Carlyle clings to the Christian formulary and the old Christian life in spite of himself.  He is almost fanatical in his attachment to the mediaeval times,—­to the ancient worship, its ceremonial, music, and architecture, its monastic government, its saints and martyrs.  And the reason, as he shows in the “Past and Present,” is, that all this array of devotion, this pomp and ceremony, this music and painting, this gorgeous and sublime architecture, this fasting and praying, were real,—­faithful manifestations of a religion which to that people was truly genuine and holy.  They who built the cathedrals of Europe, adorned them with carvings, pictures, and those stately windows with their storied illuminations which at this day are often miracles of beauty and of art, were not frivolous modern conventicle-builders, but poets as grand as Milton, and sculptors whose genius might front that of Michel Angelo.  It was no dead belief in a dead religion which designed and executed these matchless temples.  Man and Religion were both alive in those days; and the worship of God was so profound a prostration of the inmost spirit before his majesty and glory, that the souls of the artists seem to have been inspired, and to have received their archetypes in heavenly visions.  Such temples it is neither in the devotion nor the faculty of the modern Western world to conceive or construct.  Carlyle knows all this, and he falls back in loving admiration upon those old times and their worthies, despising the filigree materials of which the men of to-day are for the most part composed.  He revels in that picture of monastic life, also, which is preserved in the record of Jocelyn de Brakelonde.  He sees all men at work there, each at his proper vocation;—­and he praises them, because they fear God and do their duty.  He finds them the same men, although with better and devouter hearts, as we are at this day.  Time makes no difference in this verdant human nature, which shows ever the same in Catholic monasteries as in Puritan meeting-houses.  We have a wise preachment, however, from that Past, to the Present, in Carlyle’s book, which is one of his best efforts, and contains isolated passages which for wisdom and beauty, and chastity of utterance, he has never exceeded.

We have no space to speak here of all his books with anything like critical integrity.  The greatest amongst them, however, is, perhaps, his “French Revolution, a History,”—­which is no history, but a vivid painting of characters and events as they moved along in tumultuous procession.  No one can appreciate this book who is not acquainted with the history in its details beforehand.  Emerson once related to us a striking anecdote connected with this work, which gives us another glimpse of Carlyle’s character.  He had just completed, after infinite labor, one of the three volumes of his History, which he left exposed on his study table when he went to bed.  Next morning he sought in vain for the manuscript, and had wellnigh concluded with Robert Hall, who was once in a similar dilemma, that the Devil had run away with it, when the servant-girl, on being questioned, confessed that she had burnt it to kindle the fire.  Carlyle neither stamped nor raved, but sat down without a word and rewrote it.