382 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF 



consequent spread of untruth among a straightforward 

 and truth-loving people. " A national wound," he would 

 have said, " may be healed by the healthy surgery of the 

 sword, but not when it is accompanied by national 

 putrefaction." He would have made his own observa- 

 tions on the fell potency of that party virus which has 

 brought men whom he regarded and loved as younger 

 brothers into partnership with so much that is mean 

 and mendacious in political life. They have, I doubt 

 not, their hours of misgiving, if not of self-accusation. 



A word or two may here be thrown in as to Carlyle's 

 relation to the " Nigger question." He undoubtedly 

 rated the white man above the black. The capacity of 

 rising to a higher blessedness, and of suffering a deeper 

 woe, he deemed the prerogative and doom of the white. 

 Hence his sympathy with the yellow-coloured weavers 

 of Lancashire, as against " black Quashee over the seas." 

 Even among ourselves he insisted on indelible differ- 

 ences. Wise culture could make the cabbage a good 

 cabbage and the oak a good oak; but culture could not 

 transform the one into the other. It is interesting to 

 observe how Locke's image of a sheet of white paper, 

 on which education could write everything at will, laid 

 hold of even powerful minds. I had nlany discussions 

 with the late Mr. Babbage upon this subject. His be- 

 lief in the all-potency of education, as applied to the 

 individual, I could not share. Brains differ, like voices ; 

 and^as the voice-organ of a great singer must be the 

 gift of Nature, so the brain-organ of the great man 

 must also be a natural gift. Nobody who knew Carlyle 

 could dream for a moment that he meant to be unfair, 

 much less cruel, towards the blacks. " Do I then hate 

 the Negro? No; except when the soul is killed out 

 of him I decidedly like poor Quashee. A swift, supple 



