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pauper dealers should be and do. The founder of Christianity did not condescend, in the midst of his mission, to act even incidentally as a political tutor either to Herod or to Cæsar. But a Life of John Sterling is greatly lower from Mr Carlyle's self-chosen vocation, than the 'Latterday Pamphlets.'

It is a curious coincidence that the man who, in America, occupies the same prophetic post as Carlyle in this country, has recently made the same descent. Emerson has written the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, a noted Yankee Blue-stocking. In the case of both, also, their subjects of biography were disciples, and disciples who, though dearly loved, were but indifferently admired. Emerson's opinion of Margaret Fuller is neither high nor impassioned; and Carlyle is often a severe critic of what John Sterling was and did intellectually. Emerson's is a cold and unadmiring nature; and Carlyle is whimsical, having many moods of bad temper from disappointment. We believe that in the instances on hand, their criticism is just, though, probably, had they not been friends and survivors to those whose biographies they have written, it would have been as unkind as unjust. Friendship, so far from leading them to exaggerate and go beyond the truth, has only led them up to the truth, beneath which they would otherwise have kept a long way.

For several years, Carlyle has been denouncing Literature,' and those who prosecute it. His professed contempt for it is quite as great as Louis Napoleon's fear. He cannot away with the potency of the 'pen,' and all such cant. He classes' writing,' whether in prose or poetry, with 'stump oratory;' and brands it as the mark of a feeble and talkative age. He thinks the press only a very few degrees better than the pulpit; and to him the poet's pen moves as idly and unprofitably as the clergyman's tongue. Literature, however, needs no defence, even against the sneers of Carlyle, until he shall have succeeded in annihilating the whole class of readers, or in getting them fixed down to an exclusive study of his own books. Nor, when we allege that Carlyle's present position of influence has been gained, and is still held, by literature, do we bring forward all the strong reasons that exist for his speaking respectfully of what has been his life-at least, his bread. The success of those assaults of his upon all institutions, which have attracted many admiring disciples, is entirely owing to the literary form into which he cast his destructive ideas. No man, as a sceptic, is so much indebted as Carlyle to the literary expression into which he has put doubt and denial. And this is also true of him as a

propounder of new truth. It is chiefly new in point of expression, and the vividness of that expression is, of course, entirely literary. In assailing literature, then, he has broken the sword by which he has conquered.

The truth is, that Mr Carlyle's most characteristic views are grossly exagge rated. Because the gift of speech has been abused, he would cut out every tongue, or muffle it; and because the pen has frequently lied or twaddled, he would have it thrown away for ever. He is now in full tilt against every occupation under the sun, and against every attitude which man may assume, from his sitting down to his up-rising. If men sleep, he bids them get up wide awake, or be shovelled into a ditch grave; if men speak, he bids them think; if they think, he bids them work; and if men work, whether in mechanical inventions or in philanthropic or religious enterprises, he drives them to and fro all the posts in the field of human labour; whilst he slanders the whole process as vain, and the result as a nullity. We cannot call this conduct a display of mere caprice, but of immense vanity, mixed with terrible agony. He imagines himself to be the mainspring of all right motion in Christendom, and his everchanging and ever-contradictory directions are but the painful shiftings of himself from side to side-in ignorance of whether he should put his right or his left foot foremost.

He is an intensely disappointed man, having aspired to be the teacher of the age, and having got, as yet, no articulate lessons to communicate. His system is

His

one of consonants without vowels. very alphabet is incomplete; and, when he is to get beyond that, is known only to his friends, the 'Silences. His efforts to regenerate the world have been made in every direction, and they have failednay, they have not even been efforts, but only abortive ideas. And no wonder; for he has been perfectly unintelligible, both as to what the regeneration was to be, and what should be its means. Sometimes he looks hopefully to a new Mahomet, a new Luther, a new Knox, or a new Cromwell; but never to the second coming, either literal or spiritual, of Christ the same Jesus' who 'turned the world upside down,' and introduced all the good that has existed, now exists, or will ever exist in it. With a scorn which, after running through all the decent terms of sarcastic phraseology, vents itself in coarse nicknames, such as, 'Old Hebrew Clothes,' and 'damnable, dead, putrescent cant,' he sets aside Christianity as an agency-nay, he places it in the list of things deserving and waiting to be abolished.

