was a most melancholy prospect ahead,—­not revolution, but universal degradation, and the reign of injustice.  This sad condition of the people was contrasted in his mind with what it had been centuries before, as it appeared from an old book which he happened to read, Jocelin’s Chronicles, which painted English life in the twelfth century.  He fancied that the world was going on from bad to worse; and in this gloomy state of mind he wrote his “Past and Present,” which appeared in 1843, and created a storm of anger as well as admiration.  It was a sort of protest against the political systems of economy then so popular.  Lockhart said of it that he could accept none of his friend’s inferences except one,—­“that we were all wrong, and were all like to be damned.”

Gloomy and satirical as the book was, it made a great impression on the thinkers of the day, while it did not add to the author’s popularity.  It seemed as if he were a prophet of wrath,—­an Ishmaelite whose hand was against everybody.  He offended all political parties,—­“the Tories by his radicalism, and the Radicals by his scorn of their formulas; the High Churchman by his Protestantism, and the Low Churchman by evident unorthodoxy.”  Yet all parties and sects admitted that much that he said was true, while at the same time they had no sympathy with his fierce ravings.

For ten years after the publication of the “French Revolution” Carlyle assumed the functions of a prophet, hurling anathemas and pronouncing woes.  To his mind everything was alike disjointed or false or pretentious, in view of which he uttered groans and hisses and maledictions.  The very name of a society designed to ameliorate evils seemed to put him into a passion.  Every reformer appeared to him to be a blind teacher of the blind.  Exeter Hall, then the scene of every variety of social and religious and political discussion, was to him a veritable pandemonium.  Everybody at that period of agitation and reform was giving lectures, and everybody went to hear them; and Carlyle ridiculed them all alike as pedlers of nostrums to heal diseases which were incurable.  He lived in an atmosphere of disdain.  “The English people,” said he, “number some thirty millions,—­mostly fools.”  His friends expostulated with him for giving utterance to such bitter expressions, and for holding such gloomy views.  John Mill was mortally offended, and walked no more with him.  De Quincey said, “You have made a new hole in your society kettle:  how do you propose to mend it?”

Yet all this while Carlyle had not lost faith in Providence, as it might seem, but felt that God would inflict calamities on peoples for their sins.  He resembled Savonarola more than he did Voltaire.  What seemed to some to be mockeries were really the earnest protests of his soul against universal corruption, to be followed by downward courses and retribution.  His mind was morbid from intense reflection on certain evils, and from his physical ailments.  He doubtless grieved and alienated his best friends by his diatribes against popular education and free institutions.  He even appeared to lean to despotism and the rule of tyrants, provided only they were strong.