things, realities, which things, realities, are to be come at only through the signs. The term God and the adjective good, are one and the same word; and from this we learn that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called by one and the same name, the Supreme Being, and that which it is proper to be, to desire, to do, or to possess. Therefore, say our wise modern philosophers, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors believed that the Supreme Being is Good; thus proving that Balaam's ass, or rather that Balaam himself, yet liveth and speaketh. Say, rather, therefore, they believed and incorporated into their every-day speech, the great truth, the foundation and spring of all heroism, that nothing is proper to be sought after, to be done, or possessed, which is not Godlike, or Divine. They found not God in Good; but Good in God. What shall I be? A God-man, Godlike. What shall I do? That which is God-like. What shall I prize? A God-ly soul. They did not conceive of Good, independent of God,-make that conception the standard, and bring God to it, as before a tribunal, to ascertain whether he conformed to it, or not; but they regarded God himself as the standard; and whatever conformed to him, they called good, and said, That be, do, possess, live for, die for,-nothing else is worth a wish, or a thought. We note in Carlyle, with great pleasure, an unceasing effort to make his readers remark the significance, the wonderfulness of what is ordinary and familiar. To him the thaumaturgic WORD Sounds out from all, from the least as well as from the greatest; and the Infinite is spoken by the grain of sand, as well as by Andes or Himeleh. Even silence is eloquent to him, and the dumb are not mute. He has a truly genial and loving soul,-a ready sympathy with and for all in God's Universe. There is at times something startling and fearful in this universal sympathy, and the unexpected analogies it enables him to discover and disclose. All nature becomes sacred; the Universe a Temple; each living thing, each thought, each feeling a shrine; We stand on holy ground; we fall down and worship; we are filled with awe; we hold our breath; we feel that we are in the very Sanc tum, the very PRESENCE of the Infinite God. But it is not our intention to enter into any inquiry concerning the general or particular merits, characteristics, or peculiarities of Mr. Carlyle. He is no stranger to the American public. This much, however, we may say, that he is almost the only contemporary English writer of much note, whose writings give us any signs of vitality, or that promise to leave any trace on his age or country. Your Wordsworths, Talfourds, Wilsons, Broughams, Macauleys, Bulwers, and the like-ernst ist das Leben, we have no time to waste. Bulwer, we are told, has given up romancing, and betaken himself to serious study; we will hope that he will yet do somewhat that will survive, by a few years, the natural term of his pilgrimage. Carlyle, with all his faults, is the only live Englishman it is our good fortune to know; and he, though alive, we are sorry to see, like all his countrymen, is ailing. Yet most thankful are we, that in these days of Cant and Humbug, Puseyism and Chartism, Communisms and Manchester Strikes, there is even one Englishman, who though ailing is not dead nor dying. God's blessing on him! May he soon be restored to perfect health, and it be long before he needs his Viaticum! The book before us is a remarkable, but a melancholy production; it is the wail of a true manly heart, over the misery and wretchedness he sees everywhere around, and from which he himself is not exempt. No man sees more clearly the comic, or feels more keenly the tragic, there is in our age, especially our English and American portion of it; yet no one views with a truer or more loving spirit the universal wrongs and sufferings of our Saxon race. He is sadly, nay, at times terribly in earnest; but his voice loses never its melody in becoming indignant; his heart is grieved, and his soul is sick, and his whole being laments over the miseries, the meannesses, the cants, the emptinesses, the quackeries, of the evil times on which we have fallen; but he laments in sorrow not in wrath,-in anguish of spirit, but not altogether without hope. In his very severity, in his most scorching rebukes, he is mild, tolerant, loving to all that is intolerant only to sham, mere makebelieve, vacuity, Nothing pretending to be Something. We like his earnestness, and also the cheerfulness, so to speak, which he maintains even in his profoundest sorrow. us. We cannot undertake to give any thing approaching an analysis of the very remarkable book before us, decidedly the best Carlyle has yet given It is unlike anything else ever written by any other man, and no critical review can give the reader not acquainted with the general character of Mr. Carlyle's writings, the least conception of it. It has a purpose, or rather many purposes, a general bearing, and many special and particular bearings; but these are not to be summed up and given in a line; they come out from the book as a whole, and can be gathered only by a close and attentive, we may say, a frequent reading of the whole book. The great aim of the writer is not to teach one lesson, but many lessons; and these not so much by formal statements, as by presenting the various topics on which he touches, in such light, or rather lights, as shall compel the reader to see and feel their significance, and draw his own moral. Mr. Carlyle divides his work into four books; the first he entitles Proem; the second, The