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could possibly offer. None but hypocrites and formalists have any longer anything to do with such an anomaly. Good men get out of it. It is quite a secondary kind of man that gets at the head of it. If the world be a lie, and everything present and future a juggle, then that may be a truth, but not otherwise. It must be altered, a thing like that.' The effect of hearty convictions like these, uttered in such simple, truthful words, and with the flavour of a Scottish accent (as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy, and his own intense reflections and experience) can be duly appreciated only by those who see it. Every manly face among the audience seems to knit its lips, out of a severity of sympathy, whether it would or no; and all the pretty churchand-state bonnets seem to thrill through all their ribbons."

Of the four courses of lectures delivered by Mr. Carlyle, that of 1840, on "Hero-Worship," is the only one he has published. Frequent applications have been made to him from America since then, and also from many of our provincial towns, for the delivery of a course of lectures, but all have been alike refused. At the urgent solicitation of many friends and admirers, he had consented to give the four courses we have mentioned, but on finishing the fourth he emphatically declared his determination to have done with that mode of utterance. The touching passage at the close of the concluding lecture of the last series, in which he took farewell of his audience, will be long remembered by all who heard him. "Here, finally," said Mr. Carlyle, "these wide roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search and study of heroes, are to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in this business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this which, not to be too grave about, I have named Hero-Worship. It enters deeply, as I think, into the secret of mankind's ways and

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vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth explaining at present. With six months, instead of six days, we might have done better. I promised to break ground on it; I know not whether I have even managed to do that; I have had to tear it up in the rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these rude utterances thrown out isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, patient candour, allhoping favour and kindness, which I will not speak of at present. The accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, something of what is best in England, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelings, I heartily thank you all; and say, Good be with you all!"

Meanwhile his fame as a writer had been rapidly extending during the few years to which we have been adverting. In 1837, " The French Revolution, a History, by Thomas Carlyle," brought his name prominently before the public for the first time; all that he had written up to that period having been published anonymously. In the following year "Sartor Resartus" was at last published as a book, and in 1838, the first edition of the "Miscellanies" made its appearance in four volumes, containing his contributions to the "Edinburgh Review," "Foreign Review," "British and Foreign Quarterly Review," "Westminster Review," and "Frazer's Magazine," from 1827 to 1838.

In 1839 he first broke ground on the Condition-ofEngland Question, in his "Chartism," which was published at the close of that year, and caused great disappointment among many of his admirers, who searched in vain through the various chapters for any encouragement of their Suffrage movements, Anti-corn-law agitations, and other popular modes of curing effectually the discontent and

misery of the English people. And yet, although condemned by the universal newspaper press of Great Britain for its unpractical character in 1840, "Chartism" is full of what everybody recognises as profound practical wisdom in 1855. What was ridiculed as idle rhapsody at the former period is now fulfilled prophecy. "Two things,-great things," says the author, in the chapter on things impossible to paralytic statesmen, "dwell for the last ten years in all thinking heads in England; and are hovering of late even on the tongues of not a few* ** *. Universal education is the first great thing we mean; general emigration is the second." Of these two great remedies for our most pressing national wants, the last few years has seen the application of the latter one on a larger scale than was ever contemplated by the boldest political speculator, although not precisely in the well-ordered manner which Mr. Carlyle would have recommended. He denounced the apathy of our statesmen, who, "with shipswith war-ships rotting idle-which, but bidden move, and not rot, might bridge all oceans; with trained men, educated to pen and practise, to administer and act; briefless barristers, chargeless clergy, taskless scholars, languishing in all court-houses, hiding in obscure garrets, besieging all ante-chambers, in passionate want of simply one thing, work; with as many half-pay officers of both services, wearing themselves down in wretched tedium," had done nothing, or next to nothing. "But in spite of their neglect, an emigrant host larger than Xerxes' " has already crossed the Atlantic, and relieved, for a time at least, the intolerable pressure in the labour market. As regards the other great remedy -Universal Education-all men are now alive to its urgent necessity. The only desideratum is the "fit official person" who will insist on carrying out some

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well-schemed plan by which all English persons shall be taught to read.

In "Past and Present," published in 1843, he went still more deeply into the causes of our social disorders, and painted in the most gloomy colours the condition of England, with an aristocracy which cannot or will not govern, and a parliament, elected by bribery, which prefers wearisome, profitless talk to indispensable work. But it was in his "Latter-Day Pamphlets," which appeared in 1850, that Mr. Carlyle first fairly grappled with the leading questions of the day. In those pamphlets, entitled "The Present Time," "Downing Street," " New Downing Street," "Parliament," and "Stump Oratory," he uttered some of the boldest and most unpalatable truths that ever were published in this or any other country. Their reception was what might have been anticipated. Though widely read, they were everywhere condemned as the rhapsodies of a mere student, who could not be expected to understand modern politics. The general recognition, during the last twelve months, of the truth of what he was condemned for saying in 1850, may in some degree console Mr. Carlyle for the abuse which was heaped upon him at the former period.

His work on Cromwell, on which he had been employed several years, was published in December, 1845, under the modest title of “Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with Elucidations," and, as the author mentions, in the preface to the second edition, "contrary to expectation, spread itself with some degree of impetus," as might, indeed, be inferred from the fact that a new edition was called for before many weeks after the first was published. A third edition, in four volumes, appeared in 1849, containing large additions in the shape of letters

of Cromwell, and other matter throwing light on his biography.

With the "Life of John Sterling," in 1851, our list of Mr. Carlyle's works terminates. From the "Life of Schiller" to that of Sterling-an interval of twenty-eight years it is interesting to mark the progress of the author from obscurity to a world-wide reputation, and not less interesting to note the difference between his first work and his last. The life of the German poet was beautiful and full of promise, but how inferior to that of John Sterling, which has been justly called, "one of the finest biographies ever written."

Charles Lamb, when presented with the "Beauties of Shakspeare," in a single duodecimo, asked where the other nine volumes were. Those who have made themselves familiar with the writings of Mr. Carlyle must not apply the same joke to this compilation, which has not been prepared for that class at all. The main object of the selector has been to give "the general reader" some notion of what has been said by the most original thinker of the present age, on various important questions. In choosing and arranging the passages selected for that purpose, his great difficulty has been, how to keep within the prescribed limits, amid the "riches fineless" of the author. Hundreds of pages marked for extract, though full of characteristic beauty and force, have been passed over for want of room, nor is it unlikely that many an admirer of Carlyle may fancy that the best specimen has not always been chosen.

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