out simply what they hold to be truth.  It is his partiality only that we here take notice of, and the different measure that he deals out to the past and the present.  Out of compliment to a bygone century he can sink philosophy, and common sense too; when it might be something more than a compliment to the existing age to appear in harmony with its creed, he will not bate a jot from the subtlest of his metaphysical convictions.

Mr Carlyle not being en rapport with the religious spirit of his age, finds therein no religious spirit whatever; on the other hand, he has a great deal of religion of his own, not very clear to any but himself; and thus, between these two, we have pages, very many, of such raving as the following:—­

“It is even so.  To speak in the ancient dialect, we ’have forgotten God;’—­in the most modern dialect, and very truth of the matter, we have taken up the fact of the universe as it is not.  We have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal substance of things, and opened them only to the shows and shams of things.  We quietly believe this universe to be intrinsically a great unintelligible PERHAPS; extrinsically, clear enough, it is a great, most extensive cattle-fold and workhouse, with most extensive kitchen-ranges, dining-tables—­whereat he is wise who can find a place!  All the truth of this universe is uncertain; only the profit and the loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and remain very visible to the practical man.

“There is no longer any God for us!  God’s laws are become a greatest-happiness principle, a parliamentary expediency; the heavens overarch us only as an astronomical timekeeper:  a butt for Herschel telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot sentimentalities at:—­in our and old Jonson’s dialect, man has lost the soul out of him; and now, after the due period, begins to find the want of it!  This is verily the plague-spot—­centre of the universal social gangrene, threatening all modern things with frightful death.  To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and top-root, with its world-wide upas boughs and accursed poison exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony.  You touch the focal centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this.  There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt.  Vainly:  in killing Kings, in passing Reform Bills, in French Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found no remedy.  The foul elephantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, re-appears in new force and desperateness next hour.

“For actually this is not the real fact of the world; the world is not made so, but otherwise!  Truly, any society setting out from this no-God hypothesis will arrive at a result or two.  The unveracities, escorted each unveracity of them by its corresponding