It is plain that Carlyle is not satisfied with the political revolutions of the age. They are superficial. He demands a revolution, not only political, but social, and not only social but moral. He is even disposed to look with toleration on the schemes of the socialists:-"For example, when the Saint-Simonian Society transmitted its propositions hither, and the whole ganse was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening, said merelyHere also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that man is still man; of which high, long-forgotten truth you already see them make a false application."

Carlyle sees clearly that there can be no great human society which is not penetrated and exalted by some religions feeling. He demands a society bound together, not only by law and by necessity, but by mutual attachment; by a reverence of human beings for one another, and for God as the Father of them all.

In the following passage he intimates that the idea of independence, which sets the world on fire, may be carried too far :"True it is, that in these days man can do almost all things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso can not obey can not be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. Painful for man is that same rebellious independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the Higher does he feel himself exalted."

The religious belief of Carlyle is not much more tangible than his social and political opinions. His mind is not a logical one. Indeed he professes a contempt for the "common school logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other." His method is rather "that of practical reason, proceeding by large intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms." We have accordingly no consecutive statement of what he holds for true, nor can we glean any thing very definite from his scattered statements and "large intuitions." We recognize, however, much that is imbued with a religious spirit, and of a religious tendency. His philosophical opinions are totally opposed to the material and skeptical philosophy of the last century. The ribald and sneering temper of the French atheists he loathes. He is a spiritualist in his ideas of man, and of the nature and end of his existence. No one feels more earnestly than he, the necessity of some religious faith. He bestows a just contempt on infidelity when he declares, "that for man's well being, faith is properly the one thing needful; how with it martyrs, otherwise weak, cau cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide in the midst of luxury."

Indeed the mind of Carlyle is of that earnest and meditative character which naturally inclines a man to ponder the awful questions of religion. He quotes from his master Goethe, that "man is properly the only subject that interests man." And in his views of the greatness and littleness of human nature, he sometimes reminds us of the solemn and mournful reflections of Pascal. He wishes men to see themselves as they are; and if he strips off their artificial importance, it is only to invest them with a higher dignity as immortal beings. It is necessary to look at the ludicrous, the contemptible side of human nature to appreciate that which is "immense and infinite." The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly at clothes till they become transparent. "There is something great in the day when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages, and sees indeed that he is naked-and as Swift has it, 'a forked, straddling animal with bandy legs,' yet also a spirit and unutterable mystery of mysteries."

The mind of Carlyle is oppressed with the thick darkness that hangs over the existence of man on earth. To him life is a somnambulism. We walk as in a dream. The tone of his writings on these subjects is often sad, for he feels the unspeakable solemnity of existence. "The secret of man's being is still like the Sphinx's secret; a riddle that he can not read; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual." Existence is encircled with mystery. Life is a mystery. Death is a mystery. We stand "in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities." We hear the stream of time rushing past. The flood sweeps us down. But whither we can not tell. Behind and before all is dark!

We lament the absence of a more distinct faith in Christianity in the writings of Carlyle. At the same time it is worthy of note, that in his highest point of attainment, when he has, as he judges, reached the table-land of truth, his discoveries accord precisely with the affirmations of Christianity. Thus when he cries aloud with such exultation at the discovery; "I see a glimpse of it! there is in man a HIGHER than love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness and instead thereof find Blessedness!"-has he discovered anything which the martyrs did not see ages ago? And when he announces as a great truth, "well did the wisest of our time write, It is only with Renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin"-has he not repeated, as the result of one more human experience, what Christ taught eighteen hundred years before Goethe?

There is one thing in Carlyle's reflections on religion, against which we feel bound to protest. It has become characteristic of the school which he has founded in this country. It is a certain patronizing air towards religion in general, with no great re

spect for any religion in particular. This school pride themselves. on their superior insight; and here they carry their penetration so far as to discover that there is about equal truth in all religions! Carlyle brings out this idea very distinctly in his volume on Heroes, and the Heroic in history. He gives the impression that all religions are true to those who believe in them; and therefore that Mahomedanism and Paganism are almost as good as Christianity. The point of view taken is wholly subjective. Anything is true to the man who sincerely believes it. Religious truth is not an absolute and objective reality, but merely the impression which objects make upon the miud. We will not deny that this representation is partially correct. Some portion of truth is doubtless to be found in all religions. It is also true that, so vague and uncertain a medium of thought is human language, so various are the meanings which different men attach to the same words, that they may be mentally conscious of the same truths, and acknowledge the same obligations to a Supreme Being, while they express their faith in very opposite formulas. But to go farther than this, and represent that all religions are equally good; that there is no difference between heathenisin which makes men vile, and Christianity which makes them pure, is to utter a doctrine which is as dangerous as it is absurd.

The followers of Carlyle, as is usual with the disciples of great men, have gone much beyond their master, and seem disposed to upturn the foundations of everything in philosophy and religion. Thus Emerson gives out somewhere this brave confession:"Do not set the least value on what I do, as if I intended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back." Did more utter fatuity ever fall from the lips of man? This is chaos indeed!-n confusion as fatal to sound philosophy as it is to every form of Christianity.