It is un

speakably mournful and surprising that Carlyle, who has so many sympathies, both with truth and goodness, should have a quarrel with Christianity; and more especially since, as a sceptic, he alleges against it no want of celestial evidence and signs, and seeks no new and more authentic certificate of its divinity, but simply accuses it of a want of life in, and influence over, men. He treats it as exhausted, spent, dead; and he would have it buried out of sight. But he will not come to the proof, otherwise he would find, that if Christianity ever had life, it has it now, larger and purer; that if Christianity ever did work and rule, it does so now, more actively and potently in a wider sphere. Has it not equally genuine and faithful disciples and martyrs in far greater numbers than ever? Is not its humane spirit abroad in the world almost as extensively as its name? and has it lost any of its specific power to change men who shall afterwards, through it, be consecrated, purified, consoled, and spiritualized? What it was it still is in more abundant and varied manifestations -what it did it still does on a larger scale. It is its very success in the world which has drawn into its train the hypocrites whom Mr Carlyle stigmatizes, and whom, with the grossest injustice, he regards as representative Christians. Its lazy and plundering camp followers he wickedly mistakes for its true soldiers. Now, separate Christianity from our existing Churches, and it has life to rush immediately into new embodiments. The Bird of Heaven would soon find or make a new nest. Lift Christianity out of the pulpit, and it has life enough forthwith to cry aloud in all our streets. Its indestructible essence could enter all varieties of organization, or, at least, would still dwell in countless hearts; and its irresistible power could seize upon all kinds of means and appliances, or, at least, would communicate itself from man to man along the natural tie of brotherhood. Carlyle himself once said, many years ago, "The Christian religion, once here, cannot again pass away: in one or other form it will endure through all time: as in Scripture, so also in the heart of man, is written, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Were the memory of this faith never so obscure, as, indeed, in all times the coarse passions and perceptions do all but obliterate it in the hearts of most: yet, in every pure soul, in every poet and wise man, it finds a missionary, a new martyr, till the great volume of universal history is finally closed, and man's destinies are fulfilled in this earth. It is a height to which the human species were fated and enabled to attain: and from which, having

once attained it, they can never retrograde.'

In an introductory chapter, Mr Carlyle explains why he writes a Life of Sterling, when that was so ably and affectionately done, a few years ago, by Archdeacon Hare, and done, too, on Mr Carlyle's express suggestion. Mr Hare's biography represented Sterling as, in spite of scepticism on many important points, 'almost a Christian' in creed, and quite one in heart. Mr Carlyle was indignant at this, as a misrepresentation of one whom he fancied to be his disciple, and not a Christian at all. Mr Hare had fixed upon the brief period during which Sterling officiated as a curate, as not only the most satisfactory period, but also the most mirror-like one that gave a genuine glimpse, with a few subsequent changes to be allowed for in the expression, of Sterling's religious developments. But Mr Carlyle estimates the clerical period as something properly aside from Sterling's real career, a brief month or two absurdly and violently flung into his history by the wildest chance; nor will he consent that it should give any complexion to Sterling's character, either in the preceding or succeeding portions of life. He says: 'Mr Hare

takes up Sterling as a clergyman merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months: during eight months, and no more, had he any special relation to the Church. But he was a man, and had a relation to the universe for eight-andthirty years; and it is in this latter character to which all the others were but features and transitory hues, that we wish to know him. His battle with hereditary Church formulas was severe; but it was by no means his one battle with things inherited, nor indeed his chief battle; neither, according to my observation of what it was, is it successfully delineated or summed up in Mr Hare's book. A pale, sickly shadow in torn surplice is presented to us: weltering bewildered amid heaps of Hebrew Old Clothes: wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the baseful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function in life: who in this miserable figure would recognise the brilliant beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations with his frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audacities, activities, and general radiant vivacity of heart and intelligence which made the presence of him an illumination and inspiration wherever he went? It is too bad. Let a man be honestly forgotten when his life ends; but let him not be misremembered in this way.'

