning; at another time deepening my fear by its mysteriousness. Or I might attempt to describe, more at length and with more accuracy, my physical sensations, the effects of the cold, of the dampness, of the fatigue, of the want of sleep, of the faint hunger that every now and then reminded me that I had eaten nothing since six o’clock the preceding



evening. But I must draw to a close, telling only of the last stage of my sufferings, when the morning at length came to end them. Grey and dreary, it broke very slowly, for some time only darkness visible; and little by little the tracery of the windows, and the stone carvings, and the capitals of the pillars, were given back from the gloom. How different they seemed now, in this desolate dawn, and yesterday, when I first beheld them, in the brightness of the afternoon sun. For the morning, a little while back so eagerly longed for, now, when it was come, was almost as unwelcome as the night. I have never in all my life besides felt such profound sadness as now while this dawn was slowly brightening. Alone in a foreign country, shut up in a church, the ghostly twilight shimmering in through stained glass,—I was prostrated in utter dejection. It seemed that all the sorrows of my life rose to my mind, which, by its very weariness, was unable to control its thoughts,—sorrows which in the active day had not risen from their tombs for months and years; above all, the great sorrow which for a time had made the earth, a garden before, a very wilderness to me. I saw faces which I had not looked upon for years; faces of the dead,—and, sadder still, faces of the changed; these last, coming sometimes with the smile of the kinder, earlier time, sometimes with the cold look of estrangement; my living friends also passed before me, but with looks how different from their own! None laughing,—a few smiling, but sorrowful smiles,—and one or two were weeping; and I listened, and the voices were changed, and it seemed a voice, once heard how often, and still remembered how vividly, sobbing, and, amid its sobs, brokenly uttering my own name,—a voice which I had never heard weep, but which I had often thought must have wept bitterly many times over lost love. At last, at last, the key turned in the lock of the south door, and the world was open to me again; but I



walked to the entrance leisurely, almost listlessly, too far exhausted to feel much joy at my deliverance.

At a time when the question of the regular education of the people occupies so much attention, presenting, alas! so few chances of speedy solution, it may be not uninteresting to consider some of the irregular channels offered to those who have the progress of their country at heart, and are able and willing to contribute to the public welfare.

The irregular channels of instruction are indeed as numerous as the various modes of intercourse, and few have absolutely nothing to add to the common stock.

But those, to whom with much earnestness I now venture to address myself, are chiefly they, whose early collegiate or other studies have possessed them of knowledge, for which their active pursuits afford little or no sufficient scope; and those channels of general information, to which I now more particularly refer, are the various institutions throughout the country for the purpose among others of giving popular lectures.

How many thousand men are constantly regretting, that nothing in their daily life recals the learning of their younger days! How many are declaiming against the waste of early energies over subjects doomed apparently but to be forgotten! How many are endeavouring to console themselves by the hope, that at least their faculties have been improved, while their secret hearts deplore the materials thrown away in the process of improvement! Such is our system of education, that a man



once professionally embarked, finds his vessel stored with less of what he does than what he does not want.

An absolute necessity for this there may or may not be; the time may or may not come when our education, like that of the great ancients, will be natural and indigenous. But that so many should allow themselves, amid vain regrets, to forget, or not forgetting, suffer the knowledge once acquired, to lie comparatively useless in the face of eager crowds, is that, against which, when so much cant of “duty to God and man” is afloat, a reasonable protest may well be entered.

It is no exaggeration to say, that not one educated man in a thousand avails himself of the opportunity offered by the increasing demand for popular, especially village, lectures, to make his unprofessional of any, his professional knowledge of all the use to others, which he might do without any severe tax upon his comfort. Thousands of gentlemen, kindly solicitous for the welfare of their parishes; more clergymen, still more teachers and tutors, and others besides, have left the various colleges of the kingdom with sufficient acquirements on many subjects to be able to impart most useful ideas to a common audience. Many have learnt, at least the principles, of mechanics; some have learnt chemistry; some one thing, some another; and thus there is hardly a branch of which the elementary, and therefore the most important principles in a national point of view, might not be generally diffused among those, whose time of life, conscious deficiencies, and earnest British habits, make eager to receive any knowledge they can.

