A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE BOW. 275 



years did not tame him at all, did not blunt his 

 conception of the " fearfulness and wonderf ulness of 

 life." Sometimes an opiate or an anaesthetic operates 

 inversely upon a constitution, and instead of inducing 

 somnolence makes the person wildly wakeful and 

 sensitive. The anodyne of life acted this way upon 

 Carlyle, and instead of quieting or benumbing him 

 filled him with portentous imaginings and fresh cause 

 for wonder. There is a danger that such a mind, if 

 it takes to literature, will make a mess of it. But 

 Carlyle is saved by his tremendous gripe upon reality. 

 Do I say the ideal and the real were one with him ? 

 He made the ideal the real, and the only real. What- 

 ever he touched he made tangible, actual, and vivid. 

 Ideas are hurled like rocks, a word blisters like a 

 branding iron, a metaphor transfixes like a javelin. 

 There is something in his sentences that lays hold 

 of things, as the acids bite metals. His subtle 

 thoughts, his marvelous wit, like the viewless gases 

 of the chemist, combine with a force that startles the 

 reader. 



Carlyle differs from the ordinary religious enthu- 

 siast in the way he bares his bosom to the storm. 

 His attitude is rather one of gladiatorial resignation 

 than supplication. He makes peace with nothing, 

 takes refuge in nothing. He flouts at happiness, at 

 repose, at joy. " There is in man a higher than love 

 of happiness ; he can do without happiness, and in- 

 stead thereof find blessedness." "The life of all 

 gods figures itself to us as a sublime sadness ear- 



