you cannot lead us?  And expect that we are to remain quietly unled, and in a composed manner perish of starvation?  What is it that you expect of us?  What is it that you mean to do with us?”—­if, we say, such a question is asked, we may not be able to answer, but we cannot stifle it.  Surely it is well that every class in the community should know how indissolubly its interest is connected with the well-being of other classes.  However remote the man of wealth may sit from scenes like this—­however reluctant he may be to hear of them—­nothing can be more true than that this distress is his calamity, and that on him also lies the inevitable alternative to remedy or to suffer.

It accords with the view we have here taken of the writings of Mr Carlyle, that of all his works that which pleased us most was the one most completely personal in its character, which most constantly kept the reader in a state of self-reflection.  In spite of all its oddities and vagaries, and the chaotic shape into which its materials have been thrown, the Sartor Resartus is a prime favourite of ours—­a sort of volcanic work; and the reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom.  But no sluggard’s peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs.  He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence.  Here is a fragment of it.  How it rebukes the spirit of strife and contention!

“To me, in this our life,” says the Professor, “which is an internecine warfare with the time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable.  Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is.  If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this—­’Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from my share; which, by the heavens, thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.’  Alas! and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a ’feast of shells,’ for the substance has been spilled out:  not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them!  Can we not, in all such cases, rather say—­’Take it, thou too ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wanted; take it with a blessing:  would to heaven I had enough for thee!’”—­P. 200.

Truisms!  Preachments repeated from Solomon downwards! some quick, impatient reader, all animal irritability, will exclaim—­Good, but it is the very prerogative of genius, in every age, to revive truisms such as these, and make them burn in our hearts.  Many a man in his hour of depression, when resolution is sicklied over by the pale cast of thought, will find, in the writings of Carlyle, a freshening stimulant, better than the wine-cup, or even the laughter of a