s character. To
achieve his object, he exhausts all the means within his command;
never shuffles through his work, but does it faithfully and sincerely,
with a man's heart and hand. This outward sincerity in the conduct of
his executive faculty has its counterpart in the inmost recesses of
his nature. We feel that this man and falsehood are impossible
companions, and our faith in his integrity is perfect and absolute.
Herein lies his power; and here also lies the power of all men who
have ever moved the world. For it is in the nature of truth to
conserve itself, whilst falsehood is centrifugal, and flies off into
inanity and nothingness. It is by the cardinal virtue of sincerity
alone--the truthfulness of deed to thought, of effect to cause--that
man and nature are sustained. God is truth; and he who is most
faithful to truth is not only likest to God, but is made a
participator in the divine nature. For without truth there is neither
power, vitality, nor permanence.

Carlyle was fortunate that he was comparatively poor, and never
tempted, therefore, as a student, to dissipate his fine talents in the
gay pursuits of university life. Not that there would have been any
likelihood of his running into the excesses of ordinary students, but
we are pleased and thankful to reflect that he suffered no kind of
loss or harm in those days of his novitiate. It is one of the many
consolations of poverty that it protects young men from snares and
vices to which the rich are exposed; and our poor student in his
garret was preserved faithful to his vocation, and laid up day by day
those stores of knowledge, experience, and heavenly wisdom which he
has since turned to so good account. It would be deeply interesting,
if we could learn the exact position of Carlyle's mind at this time,
with respect to those profound problems of human nature and destiny
which have occupied the greatest men in all ages, ceaselessly and
pertinaciously urging their dark and solemn questions, and refusing to
depart until their riddles were in some sort solved. That Carlyle was
haunted by these questions, and by the pitiless Sphinx herself who
guards the portals of life and death,--that he had to meet her face to
face, staring at him with her stony, passionless eyes,--that he had to
grapple and struggle with her for victory,--there are proofs abundant
in his writings. The details of the struggle, however, are not given
us; it is the result only that we know. B