A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE KOW. 233 



rule of majorities, the no-government, no-leader- 

 ship, 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 dumh 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 con- 

 flict 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 antislavery rifles, 

 behind which he recognized only a vague, misdi- 

 rected philanthropy. 



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 

 days, but he had not the flexibility of spirit to suc- 

 ceed m. these things; his moral vehemence, his fury 

 of conviction, were too great. 



Great is the power of reaction in the human 