Statesmen and philanthropists have done their work; they have planted the seed; popular lectures are more or less in operation all over the country; but gaps must be filled up; the lecturers are few; the subjects unorganized. It is our part, then, to tend and support the tree.

I am well aware of the objections openly current against lectures; of the secret hostility of some men; of the diffidence, or worse, the pride of others, and the apathy of still more.

To all these I venture to address myself. Would that my pen were able to keep pace with my conviction!

The great objection in theory entertained against the knowledge imparted by popular lectures is grounded, in fact, on the very irregularity of the channel. The channel being so irregular, it is said, the knowledge imparted will be piecemeal and incomplete; the views adopted shallow; entertainment will become the standard of truth; brilliancy prevail over soundness; the appetite of the people be corrupted and seduced, and the foundation laid for a general craving after those epideictic displays, which stranded ancient Greece in sophistry and lies.

In answer to this, it may be said, that the irregularity of the channel ought to be no argument in itself against lectures in our own country at any rate, where the best part of the education of the people, such as it is, that part, at least, which makes us, in the aggregate, the wisest people in Europe, is derived through the most irregular of all channels, namely, the Press.

An Englishman conversing with an intelligent foreigner, Rector of a Prussian Bürgerschule, was lamenting to him the small per centage of the population, who in England, compared with Scotland, can read, and the still smaller



per centage who can write; from which he inferred a vast superiority in the Scottish over the English system of education. “Very likely,” returned the Rector. “But,” he added, “you must not measure national education by reading and writing, for they are, after all, but a means of proficiency. In Prussia we all read and write. You will hardly find one man who does not; so much so that I was called upon by an officer, a hundred miles off, to account for the fact, that one recruit from my district (by no no means a prominent one) could not read. And yet, in politics and common sense, our Prussian is a mere child. Your labourer, even he who cannot read, is a man. And you owe this to your press. One, who can read, gets a paper, gathers round him five more who cannot; they go to the pothouse, and with their beer imbibe the political wisdom of centuries.”

The testimony of such a man is of some interest, coming from Prussia. Nor do I think, such is the English temper, that the danger will ever lie in the direction of Greek sophistry and display. The Greek intellect tended ever to expand everything to its furthest limits, until subtlety of speculation vanished like an over-grown circle on the waters; but on the contrary, the English tendency is to bring every thing to a point. It has been wittily said, that if three Englishmen should meet at the top of Mount Vesuvius, they would resolve themselves into a motion; and I remember a gentleman to have observed, that whenever he asked a labourer immediately after a sermon, what he thought of it, he might be at a loss for an answer; but if he gave him time to talk it over with two or three more men like himself, they would be found to have come to a very fair conclusion. To this habit, due probably to long years of local self-government, we may look for soundness in the fruit of popular lectures; and if to this we add the sterling common sense, the honest prudence, the calm sagacity, the semper cui bono, which characterize the minds of our countrymen, we need fear little that what is counterfeit, will ultimately prevail over truth in their minds.

I am aware that I advocate the delivery of popular lectures by men (if possible on professional subjects, but where it is not possible, since labourers are almost everywhere wanted) even on unprofessional subjects. And although objections may very naturally arise against this practice, yet on the other hand, surely, there are many reasons, why it is better perhaps that unprofessional men should undertake a subject, rather than it should not be undertaken at all. Indeed, professional men from their very proficiency may fail to realize their early difficulties—the very difficulties to be overcome in the case of a popular audience. But I would rather plead the saying of Dr. Johnson, that the English seldom think long, but they think right. Rather than not think at all then, better begin by thinking even wrong. Who ever held his first pen without blotting his fingers? who ever drew his first stroke straight? And as with the man, so with the nation, and even on the broadest ground, with all nations. The path of progress has lain often through seeming, often too, through real error. Who would have said that fortune-telling and gipsies (for the Chaldeans were little better) would give birth to astronomy; who could have thought that violence would beget law; lawlessness, rule; fanaticism, philosophy; alchemy, chemistry; quackery, physic; jobbing, political economy; gambling, insurance offices? And it is perhaps not too much to say, that we might be without our railways, if for two thousand years mathematicians had not broken their heads, squaring the circle which cannot be done. Error, in short, would seem to have been the constant road to truth. Mankind may be likened to the feline



race, which alights on its feet, fling it up as you will. And looking back, each may remember how the nonsense egg of his young idea has hatched the full-grown sense of his after-thought. Yet it would be hard, I apprehend, to conceive two things to outward appearance more utterly unconnected than an egg and a fowl.

