ut it is evident that the
progress of his mind from the bog-region of orthodoxy to the high
realms of thought and faith was a slow proceeding,--not rolled onward
as with the chariot-wheels of a fierce and sudden revolution, but
gradually developed in a long series of births, growths, and deaths.
The theological phraseology sticks to him, indeed, even to the present
time, although he puts it to new uses; and it acquires in his hands a
power and significance which it possessed only when, of old, it was
representative of the divine.

Carlyle was matured in solitude. Emerson found him, in the year 1833,
on the occasion of his first visit to England, living at
Craigenputtock, a farm in Nithsdale, far away from all civilization,
and "no one to talk to but the minister of the parish." He, good man,
could make but little of his solitary friend, and must many a time
have been startled out of his canonicals by the strange, alien
speeches which he heard. It is a pity that this minister had not had
some of the Boswell faculty in him, that he might have reported what
we should all be so glad to hear. Over that period of his life,
however, the curtain falls at present, to be lifted only, if ever, by
Carlyle himself. Through the want of companionship, he fell back
naturally upon books and his own thoughts. Here he wrote some of his
finest critical essays for the reviews, and that "rag of a book," as
he calls it, the "Life of Schiller." The essays show a catholic, but
conservative spirit, and are full of deep thought. They exhibit also
a profoundly philosophical mind, and a power of analysis which is
almost unique in letters. They are pervaded likewise by an earnestness
and solemnity which are perfectly Hebraic; and each performance is
presented in a style decorated with all the costly jewels of
imagination and fancy,--a style of far purer and more genuine English
than any of his subsequent writings, which are often marred, indeed,
by gross exaggerations, and still grosser violations of good taste and
the chastities of language. What made these writings, however, so
notable at the time, and so memorable since, was that sincerity and
deep religious feeling of the writer which we have already alluded
to. Here were new elements introduced into the current literature,
destined to revivify it, and to propagate themselves, as by seminal
vitality, in myriad minds and forms. These utterances were both
prophetic and creative, and took all sinc