Chapter IV: Part VI (3)

The fisher’s boat along the river glides,
Nor leaves a ripple in its shallow wake.
The wild swan sports in Anicosta’s wave,
And deems his shadow his departed mate;
The patient heron, on the wave-washed rock
For hours stands, watching his suspecting prey;
The wild-goose raises heavily to join
The gabbling cohort that is hastening on,
High in the air, to the bright summer-land,
Where the superb magnolia lifts its head.
And scents the gale—a wilderness of flowers.
The hardy ivy climbs the giant tree,
To place green garlands on its withered head;
The wild grape from the lofty walnut hangs
Its purple clusters tempting to the sight;
And by the swampy brook, the sunflower turns
Its golden eye in meekness toward its God;
The deer, from sylvan dell comes out to drink;
The buzzard on the dead tree patient waits,
For the returning tide to line the shore
With food well-suited to his groveling taste;
And o’er the bosom of the widening stream,
The lazy fish-hawk flaps his heavy wing.
—
Old age and childhood mark, with curious eye,
The lonely scene, and pass, with cautious tread,
Down the still pathway of the dying woods.
Now, round the mighty piles of corn they sit,
The aged ones, the young men, and the lads,
With here and there a son of Afric’s clime,
With eye that rolls in undiminished joy,
And mouth that ready waits to swell the laugh,
Or join the merry huskers’ drinking song.
And thus the labor of a week is done,
While wives and daughters, ’neath the farmer’s roof,
Spread out the festive board with viands rich,
And tempting to the eye of one who bears
The sweat of labor on his swarthy brow.
Now, from its yellow shuck, the ripened corn,
In well-filled ears, is drawn—a pleasant sight;
And while the village maidens pass along,
Stopping, where’er their fancy wills, to husk,
Red ears are placed within their anxious palms,
By roguish ones, who hid them for this hour;
And as they draw the crimson emblems forth,
Full many a kiss is printed on the cheek
Of rosy innocence, by lips that ne’er
Such liberty had dared to take before.
The clock strikes twelve, and from his cozy perch
Beside the fattest pullet, lo, the cock
Proclaims the approaching morn with shrillest crow!
The corn is husked, and now they gather round
The board, while lovely maidens wait to serve
With ready hand, the laborers of the eve.
Now from the lips of village sire ascends
The prayer for Heaven’s rich blessing on their food;
Thanks for the pouring out of plenty’s horn,
And gratitude for life and health—nay, more,
For liberty, without which all things else
Were vain. And while he stands with streaming eye,
And hand that palsy oft has clasped in vain,
His trembling accents fall upon the ear,
Like distant music at the close of day.
The service o’er, the merry feast begins,
Then joy runs riot round the sacred chair,
And dignified propriety is gay
As gipsy maiden, with her silver bells
Tinkling around her heels. At length the dawn
Recalls the joyous throng to other scenes;
And soon the last gay visiter has bade
His warm good-by—and the old house is still.
Left all alone, in calm security,
Straight in his oaken-chair of antique form,
Within his hall, the farmer sits and sleeps,
While the fierce house-dog watches at his feet.
Sweet hour of plenteous ease, when care puts off
His wrinkled brow, and charity and love,
The fairest sisters of the heavenly train,
Go hand in hand along the faded walks,
And sit at evening by the cottage door.
There the old soldier, covered o’er with scars,
Limping along unnoticed by the crowd,
Whose liberties were purchased with his blood,
Finds ’neath the whispering elms before the door
A welcome seat; and there the little ones,
Called from their play by watchful Towser’s growl.
And the patched dress that glory gives her sons,
Gather round their sire with mute surprise,
And list to tales of other days, when war,
With iron feet, swept thundering o’er the glade,
And reared his bloody altars on the hills.
And while they listen, lo! the soldier’s face
Grows less terrific, and his tatter’d dress
No longer seems to hide a vagrant’s form.
With stealthy look and silent step, they seek
The festive board, and silently return;
Then, while he wipes from his dim eye a tear,
They fill the old man’s pack with generous food,
Proffer the goblet full to his parched lips,
And play at “hide and seek” around his chair.
The heart of power may coldly beat when they
Who fought for freedom in her darkest hour,
In age and penury, appear to claim
The boon a monarch never yet refused;
But by the hearth-stones of his native land,
Where liberal thoughts and generous feelings dwell,
The valiant soldier ne’er shall find a churl
To bid him trudge, a rude unwelcome guest.

On Salem’s hill the Hebrews’ reign is o’er,
The silver trump of jubilee is still.
Timbrel and harp and soft-toned dulcimer
Have ceased their strains in Sharon’s rosy vale;
The scattered tribes in earth’s remotest bounds
Wander like sheep upon the mountain-side,
And Israel mourns her empire and her God.

The fisher, solitary, dries his net
On the green rock, amid the silver wave,
Where, robed in purple, sat imperial Tyre,
And through the autumn day beholds no sail,
To catch the scented breeze from Cypress Isle.
The hills of Judah, crowned with ruins gray,
Lift their brown summits to the deep blue air,
And cast their cooling shadows on the sea.
Hushed is the shepherd’s lute, the reaper’s shout,
The bleat of flocks, and patriarch’s song of praise,
The Harvester of years has o’er them past,
And hung his reaping-hook in Joseph’s tomb.

