but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship." 4

This feeling is the deepest part of man. It exists even in this levelling and destructive age: "I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant, lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall.”

Section II.-Wherein Carlyle is Original

We have here a German theory, but transformed, made precise, thickened after the English manner. The Germans said that every nation, period, civilization, has its idea; that is, its chief feature, from which the rest were derived; so that philosophy, religion, arts, and morals, all the elements of thought and action, could be deduced from some original and fundamental quality, from which all proceeded and in which all ended. Where Hegel proposed an idea, Carlyle proposes a heroic sentiment. It is more palpable and moral. To complete his escape from the vague, he considers this sentiment in a hero. He must give to abstractions a body and soul; he is not at ease in pure conceptions, and wishes to touch a real being.

But this being, as he conceives it, is an abstract of the rest. For according to him, the hero contains and represents the civilization in which he is comprised; he has discovered, proclaimed or practised an original conception, and in this his age has followed him. The knowledge of a heroic sentiment, thus gives us a knowledge of a whole age. By this method Carlyle has emerged beyond biography. He has rediscovered the grand views of his masters. He has felt, like them, that a civilization, vast and dispersed as it is over time and space, forms an indivisible whole. He has combined, in a system of heroworship, the scattered fragments which Hegel united by a law. He has derived from a common sentiment the events which the Germans derived from a common definition. He has comprehended the deep and distant connection of things, such as bind a great man to his time, such as connect the works of accomplished thought with the stutterings of infant thought, such as

"Lectures on Heroes," i.; The Hero as Divinity.

Ibid.

link the wise inventions of modern constitutions to the disorderly furies of primitive barbarism:

"Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things;-progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons. . Hrolf or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour." 1

"No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakespeare to speak. Nay, the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed.” 2 His great poetical or practical works only publish or apply this dominant idea; the historian makes use of it to rediscover the primitive sentiment which engenders them, and to form the aggregate conception which unites them.

Section III.-In What Genuine History Consists

Hence, a new fashion of writing history. Since the heroic sentiment is the cause of the other sentiments, it is to this the historian must devote himself. Since it is the source of civilization, the mover of revolutions, the master and regenerator of human life, it is in this that he must observe civilization, revolutions and human life. Since it is the spring of every movement, it is by this that we shall understand every movement. Let the metaphysicians draw up deductions and formulas, or the politicians expound situations and constitutions. Man is not an inert being, moulded by a constitution, nor a lifeless being expressed by formula; he is an active and living soul, capable of acting, discovering, creating, devoting himself, and before all, of daring; genuine history is an epic of heroism. This idea is, in my opinion, brilliant and luminous. For men have not done great things without great emotions. The first and sovereign motive of an extraordinary revolution is an extraordinary sentiment. Then we see appear and swell a lofty and all-powerful passion, which has burst the old dykes, and hurled the current of things into a new bed. All starts from

1 "Lectures on Heroes," i.; The Hero as Divinity.

2 Ibid. iv.; The Hero as Priest.

CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND

ENGRAVING.

Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.

CHRIST CROWNED WITH THORNS.

This is from Albert Dürer s series, "The Life of Christ," and is one of the most masterly of the series. The vigor, ease, and wealth of detall which distinguish this great artist's work are finely exemplified here. The flio volume to which this page belongs was printed in 1511 Desriptive verses accompanied each design.