f English and American people
respecting the Great Protector. It was then that his popularity was
greatest, and that the eccentric genius of Cheyne Row, so long
struggling with poverty, was assured of a competence, and was received
in some of the proudest families of the kingdom as a teacher and a sage.
Thus far he was an optimist, taking cheerful views of human life, and
encouraging those who had noble aspirations.

But for some unaccountable reason, whether from discontent or dyspepsia
or disappointment, or disgust with this world, Carlyle gradually became
a pessimist, and attacked all forms of philanthropy, thus alienating
those who had been his warmest supporters. He grew more bitter and
morose, until at last he howled almost like a madman, and was steeped
in cynicism and gloom. He put forth the doctrine that might was right,
and that thrones belong to the strongest. He saw no reliance in
governments save upon physical force, and expressed the most boundless
contempt for all institutions established by the people. Then he wrote
his "Frederic the Great,"--his most ambitious and elaborate production,
received as an authority from its marvellous historical accuracy, but
not so generally read as his "French Revolution," and not, like his
"Cromwell," changing the opinions of mankind.

Soon after this the death of his wife plunged him into renewed gloom,
from which he never emerged; and he virtually retired from the world,
and was lost sight of by the younger generation, until his
"Reminiscences" appeared, injudiciously published at his request by his
friend and pupil Froude, in which his scorn and contempt for everybody
and everything turned the current of public opinion strongly against
him. This was still further increased when the Letters of his
wife appeared.

Carlyle's bitterest assailants were now agnostics of every shade and
degree, especially of the humanitarian school,--that to which Mill and
George Eliot belonged. It was seen that this reviler of hypocrisy and
shams, this disbeliever in miracles and in mechanisms to save society,
was after all a believer in God Almighty and in immortality; a stern
advocate of justice and duty, appealing to the conscience of mankind; a
man who detested Comte the positivist as much as he despised Mill the
agnostic, and who exalted the old religion of his fathers, stripped of
supernaturalism, as the only hope of the world. The biography by Froude,
while it does not conceal the