stronger and statelier
language than others. He holds no communion with his kind, but stands
alone without mate or fellow. He is like a solitary peak, all access to
which is cut off. He exists not by sympathy but by antipathy. Mr.
Carlyle seems chiefly to try how he shall display his own powers, and
astonish mankind, by starting new trains of speculation or by expressing
old ones so as not to be understood. He cares little what he says, so as
he can say it differently from others. To read his works, is one thing;
to understand them, is another. If any one thinks that I exaggerate, let
him sit for an hour over "Sartor Resartus," and if he does not rise from
its pages, place his three or four dictionaries on the shelf, and say I
am right, I promise never again to say a word against Thomas Carlyle. He
writes one page in favour of Reform, and ten against it. He would hang
all prisoners to get rid of them, yet the inmates of the prisons and
"work-houses are better off than the poor." His heart is with the poor;
yet the blacks of the West Indies should be taught, that if they will
not raise sugar and cotton by their own free will, "Quashy should have
the whip applied to him." He frowns upon the Reformatory speakers upon
the boards of Exeter Hall, yet he is the prince of reformers. He hates
heroes and assassins, yet Cromwell was an angel, and Charlotte Corday a
saint. He scorns everything, and seems to be tired of what he is by
nature, and tries to be what he is not. But you will ask, what has
Thomas Carlyle to do with a visit to the Crystal Palace? My only reply
is, "Nothing," and if my remarks upon him have taken up the space that
should have been devoted to the Exhibition, and what I have written not
prove too burdensome to read, my next will be "a week in the Crystal
Palace."

LETTER XVIII.

_The London Peace Congress--Meeting of Fugitive Slaves--Temperance
Demonstration--The Great Exhibition: last visit._

LONDON, _August 20_.

The past six weeks have been of a stirring nature in this great
metropolis. It commenced with the Peace Congress, the proceedings of
which have long since reached you. And although that event has passed
off, it may not be out of place here to venture a remark or two upon its
deliberations.

A meeting upon the subject of Peace, with the support of the monied and
influential men who rally around the Peace standard, could scarcely have
been held in Exeter Hall withou