But though the trump of jubilee is still,
And Israel’s host in triumph meet no more
By Jacob’s well, or Siloa’s sacred brook;
Yet in the western world, where Freedom rears
Her banner o’er the altar of her God,
And all religions meet in peaceful mood,
At autumn’s close, the wanderers returned
To distant homes, to keep Thanksgiving Day.
Such was the custom of the Pilgrim band,
When first they trod that wild and wintry shore,
And such th’ observance of their sterling sons,
Who, scattered o’er the freeman’s heritage,
Remember their bold ancestry with pride,
And where they tread, make new New England’s bloom.
—
The days grow shorter, and the nights with frost
Creep shivering o’er the landscape’s fading green.
The village stage comes in at later hour,
From city, town, and distant boarding-school
Bringing a host of merry hearts, who seek
The joys of childhood by their native hearths;
And as it pauses at the welcome door
The inmates rush, uncovered, to the stile,
And there, ’mid kisses long and loud, is heard
The mother’s anxious inquiry for health,
The boisterous brother’s rude though hearty hail,
And happy father’s well-timed welcome home.
What joys, what transports centre in the hour
While the old mansion rings with childlike mirth.
—
For days the very atmosphere has teemed
With savory odor from the kitchen flue.
And now the day of praise begins, clear, cold and still.
While yet the sun sails up its morning path
The merry peal from village spire is heard,
And straightway pours the tide of life along,
Gathering fresh numbers from each ivied door,
Changing their greetings warm on every hand,
With those by Mammon or by glory called,
Whose wandering feet have homeward turned again:
And many a speaking eye reveals the tale
Of love long felt, but ne’er before expressed.

The church is still, and maiden modesty
Has smoothed her dress and re-arranged her curl,
Then from the choir the pealing anthem swells
With chorus grand—and voices long unused
To holy song join in the symphony
Of praise.
Prayer long and deep and eloquent ensues,
In which the earth, the nation, and the church,
The righteous and the wicked, rich and poor,
Remembrance find. And then a meet discourse,
Recounting changes of the variant year,
Paying a tribute just to absent worth,
And hanging garlands green on glory’s tomb.
The heart is touched—the mourner’s eye grows dim—
The proud are humbled, and the poor rejoice.
And when the speaker closes, with a charge
To pay due homage to the Mighty One
Who guides Arcturus and his boisterous sons,
Binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades,
And breaks Orion’s broad and sparkling bonds,
All hearts, with one accord, in reverence bow,
And pure thanksgiving peals from every tongue.

The service done, they seek their cheerful hearths
To spend the hallowed day in feasts of love.
The feast is set—and joy’s wild burst is o’er—
The mother’s eye has marked the vacant chair—
The father’s ear has missed his first-born’s step—
And where the church-yard sleeps, so still, they look
With hearts of grief, and eyes suffused with tears.

Evening with smiles and tales has come, and round
The social circle blind-man’s buff is played.
Wisdom and years are straightway laid aside,
And manhood lives its childhood o’er again,
Seeking the golden shadows of the days
Long passed away.
And now the youngest having sought repose,
Friend after friend drops in with cheerful heart;
The merry dance succeeds the merry game,
And the light foot with lighter heart keeps time.
Music is also there, with gentle tone,
Singing the favorite tunes of other days.
Age with its wrinkle, childhood with its smile,
Youth with its hope, and manhood with its care,
Joy blends with high esteem, and admiration
Kindles into love.

The old clock ticks the drowsy hours along—
The midnight comes—the joyous throng disperse—
Full many a head on sleepless pillow lies,
Till wearied out, with thinking o’er the past,
The mind surrenders to the body’s guide
And dreams of fancy dance before the eye.

Blest labor! thou dost fringe the poor man’s lids
With gold: and drive remembrance of his wrongs
Away—hang o’er his drowsy visions scenes
Of pleasantness, where round a cheerful cot
Wind paths of peace. Oh, Night! to him what are
The ills of day, if thou but shelter him
With brooding wing.—
Earth without labor—what a dreary waste!
Sadder to view than Asia’s barren plains
Or Afric’s sea of sand. He that would strike
Thy arm of sinews down, would make the field
A solitude, and crowded mart a den
Of thieves.—
When the moist sickle rests upon its hook,
And the rich stores of earth are gathered in,
The fair is held—a feast of fruits and flowers—
Of art’s fine workmanship and labor’s yield.
From the dark pines that fringe Aroostook’s wave
To the wild chapparal that rudely turns
The martial foot from Rio Bravo’s bank,
From the Atlantic’s many-peopled shore
To the Columbia’s vales of living green,
The joyful mandate rings, and man pours forth
His richest treasures to the gaze of day.
The nation sits in judgment on her arts,
Her choice productions and her fruitful glebes,
And cheers the laborer’s toil with voice of praise.
Thus man is dignified by honest toil,
And the dread curse pronounced in Time’s young spring
Becomes a blessing in its autumn day.
So may the laborer stand amid his race—
Taught that true knowledge elevates the soul,
That the poor carpenter of Galilee
Once worked his task—then in the temple taught—
Then gave redemption to a guilty world—
And then resumed his station by his God!

