A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 239 



more or less approaching a count of heads, a cap- 

 tain, an ablest man to take command, and put the 

 vessel through. If none were able, then indeed 

 the case were desperate; with or without the ballot- 

 box, the abyss would be pretty sure of a victim. 

 In any case there would perhaps be as little voting 

 to annul the storms, or change the ocean currents, 

 as there is in democracies to settle ethical or scien- 

 tific principles by an appeal to universal suffrage. 

 But Carlyle was fated to see the abyss lurking 

 under, and the eternities presiding over, every act 

 of life. He saw everything in fearful gigantic per- 

 spective. It is true that one cannot loosen the 

 latchet of his shoe without bending to forces that 

 are cosmical, sidereal; but whether he bends or not, 

 or this way or that, he passes no verdict upon 

 them. The temporary, the expedient, — all those 

 devices and adjustments that are of the nature of 

 scaffolding, and that enter so largely into the admin- 

 istration of the coarser affairs of this world, — were 

 with Carlyle equivalent to the false, the sham, the 

 phantasmal, and he would none of them. As the 

 ages seem to have settled themselves for the present 

 and the future, in all civilized countries, — and 

 especially in America, — politics is little more than 

 scaffolding; it certainly is not the house we live in, 

 but an ajDpurtenance or necessity of the house. A 

 government, in the long run, can never be better 

 or worse than the people governed. In voting for 

 Jones for constable, am I voting for or against the 

 unalterable laws of the universe, — an act wherein 



