226 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



a massive, heavy-laden storm-cloud is Carlyle. Car- 

 lyle was never placidly sounding the azure depths 

 like Emerson, but always pouring and rolling earth- 

 ward, with wind, thunder, rain, and hail. He reaches 

 up to the Emersonian altitudes, but seldom disports 

 himself there ; never loses himself, as Emerson some- 

 times does ; the absorption takes place in the other 

 direction; he descends to actual affairs and events 

 with fierce precipitation. Carlyle's own verdict, writ- 

 ten in his journal on Emerson's second visit to him 

 in 1848, was much to the same effect, and, allowing 

 for the Carlylean exaggeration, was true. He wrote 

 that Emerson differed as much from himself " as a 

 gymno sophist sitting idle on a flowery bank may do 

 from a wearied worker and wrestler passing that way 

 with many of his bones broken." 



All men would choose Emerson's fate, Emerson's 

 history ; how rare, how serene, how inspiring, how 

 beautiful, how fortunate ! But as between these two 

 friends, our verdict must be that Carlyle did the more 

 unique and difficult, the more heroic, piece of work. 

 Whether the more valuable and important or not, it is 

 perhaps too early in the day to say, but certainly the 

 more difficult and masterful. As an artist, using the 

 term in the largest sense, as the master-worker in, and 

 shaper of, the Concrete, he is immeasurably Emer- 

 son's superior. Emerson's two words were truth and 

 beauty, which lie, as it were, in the same plane, and 

 the passage from one to the other is easy ; it is smooth 

 sailing. Carlyle's two words were truth and duty, 



