A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 247 



think of abusing an abstraction. However impracti- 

 cal we may regard Carlyle, he was entirely occupied 

 with practical questions ; an idealist turned loose in 

 the actual affairs of this world and intent only on 

 bettering them. That which so drew reformers and 

 all ardent ideal natures to him was not the charac- 

 ter of his conviction, but the torrid impetuosity of 

 his belief. He had the earnestness of fanaticism, the 

 earnestness of rebellion ; the earnestness of the Long 

 Parliament and the National Convention the only 

 two parliaments he praises. He did not merely see 

 the truth and placidly state it, standing aloof and 

 apart from it ; but, as soon as his intellect had con- 

 ceived a thing as true, every current of his being set 

 swiftly in that direction ; it was an outlet at once for 

 his whole pent-up energies, and there was a flood 

 and sometimes an inundation of Carlylean wrath and 

 power. Coming from Goethe, with his marvelous 

 insight and cool, uncommitted moral nature, to the 

 great Scotchman, is like coming from dress parade 

 to a battle, from Melancthon to Luther. It would 

 be far from the truth to say that Goethe was not hi 

 earnest : he was all eyes, all vision ; he saw every- 

 thing, but saw it for his own ends and behoof, for 

 contemplation and enjoyment. In Carlyle the vision 

 is productive of pain and suffering, because his moral 

 nature sympathizes so instantly and thoroughly with 

 his intellectual ; it is a call to battle, and every fac- 

 ulty is enlisted. It was this that made Carlyle akin 

 to the reformers and the fanatics, and led them to ex- 