The foregoing account of the portrait by Archdeacon Hare is anything but cor

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rect. Sterling was not sketched as a lean youth dieting on doubts about Church formulas. His doubts were represented as intermittent and of a far higher kind. It was only occasionally that they gave a thoughtful pallor to the face of the portrait; and certainly did not turn the diant' Sterling into 'a pale, sickly shadow in torn surplice. By the way, in reference to such phrases (and they occur in every page of his writings) as torn surplice,' we wonder greatly that a man like Carlyle should take the trouble of waxing angry at the mere dress of clergymen. The largest proportion of his declamation is against their canonicals. Why did not the Geneva gown damn John Knox in Carlyle's estimation? It is quite evident that whenever Thomas succeeds in introducing a new religious dispensation, the tailor will be a very essential functionary. Snip will have to devise a Carlyleist costume, not to be cut and shaped, we hope, out of the same Immensities' as the creed of the sect, though it would then find plenty of scope for cabbaging. In the meantime, | it may be hinted that Jeremy Taylor, quite as 'brilliant and beautiful' as John Sterling, looked very well in his 'surplice;' and that Thomas Chalmers was not less a noble and true teacher because he wore a clergyman's gown and bands. We should think neither better nor worse of Mr Carlyle himself for any garment he might choose to wear, unless he were to call it Elijah's mantle. As for the term applied to the Bible, 'Hebrew Old Clothes,' it is not worth while noticing its coarse profanity; and we here simply point it out as one of the many instances to be found in Carlyle's writings, of the extremely puerile and offensively low cast of his associations of ideas. He himself does not blush to tell us in the course of this volume that when in a conversation Sterling branded some remark of his as sheer Pantheism,' he replied, Well, what though it were Pot-theism? To Carlyle, whose mind must have been then on the kitchen level, pan suggested pot! Thomas Hood's faculty of punning, never even when hard pressed and driven to any shift, threw off such a wretched oddity. Henceforth, when there is an inquiry about the worst specimen of joking extant, let Carlyle's 'Pot-theism' be mentioned, and it is sure to carry off the prize. Coleridge, in his Table Talk,' speaks of the cry of the Jewish Old Clothesmen in London-Old Clo! Old Clo!' as being at the very extreme of the magnificent Hebrew oracle which begins 'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!' It must have been this remark of Coleridge's which suggested Carlyle's epithet for the Bible. So shockingly low in his association of ideas.

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The impression left by Carlyle's Memoir is, that Sterling, on leaving his curacy, lived and died a confirmed doubter. The biographer uses the word 'victorious;' but wherefore? Victorious over doubt? what then was the faith to which he attained? Why is it not exhibited? Why has not Carlyle's genius kindled on its shores a watch-fire to invite and attract all poor wretches who are swimming through doubt, ignorant of what land they are making for, or, indeed, if they are making for any land? Sterling's last letter to Carlyle, written when he was dying, contains the following confession :

I tread the common road into the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have none. It is all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers by.' An acknowledgment that he was anchorless! Poor Sterling, on leaving the curacy, got into Doubting Castle; and we grieve to add that it appears that Mr and Mrs Carlyle were the Giant Despair and his wife, who kept him in safe durance there, belabouring him with jokes and arguments whenever he sought to escape. Whenever he peeped out at a door, his head would be broken by both Pan and Pot.

We need not attempt to settle whether Mr Carlyle's or Mr Hare's account be the correct one. Sterling's scepticism, whatever was its kind and degree, was no test of Christianity. Christianity had not been either long or profoundly studied by him; and his speculative faculty was just an extempore feeder to his conversational and debating eloquence. Even Mr Carlyle says-The fact was, you could observe, in spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was not properly a thinker at all; his faculties were of the active, not of the passive, or contemplative sort. A brilliant improvisatore; rapid in thought, in word, and in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating of men.'

Concerning the general manner of this Biography, it is Carlyle's very best. The incidents are told with striking effect; and all the characters grouped around Sterling are admirably exhibited and harmonized. Sterling was not a notable man, compared with either Lord Jeffrey or Dr Chalmers, yet his short and uneventful life, in CarÏyle's hands, gathers an interest and a charm which Dr Hanna and Lord Cockburn have failed to give to their biographical works. Carlyle's remarkable genius forms a spell around everything which it touches. His very naming of dates is like the solemn striking of a clock, or the merry ringing of bells before some event or spectacle. His localities are neither dots on a map, nor landscape drafts, but

enshrine the genius of the place, so that the scenery seems to be evolved and unfolded, with all its gossamer lines of association floating along and athwart it, from Sterling's own mind.

