Grave questions these; and this other which is also asked: "What are the Rights, what are the Mights of the discontented Working Classes of England at this epoch ?" And well may Carlyle aver that "He were an Edipus, and deliverer from sad social pestilence, who could resolve us fully." But one is sorry to say that the Chelsea Sage is not the Edipus who has, even in any approximate degree, solved this Sphinx riddle. He, however, has got sure grasp of one of the elements of the solution: The right to work is the right of the working man. "A man willing to work, and unable to find work," he says, is perhaps the saddest sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under this Sun." But how to make this right into a might is the question. Of one other thing Carlyle is also sure: apropos of the English Poor-Law he says:

WORKING OR STARVATION.

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"Any law, however well-meant as a law, which has become a bounty on unthrift, idleness, bastardy, and beer-drinking, must be put an end to. In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither; let him know that for him the Law has made no soft provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the Law of Nature, which the Law of England would vainly contend against in the long run, he is doomed either to quit these habits, or be

miserably extruded from this Earth, which is made on principles different from these.

"He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that. Would to heaven one could preach it abroad into the hearts of all sons and daughters of Adam, for it is a law applicable to all; and bring it to bear, with a practical application, strict as the Poor-Law Bastille, on all. We had then, in good truth, a 'perfect Constitution of Society'; and 'God's fair Earth and Taskgarden, where whosoever is not working must be begging or stealing,' were then actually what always, through so many changes and struggles, it is endeavoring to become."

To all of which we say Amen! provided only that we could, now and for ever hereafter, utterly abolish that saddest of sights, a man willing to work and unable to find work. But, alas! as was true in 1840, so it is this day still more true: this saddest of sights forces itself upon us at every turn. It forces itself upon Carlyle in sequestered Craigenputtoch. We remember what he said to Emerson five-and-forty years ago: "Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house; but here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish to go to the moor and till it." Nobody, not even Thomas Carlyle, the proprietor, in right of his wife, of some of those acres of moorland. Irish question he has something to say:

Of this

THE IRISH QUESTION.

"We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centuries of injustice to our neighbor Island. Injustice, doubt it not, abounds; or Ireland would not be miserable. The Earth is good, bountifully sends food and increase; if mán's unwisdom did not intervene and forbid. It was an evil day when Strigul first meddled with that people. He could not extirpate them: could they but have agreed together, and extirpated him! Violent men there have been, and merciful; unjust rulers, and just; conflicting in a great element of violence, these five wild centuries now; and the violent and unjust have carried it, and we are come to this. England is guilty towards Ireland; and reaps at last, in full measure, the fruit of full fifteen generations of wrong-doing."

If this, and much more to the same purport, was to have been said of English rule over the five millions or so of Ireland, what shall be said of that rule over the two hundred millions of India? "It was an evil day when Strigul first meddled with that people. Could they but have agreed together and extirpated him!" What for a day was it when some more unscrupulous Striguls first meddled with this other people? Shall we adopt the remainder of the quotation?

In 1840 Carlyle delivered a series of six public lectures on "Heroes and Hero-Worship," to a London audience, "few" certainly, but we trust "fit." These were soon after published in book form. Of this work we have little to say. It

contains not a few noble and eloquent passages. Of these we cite but a single one, and that because it bears directly upon a theme which was soon to engross for some time the best thoughts of Carlyle:

CROMWELL'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

"As things gradually became manifest the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were one after another taken down from the gibbet; nay, a certain portion of them are now as good as canonized. . . . One Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Oliver, seems to hang yet on his gibbet, and finds no hearty apologist anywhere. His dead body was hung in chains; his 'Place in History' has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here to-day, who knows if it is not a rash act in me to be among the first to pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man?"

In 1843 Carlyle put forth his "Past and Present," a book about one half larger than "Sartor Resartus," and worth about one tenth as much. It is a kind of hodge-podge, or olla podrida, compounded somewhat in this wise: Eight centuries ago or thereabouts, Henry the Second being King of England, a hitherto obscure monk, named Samson, was most unexpectedly made Abbot of the great monastery of St. Edmundsbury. Abbot Samson found the monastery in the most deplorable condition every way. The monks were given to wine-bibbing and gluttony; so much so that

they were forced to have stated times of bloodletting (tempora minutionis), this necessary sanatory operation being undergone in common. Moreover, the mere temporal affairs of the monastery had gone to the bad. The vast revenues of St. Edmund had been fearfully squandered, and the Saint was terribly in debt to Hebrew moneylenders, whose bonds, duly executed, at double, triple, or tenfold compound interest, had become awful to contemplate.

We give a single specimen of monkish and Hebrew financiering in those days, as set down by Brother Jocelyn de Brakelond (of whom we shall speak anon), giving the sums in coin at our present valuation.* Some repairs were required on the convent buildings, and, there being no money in the treasury, Abbot Hugo, the predecessor of Samson, borrowed 540 dollars from "Benedict the Jew" to make these repairs. The account ran on for a while, until with interest the debt amounted to 10,000 dollars, when Benedict began to press for payment. Moreover, Abbot Hugo had from time to time borrowed other sums from Benedict, amounting in all, interest added, to another 10,000 dollars. There is still no money in St. Edmund's treasury, and Abbot Hugo has to ask for an "ex

As nearly as we can estimate, the purchasing power of gold and silver coin at that time was about twenty times greater than at present; that is, a pound was equivalent to a hundred of our dollars.