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worship much as the barbarians of old did, and much as the savages do now, and fall prostrate before brute Force and a tyrannons and unrelenting Will. They are "Titanolaters," as Archdeacon Hare appropriately named them. Mr. Carlyle raves about "Jarls" and "Vikings," and the "grand old Norsemen," till we are sick of the recurring cant; and Mr. Kingsley echoes his precise phrases and expressions, page after page. with an almost parrot-like exactitude of iteration. This idolatry of mere strength, however, assumes distinct forms in the two writers; and, strange to say, it takes a somewhat higher type in the Pagan than in the Christian votary. The one idolises chiefly strength of purpose, the other chiefly strength of muscle and of nerve. Both probably have "gone in" for their own especial line of superiority. Mr. Carlyle,-never strong in health or agile in frame, nor trained either as ploughman, sportsman, soldier, or athlete, but having had to fight his way in life with a persistent energy and a self-denying power which do him infinite honour-thinks little of mere bodily strength, and, indeed, seldom speaks of the animal frame at all, but feels an irresistible attraction towards inflexible tempers and overmastering volitions. Indeed, he is essentially and consistently a despot; and with all despots, if only they be relentless and inconsiderate enough, he has a prompt and abounding sympathy. If they be utterly brutal in addition, there are no limits to his admiration. His heart yearns to them, and leaps up to meet them as to a brother. He calls them "MEN," "true men," "types of real manhood." No one acquainted with Mr.. Carlyle's writings will, we are sure, charge us with one shade of exaggeration. Every book, and almost every page, will witness for us. The fierce rough Danton was among his earliest idols, bloody and ignorant as he was, because he was simple and earnest, knew what he wanted (or thought he did), and went with Juggernaut directness and recklessness to his end. Samuel Johnson too-noble old bear that he was-Mr. Carlyle really loves for his unendurable brutality. But it was not till he met with Frederick-William of Prussia,-probably the most truculent ruffian that ever sat upon a throne; an absolute savage in taste and temper; often half mad, and constantly quite drunk; for ever and in every relation of life trampling upon justice, decency, kindness, and natural affection,-that Mr. Carlyle recognised the "realised ideal" of his fancy, and hugged the 'just man made perfect" to his heart of hearts.

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But Mr. Carlyle not only worships "forcible" men; he would apply force-physical force-to all recalcitrants; he. would govern the world by force. The wise and powerful must rule; the ignorant and foolish must submit. The scourge and

the sword must carry out the dicta which Mr. Carlyle sees to be good. The negro must be flogged into sugar-making; the wandering and misguided multitudes of all lands must be "regimented" under "captains of industry," who will compel them to their task. The same offensive disregard of the rights of individual humanity, the same contempt for freedom, the same exaggeration of its mischiefs, the same denial or unconsciousness of its benefits, runs through his works, and mars the beauty and the value of them all. Truly, the despots of the worldwhether priests, legitimate tyrants, or military usurpers-never before among literary celebrities had an apologist or an adorer like the philosopher of Chelsea.

Mr. Kingsley's idolatry of power shows itself in a different fashion, prompted no doubt by his different organisation, and somewhat more befitting his clerical profession. He himself is endowed by nature with a vigorous and exuberant organisation, is a sportsman, a foxhunter, an athlete, and would probably have been a gladiator if he had not been a Christian. He revels in the description of every species of athletic exercise and desperate strife. Accordingly, all his heroes are men of surpassing animal strength, all bone and muscle, marvels of agility, boiling over with exulting and abounding life, and usually miracles of physical beauty likewise. They are constantly "models;" and very often "young Antinouses," or "Phoebus Apollos." He loves above all things to paint, and to display in action, his ideal of the perfect "animal_man.” Softness and feebleness he cannot abide. The perpetual moral of his writings, which crops out at every sentence, is the old sentiment,

"To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering."

He does not, like Mr. Carlyle, bow down in reverence before Might when utterly divorced from Right. But it is impossible not to perceive that admiration for what is strong, as strong, is about his most vivid original instinct. With all his Christian feelings, his varnish of modern civilisation, his noble aspirations, and all the intense philanthropies of his heart, Mr. Kingsley, beneath the skin, is something of a Goth, a pagan, and a schoolboy still.

Finally, and not to weary our readers further with this prolonged parallel between the two most picturesque and graphic writers of the day, one other guilty similarity remains to be denounced. Both are declaimers-not reasoners. Their declamation is always powerful, often splendid; rich with gorgeous imagery; full of lightning gleams-sometimes lengthening out into steady rays-of grand and saving truths; frequently,

*

usually perhaps, flashing forth in the cause of humanity and right; often striking the real offender and the real sin, often proclaiming the true hero and extolling the true virtue; magnificent in its wrath, withering in its scorn: but, after all, only declamation. Neither writer ever reasons, in the strict sense of the term. Inspiration supersedes all necessity for the slow and cautious processes by which conscientious mortals of the ordinary stamp must painfully work out truth and light; and both Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Kingsley believe themselves inspired. The industrious collection and collation of premises, the careful elaboration of conclusions, are beneath them. They despise the inductive process. Mr. Carlyle hates facts; Mr. Kingsley hates logic. The hatred of both breaks out on all occasions. Their opinions on subjects, their judgments of men, are not formed by reflection, but dictated by sentiment; and therefore the first are constantly unsound, and the second constantly unjust. What they like, what fits into their temperament, that they believe, and that they praise. What they dislike, what grates upon their tastes, that they repudiate and denounce. Their abhorrence of reasoning is heightened by a further peculiarity common to the two. They are singularly impatient men. They are too impatient to observe and inquire; too impatient to perpend and reflect; too impatient to entertain doubts and resolve them. They are not ruminating animals; they do not chew the cud of thought. They pounce upon ideas, catch bright glimpses of them, have them written on their souls as by a flash of light, shoot them flying, wake in the morning and find them there;but never create, educe, mould, revolve them.