There is not an idea so important in philosophy nor so vital in religion, as this of the absolute nature of truth. Truth has nothing to do with the belief or unbelief of man. It has an independent existence of its own-a reality as objective as that of the mountains on our globe. Error, falsehood, is never truth, believe it who may. The Ptolemaic astronomy was believed by its teachers as sincerely as Galileo believed in the Copernican system. Was it therefore equally true? Of what use were the discoveries of Newton and the voyages of Columbus, if they have not added something to the absolute knowledge of mankind? So Christianity is a revelation of absolute truth, a disclosure as real as the Newtonian astronomy, of what are actual realities of the universe. The eye of religious faith, illumined by a teacher from God, discerns realities of the invisible world, as infallibly as the telescope of the astronomer causes the white zone of the Milky Way to

rush asunder into worlds and systems. What the Copernican astronomy was to the notion of the ancients that the earth was the center around which the heavenly bodies revolved, that Christianity was to the vague philosophical and religious systems which preceded it. It was a discovery of absolute truth, immense as the universe itself, and bright and shining as the stars.

We had intended to say more than we have room to write of the followers of Carlyle in this country. We have by no means as high an opinion of the disciples as of their master. It is the fate, good or bad, of every original writer to be followed by a host of imitators, who, destitute of his genius, can only paraphrase his thoughts, repeat his illustrations, and copy his style. This has been particularly the case with Carlyle. The eccentricities of his manner have furnished an easy peculiarity for imitation; and accordingly we have seen a herd of pigmies waddling in the tracks of the giant.

The influence of Carlyle is very perceptible in the style of a class of writers about Boston. And, plainly enough, his influence has been bad. It has produced a vague, misty way of writing, which always indicates a second rate order of minds. These men have aped the idioms of their master, and even exaggerated them as if in burlesque. We have no patience with this class of writers. In reading them patience ceases to be a virtue. If a man has anything to say, why not say it naturally? If indeed he has nothing to say, there is no way to conceal the vacuum of thought, more hopeful than by raising such a cloud of words that the absence of ideas shall not be perceived. Vain hope! For after all, the affectation is too likely to betray the poverty of thought which it would conceal. It is with style as it is with manners. A man of real force can afford to be simple. But he who, if he took the place which nature assigned him, would be nobody, has no resort but to strut to attract attention. So a writer, who, if he wrote plain English, could not enchain readers by force of thought, must use inverted phrases, and be oracular, to get the reputation of originality.

Originality! There is nothing more easy to get a reputation for. Let a man take the most simple truisms, and dress them up in high-sounding metaphors; let him open his lips in brief oracular phrases, (in "Orphic Sayings" such as "Truth is dual;" sentences which may mean anything or nothing,) always avoiding a common mode of expression; especially let him delight in paradoxes; and, in some quarters, he will pass for the eighth wonder of the world.

We have said that the first qualification for a great writer was a clear mind, and the second, a clear style. The two generally go together. If a man sees a truth clearly, he can state it clearly. We never meet with an obscure style, but we instantly suspect

that the writer does not understand clearly what he is talking about. Judged by this test, perspicuity, we should set down the transcendentalists of this country as very indifferent writers. Emerson may be cited as a brilliant exception; but he is a poet, and we should judge his writings purely as poetry. Others among them have written some pretty verses, but as a class, they have inflicted on the public-through the Dial and elsewhere-much of the most miserable twattle we have ever seen in print. And at one time-we think the crisis is now past-they threatened to vitiate the general style of writing in this country.

The moral influence of Carlyle's writings, we think, is good. It is impossible to tell the amount of good or evil a man does till he has passed from the world, and often not even then. But the moral qualities of Carlyle are such as can not but inspire confidence. He is an honest man. No one can read a page of his writings without discovering his frank and dauntless sincerity. He is earnest after truth. "Truth!" Teufelsdröckh cries, "though the heavens crush me for following her!" He is a champion of free thought pushed to the utmost limit of human inquiry. He sees that the world is full of evil, and his mission is to fight against it. Always and every where he stands up for the right. He battles against all oppression and wrong. His sympathies are with the poor and the down-trodden. Aud one of his dearest hopes is to diffuse a more kindly feeling among all classes of society; to restore the Brotherhood of Man.

We believe too that he has a religions design in his writings. Conscious that the religious state of the world is bad, he breaks forth at times into lamentations over it such as might have fallen from the lips of his friend, Edward Irving :-"It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the gowle, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom existence is a hollow dream." "In such winter seasons of denial it is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been born." But, born in such a period, he feels that it is his mission to preach TRUTH in an age of falsehood; to preach sincerity and friendship in an age of selfishness; to unite men at once in affection for each other and in reverence for their Creator.

Much therefore as we admire Carlyle for his genius, for his wild and fiery eloquence, we honor him still more for his manly heart. The man is even greater than the writer. We honor him that in an age of selfishness, he has an ear for others' woe, and a soul in sympathy with a groaning world.

The religious people of England and of this country have been suspicious of Carlyle; and not altogether without reason; for