espised everything visionary
and indefinite, and had more respect for what is brought about by
revolution than by evolution. But of all things he held in profoundest
abhorrence the dreary theories of materialists and political economists.
It was the spirit and not the body which stood out in his eyes as of
most importance; it was the manly virtues which he reverenced in man,
not his clothes and surroundings. And it was on this lofty spiritual
plane that Carlyle and Emerson stood in complete harmony together.

I cannot quit this part of Carlyle's life without mention of what I
conceive to be his most original and remarkable production,--"Sartor
Resartus,"--The Stitcher Restitched: or, The Tailor Done Over,--the
title of an old Scotch song. It is a quaintly conceived reproduction of
the work of an imaginary German professor on "The Philosophy of
Clothes,"--under which external figure he includes all institutions,
customs, beliefs, in which humanity has draped itself, as distinguished
from the inner reality of man himself. "The beginning of all Wisdom," he
says, "is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till
they become _transparent_." And thus, in grotesque fashion, with amazing
vigor he ranges the universe in search of the Real. In one of his
letters to Emerson, Carlyle, discussing a project of lecturing in
America, takes on his sartorial professor's name, and writes: "Could any
one but appoint me Lecturing Professor of Teufelsdroeckh's
Science,--'Things in General'!" This work was written in his remote
solitude, yet not published for years after it was finished,--and for
the best of reasons, because with all his literary repute Carlyle could
not find a publisher. The "Sartor" was not appreciated; and Carlyle,
knowing its value, locked it up in his drawer, and waited for his time.

The "Sartor Resartus" is a sort of prose poem, written with the heart's
blood, vivid as fire in a dark night; a Dantean production; a revelation
probably of the author's own struggles and experiences from the dark
gulf of the "Everlasting Nay" to the clear and serene heights of the
"Everlasting Yea." To me the book is full of consolation and
encouragement,--a battle of the spirit with infernal doubts, a victory
over despair, over all external evils and all spiritual foes. It is also
a bold and grotesque but scorching sarcasm of the conventionalities and
hypocrisies of society, and a savage thrust at those quackeries which
s