ronic utterance of it
with considerable impatience. "Art thou nothing other than a vulture,
then," asks the former, "that fliest through the universe seeking after
somewhat _to eat,_ and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not
given thee? Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe."

"Huntsman Common Sense
Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense
Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue,
And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too,
Its touch of God's own flame, which He may so expand
'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand'
That ocean's self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect
Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect
Once fairly matched."[A]

[Footnote A:_Fifine at the Fair_, lxvii.]

But Carlyle was always more able to detect the disease than to suggest
the remedy. He had, indeed, "a glimpse of it." "There is in man a Higher
than love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof
find Blessedness." But the glimpse was misleading, for it penetrated no
further than the first negative step. The "Everlasting Yea" was, after
all, only a deeper "No!" only _Entsagung_, renunciation: "the fraction
of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your
numerator as by lessening your denominator." Blessed alone is he that
expecteth nothing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered the
mystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow." "What Act of Legislature
was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst
no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to
be Happy, but to be Unhappy? Nay, is not 'life itself a disease,
knowledge the symptom of derangement'? Have not the poets sung 'Hymns to
the Night' as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were but a small
motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of
Night, and did but deform and hide from us its pure transparent eternal
deeps." "We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence and
history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All
... borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides, and grand
ocean currents, of which what faintest chance is there that we should
ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the goings and comings? A
region of Doubt, therefore, hovers for ever in the back-ground.... Only
on a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way o