Ancient Monk; the third, The Modern Worker; the fourth, Horoscope. The work properly presents us, though in a strange, fitful, indirect, striking, not always satisfactory light, society as it was under Feudalism and the Catholic Church; society as it now is under the Protestant and Industrial order; with some glances at what it should and must become, if it is to be at all. What was yesterday What is to-day? What do you propose for to-morrow? You are not where you were; you cannot remain where you are; whither are you tending? How will you arrive there? These are great questions, on which we shall do well to linger awhile. The book opens with a chapter headed Midas, in which we have a sketch of the present state of life in England, not as Tourists may represent it, but as it actually is. tract the greater part : We ex "England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of workers, underand the willingest our Earth ever had; stood to be the strongest, the cunningest these men are here; the work they have done, the fruit they have realized is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of us: and behold, some baneful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, "Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it: this is enchanted fruit!" On the poor workers such fiat falls first, in its rudest shape; but on the rich master-workers too it falls; neither can the rich masteridlers, nor any richest or highest man escape, but all are like to be brought low with it, and made poor' enough, in the money-sense or a far fataller one. some two millions, it is now counted, sit "Of these successful skilful workers in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons; or have out-door relief' flung over the wall to them the workhouse Bastille being filled to bursting, and the strong Poor-law broken asunder by a stronger. They sit there, these many months now; their hope of deliverance as yet small. In workhouses, pleasantly so named, because work cannot be done in them. Twelve hundred thousand workers in England alone; their cunning right-hand lamed, lying idle in their sorrowful bosom; their shut in by narrow walls. They sit there, hopes, outlooks, share of this fair world, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchanted, that they may not perish starved. ment; glad to be imprisoned and enchantThe picturesque Tourist, in a sunny autumn day, through this bounteous realm of England, descries the Union Workhouse on his path 'Passing by the Workhouse of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, on a bright day last autumn' says the picturesque tourist, I saw sitting on wooden benches, in front of their Bastille and within their ring-wall and its railings, but of grief and shame and manifold inarticulate distress and weariness; they returned my glance with a glance that seemed to say, "Do not look at us. We sit en chanted here, we know not why. The Sun shines and the Earth calls; and by the governing Powers and Impotences of this England we are forbidden to obey. It is impossible, they tell us!" There was something that reminded me of Dante's Hell in the look of all this; and I rode swiftly away.' "So many hundred thousands sit in workhouses, and other hundred thousands have not yet got even workhouses; and in thrifty Scotland itself, in Glasgow or Edinburgh City, in their dark lanes, hidden from all but the eye of God, and of rare Benevolence the minister of God, there are scenes of woe and destitution and desolation, such as one may hope the Sun never saw before in the most barbarous regions where men dwelt. Descend where you will into Town or Country, by what avenue you will, the same sorrowful result discloses itself; you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes a Mother and Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning three of their children, to defraud a 'burial society' of some 31. 88. due on the death of each child; they are arraigned, found guilty, and the official authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe further into that department of things. Brutal savages, degraded Irish!" mutters the idle reader of newspapers, barely lingering on this incident. Yet it is an incident worth lingering on; the depravity, savagery and degraded Irishism, being never so well admitted. In the British land, a human Mother and Father, of white skin, and professing the Christian religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism and necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances are like the "highest mountain apex emerged into view, under which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A human Mother and Father had said to themselves, What shall we do to escape starvation? We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar, and help is far. Yes, in the Ugolino Hunger-Tower, stern things happen; bestloved little Gaddo fallen dead on his Father's knees! The Stockport Mother and Father think and hint; our poor little starveling Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will see only evil, and not good in this world; if he were out of misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept alive? It is thought and hinted, at last it is done. And now Tom being killed, and all spent and eaten, is it poor little starveling Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will? What an inquiry of ways and means !"