ature
and the feelings and intelligence of the nation, between the spiritual
power, literary and ecclesiastical, and those who are under it--the
anarchy that prevails in all these, and the extreme danger of it, have
been with Mr. Carlyle a never-ending theme. What seems to many of us the
extreme inefficiency or worse of his solutions, still allows us to feel
grateful for the vigour and perspicacity with which he has pressed on
the world the urgency of the problem.

The degree of durability which his influence is likely to possess with
the next and following generations is another and rather sterile
question, which we are not now concerned to discuss. The unrestrained
eccentricities which Mr. Carlyle's strong individuality has precipitated
in his written style may, in spite of the poetic fineness of his
imagination, which no historian or humorist has excelled, still be
expected to deprive his work of that permanence which is only secured by
classic form. The incorporation of so many phrases, allusions,
nicknames, that belong only to the hour, inevitably makes the vitality
of the composition conditional on the vitality of these transient and
accidental elements which are so deeply imbedded in it. Another
consideration is that no philosophic writer, however ardently his words
may have been treasured and followed by the people of his own time, can
well be cherished by succeeding generations, unless his name is
associated through some definable and positive contribution with the
central march of European thought and feeling. In other words, there is
a difference between living in the history of literature or belief, and
living in literature itself and in the minds of believers. Mr. Carlyle
has been a most powerful solvent, but it is the tendency of solvents to
become merely historic. The historian of the intellectual and moral
movements of Great Britain during the present century, will fail
egregiously in his task if he omits to give a large and conspicuous
space to the author of _Sartor Resartus_. But it is one thing to study
historically the ideas which have influenced our predecessors, and
another thing to seek in them an influence fruitful for ourselves. It is
to be hoped that one may doubt the permanent soundness of Mr. Carlyle's
peculiar speculations, without either doubting or failing to share that
warm affection and reverence which his personality has worthily inspired
in many thousands of his readers. He has himself