Now from the well-filled barn, in gusty day,
The flail’s loud beat is heard—a pleasing sound—
And from the chaff the full unspotted grain
Is winnowed by the stripling’s feeble hand.
And while the dust is flying far and wide
The wheat is gathered in, a precious store,
Tempting the factor’s mercenary eye,
And bidding famine with her sickly form
Wander afar from Freedom’s hallowed soil;
The timid quail, with well-fledged brood, draws near,
Her tithe to claim from man’s productive toil,
And barn-yard fowls their rich thanksgivings spend,
Nor dream of days of want in time to come,
When winter o’er the frozen earth shall claim
Her sovereignty with cutting blast and snow.

Autumn departs, and soon on hills of brown,
In storms will break the dark solstitial morn.
The grove has lost its verdure and its song,
And withered leaves, in heaps, are mouldering round.
Keen northern blasts, from Greenland’s gelid wastes,
Wake the dark woods of stormy Labrador,
And o’er Canadian wilds and ocean-lakes,
Down Mississippi’s vales in fury howl.
By Huron’s flood the savage wrapped in furs
Gathers his tent of skins beneath the snow,
And ’mid the smoke, for days, securely waits
For the encrusting rain to plate the drift
With glittering ice, that cracks not at his tread,
Where he may chase the moose, whose hoofs break thro’
And leave upon the trail a track of blood.
The miner on Superior’s pictured cliffs,
Where sings the thunder its eternal hymn,
Waits in his cabin rude for hours of spring,
Giving up pleasure, and e’en health itself,
That he may climb to fortune’s fickle height
Through veins of copper, and up shafts of gold.
The pilgrim’s son, in freedom, builds his cot,
And hails a shadowy old world from the new,
On the Pacific’s main, where blooming hills
Hang o’er the flood, and catch the dying strain
Borne on the waves from India’s coral strand.
The farmer’s boy, long since amid the woods,
Has plucked the hazel and the chestnut brown,
And sharp-ribbed walnut, for his winter store,
Leaving the staining butternut untouched,
For the hoar-frost to peel its ragged shell.
The sheep go wandering o’er the barren plains
In search of welcome food, and where the scythe
Between the pointed stones has passed along,
Crop closer than the crooked blade of man
The sallow loiterers of the autumn field.
The red-breasts, gathered into flocks, no longer pipe
Their sweetest songs beside the cottage door:
And the vast family of sea-birds screech
Their notes of sadness o’er the sounding sea.
The rivers lift their voices, as the rain
From chilly clouds falls on the dreary scene,
And high above their banks in torrents swell,
Sweeping the cottage and the well-filled barn,
The dam, the bridge, and the old ivied mill,
With stacks of grain and implements of man,
In wild confusion onward to the sea.
Sad are the notes of nature—doubly sad,
Where leaping o’er her brown and dizzy height,
With robe of silver and a rainbow crown,
Niagara sings her thunder-hymn to earth’s
Remotest waters—where oft the poet’s eye
Beholds, amid the shades of autumn eve,
The Tuscarora in his phantom bark,
Singing his death-song on the cataract’s brow.
Or where, amid Virginia’s fertile vale,
The Rockbridge in its grandeur towers above
The little stream that runs so far beneath,
That human ear ne’er caught its hoarsest brawl.
There where the Deluge pierced the mountain chain
And sent its wild pent river to the sea,
The storm, with sternest music, calls its clouds,
And through the giant arch remorseless sweeps
Causing dread whirlpools of the misty air.

Autumn departs, and earth in sadness mourns,
And all around is desolate and chill.
Empires have had their autumns, and are lost
Beneath the dead and rustling leaves of time.
Egypt, majestic in her ruin, sleeps
Upon the Nile—the pyramids her history
And her tomb. Idumea, ’mid her cliffs,
Yawns in her gloom, an empty sepulchre.
Tadmor is hid amid the desert sand;
Balbec’s tremendous wall upon the waste,
Shelters the spotted lizard and the owl;
And Babylon, the mighty, is a heap
By the Euphrates. Tyre has been swallowed
By the tideless sea; Greece sits in darkness
On her classic hills, ’mid templed groves,
Her king a Saxon, and her children slaves.
The Muscovite has found a shorter way
To old Byzantium; and the lazy Turk
That loiters there, is but a Turk in name.
Dark Ethiopia knows her bounds no more;
Carthage is but a pasture wild for goats;
Persia now roams the waste in broken hordes;
Imperial Rome, once mistress of the world,
Is but a province, where a mitred priest
Sits in the Cæsar’s chair without his crown;
And the furr’d Russ directs the haughty race
Of Ghengis Khan and fiery Tamerlane.
Ages and kingdoms feel the sickle click,
And bend their heads before the reaper’s tread.
The Earth shall have her autumn, with the stars
That sang in beauty at the birth of Time;
And Death shall have his autumn, for he too
Must die. The Heavens shall have their autumn,
And be rolled back to their ancient nothingness.
And all shall fade, and fall around, and die,
But God, and the vast Hierarchy of souls.
—
Oh, death! when thou dost come with trembling limbs,
Down the brown hills, where waves the ripened grain,
And bear the aged exile home to God,
While autumn’s wailing wind sings Harvest Home.
When health’s bright roses slowly fade away,
As flowers of spring-time breathed on by the frost;
When dire consumption saps the roots of life,
And slow but sure its victims steal along
The shaded path that winds around the tomb;
Or when by burning fever racked and parched,
The prostrate form with joy awaits the call;
Or when forsaken by the loved and false,
The broken spirit sits beside the grave,
And weaves strange garlands from the withered flowers,
To crown the head-stone of departed hopes,
Thou art a welcome guest.
But when in youth and health, without a sign,
Thou comest in thy most appalling form,
Swift as the sunbeam streaming from on high,
Then thou dost rudely snap hope’s brightest buds,
And form dread sepulchres in every heart—
Chasms that never close with rolling years—
Wounds that forever festering, never heal,
Till deeper sorrows settle on the soul.

