Mr Carlyle—­an astute and trenchant critic might, with show of justice, remark—­assumes to be the reformer and castigator of his age—­a reformer in philosophy, in politics, in religion—­denouncing its mechanical method of thinking, deploring its utter want of faith, and threatening political society, obstinately deaf to the voice of wisdom, with the retributive horrors of repeated revolutions; and yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to promulgate.  The age is irreligious, he exclaims, and the vague feeling of the impenetrable mystery which encompasses us, is all the theology we can gather from him; civil society, with its laws and government, is in a false and perilous position, and for all relief and reformation, he launches forth an indisputable morality—­precepts of charity, and self-denial, and strenuous effort—­precepts most excellent, and only too applicable; applicable, unfortunately, after an a priori fashion—­for if men would but obey them, there had been need of few laws, and of no remedial measures.

This man of faith—­our critic might continue—­has but one everlasting note; and it is really the most sceptical and melancholy that has ever been heard, or heard with toleration, in our literature.  He repeats it from his favourite apostle Goethe; “all doubt is to be cured only—­by action.”  Certainly, if forgetting the doubt, and the subject of doubt, be the sole cure for it.  But that other advice which Mr Carlyle tells us was given, and in vain, to George Fox, the Quaker, at a time when he was agitated by doubts and perplexities, namely, “to drink beer and dance with the girls,” was of the very same stamp, and would have operated in the very same manner, to the removing of the pious Quaker’s doubts.  Faith! ye lack faith! cries this prophet in our streets; and when reproved and distressed scepticism enquires where truth is to be found, he bids it back to the loom or the forge, to its tools and its workshop, of whatever kind these may be—­there to forget the enquiry.

The religion, or, if he pleases, the formula of religion, which helps to keep men sober and orderly, Mr Carlyle despises, ridicules; “old clothes!” he cries, empty and ragged.  It is not till a man has risen into frenzy, or some hot fanaticism, that he deserves his respect.  An Irving, when his noble spirit, kindled to fever heat, is seized with delirium, becomes worthy of some admiration.  A Cromwell is pronounced emphatically to have believed in a God, and therefore to have been “by far the remarkablest governor we have had here for the last five centuries or so.”  Meanwhile, is it the faith of an Irving, or the God of a Cromwell, that our subtle-minded author would have us adopt, or would adopt himself?  If he scorn the easy, methodical citizen, who plods along the beaten tracks of life, looking occasionally, in his demure, self-satisfied