s bewildered, weeping in unknown tumults;
like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart,
came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a
charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!'

The mystery and fleetingness of life with its awful counterpart death,
are the commonplaces of every hour, but who but Carlyle has rendered
them with such inspirational power?

'Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a Body; and
forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What
Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of
Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science;
one madly dashed to pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his
fellow:--and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls
away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some
wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this
mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding
grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created,
fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully
across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's
mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage; can the
Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality
and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped
in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But
whence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that
it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.

'We _are such stuff_
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep?'

A fervid perception of the evanescence and sorrows of life is the root
of Carlyle's pathos, which is unsurpassed in literature. It leads him to
some beautiful contrasts between childhood and manhood, positively
idyllic in their charm.

'Happy season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdroeckh: 'Kind Nature, that
art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with
auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft swathing of
Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round
(_umgaeukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us
in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet,
priest and king, a