"A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in man."
Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr. Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the country; and those who watch eagerly the signs of the times have their eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough, and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry us—state, church, and sacred property—down along with it. But whither would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery. Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom which he would do well to heed:
"O thou that after toil and storm
May'st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
"Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
"See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And even for want of such a type."
This life of Sterling will be useful to the class whose beliefs have given way before Mr. Carlyle's destroying energies; because it furnishes hints, not to be mistaken though not obtrusive, as to the extent to which they must be prepared to go if they would really be his disciples. If the path has in its very dangers an attraction for some, while others are shudderingly repelled, in either case the result is desirable, as it is the absence of certainty which causes the pain and paralyzes the power of action. At any rate, the doctrines of this teacher must be so much more intelligible to the mass when applied, as they are here, in commentary upon a life all whose details are familiar, because it is the life of a contemporary and a countryman, that all who read must inevitably be impressed with that great lesson of the philosophic poet—
"The intellectual power through words and things
Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way."
Though John Sterling is of course the principal figure in the composition, and Mr. Carlyle's treatment the great attraction of the book, yet the figures in the background will be those to make most impression on the general reader. Coleridge stands there in striking but caricatured likeness; and even his most devoted admirers will not be sorry to see a portrait of their master by such a hand: and all will curiously observe the contrast between the sarcastic bitterness which colors the drawing of the philosophic Christian, and the kindly allowance through which the character of John Sterling's father, the famous "Thunderer" of the Times, is delineated. We half suspect that Coleridge would have appeared to Mr. Carlyle a much greater man, if he had allowed him to declaim—"Harpocrates-Stentor," as Sterling calls him—with trumpet voice and for time unlimited on the divine virtues of Silence. There are besides, as in all Mr. Carlyle's works, passages of wise thought expressed in most felicitous language: of which not the least important is this advice given to Sterling in reference to his poetic aspirations:
"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way; behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so-called, and your fiddling talent,—even if you have one, much more if you have none,—we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy is taken: alas, while the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!—"