A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 253 



completely, and with the emphasis of a clap of thun- 

 der, the modern leveling impersonal tendencies, the 

 " manifest destinies," the blind mass movements, the 

 merging of the one in the many, the rule of majori- 

 ties, the no-government, no-leadership, laissez-faire 

 principle. Unless there was evidence of a potent, 

 supreme, human will guiding affairs, he had no faith 

 in the issue ; unless the hero was in the saddle, and 

 the dumb blind forces well bitted and curbed beneath 

 him, he took no interest in the venture. The cause 

 of the North, in the War of the Rebellion, failed to 

 enlist him, or touch him. It was a people's war ; 

 the hand of the strong man was not conspicuous ; it 

 was a conflict of ideas, rather than of personalities ; 

 there was no central and dominating figure around 

 which events revolved. He missed his Cromwell, 

 his Frederick. So far as his interest was aroused 

 at all, it was with the South, because he had heard 

 of the Southern slave-driver ; he knew Cuffee had a 

 master, and the crack of his whip was sweeter music 

 to him than the crack of anti-slavery rifles, behind 

 which he recognized only a vague, misdirected philan- 

 thropy. 



Carlyle did not see things in their relation, or as 

 a philosopher ; he saw them detached, and hence 

 more or less in conflict and opposition. We accuse 

 him of wrong-headedness, but it is rather inflexible- 

 ness of mind and temper. He is not a brook that 

 flows, but a torrent that plunges and plows. He 

 tried poetry, he tried novel-writing in his younger 



