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on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered; the seventeen hours of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which is he. A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand; waving the other sibyl-like; and exclaims: The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m'énivre de joie !' Robespierre opened his eyes : 'Scélérat, go down to Hell with the curses of all wives and mothers!' At the foot of the scaffold they stretched him on the ground till his turn caine. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry;—hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too quick!

"Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on shout of applause. Shout which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates? Stricter man, according to his formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His poor Landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue SaintHonoré, loved him; his Brother died for him. May God be merciful to him and to us!"

We think it not unlikely that the British public, if left to themselves, would in course of time

have discovered that this Thomas Carlyle was a man not altogether destitute of talent; but they were fearfully slow in finding it out. The "French Revolution," like "Sartor Resartus," was famous in America long before it excited any special notice in England. The "Athenæum" (which Bulwer styled the "Assinæum ") pitched into it briefly, and in its most flippant style. Still there were some Englishmen who appreciated Carlyle ; and among them were his two friends Mill, the editor of the "Westminster Review," and John Sterling. In 1839 Sterling put forth in the "Review" a highly laudatory critique upon Carlyle, who thus in his "Life of Sterling " refers to it:

"I well remember the deep silent joy, not of a weak or ignoble nature, which it gave to myself in my then mood and situation; as well it might. The first generous human recognition, expressed with heroic emphasis, a clear conviction visible amidst its fiery exaggerations, that one's poor battle in this world is not quite a mad and futile; that it is perhaps a worthy and manful one, which will come to something yet. The thought burnt in me like a lamp for several days, lighting up into a sort of heroic splendor the sad volcanic wrecks, abysses, and convulsions of said poor battle."

VI.

CHARTISM.-HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP.-PAST

AND PRESENT.

EARLY in 1840 Carlyle put forth "Chartism," a little book, or rather pamphlet, evidently hastily written. Heretofore he had appeared mainly as an ethical philosopher and historian. He now took upon himself the character of a political philosopher, treating upon the rights and wrongs, the duties and obligations, of civil and political and social life. "A feeling," he says, "very generally exists that the condition and disposition of the working classes is a rather ominous matter at present; that something ought to be done in regard to it. . . . To us individually, this matter appears, and has for many years appeared, to be the most ominous of all practical matters whatever; matter in regard to which if something be not done, something will do itself one day, and in a fashion that will please nobody. The time is verily come for acting in it; how much more for consultation about acting in it; for speech and articulate inquiry about it."

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHARTISM.

"We are aware that, according to the Newspapers Chartism is extinct; that a Reformed Ministry has 'put

down the Chimera of Chartism' in the most felicitous effectual manner. So say the Newspapers;-and yet, alas, most readers of newspapers know withal that it is indeed the Chimera' of Chartism, and not the Reality, which has been put down.' The distracted incoherent embodiment of Chartism, whereby in late months it took shape and became visible, has been put down; or rather has fallen down and gone asunder by Gravitation and the Law of Nature: but the living essence of Chartism has not been put down.

"Chartism means the bitter discontent, grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition of the Working Classes of England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many names, and which will yet have many. The matter of Chartism is weighty, deep-rooted, far-extending; did not begin yesterday; will by no means end this day or to-morrow. Reform Ministry, constabulary, rural police, new levy of soldiers, grants of money to Birmingham; all this is well, or is not well; all this will only put down the Embodiment or 'Chimera' of Chartism. The Essence continuing, new and ever new embodiments, Chimeras madder or less mad, have to continue.

"The melancholy fact does remain, that this thing known at present by the name of Chartism does exist; has existed; and either 'put down' into secret treason, with rusty pistols, vitriol-bottle and match-box, or openly brandishing pike and torch (one knows not in which case more fatal looking), is like to exist till quite other methods have been tried with it. What means this bitter discontent of the Working Classes? it; whither goes it? Above all, at what price, on what terms, will it probably consent to depart from us and

die into rest? These are the questions."

Whence comes

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 man'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 66 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