A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 231 



thus abridged, does not want the universe reduced 

 to an epigram. Carlyle wants an actual flesh-and- 

 blood hero, and what is more, wants him immersed 

 head and ears in the actual affairs of this world. 



Those who seek to explain Carlyle on the 

 ground of his humble origin shoot wide of the mark. 

 " Merely a peasant with a glorified intellect/' says a 

 certain irate female, masquerading as the " Day of 

 Judgment." 



It seems to me Carlyle was as little of a peasant 

 as any man of his time, a man without one peas- 

 ant trait or proclivity, a regal and dominating man, 

 " looking," as he said of one of his own books, "king 

 and beggar in the face with an indifference of broth- 

 erhood and an indifference of contempt." The two 

 marks of the peasant are stolidity and abjectness ; 

 he is dull and heavy, and he dare not say his soul 

 is his own. No man ever so hustled and jostled 

 titled dignitaries, and made them toe the mark, as 

 did Carlyle. It was not merely that his intellect was 

 towering ; it was also his character, his will, his stand- 

 ard of manhood that was towering. He bowed to 

 the hero, to valor and personal worth, never to titles 

 or conventions. The virtues and qualities of his yeo- 

 man ancestry were in him without doubt ; his power 

 of application, the spirit of toil that possessed him, 

 his frugal, self-denying habits, came from his family 

 and race, but these are not peasant traits, but heroic 

 traits. A certain coarseness of fibre he had also, to- 

 gether with great delicacy and sensibility, but these 