John Sterling was born in the Isle of Bute, on the 20th July 1806. His parents, though Irish by birth, were of Scotch extraction. His father was Captain Edward Sterling, who, though bred for the bar, took to a military life for a few years, and afterwards was famous as the 'thunderer of the Times newspaper,' a man without much expansion, but with great and ever ready energy, of soul, a Captain Whirlwind, as Carlyle calls him.

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On leaving the army, he had gone to Kaimes Castle, a kind of dilapidated baronial residence, to which a small farm was attached,' which he rented in Bute, his only income being his half-pay and an inherited pension of £200 a year. He had taken a fancy for farming, but wanted both agricultural skill and agricultural perseverance. The rainy climate of Bute was uncongenial to his restless, ardent, and energetic character, and, neglecting his farm, he made frequent runs to Dublin and London. John was born during this experiment in farming. In three years, the family removed to a pleasant cottage in the Village of Llanblethian, close by Cowbridge in Glamorganshire. Five years were there spent; and of the scenery and schoolboy days, John ever retained delightful impressions. His father had become Adjutant of the Glamorganshire Militia, and in 1811 published a pamphlet on Military Reform. The following year he wrote a series of Letters to the Times, which, by their trenchant and bold style, attracted much notice. During the peace in 1814, he went with his family to Paris, with the view of qualifying himself to be the Foreign Correspondent of the Times; but in three months, on the escape of Napoleon from Elba, was obliged to return to London. There he fixed his own and his family's residence, and by degrees got into closer and closer connexion with the Times, until he became a co-proprietor and the leading editor. John was growing up, a singularly quick, enthusiastic, gallant and adventurous youth, but with health delicate. We may infer from the fact that at the age of twelve, he, for some petty cross, ran away from home, at a time when he had been bereaved of several little brothers and sisters, and when his gentle mother was almost broken-heartedthat there was a want of depth, or at least of consistency of tender feeling, in his nature, or that through his restlessness and volatility, it was moved and lashed into thin spray. On being arrested, and in writing to Dear Mamma,' the steady

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historical style of the young runaway of twelve, narrating merely, not in the least apologizing,' is very laughable. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to Glasgow College, and three years afterwards to Trinity College, Cambridge. At the latter place he had Mr Hare for his tutor, who was fascinated by the youth's gifts and graces, especially by his brilliant debating faculty in conversation. At this time he was an ecclesiastical and political radical, not a young Joe Hume, but of a loftier and more generous type. In 1827, at the age of 21, he left Cambridge, universally accomplished rather than profoundly learned, and with full and ready mastery over all his abilities. He turned away from the three learned professions, feeling that he was unsuited to them, and they to him. Carlyle, along with all his friends, thinks that he was pre-eminently qualified for Parliamentary life.

'Here,' he says, 'beyond question, had the gross material conditions been allowed, his spiritual capabilities were first-rate. In an arena where eloquence and argument was the point, this man was calculated to have borne the bell from all competitors. In lucid ingenious talk and logic, in all manner of brilliant utterance and tongue fence, I have hardly known his fellow. So ready lay his store of knowledge around him, so perfect was his ready utterance of the same, in coruscating wit, in jocund drollery, in compact, articulated clearness, or high poignant emphasis, as the case required, he was a match for any man in argument before a crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed, dexterous, graceful, and successful fencers in that kind. A man, as Mr Hare has said, "able to argue with four or five at once," and could do the parrying all round, in a succession swift as light, and plant his hits wherever a chance offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of the due toughness might have carried it far.'

The elder Sterling appears to have been so much engrossed in the management of the Times, as neither to have had, nor wished to have, any influence over his son. Yet it might have been thought that, as a politician, he would have been anxious to see young Sterling, with his remarkable powers of eloquence and debate, enter the Parliamentary arena. Perhaps that son's radicalism frightened the editor, and made him abandon a fatherly ambition. Young Sterling, however, took to literature as his profession, and purchased the copyright of the Atheneum which he and his college friend Frederic Maurice were to conduct. This periodical, which has long had remarkable success, was then in its struggling infancy; and Sterling was

