exists? How shall any man be assured that he himself is the wise man, or even one of the few wise men appointed by Heaven "to take and keep command of the innumerable foolish"? And how, if he were so assured, shall he make good his Divine appointment?

Upon these vital questions the oracle is mute. It announces in every form of iteration and reiteration that the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint; or points out the wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, but does not point us to the healer. At most, there is the hope that in the far future, somehow and somewhere, there is to be a change: "Surely this ignoble sluggishness, skeptical torpor, indifference to all that does not bear upon Mammon and his interests, is not the natural state of human creatures, and it is not doomed to be their final one." But to us of the present time, whom the matter so pressingly concerns, the closing words of the oracle are:

THE ENNUI OF THE PRESENT.

"Unfortunate creatures! You are fed, clothed, lodged, as men never were before; such wealth of material means as is now yours was never dreamed of by man before; and to do any noble deed with all this mountain of implements is for ever denied you. Only ignoble, expensive, and unfruitful things can you now do; nobleness has vanished from the sphere where you live. The way of it is lost; the possibility of it becomes incredible. We must try to do without it, I am told. Well,

rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries, then, if so be they will make you happy. Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. Mount into your railways, whirl from place to place at the rate of fifty, or, if you like, of five hundred miles an hour, you can not escape from that inexorable, all-encircling ocean-moan of ennui. No: if you mount to the stars, and do yachtvoyages under the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the ring of Saturn, it would still begirdle you. You can not escape from it; you can but change your place in it, without solacement except one moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue with you till you wisely interpret it and do it, or else till the Crack of Doom swallow it and you. Adieu: au revoir."

"The Nigger Question," called the "precursor to Latter-Day Pamphlets," is in Carlyle's worst manner. The fault of it lies far deeper than its eccentricities of styl, in its bitter, jeering spirit. One could wish that it had never been exhumed from the magazine in which it first appeared. But Carlyle will not have it so. He reproduced it in a separate form, and twenty years later perpetuated it in his "Collected Works." It purports to be a speech delivered before the council for organizing a "Universal Abolition-of-Pain Association," the council having "decided that the Negro Question, as lying at the bottom, was the first to be handled, and if possible settled." The speech begins, we keeping his words, only with considerable abridgments:

WEST INDIAN AFFAIRS.

"West Indian affairs, as we all know, are in a very troublous condition this good while. However, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact indisputable where so many are dubious: that the negroes are doing very well. The black population are doing remarkably well; our beautiful black darlings are at least happy, with little labor except to the teeth, which surely in those excellent horse jaws of theirs will not fail. The West Indies, it appears, are short of labor, as indeed is very conceivable; in those cases where the fortunate black man, by working about half an hour a day, can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to rise into hard work. The less fortunate white man of those tropical localities can not work, and his black neighbor, rich in pumpkins, is in no haste to help him."

The white man, moreover, demands, besides pumpkins, various other things, such as sugar, spices, and the like; and, as he can not work, he can only get them by making somebody else work for him. Under these affecting circumstances, the unconscionable black man, who can work, actually will not work unless he gets wages so high that in many cases the white man can not afford to pay them; and consequently the poor white man must go without sugar and spices, and perhaps even without pumpkins, for to get these requires some labor-say, half an hour a day. Now, it seems to us that if (which we by no means admit) the white man can not work

there, the West Indies are no place for him. He is useless and worse than useless. Not so Mr. . Carlyle. He lays it down that those West India. Islands belong to the white man, and especially to the British species of white man.

THE OWNERSHIP OF THE WEST INDIES.

"It was not black Quashee," he says, "" or those he represents, that made these West India Islands what they are, or can, by any hypothesis, be considered to have the right of growing pumpkins there. Till the white European first saw them they were as yet uncreated-their noble elements of cinnamon, sugar, coffee, pepper, lying all asleep, waiting the white enchanter who should say to them, Awake. . . . Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences, and waste savageries could become arable! Under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid; the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there; worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the Devils which were manifold."

We are far from accepting this view of the British acquisition of Jamaica; but whether it be accepted or not, it is certain that the whites could once work there. But, passing this over, it is quite clear to Carlyle that the British Government has the power to rule Jamaica after the manner in which he thinks it should be ruled.

He shall tell us how, in this matter of labor, he thinks that rule should be exercised:

RULING THE NEGROES.

The West Indian whites, so soon as this bewilderment of philanthropic and other jargon abates from them, will, I apprehend, as a preliminary, resolutely refuse to permit the black man any privilege whatever of pumpkins till he agree to work for them. Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful isles, purchased by British blood, shall any black man hold to grow pumpkins for him except on terms that are fair toward Britain. Fair toward Britain it will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to give the state so many days of service. The state wants sugar from those islands, and means to have it. The islands are good withal for pepper, for sago, arrow-root, for coffee, perhaps for cinnamon, and precious spices. The gods wish, beside pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown there; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since others methods avail not, will be compelled to work."

In actual working Carlyle inclines to the opin ion that the most feasible plan would be to make the blacks serfs "bound to the soil."

BOUND TO THE SOIL.

"Already one hears of black Adscripti Gleba; which seems a promising arrangement in such a complicacy. It