The great thing, then, is for the people to begin to think; and let us trust that thought, once begun, will right itself.

And lectures would seem to be chiefly valuable in this, that they are calculated to furnish the same general stimulus and inoculation to public thought, on a large scale, which our ruder forefathers originally received through conquest and, in later days, through pilgrims and crusaders.

Let any man look back upon the growth of his own mind; let him observe how much of the knowledge acquired through regular channels may often have lain inexplicably barren; how often, on the other hand, small and apparently insignificant facts and sayings, conveyed as it were by the winds of heaven, have grown to such dimensions as to have somehow absorbed and assimilated all the materials presented to his notice. Then let him consider that, according to different tempers, capacities and circumstances, different ideas, equally simple in themselves, become to different individuals centres and, so to speak, cell-germs of development; let him, moreover, consider that each man grows not in himself alone, but that we are all members one of another, wheel within wheel, inseparably connected, by love and by hate, acting and reacting, with and without our will multiplying our neighbour’s existence, and he may form some notion of the effect of one single idea thoroughly introduced into the circulation of the national sap.

The speculation is obvious; but, like many things which lie unheeded at our feet, it may be questioned if many men have ever thought it worth their while to follow even in a general way the consequences of the introduction of one new fact or idea into a mind, modifying the relations of all the facts already there—how, these relations being modified, even should the new fact never once be mentioned, its influence, perceptible or imperceptible, must infallibly work on all around. And is not a noble field opened to those who, despairing of being able to cope in brilliant achievements with the giants of the earth, may yet, could they but realize it, be instrumental in sowing the seeds of progress, prosperity, and happiness in whole generations of men at a trifling inconvenience to themselves?

Words fail me to follow the ramifications of usefulness branching through the length and breadth of the land, that might result, if only Cambridge and Oxford, in the persons of their sons, would make even that portion of their knowledge available, which is too generally allowed to sink fruitless and forgotten in dark corners of the mind. I remember a clergyman, in the prime of life, who had taken a high wranglership, relating how he had just gone down to Cambridge, at the time of the examinations, and being in the rooms of a friend, sat down to a problem paper, fresh from the senate-house, on optics (his crack subject), just to see what he could do; “but,” he said with a smile, in which no doubtful shade of sadness lurked, “it was all gone.” Those who know what a wranglership means, especially a very high wranglership—what a laborious and searching process the training involves, will feel more tempted to share in the sadness than in the smile.

But what shall be said of the vast



amount of time spent in after-life in random, aimless reading, and because aimless, therefore also too often tedious and barren? How many read they know not what, nor with what object? If such time were spent in maturing given topics, and bringing them to the level of a common audience—one of the most fruitful of mental exercises—would a man read with less pleasure because his reading, far from being merely selfish, and contributing to the relaxation of one only, might add to the improvement of a thousand? And if diffidence should stand in his way, if he should think: “I am not equal to the task; I cannot write a book—to write a lecture seems little less;” he may gather courage from the thought, that the greatest merit his performance can have will lie in its simplicity and elementary character.

“Les progrès de la science ne sont vraiment fructueux, que quand ils amènent aussi le progrès des Traités élémentaires,” is the golden motto adopted by an Oxford mathematician, who in consequence has written a treatise said to be the best in the language. To suit my present purpose, I might paraphrase the motto thus: “Knowledge is, then only, nationally prolific, when its first and most elementary principles have been brought down to the common sense of the many, and grafted into the living current of their daily thought.”

Newton knew this when he translated his Principia from his own calculus into common geometry; Guizot felt this when he said that “Common sense is the genius of mankind,” and Wellington set his seal to the truth when one day, in answer to the compliments paid him, he said, “You call it genius; I call it common sense.”

( To be continued.)