THOMAS CARLYLE.

"Always there stood before him, night and day,
Of wayward vary-colored circumstance
The imperishable presences serene,
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound;
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Four-faced to four corners of the sky:
And yet again, three shadows fronting one,
One forward, one respectant, three but one;
And yet again, again and evermore,

For the two first were not, but only seemed,
One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time,

One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
Awful with most invariable eyes."

TENNYSON.

The Mystic.

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, nor the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. * * * * * He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world."

EMERSON. Essay on Circles.

ACCORDING to the view of the microcosmus, what is said of the world itself, may be said of every individual in it and what is said of the individual, may be predicated of the world. Now, the individual mind has been compared to a prisoner in a dark room, or in a room which would be dark but for the windows of the same, meaning the senses, in a figure; nothing being in the mind without the mediation of the senses, as Locke held,-" except," as Leibnitz acutely added in modification, "the mind itself." Thus is it with the individual, and thus with the general humanity. Were it not for the Something from without, and the Something within, which are both Revelations, we should sit on the floor of our dark dungeon, between its close stifling walls, gnawing vainly with the teeth of the mind, at the chains we wear. But conclusions which genius has leapt successfully, and science proved, have come to aid us. It is well to talk

of the progress of the public mind. The public mind, that is, the average intelligence of the many,-never does make progress, except by imbibing great principles from great men, which, after long and frequent reiteration, become part of the moral sense of a people. The educators are the true and only movers. Progress implies the most active of ener gies, such as genius is, such as science is: and general pro gress implies, and indeed essentially consists of, individual progresses, men of genius, and other good teachers, working. A Ulysses must pass with the first goat,-call him Nobody, or by his right name. And to return to our first figure,what the senses are to the individual mind, men of genius are to the general mind. Scantily assigned by Providence for necessary ends, one original thinker strikes a window out here, and another there; wielding the mallet sharply, and leaving it to others to fashion grooves and frames, and complete advantage into convenience.

That Mr. Carlyle is one of the men of genius thus referred to, and that he has knocked out his window from the blind wall of his century, we may add without any fear of contradiction. We may say, too, that it is a window to the east and that some men complain of a certain bleakness in the wind which enters at it, when they should rather congratulate themselves and him on the aspect of the new sun beheld through it, the orient hope of which he has so discovered to their eyes. And let us take occasion to observe here, and to bear in memory through every subsequent remark we may be called upon to make, that it has not been his object to discover to us any specific prospect--not the mountain to the right, nor the oak-wood to the left, nor the river which runs down between,-but the SUN, which renders all these visible.

When "the most thinking people" had, at the sound of all sorts of steam-engines, sufficiently worshipped that idol of utilitarianism which Jeremy Bentham, the king, had set up, and which Thomas Carlyle, the transcendentalist, and many others, who never read a page of Bentham's works, have resolved to narrow to their own misconceptions of this philosopher-the voice of a prophet was heard praying three times a day, with magnanimous reiteration, towards Jerusalem-towards old Jerusalem, be it observed; and also towards the place of sun-rising for ultimate generations. And

the voice spoke a strange language-nearly as strange as Bentham's own, and as susceptible of translation into English. Not English, by any means, the critics said it spoke; nor even German, nor Greek; although partaking considerably more of the two last than of English; but more of Saxon than either, we humbly beg to add. Yet, if the grammarians and public teachers could not measure it out to pass as classic English, after the measure of Swift or Addison, or even of Bacon and Milton-if new words sprang gauntly in it from savage derivatives, and rushed together in outlandish combinations-if the collocation was distortion, wandering wildly up and down-if the comments were every where in a heap, like the "pots and pans" of Bassano, classic or not, English or not; it was certainly a true language-a language "uɛgóлш váш;" the significant articulation of a living soul: God's breath was in the vowels of it. And the clashing of these harsh compounds at last drew the bees into assembly, each murmuring his honey-dream. And the hearers who stood longest to listen, became sensible of a still grave music issuing, like smoke, from the clefts of the rock. If it was not "style" and " classicism," it was something better—it was soul-language. There was a divinity at the shaping of these rough-hewn periods.