Autumn departs, and with it ends the song
Of the rude bard, who first essayed to sing
In high scholastic verse, its scenes of gold;
A pleasant pastime for an idle month,
When the hot sun pour’d down its sickly rays.
And pestilence at noonday walked abroad.

Autumn departs, and on its cheerless gale,
Sighing o’er barren moor and russet grove,
The feeble lay goes forth, with deep distrust,
And much of hope, entwined with more of fear.
If it shall fail—and stranger things have been,
And with the leaves around, whirl through the glen,
And up the forest’s melancholy path,
Lifeless and useless, as its withered band.
’Tis an old truth, by bard of sweetness told,
“Leaves have their time to fall, and stars to set.”

But if perchance some generous soul shall take
The half-fledged warbler to a pleasant home,
Where bright-eyed children gather in their joy—
Type of the host that throng the homes of Heaven—
Glean from its varied notes one sound to please,
One truth to charm and elevate the soul,
And bid young genius in her wild-wood sing,
The scenes and glories of her native land—
Then shall the bard in his retreat rejoice,
And sing again, when spring, with sunny brow,
Shall speak the resurrection of the flowers.

* * * * *

STANZAS.

BY THOMAS FITZGERALD.

Ah! weary days have passed since last we met,
But not with time has distance longer grown!
My heart, well-tutored, never can forget
Its love for thee, my beautiful, my own!

I would that I were near thee, gentle one,
To see thee gladly smile, and hear thee speak,
And list the sweetness of thy silver tone,
And mark the changes on thy blushing cheek!

I see the pathway where our ramble led—
Where brightest flowers in rarest fragrance vied—
The fairy nook, whence sunlight trembling fled,
And laughing water-fall in music died!

But not for me the pensive walk of eve—
Life’s sterner duties claim my footsteps now;
Yet does the yearning heart full often grieve
For those dear haunts where first we breathed love’s vow.

* * * * *

THE PORTRAIT.

BY KATE DASHWOOD.

A fair, young, thoughtful face—and very pale
Is the soft dimpled cheek, and o’er her brow
Lingereth a strange, wild beauty; many a tale
Thy bright ideal weaveth for her now.
Those breathing lips!—they speak not, but you feel
Love’s thrilling kiss, hath mingled with his sigh,
The dreamy depths of those dark eyes reveal
The soul of Sappho’s song—_to love or die_!
Yet on that fair, young brow is set the seal
Of woman’s firm resolve, and o’er-mastering high.

* * * * *

THOMAS CARLYLE AND HIS WORKS.

BY HENRY D. THOREAU.

(_Concluded from page 152._)

But he is wilfully and pertinaciously unjust, even scurrilous, impolite, ungentlemanly; calls us “Imbeciles,” “Dilettants,” “Philistines,” implying sometimes what would not sound well expressed. If he would adopt the newspaper style, and take back these hard names—but where is the reader who does not derive some benefit from these epithets, applying them to himself? Think not that with each repetition of them there is a fresh overflowing of bile; oh no! Perhaps none at all after the first time, only a faithfulness, the right name being found, to apply it—“They are the same ones we meant before”—and ofttimes with a genuine sympathy and encouragement expressed. Indeed, there appears in all his writings a hearty and manly sympathy with all misfortune and wretchedness, and not a weak and sniveling one. They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with the gods themselves, in view of their grotesque, half-finished creatures.

He is, in fact, the best tempered, and not the least impartial of reviewers. He goes out of his way to do justice to profligates and quacks. There is somewhat even Christian, in the rarest and most peculiar sense, in his universal brotherliness, his simple, child-like endurance, and earnest, honest endeavor, with sympathy for the like. And this fact is not insignificant, that he is almost the only writer of biography, of the lives of men, in modern times. So kind and generous a tribute to the genius of Burns cannot be expected again, and is not needed. We honor him for his noble reverence for Luther, and his patient, almost reverent study of Goethe’s genius, anxious that no shadow of his author’s meaning escape him for want of trustful attention. There is nowhere else, surely, such determined and generous love of whatever is manly in history. His just appreciation of any, even inferior talent, especially of all sincerity, under whatever guise, and all true men of endeavor, must have impressed every reader. Witness the chapters on Werner, Heyne, even Cagliostro, and others. He is not likely to underrate his man. We are surprised to meet with such a discriminator of kingly qualities in these republican and democratic days, such genuine loyalty all thrown away upon the world.

