A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 273 



master roots, with all that implies, toiling and grap- 

 pling in the gloom, but full of the spirit of light. 

 How he delves and searches ; how much he made 

 live and bloom again ; how he sifted the soil for the 

 last drop of heroic blood. The Fates are there too 

 with water from the sacred well. He is quick, sensi- 

 tive, full of tenderness and pity ; yet he is savage 

 and brutal when you oppose him or seek to wrench 

 him from his holdings. His stormy outbursts always 

 leave the moral atmosphere clear and bracing; he 

 does not communicate the gloom and despondency 

 he feels, because he brings us so directly and unfail- 

 ingly in contact with the perennial sources of hope 

 and faith, with the life-giving and the life-renewing. 

 Though the heavens fall, the orbs of truth and jus- 

 tice fall not. Carlyle was like an unhoused soul, 

 naked and bare to every wind that blows. He felt 

 the awful cosmic chill. He could not take shelter 

 in the creed of his fathers, nor in any of the opin- 

 ions and beliefs of his time. He could not and did 

 not try to fend himself against the keen edge of the 

 terrible doubts, the awful mysteries, the abysmal ques- 

 tions and duties. He lived and wrought on in the 

 visible presence of God. This was no myth to him, 

 but a terrible reality. How the immensities open 

 and yawn about him ! He was like a man who 

 should suddenly see his relations to the universe, 

 both physical and moral, in gigantic perspective, and 

 never through life lose the awe, the wonder, the fear, 

 the revelation inspired. The veil, the illusion of the 

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