-pp. 1-4. These individual instances show to those who will think, the abject misery and wretchedness to which the working population of England is reduced. What poverty! and this too in England, the richest nation on earth, perhaps the richest the world ever saw; and in England now, richer, with a greater abundance of supply for every want than at any former period! Think of this, linger long, oh, reader, and thoughtfully on this, for it is full of in struction. "Nor are they," continues Mr. Carlyle," of the St. Ives workhouses, of the Glasgow lanes, and Stockport cellars, the only unblessed among us. This successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth, has as yet made nobody rich; it is an enchanted wealth, and belongs yet to nobody. We might ask, which of us has it enriched? We can spend thousands where we once spent hundreds, but can purchase nothing good with them. In poor and rich, instead of noble thrift and plenty, there is idle luxury alternating with mean scarcity and inability. We have sumptuous garnitures for our life, but have forgotten to live in the middle of them. It is an enchanted wealth; no man as yet can touch it. The class of men who feel that they are truly better off by means of it, let them give us their name! "Many men cat finer cookery and drink dearer liquors-with what advantage, they can report, and their Doctors can; but in the heart of them, if we go out of the dyspeptic stomach, what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuller, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call happier? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces, in this God's earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so. Human faces gloom discordantly, disloyally on one another. Things, if it be not mere cotton and iron things, are growing disobedient to man. The Master Worker is enchanted, for the present, like his Workhouse workman; clamors, in vain hitherto, for a very simple sort of Liberty:' the libertyto buy where he finds it cheapest, to sell where he finds it dearest.' With guineas jingling in every pocket, he was no whit richer; but now, the very guineas threatening to vanish, he feels that he is poor indeed Poor Master Worker! And the Master Unworker, is not he in a still fataller situation? Pausing amid his game-preserves with awful eye,-as he well may! Coercing fifty-pound tenants; coercing, bribing, cajoling; doing what he likes with his own. His mouth full of loud futilities, and arguments to prove the excellence of his Corn-Law; and in his heart the blackest misgivings, a desperate half-consciousness that his excellent CornLaw is indefensible, that his loud arguments for it are of a kind to strike men too literally dumb. "To whom then is the wealth of England wealth? Who is it that it blesses; makes happier, wiser, beautifuller, in any way better? Who has got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for him, like a true servant, not like a false mock-servant; to do him any real service whatsoever? As yet no one. We have more riches than any Nation ever had before; we have less good of them than any nation ever had before. Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful; a strange success, if we stop here! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish; with gold walls, and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, Master-workers, Unworkers, all men come to a pause; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Fatal paralysis spreading inwards, from the extremities, in St. Ives workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart itself. Have we actually got enchanted, then; accursed by some god?"Midas longed for gold, and insulted the Olympians. He got gold, so that whatsoever he touched became gold, and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it. Midas had misjudged the celestial musictones; Midas had insulted Apollo and the gods: the gods gave him his wish, and a pair of long ears, which also were a good appendage to it. What a truth in these old Fables !"-p. 5–6. "We have more riches than any nation ever had before; we have less good from them than any nation ever had before." England, with fifteen millions of workers, with machinery increasing man's productive power many thousand fold, making cotton at twopence an ell, and yet some five millions of her population sustained just above the starving point, and not always above it! What a theme for reflection here! Has the productive power of this God's rich and glorious earth become exhausted? Is there not yet room on its broad and inviting surface for many millions more of workers; are there not yet immense tracts waiting to be tilled; immense treasures yet to be dug from its fertile soil? Whence comes then this strange anomaly, that men with cunning brains, well-made bodies, strong and active limbs, can find no work to do, whereby even the simplest means of subsistence may be obtained? Here lies the question. The tendency is throughout all Christendom to bring us to the point where no small portion of the population can obtain not only the lowest wages for work done, but where they can obtain no work to do. Already in England has it come to this. Millions say, "Let us work,-for the love of God let us work, and give us in return the humblest fare and the scantiest clothing, so we do but keep the life in us, and we will be for ever grateful.” Vain prayer! "Ye naked, starving, begging workers, there is no work for you; ye have already worked too much; ye have already produced more than we can find markets for; ye are suffering from over-production." "Over-production. Just Heaven, what meaneth this? We have made too many shirts to have a shirt to our back; grown too much corn to be allowed to have a loaf to keep the breath in the bodies of our wives