IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 79 



projectile force. It makes a vast difference whether 

 you burn gunpowder on a shovel or in a gun-barrel. 

 Irving may be said to have made a brilliant flash, 

 and then to have disappeared in the smoke. 



Some men are like nails, easily drawn ; others are 

 like rivets, not drawable at all. Carlyle is a rivet, 

 well headed in. He is not going to give way, and be 

 forgotten soon. People who differed from him in 

 opinion have stigmatized him as an actor, a mounte- 

 bank, a rhetorician ; but he was committed to his 

 purpose and to the part he played with the force of 

 gravity. Behold how he toiled ! He says, " One 

 monster there is in the world : the idle man." He 

 did not merely preach the gospel of work ; he was it, 

 an indomitable worker from first to last. How he 

 delved ! How he searched for a sure foundation, like 

 a master builder, fighting his way through rubbish 

 and quicksands till he reached the rock ! Each of his 

 review articles cost him a month or more of serious 

 work. " Sartor Resartus " cost him nine months, the 

 " French Revolution " three years, " Cromwell " four 

 years, " Frederick " thirteen years. No surer does 

 the Auldgarth bridge, that his father helped build, 

 carry the traveler over the turbulent water beneath 

 it, than these books convey the reader over chasms 

 and confusions, where before there was no way, or 

 only an inadequate one. Carlyle never wrote a book 

 except to clear some gulf or quagmire, to span and 

 conquer some chaos. No architect or engineer ever 

 had purpose more tangible and definite. To further 



