han a
grain of mustard-seed, and though perhaps none of those who watch the
spot may live to see the birds singing in its branches.

I have not yet spoken of one of _our_ benefactors, Mr. Carlyle, whom I
saw several times. I approached him with more reverence after a little
experience of England and Scotland had taught me to appreciate the
strength and height of that wall of shams and conventions which he
more than any man, or thousand men,--indeed, he almost alone,--has
begun to throw down. Wherever there was fresh thought, generous hope,
the thought of Carlyle has begun the work. He has torn off the veils
from hideous facts; he has burnt away foolish illusions; he has
awakened thousands to know what it is to be a man,--that we must live,
and not merely pretend to others that we live. He has touched the
rocks and they have given forth musical answer; little more was
wanting to begin to construct the city.

But that little was wanting, and the work of construction is left to
those that come after him: nay, all attempts of the kind he is the
readiest to deride, fearing new shams worse than the old, unable to
trust the general action of a thought, and finding no heroic man, no
natural king, to represent it and challenge his confidence.

Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced
with steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the
usual misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or
inevitable) that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and
show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment
and instruction, which the greatest never cease to need from the
experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but
bears down all opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words,
resistless in their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual
physical superiority, raising his voice and rushing on his opponent
with a torrent of sound. This is not the least from unwillingness to
allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no man would more enjoy
a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind
accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk its prey, and
which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant
and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or
self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian
co