282 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



formative in the modern movement ? I think it is 

 the best medicine and regimen for it that could be 

 suggested the best stay and counterweight. For 

 the making of good Democrats, there are no books 

 like Carlyle's, and we in America need especially to 

 cherish him, and to lay his lesson to heart. 



It is his supreme merit that he spoke with abso- 

 lute sincerity ; not according to the beliefs, traditions, 

 conventionalities of his times, for they were mostly 

 against him ; but according to his private and solemn 

 conviction of what the will of his Maker with refer- 

 ence to himself was. The reason why so much writ- 

 ing and preaching sounds hollow and insincere com- 

 pared with his is that the writers and speakers are 

 mostly under the influence of current beliefs or re- 

 ceived traditions ; they deliver themselves of what 

 they have been taught, or what is fashionable and 

 pleasant ; they draw upon a sort of public fund of con- 

 viction and sentiment and not at all from original pri- 

 vate resources, as he did. It is not their own minds 

 or their own experience they speak from, but a vague, 

 featureless, general mind and general experience. We 

 drink from a cistern or reservoir and not from a foun- 

 tain head. Carlyle always takes us to the source of 

 intense personal and original conviction. The spring 

 may be a hot spring, or a sulphur spring, or a spout- 

 ing spring a Geyser, as Froude says, shooting up 

 volumes of steam and stone, or the most refreshing 

 and delicious of fountains (and he seems to have 

 been all these things alternately) ; but in any case it 



