of Industry,” “The Landed,” “The Gifted”?  What truth, what force in the aphorism:—­“To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled; effaced, and what is worse, defaced!”—­“Of all Bibles, the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this ‘Bible of Universal History’”—­“The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World.”  What new meaning that phrase has acquired in these fifty years!  “Men of letters may become a ‘chivalry,’ an actual instead of a virtual Priesthood.”  Well! not men of letters exactly:  but perhaps philosophers, with an adequate moral and scientific training.  Here, as so often, Carlyle just missed a grand truth to which his insight and nobility of soul had led him, through his perverse inability to accept any systematic philosophy, and through his habit to listen to the whispering of his own heart as if it were equivalent to scientific certainty.  But the whole book, Past and Present, is a splendid piece and has done much to mould the thought of our time.  It would impress us much more than it does, were it not already become the very basis of all sincere thought about social problems and the future conditions of industry.

Of the Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845) we have already spoken, as the greatest of our author’s effective products, inasmuch as it produced the most definite practical result in moulding opinion, and a result of the highest importance.  But it is not, as we have seen, a work of art, or even an organic work at all, and it cannot compare in literary charm with some other of the author’s works.  We do not turn to the Cromwell again and again, as we do to the French Revolution, or to Sartor, which we can take up from time to time as we do a poem or a romance.  Many of the great books of the world are not read and re-read by the public, just as none but special students continually resort to the Novum Organum, or the Wealth of Nations.  For similar reasons, the Cromwell will never be a favourite book with the next century, as it cannot be said to have been with ours.  It has done its work with masterly power; and its work will endure.  And some day perhaps, from out these materials, and those collected by Mr. Gardiner, and by [Transcriber’s note:  next two words transliterated from Greek] oi peri Gardiner, a Life of Cromwell may be finally composed.

It is true that Carlyle’s determination to force Oliver upon us as perfect saint and infallible hero is irritating and sometimes laughable; it is true that his zeal to be-dwarf every one but Cromwell himself is unjust and untrue; and the depreciation of every man who declines to play into Oliver’s hands is too often manifest.  But, on the whole, the judgments are so sound, the supporting authorities are so overwhelming, the work of verification is so thorough, so scrupulous, so perfectly borne out by all subsequent research—­that the future will no doubt look on the Cromwell, not only as the most extraordinary, but the most satisfactory and effective of all Carlyle’s work; although for the reasons stated, it can never have the largest measure of his literary charm or possess the full afflatus of his poetic and mystical genius.