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that the old spiritual highways and recognised paths to the eternal,' are now all torn up and flung in heaps, submerged in 'unutterable boiling mud-oceans of hypocrisy and unbelievability, of brutal living atheism, and damnable dead putrescent cant;' supposing him to have assured his pupil of all this, is there anything so triumphantly satisfactory in the success, that he must needs trumpet it forth long after the poor object of his wayward powers has gone from his side into that future, where the consequences of present error may be far other than our philosopher supposes! In this view there is a Mephistopheles feeling running through the whole volume, which we are at a loss to understand except on the authority of a much older volume, which teaches us that men are sometimes surrendered to the delusions they have chosen. Some simple folk have been pleased to see, in the narrative of Archdeacon Hare, that the gifted youth, John Sterling, may be regarded as having had some good-some Christian thing in him even to the last. Whereupon, forth comes Mr. Carlyle, who, with all the dexterous handling he can bring to the subject, endeavours to show that it was not so; that the seeming Christianity of his friend was only seeming at best, and that at the last every vestige of that obsolete affair had vanished from him. As our amiable manipulator makes his way towards this conclusion, he looks toward the disappointed ones with the kind of glee upon his muscles for which we shall not try to find an adjective-saying, 'So much, good people, for 'your pious John Sterling; you see what I did for him in that way! In the whole history of infidel literature, we know of nothing to exceed this. Yet this is the man whom some Christian ministers can be vain to reckon among their friends and familiar acquaintance; and this is the book, too, which some of the said ministers can recommend to the youth under their influence! We wish we could believe in the extinction of the race called wolves in sheep's clothing-we wish we could regard phenomena of this complexion as unknown even among professed evangelical nonconformists.

But a closer investigation of Archdeacon Hare's 'Life of Sterling' will serve to explain the reason which induced Mr. Carlyle to follow with his supplement. Pantheism, or Carlyleism, or Nihilism, or whatever we may call the creed which consists in believing that no creed is possible, and that none of the 'many things we are in doubt about, and need to have demon'strated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made a 'religion for us,' is no sure preservation against a very vulgar failing, the failing of vanity. Now, it does so happen that the name of Carlyle is only twice mentioned by Archdeacon Hare

in the whole of his book, so far as we can discover, and in the few instances in which it occurs in quotations from Sterling's letters and papers given in the Life,'-eight we think in all,-four at least are accompanied by very questionable annotations:- Inadequacy of Carlyle's views;' his 'Chartism,' full of inconsistencies and fallacies; his Heroes,' 'on the whole, more free from delusive paradox than his other works;' Thirlwall's History,' superior to all in English for depth and compass, 'unless-prepare to laugh— Carlyle's.' Hinc ille lachryma! Here is the true cause of this Opus majus. But how strange that such a feeling should be indulged by a man who cannot write on any subject without exercising a mesmeric influence on his readers.

What, for example, can be more perfect of its kind than the portrait of Coleridge?- Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate'hill, in these years, looking down on London and its smoke tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting 'towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged "there;' the ascription to him of a magician character; the purring softness of the sneer as to his knowing the secret of believing by the reason' what the understanding' had been obliged to throw out as incredible; the bird's-eye view of London, which makes Highgate and Hampstead hills so remarkable; the personal sketch of face, manner, walk, tones, to the very snuffle; the raciness of the quotations of his discourse-all are inimitable. Not less delicious is the quiet rehearsal of the vast promises and null performances of the inspired dreamer. Still such sentences as the following do not carry immediate conviction: What the light of 'your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pro'nounces incredible,-that, in God's name, leave uncredited; at 'your peril do not try believing that.' Leaving out of the discussion the question what is meant by the light of your mind,' the exhortation contained in this oracular sentence is somewhat obscure, for it is not explained how under any circumstances there can be the slightest temptation to believe that which the faculty wherewith we believe pronounces to be unworthy of credit. Mr. Carlyle takes a bad fourpenny bit in change from the cad of the Chelsea omnibus; the light of his mind' pronounces the coin to be spurious;-not questionable, but downright pewter;it surely is most unnecessary to exhort the philosopher in God's name' to refuse to take it. The human mind may err, the light which illuminates it in its search for truth may sometimes fail, so that even in cases where a decisive judgment has been given, it is not impossible that it may be a mistaken one'; but the common case is that where the judgment is not given at all, and in cases of this nature, we must surely appeal to that probability which is

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the guide of life, and weigh the decisions to which others with superior light to ourselves have come, before we conclude either on the one side or the other.

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Mr. Carlyle, among other of his many peculiarities, has the peculiarity of throwing out, in a word, what is either a monstrous fallacy, or the result of a long train of patient investigation rightly conducted. A remarkable instance of this habit is to be found in his chapter on Coleridge. In his peculiar Lempriere's Dictionary vein, he talks of Coleridge as a modern Ixion, and ascribes to him the parentage of strange centaurs, spectral Puseyisms, monstrous illusory hybrids, and ecclesiastical Chi'meras, which now roam the earth in a very lamentable manner!' We will not quarrel with the mythology of the passage, although Hesiod might have been at issue as to the family tree of Chimera, who, if we mistake not, was daughter of the Serpent,* not of Ixion; for we should be exceedingly sorry to take spectral Puseyism out of such good company; and yet, such is our distrust of Mr. Carlyle's opinion, when any theological topic comes to be discussed, that we had rather not take even this genealogical theory for granted. Is it not rather the case that Coleridge and Puseyism are co-ordinate developments of one principle, or rather of one class of tendencies, and, accordingly, stand to each other not in the position of cause and effect?