and little ones! Over-production, is it? Ha, ha, warehouses and corn-ricks can burn! Torches, torches there! We will soon put an end to this over-production." So will, and may, and do, we had almost said, should, desperate men, forced to the starving point, reply to the taunt of over-production. These million workers, in the Manchester insurrection, last summer, striking work, standing mute, looking gloomily, are significant of much, and may tell Master-Workers and Master-Unworkers, that the mute will ere long find a tongue, and the dumb will speak, and through harsh brazen throats, startling them from their soft beds, to behold factory and palace sending up their red light on the midnight sky; ay, and it may be, to behold royal and noble blood flowing once and again on the Place de Grêve. Millions of hands striking work, because no work is to be had whereby men can keep the breath in them, will soon find work, and that of the direfullest sort. It is not we that say it, it is all history that says it, it is the human heart that says it. Master Workers and Master Unworkers, look to it, that ye press not the masses beyond the bearable point. Poor Humanity will bear much, go for long ages with sorrowful eye and haggard face, bent to the earth; patient as the dull ox; but there is a point where, if submission does not cease to be a virtue, it at least ceases to be a possibility; and nothing remains but for her to draw herself up and turn upon the tyrant and battle it Better die struggling for freedom, for life, than to die timid, crouching slaves, to be buried in graves of our own digging. out. We understand,-we believe nothing of this modern doctrine of the legal right of revolution; nor do we believe that violent revolutions are the best method of working out social reforms and advancing humanity in freedom, religion, morality, well-being. In all countries where there is anything like established order, or where there is a governing body that admits but the slightest element of progress, and under which men can live; more especially in a country like ours, where there is a constitutional order in full force, which, if not perfect, yet contains in itself the elements of progress; we can countenance no measures of reform not allowed, not sanctioned by that order itself. But in this world there are specialities, and each of these specialities must always be decided on its own merits. In this country, as we have said over and over again for years, touching political organisms, we must be conservative, and study to preserve the order established by the wisdom of our fathers, aided by a beneficent and ever watchful Providence; because it is only by so doing that we can work out that higher order of civilisation for mankind, which it is our mission to work out. But they know little of the spirit that burns in us, of the deep indignation we feel towards all who wrong or neglect their fellow men, and ride rough-shod over their brethren, who fancy that we hold or teach doctrines of tame, unqualified submission. While there is the least chink through which can reach us one, even the faintest, gleam of hope, we will submit and work on; but when the last gleam expires, when nothing remains but blackness and total extinction, we parley no more; we cease to discuss, to plead; we seize the brand and turn on the tyrant, and DIE shall he or we. It is an awful thing to see brother hewing and hacking the flesh of brother, and strewing the ground with the limbs and trunks of precious human beings; but it is more awful to see a whole nation of workingmen bound hand and foot, dying starved, while there is bread enough and to spare; a thousand times more awful in time of peace and plenty, to see poor human mothers driven to devour the flesh of their own offspring, of the dear ones who have drawn life from their own breasts! But we must pass not too lightly over this subject. Can there be a more sorrowful sight, can there be a stronger condemnation of an order of things, than this simple fact of men, able-bodied men, with a rational soul and cunning right hands, willing, begging to work, and yet finding no work to do whereby they can get their victuals? Certainly not, say all men with one voice. Well, then, friends and countrymen, is it only in England that we stumble on this fact? What, we ask, are we coming to in this country, here where there are so many millions of acres of rich, fertile lands, waiting to be tilled? We have not yet come, it may be, to the Glasgow lanes and Stockport cellars, of which Carlyle speaks, but we have come very near to the St. Ives workhouses; but we have come to the point where there are many thousands of our people who can keep the life in them only as fed by the grudging hand of public or private charity. In 1829, it was reckoned that in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, there were eighteen thousand females, sempstresses mostly, unable to obtain work for more than two-thirds of the time; and yet if getting work all the time, for sixteen hours a day, receiving therefor only about sixteen dollars a year with which to furnish fuel, food and clothing; many of these wives, with sick or disabled husbands; many of them widows with two, three and four small children to support. So said the benevolent Matthew Carey. The matter must be worse now. In this wealthy, charitable, industrious, Christian city of Boston, where we now write, we have come, the last winter, to our Bread and Soup Societies! Bread and Soup Societies for the poor, already in this blessed land of America, free, democratic America, and in the very heart |