soon glad to get quit of it as a property. About this period of his history, he was introduced to the 'myriad-minded' Coleridge, from whose wonderful monologues he seems to have got his first ideas of Christianity in connexion with, and mastery over, philosophy. Carlyle's lengthy sketch of Coleridge is one of consummate ability, here and there, however, running into caricature of his conversations, and, what is much worse, the whole animated with bitter and scornful hatred of his Christian creed. Christianity is made to rise from its solid foundations, and diffuse itself into the mists and haze of Coleridge's talk about Church constitutions. Carlyle remarks Coleridge had skirted the howling deserts of infidelity: this was evident enough; but he had not had the courage, in defiance of pain and terror, to press resolutely across said deserts to the new firm lands of faith beyond: he preferred to create logical fata-morganas for himself on this hither side, and laboriously solace himself with these!' Why has not Mr Carlyle pointed out these 'new firm lands of faith beyond?' We may presume that he himself has a solid footing on them; and why will he not enable a few companions to join him there? Still his own initiated John Sterling, at the moment of death, when faith gathers strength from weakening sense, confessed that, instead of standing upon firm land, he had 'no certainty. Not so Coleridge, who, in a noble sonnet, says:

'Born unto God in Christ-in Christ, my all! What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply,

rather

Than forfeit that blest name by which we call

The Holy One, the Almighty God, our Father? Father! in Christ we live; and, Christ in Thee! Eternal Thou, and everlasting we!

The heir of Heaven, henceforth I dread not death:
In Christ I live; in Christ I draw the breath
Of the true life. Let sea, and earth, and sky
Wage war against me; on my front I show
Their mighty Master's seal! In vain they try
To end my life who can but end its woe.
Is that a death-bed where the Christian lies?
Yes; but not his: 'tis Death itself there dies.'

As for Carlyle's 'FAITH,' it has no truth, much less a system of truth; it has no worship; and it has neither a life nor a rule of practice. It cannot speak; it cannot kneel; it cannot work. Whoever saw or heard of it in connexion with a positive doctrine, a tangible ceremony, or a visible fruit? And if, among philosophers, and even with its philosophical author himself, it is an undeclared and unshaped nonentity, how is it to take possession of, stir, and rule the common but various world? If it have no book, no altar, no

code for the esoteric, what can it be or have to the vulgar millions?

Carlyle's spite at Coleridge as a Christian appears very offensively in the following anecdote :

There is no doubt but Coleridge could speak plain words on things plain: his observations and responses on the trivial matters that occurred were as simple as the commonest man's, or were even distinguished by superior simplicity as well as pertinency. "Ah! your tea is too cold, Mr Coleridge!" mourned the good Mrs Gilman once, in her kind, reverential, and yet protective manner, handing him a very tolerable though belated cup. "It's better than I deserve!" snuffled he, in a low, hoarse murmur, partly courteous, chiefly pious, the tone of which still abides with me: "It's better than I deserve!”

If it be remembered what poignant remorse Coleridge felt for that irresolution of will which had thrown him off from all the resources of a livelihood and an independence, which his wonderful genius could easily have secured, and made him indebted for support to strangers, to whom he could make no return, his remark, even over Mrs Gilman's cup of tea, 'It's better than I deserve,' will lose all its appearance of cant. Gratitude to Providence, along with a touch of penitence, is not one of Mr Carlyle's laughable peculiarities. No biographer will have to sneer at him for that.

Coleridge was none of your narrow, dull, mechanical souls who move in the beaten track of a creed; but a man endowed with the most original powers of speculation, which he exercised every moment; and yet, in his best, and down to his last days, he found the amplest scope for them within Christianity, and read a memorable lesson to all daring and lawless thinkers that to hold fast by its peculiar and essential doctrines is glorious liberty. Hence Carlyle's hatred of him. Unfortunately, Coleridge's subtle and dreamy talk, not to speak of his sanguine views and projects for reforming such a corrupt institution as the Church of England, furnished Carlyle with materials for ridicule; and Carlyle has unjustly transferred these materials into the very heart of Coleridge's Christian creed. He has dexterously but dishonourably put Coleridge's mists into the place of the everlasting hills on which Coleridge rested. There is, however, one living philosopher, with whose subtle and comprehensive disquisitions on Christianity we challenge Mr Carlyle to meddle. Let him try Thomas De Quincey! Instead of mist, he would find impenetrable mail.

The most mournful episode in the volume is Sterling's connexion with Torrijos and the Spanish exiles. Torrijos, prompted

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