66

We dwell the longer upon the construction of Mr. Carlyle's sentences, because of him it is pre-eminently true, that the speech is the man. All powerful writers will leave, more or less, the pressure of their individuality on the medium of their communication with the public. Even the idiomatic writers, who trust their thoughts to a customary or conventional phraseology, and thus attain to a recognized level perfection in the medium, at the expense of being less instantly incisive and expressive, (according to an obvious social analogy,) have each an individual aspect. But the individuality of this writer is strongly pronounced. It is graven-like the Queen's arrow on the poker and tongs of her national prisons-upon the meanest word of his utterance. He uses no moulds in his modelling, as you may see by the impression of his thumb-nail upon the clay. throws his truth with so much vehemence, that the print of the palm of his hand is left on it. Let no man scoff at the language of Carlyle-for if it forms part of his idiosyncracy, his idiosyncracy forms part of his truth;—and let no man

He

say that we recommend Carlylisms-for it is obvious, from our very argument, that, in the mouth of an imitator, they would unlearn their uses, and be conventional as Addison, or a mere chaos of capitals, and compounds, and broken language.

We have named Carlyle in connection with Bentham, and we believe that you will find in "your philosophy," no better antithesis for one than is the other. There is as much resemblance between them as is necessary for antithetic unlikeness. Each headed a great movement among thinking men; and each made a language for himself to speak with; and neither of them originated what they taught. Bentham's work was done by systematizing; Carlyle's, by reviving and reiterating. And as, from the beginning of the world, the two great principles of matter and spirit have combatedwhether in man's personality, between the flesh and the soul; or in his speculativeness, between the practical and the ideal ; or in his mental expression, between science and poetryBentham and Carlyle assumed to lead the double van on opposite sides. Bentham gave an impulse to the material energies of his age, of the stuff of which he was himself made-while Carlyle threw himself before the crushing chariots, not in sacrifice, but deprecation; "Go asidethere is a spirit even in the wheels!" In brief, and to take up that classification of virtues made by Proclus and the later Platonists Bentham headed such as were лоλiτixαi, Carlyle exalts that which is Tedeσtinn, venerant and religious virtue.

Every reader may not be acquainted, as every thinker should, with the Essays of R. W. Emerson, of Concord, Massachusetts. He is a follower of Mr. Carlyle, and in the true spirit; that is, no imitator, but a worker out of his own thoughts. To one of the English editions of this volume, Mr. Carlyle has written a short Preface, in which the following gaunt and ghastly, grotesque and graphic passage occurs; and which, moreover, is characteristic and to our immediate point.

"In a word, while so many Benthamisms, Socialisms, Fourierisms, professing to have no soul, go staggering and lowing like monstrous moon-calves, the product of a heavy-laden moon-struck age; and in this same baleful twelfth hour of the night' even galvanic Puseyisms, as we say, are visible, and dancings of the sheeted dead,shall not any voice of a living man be welcome to us, even because it is alive."

That the disciples of Bentham, and Robert Owen, and Fourier, should be accused of professing to have no soul,

because their main object has been to ameliorate the bodily condition of mankind; or that an indifference to poetry and the fine arts, except as light amusements, to be taken alternately with gymnastics and foot-ball, should be construed into a denial of the existence of such things, we do not consider fair dealing. True, they all think of first providing for the body; and looking around at the enormous amount of human suffering, from physical causes, it is no great wonder that they chiefly devote their efforts to that amelioration. A man who is starving is not in a fit state for poetry, nor even for prayer. Neither is a man fit for prayer, who is diseased, or ragged, or unclean-except the one prayer for that very amelioration which the abused philosophers of the body seek to obtain for him. With respect, however, to the disciples of Bentham, Owen, and Fourier, it is no wonder that he should be at utter variance. No great amount of love "is lost between them." Not that Carlyle reads or knows much of their systems; and not that they read or know any thing of his writings. In these natural antipathies all philosophers are in an equal state of unreasonableness. Or shall we rather call it wisdom, to follow the strong instincts of nature, without any prevaricating reasonings upon the in-felt fact. Carlyle could make little good out of their systems, if he read them; and they could make nothing at all of his writings. The opposite parties might force themselves to meet gravely, with hard lines of the efforts of understanding in their faces, and all manner of professions of dispassionate investigation and mutual love of truth-and they would clash foreheads at the first step, and part in fury! "The Body is the first thing to be helped!" cry the Benthamites, Owenites, Fourierites-loudly echoed by Lord Ellenborough and the Bishop of London—“ Get more Soul!" cries Carlyle," and help yourselves!"

But the wants of the body will win the day-the movements of the present age show that plainly. The immortal soul can well afford to wait till its case is repaired. The death-groans of humanity must first be humanely silenced. More Soul, do we crave for the world? The world has long had a sphere-full of unused Soul in it, before Christ, and since. If Plato and Socrates, and Michael Angelo and Raphael, and Shakspeare and Milton, and Handel and Hadyn, and all the great poets, philosophers, and music-ma