The inevitable consequence of this is, that both men, to a degree wholly unworthy of cultured intellects, are at the mercy of their sympathies and their antipathies. You cannot have better awakeners, nor worse guides. We might cite a thousand illustrations, but two will suffice. Take the treatment which political economy and its votaries receive at their hands. Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Kingsley-the latter especially-are deeply impressed with the wretched condition of mankind in these islands, and with the vast and irresistible influence which their material well- or ill-being has upon their moral state. In his Miscellanies, Mr. Kingsley states his views on this subject with a breadth and daring which are astounding in a clergyman, but with which we almost unreservedly agree. To make men virtuous, he every where proclaims, you must first rescue them

* It is a curious exemplification, that Mr. Kingsley has put forth a volume treating of some of the most knotty and awful questions that can occupy the human mind under the perfectly accurate title of Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers. † ii. pp. 332-334.

from their physical misery. Now, political economy is the science which treats of man's material well-being. It deals with causes, not with symptoms. Discarding the shallow charity which relieves suffering as it arises, and perpetuates and multiplies it by relieving it, political economy searches out and explains the sources of that suffering, and the only recipe for its radical and enduring cure. Eschewing and denouncing the assistance from without, which degrades the labourer, it studies and preaches that knowledge and self-control which elevates and strengthens while it enriches him. Knowing that competence is essential (among the masses at least) to virtue and to progress, its task is to discover and proclaim how that competence is to be won. It is, in a single word, the Science of Philanthropy. Its business is to show how, and how only, Mr. Kingsley's object may be attained. Surely the professors of such a science ought to be recognised and welcomed by him as fellow-labourers. He may think their principles at fault; he may think their rules too rigid; he may think their purpose and their means too narrow; but at least he must see that they are doing his work, and aiming at his end. But no; they are exact thinkers, and Mr. Kingsley hates the fetters of exactitude. They are logicians, and believe in logic; Mr. Kingsley neither has it, nor has faith in it. They are often dry, stern, and methodical, while Mr. Kingsley is impetuous, enthusiastic, and sentimental; and, in these matters at least, he can endure no man who does not wear his livery, speak his language, and go his way. Therefore he denounces them in terms quite as violent, and almost as indecent, as Mr. Carlyle. Yet they are both acquainted with economists-with one at least, and he perhaps the chief—whose compassion for the wretched and the astray is as vivid and as genuine as their own, and has often tried hard his allegiance to sound doctrine and scientific truth, but scarcely ever-if ever-found it wanting. Unheeding all this, however, and never pausing to master the science they detest, or to respect the thinker whom they know, they have made political economy from the first, and make it still, the object of their fiercest anathemas.

We need not encumber our pages with the sarcasms which disfigure nearly all Mr. Carlyle's writings against the "professors of the Dismal Science," "the Gospel according to M'Crowdy,' and the like:* nor should we be disposed to remind our readers of the very unseemly and indefensible language used on the subject by Mr. Kingsley in Cheap Clothes and Nasty, and in Alton Locke (of which we hoped and believed that he had long ago become ashamed), were it not that in his Mis* See Past and Present, Chartism, and Latter-day Pamphlets, passim.

cellanies, published only yesterday, we came upon a passage in his old manner, which proves too clearly that the shame has been ineffectual, and that the repentance is, to say the least, incomplete. At present Mr. Kingsley is wild about sanitary reform; so are we. Well, then, remembering who was the chief originator, and unwearied-if not unwearying-advocate of that great movement, how could he dare to pen and publish this heartless sneer?

"Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the political economist [in the work of sanitary reform]. The fact is undeniable, but at the same time inexplicable. What they could have found in the doctrines of most modern political economists which should lead them to believe that human life would be precious in their eyes is unknown to the writer of these pages. Those whose bugbear has been over-population, whose motto has been a euphuistic ver

sion of

'The more the merrier, the fewer the better fare,' cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population by saving the lives of two-thirds of the children who now die prematurely in our great cities, and so still further overcrowding this unhappy land with those helpless and expensive sources of national poverty-rational human beings in strength and health.”*

It is as useless to argue with Mr. Kingsley when he takes up his parable against economic science, as with Sir A. Alison when he opens out about the currency. But passing over the unscru pulousness of the above onslaught, we cannot help observing,

* In justice to ourselves, and as a specimen of Mr. Kingsley's style when he comes across his foes, we must give the rest of the passage, though we confess to a feeling almost of disgust as we transcribe his random irony.

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By political economy alone has this faculty [progress and invention] been denied to man. In it alone he is not to conquer nature, but simply to obey her. Let her starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he must submit, as the savage does to the hail and the lightning. 'Laissez-faire,' says the science du néant,'-the science de la misère,' as it has truly and bitterly been called,- laissez-faire.' Analyse economic questions if you will, but beyond analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature, to fight against facts; as if facts were not made to be fought against and conquered and put out of the way, whensoever they interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. [Strange jumble and confusion between facts and truths, principles and laws.] The drowning man is not to strike out for his life, lest by keeping his head above water he interferes with the laws of gravitation. Not that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method, though he forbids it to the rest of the world. But the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural 'eidolon specûs' which ever entered into the head of a dehumanised pedantnamely, that once-famous preventive check,' which-if ever a nation did apply it, as it never will-could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural crime."-Miscellanies, i. 116.

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It is difficult to say whether the rattling nonsense or the unseemly insinuations of this passage are the more repellent.

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