Carlyle, to adopt his own classification, is himself the hero, as literary man. There is no more notable working-man in England, in Manchester or Birmingham, or the mines round about. We know not how many hours a-day he toils, nor for what wages, exactly, we only know the results for us. We hear through the London fog and smoke the steady systole, diastole, and vibratory hum, from “Somebody’s Works” there; the “Print Works,” say some; the “Chemicals,” say others; where something, at any rate, is manufactured which we remember to have seen in the market. This is the place, then. Literature has come to mean, to the ears of laboring men, something idle, something cunning and pretty merely, because the nine hundred and ninety-nine really write for fame or for amusement. But as the laborer works, and soberly by the sweat of his brow earns bread for his body, so this man _works_ anxiously and _sadly_, to get bread of life, and dispense it. We cannot do better than quote his own estimate of labor from Sartor Resartus.

“Two men I honor, and no third. First; the toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man’s. Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse, wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee. Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labor; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on; _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.”

“A second man I honor, and still more highly; him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he, too, in his duty, endeavoring toward inward harmony, revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavor are one; when we can name him Artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, that with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us. If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two in all their degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.”

“Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness.”

* * * * *

Notwithstanding the very genuine, admirable, and loyal tributes to Burns, Schiller, Goethe, and others, Carlyle is not a critic of poetry. In the book of heroes, Shakspeare, the hero, as poet, comes off rather slimly. His sympathy, as we said, is with the men of endeavor; not using the life got, but still bravely getting their life. “In fact,” as he says of Cromwell, “every where we have to notice the decisive, practical _eye_ of this man; how he drives toward the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight into what _is_ fact.” You must have very stout legs to get noticed at all by him. He is thoroughly English in his love of practical men, and dislike for cant, and ardent enthusiastic heads that are not supported by any legs. He would kindly knock them down that they may regain some vigor by touching their mother earth. We have often wondered how he ever found out Burns, and must still refer a good share of his delight in him to neighborhood and early association. The Lycidas and Comus appearing in Blackwood’s Magazine, would probably go unread by him, nor lead him to expect a Paradise Lost. The condition of England question is a practical one. The condition of England demands a hero, not a poet. Other things demand a poet; the poet answers other demands. Carlyle in London, with this question pressing on him so urgently, sees no occasion for minstrels and rhapsodists there. Kings may have their bards when there are any kings. Homer would _certainly_ go a begging there. He lives in Chelsea, not on the plains of Hindostan, nor on the prairies of the West, where settlers are scarce, and a man must at least go _whistling_ to himself.

What he says of poetry is rapidly uttered, and suggestive of a thought, rather than the deliberate development of any. He answers your question, What is poetry? by writing a special poem, as that Norse one, for instance, in the Book of Heroes, altogether wild and original;—answers your question, What is light? by kindling a blaze which dazzles you, and pales sun and moon, and not as a peasant might, by opening a shutter. And, certainly, you would say that this question never could be answered but by the grandest of poems; yet he has not dull breath and stupidity enough, perhaps, to give the most deliberate and universal answer, such as the fates wring from illiterate and unthinking men. He answers like Thor, with a stroke of his hammer, whose dint makes a valley in the earth’s surface.

Carlyle is not a _seer_, but a brave looker-on and _reviewer_; not the most free and catholic observer of men and events, for they are likely to find him preoccupied, but unexpectedly free and catholic when they fall within the focus of his lens. He does not live in the present hour, and read men and books as they occur for his theme, but having chosen this, he directs his studies to this end.

But if he supplies us with arguments and illustrations against himself, we will remember that we may perhaps be convicted of error from the same source—stalking on these lofty reviewer’s stilts so far from the green pasturage around. If we look again at his page, we are apt to retract somewhat that we have said. Often a genuine poetic feeling dawns through it, like the texture of the earth seen through the dead grass and leaves in the spring. There is indeed more poetry in this author than criticism on poetry. He often reminds us of the ancient Scald, inspired by the grimmer features of life, dwelling longer on Dante than on Shakspeare. We have not recently met with a more solid and unquestionable piece of poetic work than that episode of “The Ancient Monk,” in Past and Present, at once idyllic, narrative, heroic; a beautiful restoration of a past age. There is nothing like it elsewhere that we know of. The History of the French Revolution is a poem, at length got translated into prose; an Iliad, indeed, as he himself has it—“The destructive wrath of Sansculotism: this is what we speak, having unhappily no voice for singing.”