The thoughtful youth of England, when the lull which succeeded the great continental war gave opportunity to look around and within, could not but feel dissatisfied with the dead condition of the Church of England. But there is a tendency in human nature-one of its noblest tendencies-to refer things to principles, and to assume that 'great facts' like the Establishment are not founded on mere mockery and delusion, but rest upon a principle of some sort or other, however much the wood, hay, stubble,' of the superstructure may have concealed the principle upon which it was founded. Hence the eagerness with which men like Sterling listened to Coleridge's theory of a church. Hence, again, the earnest ingenuity which has succeeded so far in transforming the hard formal orthodoxy of the old high-church school into such developments as are presented at Wells-street and St. Barnabas.

But the worst of it is, that we never know what is the groundwork of these apophthegmatic revelations. It may be a train of reasoning-it may be, to use Mr. Carlyle's own polite words'thrice-refined pabulum of transcendental moonshine.' And when we get to more important subjects than either Puseyism or the Coleridgian philosophy, the question deepens and becomes

*See Hesiod's Theogony, v. 319.

one of anxious interest. Who told Mr. Carlyle that 'the course of pious genius towards the eternal kingdom' is grown more 'dark and abstruse' than in the days of our fathers? What process of argument has given him the conclusion, that Darkness and the mere shadow of death envelope all things from pole to pole; and in the raging gulf-currents, offering us will-ofwisps for loadstars-intimating that there are no stars, nor ever were, except certain old Jew ones which have now gone 'out'? We may ask these questions. We may surmise that Mr. Carlyle's love of the style of Jean Paul has become a kind of monomania, so that when he begins a sentence, after the manner of Richter, he forgets everything except the picturesque. But there are many, and those from the classes which sway the world's opinion, who will not look so closely into the matter, and who, when Mr. Carlyle tells them that the old Jew stars are gone out, will jump to a conclusion of a description far from harmless. If Mr. Carlyle were a theological, or even a philosophical writer-if he had carefully enunciated the results of an elaborate process of reasoning, and that elaborate process of reasoning clearly pointed to the result which in these words he proclaims with about as much reverence as a flying newsman roaring through the streets the 'coup-d'état,' or the resignation of Lord Palmerston ;-if he could refer to a well-digested and intelligible argument in support of his views, and having the authority of his great name, there might be some excuse for this sort of writing; but it is really beneath the dignity of a man of his literary reputation, to cast insinuations, and throw out hints, aimed at the very foundation of Christianity, without having the manliness to give plain reasons for the opinions which he is evidently afraid to avow. It was thus with Gibbon-he never reasoned, he only sneered. He never gave you proofs-he only insinuated falsehood, without descending to the cost of proof. Our older Gibbon has had his reward, and our modern one will have his also.

'It is not now known,' says Mr. Carlyle, in pursuing his illustration of the oblivious baseness' of the age in which we live,

That none or all of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made a religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring-salvation do we fancy? I think, it is another thing they will bring; and are, on all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!'

This sentence is hard to construc-being a pure specimen of the Hieratic Carlylee-but being interpreted, we believe its author to mean, that the great truths on which religion must be founded,

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and an acknowledgment and appreciation of which must be prior to all religion, are truths which do not admit of syllogistic verification, but stand more intimately connected with man's consciousness than any formal argument can possibly do. But these words will unfortunately bear a very different meaning, and one which strikes at the root of all historical evidence as applied to Christianity. The historical facts of Christianity are not the religion, they do not bring salvation' to us; but unless we are enabled to combine the fundamental truths of man's moral consciousness-truths which Mr. Carlyle considers to be prior to all argument-with the historical facts of the religion; unless we can see first the necessity of salvation, and secondly, the truth of the historical assertion that Jesus is the Christ, it is impossible that our religion can go one step beyond deism. The claims of Christianity to the acceptance of mankind are not to be disposed of by an indirect assertion forming one clause of a paragraph, the direct object of which is a denunciation of the darkness,' cowardice,' and oblivious baseness' of the age.

We should account it a great crime to bring railing accusations against any man, but specially so against a man to whom the literary world is under such obligations as Mr. Carlyle. But we cannot help thinking, that the habit in which he seems more and more to indulge, of snarling whenever he can get an opportunity at a Faith which he cannot but wish true, is following the rule of habit, and growing stronger by indulgence. There is what we deem a very melancholy instance of it to be found in the narrative before us. (Part ii. c. x. p. 278.) He is relating an instance of self-devotion in a Cornish miner, which had roused Sterling's genial nature into very praiseworthy exertion.

In a certain Cornish mine, said the newspapers, duly specifying it, two miners, deep down in the shaft, were engaged putting in a shot for blasting; they had completed their affair, and were about to give the signal for being hoisted up. One at a time was all their coadjutor at the top could manage, and the second was to kindle the match, and then mount with all speed. Now it chanced while they were both still below, one of them thought the match too long; tried to break it shorter; took a couple of stones, a flat and a sharp, to cut it shorter; did cut it of the due length; but, horrible to relate, kindled it at the same time, and both were still below! Both shouted vehemently to the coadjutor at the windlass, both sprang at the basket; the windlass man could not move it with both. Here was a moment for poor miner Jack, and poor miner Will! Instant, horrible death hangs over both-when Will generously resigns himself: 'Go aloft, Jack,' and sits down. 'Away; in one minute I shall be in heaven.' Jack bounds. aloft; the explosion instantly follows, bruises his face as he looks over;