ics, visionaries, from their youth; but in
ethics Flaubert seems to attain at a bound the point of view which the
dragging years alone revealed to Carlyle.

The chapter on the death of Frederick the Great reads like a passage
from the _Correspondance_ of Flaubert in his first manhood. In Saint
Antoine, Flaubert found the secret of the same mystic inspiration as
Carlyle found in Cromwell. To the brooding soul of the hermit, as to
that of the warrior of Jehovah, what is earth, what are the shapes of
time? Man's path is to the Eternal--_dem Grabe hinan_--and from the
study of the Revolution of 1848 Flaubert arises with the same
embittered insight as marks the close of "Frederick the Great."

And if, in such later works as Flaubert's _Bouvard et Pecuchet_ and the
_Latter-Day Pamphlets_ of Carlyle, only the difference between the two
minds is apparent, the difference is, after all, but a difference in
temperament. It is the contrast between the impassive aloofness of the
artist, and the personal and intrusive vehemence of the prophet.

The structural thought, the essential emotion of the two works are the
same--the revolt of a soul whose impulses are ever beyond the finite
and the transient, against a world immersed in the finite and the
transient. Hence the derision, the bitter scorn, or the laughter with
which they cover the pretensions, the hypocrisies, the loud claims of
modern science and mechanical invention. But whether surveyed with
contemplative calm, or proclaimed with passionate remonstrance to an
unheeding generation, the life vision of these two men is one and the
same--"the eternities, the immensities."[9]

And this same passion for the infinite is the informing thought of
Wagner's tone-dramas and Tschaikowsky's symphonies. Love's mystery is
deepened by the mystery of death, and its splendour has an added touch
by the breath of the grave. The desire of the infinite greatens the
beauty of the finite and lights its sanctuary with a supernatural
radiance. All knowledge there becomes wonder. Truth is not known, but
the soul is there in very deed possessed by the Truth, and is one with
it eternally.

Ibsen's protest against limited horizons, against theorists,
formulists, social codes, conventions, derives its justice from the
worthlessness of those conventions, codes, theories, in the light of
the infinite. The achievements in art most distinctive of the present
age--the paintings of Courbet, Whistl