e him to be. The law that _noblesse oblige_ has
unwritten bearings in dealing with all men; all masses of men are
susceptible of an appeal from that point: for this Mr. Carlyle seems to
make no allowance.

[14] 'Organic Filaments' in the _Sartor_, bk. iii. ch. vii.

Every modification of society is one of the slow growths of time, and to
hurry impatiently after them by swift ways of military discipline and
peremptory law-making, is only to clasp the near and superficial good.
It is easy to make a solitude and call it peace, to plant an iron heel
and call it order. But read Mr. Carlyle's essay on Dr. Francia, and then
ponder the history of Paraguay for these later years and the accounts of
its condition in the newspapers of to-day. 'Nay, it may be,' we learn
from that remarkable piece, 'that the benefit of him is not even yet
exhausted, even yet entirely become visible. Who knows but, in unborn
centuries, Paragueno men will look back to their lean iron Francia, as
men do in such cases to the one veracious person, and institute
considerations?'[15] Who knows, indeed, if only it prove that their
lean iron Francia, in his passion for order and authority, did not stamp
out the very life of the nation? Where organic growths are concerned,
patience is the sovereign law; and where the organism is a society of
men, the vital principle is a sense in one shape or another of the
dignity of humanity. The recognition of this tests the distinction
between the truly heroic ruler of the stamp of Cromwell, and the
arbitrary enthusiast for external order like Frederick. Yet in more than
one place Mr. Carlyle accepts the fundamental principle of democracy.
'It is curious to consider now,' he says once, 'with what fierce,
deep-breathed doggedness the poor English Nation, drawn by their
instincts, held fast upon it [the Spanish War of Walpole's time, in
Jenkins' Ear Question], and would take no denial of it, as if they had
surmised and seen. For the instincts of simple, guileless persons
(liable to be counted stupid by the unwary) are sometimes of prophetic
nature, and spring from the deep places of this universe!'[16] If the
writer of this had only thought it out to the end, and applied the
conclusions thereof to history and politics, what a difference it would
have made.

[15] _Misc. Ess._ vi. 124.

[16] _Frederick_, iv. 390.

* * * * *

No criticism upon either Mr. Carlyle or any other modern historia