One improvement we could suggest in this last, as indeed in most epics, that he should let in the sun oftener upon his picture. It does not often enough appear, but it is all revolution, the old way of human life turned simply bottom upward, so that when at length we are inadvertently reminded of the “Brest Shipping,” a St. Domingo colony, and that anybody thinks of owning plantations, and simply turning up the soil there, and that now at length, after some years of this revolution, there is a falling off in the importation of sugar, we feel a queer surprise. Had they not sweetened their water with Revolution then? It would be well if there were several chapters headed “Work for the Mouth”—Revolution-work inclusive, of course—“Altitude of the Sun,” “State of the Crops and Markets,” “Meteorological Observations,” “Attractive Industry,” “Day Labor,” &c., just to remind the reader that the French peasantry did something beside go without breeches, burn châteaus, get ready knotted cords, and embrace and throttle one another by turns. These things are sometimes hinted at, but they deserve a notice more in proportion to their importance. We want not only a background to the picture, but a ground under the feet also. We remark, too, occasionally, an unphilosophical habit, common enough elsewhere, in Alison’s History of Modern Europe, for instance, of saying, undoubtedly with effect, that if a straw had not fallen this way or that, why then—but, of course, it is as easy in philosophy to make kingdoms rise and fall as straws. The old adage is as true for our purpose, which says that a miss is as good as a mile. Who shall say how near the man came to being killed who was not killed? If an apple had not fallen then we had never heard of Newton and the law of gravitation; as if they could not have contrived to let fall a pear as well.

The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well as nature. Carlyle has not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes, struggling in a lurid light, with Iötuns still, striving to throw the old woman, and “she was Time”—striving to lift the big cat—and that was “The Great World-Serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the whole created world.” The smith, though so brawny and tough, I should not call the healthiest man. There is too much shop-work, too great extremes of heat and cold, and incessant ten-pound-ten and thrashing of the anvil, in his life. But the haymaker’s is a true sunny perspiration, produced by the extreme of summer heat only, and conversant with the blast of the zephyr, not of the forge-bellows. We know very well the nature of this man’s sadness, but we do not know the nature of his gladness. There sits Bull in the court all the year round, with his hoarse bark and discontented growl—not a cross dog, only a canine habit, verging to madness some think—now separated from the shuddering travelers only by the paling, now heard afar in the horizon, even melodious there; baying the moon o’ nights, _baying the sun by day_, with his mastiff mouth. He never goes after the cows, nor stretches in the sun, nor plays with the children. Pray give him a longer rope, ye gods, or let him go at large, and never taste raw meat more.

The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world while he lives. _Philosophia practica est eruditionis meta_, philosophy practiced is the good of learning; and for that other, _Oratoris est celare artem_, we might read, _Herois est celare pugnam_, the hero will conceal his struggles. Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Carlyle speaks of Nature with a certain unconscious pathos for the most part. She is to him a receded but ever memorable splendor, casting still a reflected light over all his scenery. As we read his books here in New England, where there are potatoes enough, and every man can get his living peacefully and sportively as the birds and bees, and need think no more of that, it seems to us as if by the world he often meant London, at the head of the tide upon the Thames, the sorest place on the face of the earth, the very citadel of conservatism. Possibly a South African village might have furnished a more hopeful, and more exacting audience, or in the silence of the wilderness and the desert, he might have addressed himself more entirely to his true audience posterity.

In his writings, we should say that he, as conspicuously as any, though with little enough expressed or even conscious sympathy, represents the Reformer class, and all the better for not being the acknowledged leader of any. In him the universal plaint is most settled, unappeasable and serious. Until a thousand named and nameless grievances are righted, there will be no repose for him in the lap of nature, or the seclusion of science and literature. By foreseeing it he hastens the crisis in the affairs of England, and is as good as many years added to her history.

As we said, we have no adequate word from him concerning poets—Homer, Shakspeare; nor more, we might add, of Saints—Jesus; nor philosophers—Socrates, Plato; nor mystics—Swedenborg. He has no articulate sympathy at least with such as these as yet. Odin, Mahomet, Cromwell, will have justice at his hands, and we would leave him to write the Eulogies of all the giants of the will, but the kings of men, whose kingdoms are wholly in the hearts of their subjects, strictly transcendent and moral greatness, what is highest and worthiest in character, he is not inclined to dwell upon or point to. To do himself justice, and set some of his readers right, he should give us some transcendent hero at length, to rule his demigods and Titans; develop, perhaps, his reserved and dumb reverence for Christ, not speaking to a London or Church of England audience merely. Let _not_ “sacred silence meditate that sacred matter” forever, but let us have sacred speech and sacred scripture thereon. True reverence is not necessarily dumb, but ofttimes prattling and hilarious as children in the spring.

