The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in the pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are immediately connected.  It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed to England the continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the issues of individual action.  Seeing the infinite in the finite, living under a continued sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he flung explosive negations amidst the narrow formulae of the social and religious orthodoxy of his day, blew down the blinding walls of ethical individualism, and, amidst much smoke and din, showed his English readers something of the greatness of the moral world.  He gave us a philosophy of clothes, penetrated through symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned all shibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modes of man’s activity.  He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual, that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and that national welfare rests on character.  After reading him, it is impossible for any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He not only imagined, but knew, how “all things the minutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing.  I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it:  will not the price of beaver rise?  It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.”  Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the “laissez-faire” theory rampant in his day, and made each individual responsible for the race.  He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours.  There will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the laws of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums.  “Ye are my brethren,” said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too denunciatory way of dealing with them, “hence my rage and sorrow.”

But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only despair for him.  He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not the dignity which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of humanity upon his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that all the good of the world was there to help him bear it, and that “One with God is a majority.”  He taught only the half-truth, that all men are united on the side of duty, and that the spiritual life of each is conditional on striving to save all.  But he neglected the complement of this truth, and forgot the greatness of the beings on whom so great a duty could be laid.  He therefore dignifies humanity only to degrade it again.  The “twenty millions” each must try to save “are mostly fools.”  But how fools, when they can have such a task?  Is it not true, on the contrary,