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From this casual interlude of the admirable Edinburgh Inaugural we come to the next production of his pen, in which are many of the worst and a few of the best of his manifold utterances.

XII.

"SHOOTING NIAGARA: AND AFTER."

LATE in the summer of 1867 appeared the magazine paper, "Shooting Niagara: and After," which one may properly style a "Latest-Day Pamphlet." The new Reform Bill had passed, which Carlyle thought had pushed England into the rapids from which there was no way of escape backward, and the kingdom could only shoot the cataract into the vortex of democracy. It commences:

THE COMING DEMOCRACY.

"There probably never was since the Heptarchy ended, or almost since it began, so hugely critical an epoch in the history of England as this we have now entered upon with unusual self-congratulation and flinging-up of caps; nor one in which the question of utter death or of nobler new life for the poor country was so uncertain. Three things seem to be agreed upon by gods and men, at least by English men and gods; certain to happen, and are now in visible course of fulfillment:

"1. Democracy to complete itself; to go the full length of its course toward the bottomless, or into it, no power

now extant to prevent it, or even considerably to hinder it, till we have seen where it will lead us to, and whether there will then be any return possible or none.

2. That in a limited time, say fifty years hence, the Church, all Churches and so-called religions, the Christian Religion itself, shall have deliquesced into mere 'Liberty of Conscience,' 'Progress of Intellect,'' Philanthropic Movement,' and other aqueous residues of a vapid, badly-scented character; and shall, like water spilled upon the ground, trouble nobody considerably thenceforth, but evaporate at its leisure. 3. That, in lieu thereof, there shall be Free Trade, in all senses, and to all lengths-which some take to mean, 'Free racing ere long, with unlimited speed in the career of Cheap and Nasty'; -so that everybody shall start free, and everywhere, 'under enlightened popular suffrage,' the race shall be to the swift, and the high office shall fall to to him who is the ablest, if not to do it, at least to get elected for doing it."

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According to this "Latest-Day Pamphlet," one of the most notable characteristics of the time is "that singular phenomenon which the Germans call Schwärmerei" ("enthusiasm" is our poor Greek equivalent), " which means simply 'Swarmery,' or the 'Gathering of men in swarms,' and what prodigies they are in the habit of doing and believing when in that miraculous condition! Now, it is to be noted that this very "swarmery is the notable characteristic of the ages and movements which Carlyle everywhere characterizes as heroic ones. What was it but this which marked

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the triumph of Christianity over paganism in the Roman Empire? which gave vitality and force to Islamism and the Crusades ? to the Reformation in Germany, and in Scotland? to the establishment of the English Commonwealth under the great Lord Protector? By what other means came to pass what he calls "the hopefullest public fact that has occurred in my time: that noble, patient, deep, pious, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation, and become queen of the Continent, instead of vaporing, vainglorious, quarrelsome, restless, and over-sensitive France?"

But "swarmery" is noble and heroic, or quite otherwise, according to the object of the swarming. The swarming of bees, "when their old homes have grown too narrow for them," and they enlist to found a new bee nation, is noble; that of flies around carrion, perhaps, quite otherwise, though that too has its use in the economy of Nature. Of all the idle "swarmeries " of these times, that by which the matter of slavery in in America was settled, in a fashion quite different from his own scheme, is in Carlyle's opinion the notablest. He says:

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"Essentially the Nigger Question was one of the smallest, and in itself did not much concern mankind in the present time of struggles and hurries. One always rather likes the Nigger; evidently a poor blockhead,

with good dispositions, with affections, attachments; with a turn for Nigger Melodies and the like. The Almighty Maker has appointed him to be a servant. Under penalty of Heaven's curse, neither party to this preappointment shall neglect or misdo his duties therein. . . . Servantship, like all solid contracts between men, must become a contract of permanency, not easy to dissolve, but difficult extremely: a contract for life, if you can manage it, will evidently be the best of all, and this was already the Nigger's essential position. Mischief, irregularities, injustices, did probably abound between the Nigger and the Buckra; but the poisonous tap-root, that servantship and mastership on the nomadic principle was ever, or will ever be, except for a few brief periods, possible anong human creatures, had never been there."

All that Carlyle could see two and a half years after our mighty conflict was over—a conflict in which there was on both sides more heroism and self-devotion than in any other conflict of arms ever waged upon earth—all that he can now see in it, was simply a bloody fight as to whether servants should be hired for life, or by the month or year. He here reproduces this squib, "The American Iliad in a Nutshell," written by him more than four years earlier :

ILIAS (AMERICANA) IN NUCE.

"PETER of the North (to Paul of the South): Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year, as I do! You are going straight to Hell, you- !

"PAUL: Good words, Peter! The risk is my own;

I am willing to take the risk. Hire your servants by the month or day, and get straight to Heaven; leave me to my own method.

"PETER: No, I won't, I will beat your brains out first! (And is trying dreadfully ever since, but can not yet manage it.)"

This is dated May 3, 1863, two months to a day before the battle of Gettysburg, and the capture of Vicksburg gave a decided turn to the contest which had seemed to hang in even scale, the balance, if anything, inclining toward the cause now lost. Carlyle never seems to have perceived that the "Nigger Question" was not the main issue involved; but that the thing to be decided was, whether America should soon be what England was under the heptarchy, what Germany and Italy were for centuries, what the states of South America now are; or should be again welded into a nation, one and undivided, and we trust indivisible. His summation of the matter is this:

SWARMERY IN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

"A continent of the earth has been submerged, for certain years, by deluges from the Pit of Hell; half a million (some say a whole million--but surely they exaggerate) of excellent white men, full of gifts and faculty, have torn and slashed one another into horrid death, in a temporary humor, which will leave centuries of remembrance fierce enough; and three millions of absurd Blacks, men and brothers (of a sort), are completely

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