Every man will include in his list of worthies those whom he himself best represents. Carlyle, and our countryman Emerson, whose place and influence must ere long obtain a more distinct recognition, are, to a certain extent, the complement of each other. The age could not do with one of them, it cannot do with both. To make a broad and rude distinction, to suit our present purpose, the former, as critic, deals with the men of action—Mahomet, Luther, Cromwell; the latter with the thinkers—Plato, Shakspeare, Goethe, for though both have written upon Goethe, they do not meet in him. The one has more sympathy with the heroes, or practical reformers, the other with the observers, or philosophers. Put these worthies together, and you will have a pretty fair representation of mankind; yet with one or more memorable exceptions. To say nothing of Christ, who yet awaits a just appreciation from literature, the peacefully practical hero, whom Columbus may represent, is obviously slighted; but above and after all, the Man of the Age, come to be called working-man, it is obvious that none yet speaks to his condition, for the speaker is not yet in his condition. There is poetry and prophecy to cheer him, and advice of the head and heart to the hands; but no very memorable coöperation, it must be confessed, since the Christian era, or rather since Prometheus tried it. It is even a note-worthy fact, that a man addresses effectually in another only himself still, and what he himself does and is, alone can he prompt the other to do and to become. Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry, &c. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the east, how little to the west—

In the East fames are won,
In the West deeds are done.

* * * * *

One more merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes many cart-loads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His writings are all enfenced on the side of the future and the possible. He does not place himself across the passage out of his books, so that none may go freely out, but rather by the entrance, inviting all to come in and go through. No gins, no net-work, no pickets here, to restrain the free thinking reader. In many books called philosophical, we find ourselves running hither and thither, under and through, and sometimes quite unconsciously straddling some imaginary fence-work, which in our clairvoyance we had not noticed, but fortunately, not with such fatal consequences as happen to those birds which fly against a white-washed wall, mistaking it for fluid air. As we proceed the wreck of this dogmatic tissue collects about the organs of our perception, like cobwebs about the muzzles of hunting dogs in dewy mornings. If we look up with such eyes as these authors furnish, we see no heavens, but a low pent-roof of straw or tiles, as if we stood under a shed, with no sky-light through which to glimpse the blue.

Carlyle, though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless, lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us reflected in innumerable pools and lakes. We have from him, occasionally, some hints of a possible science of astronomy even, and revelation of heavenly arcana, but nothing definite hitherto.

* * * * *

These volumes contain not the highest, but a very practicable wisdom, which startles and provokes, rather than informs us. Carlyle does not oblige us to think; we have thought enough for him already, but he compels us to act. We accompany him rapidly through an endless gallery of pictures, and glorious reminiscences of experiences unimproved. “Have you not had Moses and the prophets? Neither will ye be persuaded if one should rise from the dead.” There is no calm philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s hearth, how men shall live in these winter, in these summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the literary man, than of any thing else. A rare preacher, with prayer, and psalm, and sermon, and benediction, but no contemplation of man’s life from serene oriental ground, nor yet from the stirring occidental. No thanksgiving sermon for the holydays, or the Easter vacations, when all men submit to float on the full currents of life. When we see with what spirits, though with little heroism enough, wood-choppers, drovers, and apprentices, take and spend life, playing all day long, sunning themselves, shading themselves, eating, drinking, sleeping, we think that the philosophy of their life written would be such a level natural history as the Gardener’s Calendar, and the works of the early botanists, inconceivably slow to come to practical conclusions; its premises away off before the first morning light, ere the heather was introduced into the British isles, and no inferences to be drawn during this noon of the day, not till after the remote evening shadows have begun to fall around.

There is no philosophy here for philosophers, only as every man is said to have his philosophy. No system but such as is the man himself; and, indeed, he stands compactly enough. No progress beyond the first assertion and challenge, as it were, with trumpet blast. One thing is certain, that we had best be doing something in good earnest, henceforth forever; that’s an indispensable philosophy. The before impossible precept, “_know thyself_,” he translates into the partially possible one, “_know what thou canst work at_.” Sartor Resartus is, perhaps, the sunniest and most philosophical, as it is the most autobiographical of his works, in which he drew most largely on the experience of his youth. But we miss everywhere a calm depth, like a lake, even stagnant, and must submit to rapidity and whirl, as on skates, with all kinds of skillful and antic motions, sculling, sliding, cutting punch-bowls and rings, forward and backward. The talent is very nearly equal to the genius. Sometimes it would be preferable to wade slowly through a Serbonian bog, and feel the juices of the meadow. We should say that he had not speculated far, but faithfully, living up to it. He lays all the stress still on the most elementary and initiatory maxims, introductory to philosophy. It is the experience of the religionist. He pauses at such a quotation as, “It is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin;” or, “Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action;” or, “Do the duty which lies nearest thee.” The chapters entitled, “The Everlasting No,” and “The Everlasting Yea,” contain what you might call the religious experience of his hero. In the latter, he assigns to him these words, brief, but as significant as any we remember in this author:—“One BIBLE I know, of whose plenary inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay, with my own eyes I saw the God’s-hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but leaves.” This belongs to “The Everlasting Yea;” yet he lingers unaccountably in “The Everlasting No,” under the negative pole. “Truth!” he still cries with Teüfelsdrock, “though the heavens crush me for following her: no falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of apostacy.” Again, “Living without God in the world, of God’s light I was not utterly bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him, nevertheless, in my heart He was present, and His heaven-written law still stood legible and sacred there.” Again, “Ever from that time, [_the era of his Protest_,] the temper of my misery was changed: not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim, fire-eyed defiance.” And in the “Centre of Indifference,” as editor, he observes, that “it was no longer a quite hopeless unrest,” and then proceeds, not in his best style, “For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpungable; outward from which the remaining dominions, not, indeed, without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.”

Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems. Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths, the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this work-shop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity; in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher, will be mere propositions, like the rest. It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing. He will prophecy, tell what is to be, or in other words, what alone is, under appearances, laying little stress on the boiling of the pot, or the Condition of England question. He has no more to do with the condition of England than with her national debt, which a vigorous generation would not inherit. The philosopher’s conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men’s, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher, is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely, and according to universal laws. In this, which was the ancient sense, we think there has been no philosopher in modern times. The wisest and most practical men of recent history, to whom this epithet has been hastily applied, have lived comparatively meagre lives, of conformity and tradition, such as their fathers transmitted to them. But a man may live in what style he can. Between earth and heaven, there is room for all kinds. If he take counsel of fear and prudence, he has already failed. One who believed, by his very constitution, some truth which a few words express, would make a revolution never to be forgotten in this world; for it needs but a fraction of truth to found houses and empires on.

However, such distinctions as poet and philosopher, do not much assist our final estimate of a man; we do not lay much stress on them. “A man’s a man for a’ that.” If Carlyle does not take two steps in philosophy, are there any who take three? Philosophy having crept clinging to the rocks, so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain. It would be hard to surprise him by the relation of any important human experience, but in some nook or corner of his works, you will find that this, too, was sometimes dreamed of in his philosophy.

To sum up our most serious objections, in a few words, we should say that Carlyle indicates a depth,—and we mean not impliedly, but distinctly,—which he neglects to fathom. We want to know more about that which he wants to know as well. If any luminous star, or undissolvable nebula, is visible from his station, which is not visible from ours, the interests of science require that the fact be communicated to us. The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude. We want to hear more of his inmost life; his hymn and prayer, more; his elegy and eulogy, less; that he should speak more from his character, and less from his talent; communicate centrally with his readers, and not by a side; that he should say what he believes, without suspecting that men disbelieve it, out of his never-misunderstood nature. Homer and Shakspeare speak directly and confidently to us. The confidence implied in the unsuspicious tone of the world’s worthies, is a great and encouraging fact. Dig up some of the earth you stand on, and show that. If he gave us religiously the meagre results of his experience, his style would be less picturesque and diversified, but more attractive and impressive. His genius can cover all the land with gorgeous palaces, but the reader does not abide in them, but pitches his tent rather in the desert and on the mountain peak.

When we look about for something to quote, as the fairest specimen of the man, we confess that we labor under an unusual difficulty; for his philosophy is so little of the proverbial or sentential kind, and opens so gradually, rising insensibly from the reviewer’s level, and developing its thought completely and in detail, that we look in vain for the brilliant passages, for point and antithesis, and must end by quoting his works entire. What in a writer of less breadth would have been the proposition which would have bounded his discourse, his column of victory, his Pillar of Hercules, and _ne plus ultra_, is in Carlyle frequently the same thought unfolded; no Pillar of Hercules, but a considerable prospect, north and south, along the Atlantic coast. There are other pillars of Hercules, like beacons and light-houses, still further in the horizon, toward Atlantis, set up by a few ancient and modern travelers; but, so far as this traveler goes, he clears and colonizes, and all the surplus population of London is bound thither at once. What we would quote is, in fact, his vivacity, and not any particular wisdom or sense, which last is ever synonymous with sentence, [_sententia_,] as in his cotemporaries, Coleridge, Landor and Wordsworth.

We have not attempted to discriminate between his works, but have rather regarded them all as one work, as is the man himself. We have not examined so much as remembered them. To do otherwise, would have required a more indifferent, and perhaps even less just review, than the present. The several chapters were thankfully received, as they came out, and now we find it impossible to say which was best; perhaps each was best in its turn. They do not require to be remembered by chapters—that is a merit—but are rather remembered as a well-known strain, reviving from time to time, when it had nearly died away, and always inspiring us to worthier and more persistent endeavors.

In his last work, “The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell,” Carlyle has added a chapter to the history of England; has actually written a chapter of her history, and, in comparison with this, there seems to be no other,—this, and the thirty thousand or three hundred thousand pamphlets in the British Museum, and that is all. This book is a practical comment on Universal History. What if there were a British Museum in Athens and Babylon, and nameless cities! It throws light on the history of the Iliad and the labors of Pisistratus. History is, then, an account of memorable events that have sometime transpired, and not an incredible and confused fable, quarters for scholars merely, or a gymnasium for poets and orators. We may say that he has dug up a hero, who was buried alive in his battle-field, hauled him out of his cairn, on which every passer had cast a pamphlet. We had heard of their digging up Arthurs before to be sure they were there; and, to be sure they were there, their bones, seven feet of them; but they had to bury them again. Others have helped to make known Shakspeare, Milton, Herbert, to give a name to such treasures as we all possessed; but, in this instance, not only a lost character has been restored to our imaginations, but palpably a living body, as it were, to our senses, to wear and sustain the former. His Cromwell’s restoration, if England will read it faithfully, and addressed to New England too. Every reader will make his own application.