While I was scanning the features and general appearance of the gentleman, the Omnibus stopped and put down three or four of the passengers, which gave me an opportunity of getting a seat by the side of my friend, who, in a low whisper, informed me that the gentleman whom I had been eyeing so closely, was no less a person than Thomas Carlyle.  I had read his “Hero-worship,” and “Past and Present,” and had formed a high opinion of his literary abilities.  But his recent attack upon the emancipated people of the West Indies, and his laborious article in favour of the re-establishment of the lash and slavery, had created in my mind a dislike for the man, and I almost regretted that we were in the same Omnibus.  In some things, Mr. Carlyle is right:  but in many, he is entirely wrong.  As a writer, Mr. Carlyle is often monotonous and extravagant.  He does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insignificant objects into importance, but generally takes commonplace thoughts and events, and tries to express them in stronger and statelier language than others.  He holds no communion with his kind, but stands alone without mate or fellow.  He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off.  He exists not by sympathy but by antipathy.  Mr. Carlyle seems chiefly to try how he shall display his own powers, and astonish mankind, by starting new trains of speculation or by expressing old ones so as not to be understood.  He cares little what he says, so as he can say it differently from others.  To read his works, is one thing; to understand them, is another.  If any one thinks that I exaggerate, let him sit for an hour over “Sartor Resartus,” and if he does not rise from its pages, place his three or four dictionaries on the shelf, and say I am right, I promise never again to say a word against Thomas Carlyle.  He writes one page in favour of Reform, and ten against it.  He would hang all prisoners to get rid of them, yet the inmates of the prisons and “work-houses are better off than the poor.”  His heart is with the poor; yet the blacks of the West Indies should be taught, that if they will not raise sugar and cotton by their own free will, “Quashy should have the whip applied to him.”  He frowns upon the Reformatory speakers upon the boards of Exeter Hall, yet he is the prince of reformers.  He hates heroes and assassins, yet Cromwell was an angel, and Charlotte Corday a saint.  He scorns everything, and seems to be tired of what he is by nature, and tries to be what he is not.  But you will ask, what has Thomas Carlyle to do with a visit to the Crystal Palace?  My only reply is, “Nothing,” and if my remarks upon him have taken up the space that should have been devoted to the Exhibition, and what I have written not prove too burdensome to read, my next will be “a week in the Crystal Palace.”

LETTER XVIII.

The London Peace Congress—­Meeting of Fugitive Slaves—­Temperance Demonstration—­The Great Exhibition:  last visit.