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 bo^'ish 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 sesthet- 

 ics. Alas 1 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 InIoscows, 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, howevei, to keep 

 cool under w^hatever circumstances, and to reckon that 

 the excesses of an author will 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 gaj)ing crowd forthwith. 



