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cording to God's own heart?' David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer and ask, 'Is this your man according to God's own heart?' The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one.

"What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact, is dead; it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure.

"David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls?' Man can

do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is."

In the summer of 1833 Carlyle received a visit from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who some years later published an account of this visit, which we abridge:

"I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and, being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtoch. It was a farm in the parish of Dunscore, fifteen miles distant. I found the house amid desolate, heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. Few were the objects, and lonely the man, 'not a person to - speak to within fifteen miles, except the minister of Dunscore;' so that books inevitably made his topics. He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing; hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the verge of bankruptcy.

"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish abnegation by public men of all that public persons should perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do. 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 go to the moor and till it.'

"He was already turning his eyes toward London with a scholar's appreciation. 'London is the heart of the world,' he said, 'wonderful only for the mass of human beings. I like the huge machine. Each keeps his own round; the baker's boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows, or wishes to know, on the subject; but it turns out good men.''

IV.

66 SARTOR RESARTUS."

IN 1834 Carlyle, as we have seen, took up his permanent residence in London. This was not the first time that he had gone up to the metropolis. Three years before, he says, "I had gone up to this modern Babylon with a manuscript in my hand, 'Sartor Resartus' by name. I was bound thither to see if there was any chance to have it translated into print." The manuscript was offered to bookseller after bookseller, each of whom, as the custom is, submitted it to the judgment of his confidential "Reader." Long afterward, when he had come to be famous, Carlyle prefixed to an edition of this work the answer of one of these booksellers, who wrote: Allow me to say that such a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work. I sent your manuscript to a gentleman in

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the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar. I now inclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a correct one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to," etc. The reader's opinion ran thus: "The author of Teufelsdröckh' is a person of talent. His work displays, here and there, some felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge; but whether it would take with the public seems doubtful. For a jeu d'esprit of that sort it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article than as a volume. The author has no great tact; his wit is frequently heavy, and reminds one of the German baron who took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was learning to be lively. Is the work a translation?”

Although Carlyle had already established his reputation by more than a score of able papers in the leading reviews, he could find no one who would venture to publish it in book form; and it was not until two years afterward that he could even get it published piecemeal, month by month, in "Fraser's Magazine." Whatever little of remark it occasioned in England was of the most unfavorable kind. One newspaper critic pronounced it "a mass of clotted nonsense, mixed, however, here and there, with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigor ;" and he proceeds to quote a sentence which he says "may

be read either backward or forward, for it is equally intelligible either way. Indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning." We suspect, indeed, that the work was ended earlier than the author intended; for it certainly comes to an abrupt conclusion in a "farewell," from the tone of which it may be inferred that not only the readers but the editor of "Fraser" had grown tired of it:

EXIT TEUFELSDRÖCKH.

"Here, however," says Carlyle, speaking in the character of the editor of the miscellaneous papers of Herr Teufelsdröckh, 66 can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him during these current months but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-well!

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