THOMAS CARLYLE. 395 



to recognise true merit and manfulness in all their 

 phases and spheres of action. Braidwood amid the 

 flames of Tooley Street, and the riddled Vengeur sink- 

 ing to the cry of ' Vive la Republique ! ' found in his 

 strong soul sympathetic admiration. He, however, 

 prized courage less than truth ; and when he found the 

 story of the Vengeur to be a lie, he transfixed it, and 

 hung it up as an historic scarecrow. The summer 

 lightning of his humour, and the splendour of an ima- 

 gination perhaps without a parallel in literature, served 

 only to irradiate and vivify labours marked by a 

 thoroughness in searching, and a patience in sifting, 

 never yet surpassed. The bias of his mind was cer- 

 tainly towards what might be called the military virtues ; 

 thinking, as he did, that they could not be dispensed 

 with in the present temper of the world. But, though 

 he bore about him the image and superscription of a 

 great military commander, had he been a statesman, as 

 he might well have been, he would at any fit and proper 

 moment have joyfully accepted as the weapons of his 

 warfare, instead of the sword and spear, the ploughshare 

 and pruning-hook of peaceful civic life. 



One point, touching Carlyle's ethics, may be referred 

 to here. Taking all that science has done in the past, 

 all that she has achieved in the present, and all that 

 she is likely to compass in the future will she at 

 length have told us everything, rendering our know- 

 ledge of this universe rounded and complete ? The 

 answer is clear. After science has completed her 

 mission upon earth, the finite known will still be em- 

 braced by the infinite unknown. And this ' boundless 

 contiguity of shade,' by which our knowledge is hemmed 

 in, will always tempt the exercise of belief and imagi- 

 nation. The human mind, in its structural and poetic 

 capacity, can never be prevented from building its 



