120 CARLYLE. 



was no more to him than that on his hearthstone ; even 

 the burning of a meeting-house, in itself a vulcanic 

 rarity, (so long as he was of another parish,) could not 

 tickle his outworn palate ; but he had hoped for a cer- 

 tain tang in the downcome of the bell that might recall 

 the boyish flavor of conflagration. There was something 

 dramatic, no doubt, in this surprise of the brazen senti- 

 nel at his post, but the breathless rustic has always 

 seemed to us a type of the prevailing delusion in aesthet- 

 ics. Alas ! if the bell must fall in every stanza, or every 

 monthly number, how shall an author contrive to stir us 

 at last, unless with whole Moscows, crowned with the 

 tintinnabulary crash of the Kremlin 1 For ourselves, we 

 are glad to feel that we are still able to find content- 

 ment in the more conversational and domestic tone 

 of our old-fashioned wood-fire. No doubt a great part 

 of our pleasure in reading is unexpectedness, whether in 

 turn of thought or of phrase ; but an emphasis out 

 of place, an intensity of expression not founded on 

 sincerity of moral or intellectual conviction, reminds one 

 of the underscorings in young ladies' letters, a wonder 

 even to themselves under the colder north-light of ma- 

 tronage. It is the part of the critic, however, to keep 

 cool under whatever circumstances, and to reckon that 

 the excesses of an author wiil be at first more attractive 

 to the many than that average power which shall win 

 him attention with a new generation of men. It is 

 seldom found out by the majority, till after a considera- 

 ble interval, that he was the original man who contrived 

 to be simply natural, the hardest lesson in the school 

 of art and the latest learned, if, indeed, it be a thing 

 capable of acquisition at all. The most winsome and 

 wayward of brooks draws now and then some lover's foot 

 to its intimate reserve, while the spirt of a bursting 

 water-pipe gathers a gaping crowd forthwith. 



