A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 253 



the moral atmosphere clear and bracing; he does 

 not communicate the gloom and despondency he 

 feels, because he brings us so directly and unfail- 

 ingly in contact with the perennial sources of hope 

 and faith, with the life-giving and the life-renew- 

 ing. Though the heavens fall, the orbs of truth 

 and justice fall not. Carlyle was like an unhoused 

 soul, naked and bare to every wind that blows. 

 He felt the awful cosmic chill. He could not take 

 shelter in the creed of his fathers, nor in any of 

 the opinions and beliefs of his time. He could not 

 and did not try to fend himself against the keen 

 edge of the terrible doubts, the awful mysteries, 

 the abysmal questions and duties. He lived and 

 wrought on in the visible presence of God. This 

 was no myth to him, but a terrible reality. How 

 the immensities open and yawn about him! He 

 was like a man who should suddenly see his rela- 

 tions to the universe, both physical and moral, in 

 gigantic perspective, and never through life lose the 

 awe, the wonder, the fear, the revelation inspired. 

 The veil, the illusion of the familiar, the common- 

 place, is torn away. The natural becomes the su- 

 pernatural. Every question, every character, every 

 duty, was seen against the immensities, like figures 

 in the night against a background of fire, and seen 

 as if for the first time. The sidereal, the cosmical, 

 the eternal, we grow familiar with these or lose 

 sight of them entirely. But Carlyle never lost 

 sight of them; his sense of them became morbidly 

 acute, preternaturally developed, and it was as if 



