THE

CHAPTER XXIV.

PAUSE OF SORROWFUL STILLNESS -TRIBUTES OF THE PRESS AND THE PULPIT-THE FUNERAL-HIS BEQUEST OF CRAIGENPUTTOCH: THE JOHN WELSH BURSARIES-PERVERSION OF TRUSTS-HIS INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE AND ON LIFE-HIS RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY-THE SELF-DISCIPLINE OF HIS LIFEHIS LETTERS.

THE world, it was truly said by the chief reflector of the feeling of England, seemed duller and colder, that one grey old man at Chelsea had faded away from among us. As another powerful journal remarked, it was a striking testimony to the greatness of Carlyle's position, that men were almost as much impressed by the tidings of his death as if he had been taken in the midst of his career. His work had been finished nearly fifteen years before— no more was expected from him; yet every educated Briton, and even many of the manual toilers in our nation, felt that they had lost something by the disappearance of a writer to whom they owed so much. He had passed away in a season of almost fierce political conflict, but for the moment even the leaders in the strife became oblivious of its heats and distractions-there had come, as one of these leaders finely remarked, "a pause of sorrowful stillness" in the minds of all men. At the recollection of the brave old worker who had gone to his

rest, of his noble character, of his magnificent work, "the battles of the hour seemed but pale skirmishes." Nor did the fact pass unnoted, that while the parliamentary government of which he had said so many hard things was in the very crisis of one of its most trying struggles, he was gently sinking away from it all, setting out on the voyage to the still country, "where, beyond these voices, there is peace."

Never was the press of Great Britain more unanimous than in the testimony which it bore respecting Thomas Carlyle. On all hands, by the organs of every political party and of every church, it was conceded that he had been the greatest and most heroic man of letters of our time, and that he had left his traces more deeply than any single Englishman on the moral character of the nineteenth century. The organ of the fashionable world of London pointed to the humble station in which he was born as an incitement to ambition. The son of a small Scottish farmer, he had died regretted and mourned by an entire nation. The representative of the most

advanced Liberalism contended that he had never been an idolator of mere brute, selfish force, for he placed Cromwell above Napoleon; he believed in the divinity of strength, but only in the strength which is strong in rectitude and self-denying in labour. His cynicism had nothing in common with the cynicism of this materialistic age; his stern Hebraism scorned the modern Hellenists, and it was impossible that he could be the prophet of modern aristocracies. The Scottish journals mourned the departure of "the greatest Scotsman of his generation," one worthy to be ranked with John Knox and Robert Burns, in some respects to be placed above even

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them; and pointed with pardonable pride to his personal character, fruit of the wholesome training in that peasanthome of Annandale, as constituting perhaps the truest element of his greatness. The people of the little land that lies north the Tweed might be excused if they felt their hearts swell as they read in the most influential organ of British public opinion, that their newly-departed compatriot was a man who had educated himself in the art of plain living and high thinking, before he presumed to educate others, and who, when he had become famous, as while he was obscure, never taught the world lessons which he had not first made part of his own being.

As was to be expected, the press of Germany vied with that of Britain in doing honour to the memory of Carlyle, as also did the press of England's daughter, the Great Republic across the sea, generously forgiving the many hard words he had used in speaking of her. The press of Italy did not fail to render justice to the old friend of Mazzini, praising him both as a writer and as a man; from France alone came the one discordant note. There the Republican journalists reciprocated the feeling of dislike with which he had viewed their country; their verdict was distinctly unfavourable, and obviously coloured by political resentment. They defined him as "a Scotchman of an age anterior to Burns, a Scot of the Covenant and Old Testament," who judged Diderot and Danton according to the Covenanters' standard; and declared that nothing could be looked for from a man who took his standpoint on the Cromwellian dictatorship in criticising parliamentarism, industrialism, and all that is great and small in modern civilization. 'Hero-worship and hatred of French sensualism blinded

Carlyle. He was original and vigorous, but too fantastic and archaic to merit the name of a great thinker." The most favourable estimate was pronounced by the chief organ of the Clericals, which, while deploring the contempt felt for the Latin races by this "Cromwellian Roundhead of the nineteenth century," praised him for "his implacable antagonism to that modern state of society in which falsehood, hypocrisy, scepticism, and stupid frivolities are more and more taking the place of the chain of sentiments and ideas which links earth to heaven." The marvels of industry did not awe him, the progress of humanity he did not place in the triumphs of matter; in his eyes a man was a man only on condition of being a tabernacle of the living God.

In hundreds of pulpits, on both sides of the Border, by preachers of the two Established Churches and of nearly all the Nonconformist communions as well, the life and writings of Carlyle were made the subject of discourse; and the conclusion almost unanimously reached was, that he had been the greatest moral teacher of this generation. At Oxford, in 1840, Professor Sewell said to his students: "Pantheism is invading this country in a great variety of modes, and in particular a man named Carlyle, who writes in a grotesque and striking manner, has introduced it in a most objectionable form." Not even in the most orthodox pulpits of his native country was such language as this uttered when he passed away. Even the rigid representatives of the least advanced section of the

Compendium of all Righteousness" had nothing but good to say of him. "No greater preacher of righteousness ever lived in modern times," said the minister of old St Giles's Church at Edinburgh; and in the same city

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one of the most thoughtful representatives of Nonconformity spoke of him as not the least of the many great men God had given to "the small and manly Scottish nation," and stated, as a fact of his own spiritual experience, that in some of his most troubled hours he had derived more aid from Sartor than from any other book save the Bible. "It is said he did not attend church or chapel, which, if true, as it is only partially, need not be marvelled at, when it is considered what both church and chapel have done to drive such men away from their doors." One preacher at Dundee took it to be a hopeful sign that the orthodox were not without hope that Carlyle may have found his way into Heaven. Those who cherished the hope were not trespassing far into the realm of Christian faith and hope. "Pity the heaven," he said, "that has no room for men like Carlyle. Pity the hell that got him, so far, at least, as its own peace and stability were concerned. Iniquity would not find much rest there with Carlyle's eyes upon it." Another preacher on the banks of the Tay described him as a man of blameless life, clearly gifted with the spirit and gifts of Isaiah and Ezekiel; and yet there was no Church that would have admitted him to its ministry, or even to its membership. He had turned away from all ecclesiastical bodies, that, like Paul, he might go unto the Gentiles and preach to God's wider Church scattered throughout the world. The best men in the ecclesiastical bodies, however, did not turn away from him. The Dean of Durham publicly suggested, within a day or two of his death, that a Carlyle Scholarship should be established at Newcastle in honour of the man whose works were familiar, he knew, to so many of the sons of toil on the busy banks