A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 243 



cies, to great occasions, they could oppose great qual- 

 ties ; there can be no doubt of that, but the ordinary 

 e very-day hindrances and petty burdens of life fretted 

 their spirits into tatters. Mrs. C. used frequently to 

 return from her trips to the country with her " mind 

 all churned into froth," no butter of sweet thought 

 or sweet content at all. Yet Carlyle could say of 

 her, " Not a bad little dame at all. She and I did 

 aye very weel together ; and 'tweel, it was not every 

 one that could have done with her," which was doubt- 

 less the exact truth. Froude also speaks from per- 

 sonal knowledge when he says : " His was the soft 

 heart and hers the stern one." 



We are now close on to the cardinal fact of Car- 

 lyle's life and teachings, namely, the urgency of his 

 quest for heroes and heroic qualities. This is the 

 master key to him ; the main stress of his preaching 

 and writing is here. He is the medium and exem- 

 plar of the value of personal force and prowess, and 

 he projected this thought into current literature and 

 politics, with the emphasis of gunpowder and torpe- 

 does. He had a vehement and overweening conceit 

 in man. A sort of anthropomorphic greed and hun- 

 ger possessed him always, an insatiable craving for 

 strong, picturesque characters, and for contact and 

 conflict with them. This was his ruling passion (and 

 it amounted to a passion) all his days. He fed his 

 soul on heroes and heroic qualities, and all his liter- 

 ary exploits were a search for these things. Where 

 he found them not, where he did not come upon 



