On 14th February, Mr Walker was ordained by the Presbytery of Linlithgow to Mid-Calder. Mr Martin presided.

On 1st March, the Presbytery of Weem ordained Mr Logan, late assistant in Comrie, to the mission of Lawers, Loch-tay-side. Mr Cameron of Logierait presided.

On 2d March, the Presbytery of Dumfries met at Dalbeattie for the induction of Mr Mackenzie. Mr Wilson of Kirkmahoe presided.

On 16th March, the Presbytery of Edinburgh inducted the Rev. Mr Veitch of Newbattle to St Cuthbert's, as successor to Dr Dickson. Mr Kinross presided.

DEATHS.-On 26th December, at Glasgow, the Rev. William Eason, minister of Camlachie Church, Glasgow.

On 18th January, at Houston Manse, Presbytery of Paisley, the Rev. John Monteath, D.D., in the 91st year of his age, and 63d of his ministry, having been for some time father of the Church of Scotland.

On 17th January, at Kilninver, Presbytery of Lorn, the Rev. Donald Campbell, in the 85th year of his age, and 49th of his ministry.

On 2d February, at Cambuslang Manse, the Rev. Dr John Robertson, in the 75th year of his age, and 45th of his ministry.

On 9th February, at Gargunnock Manse, the Rev. James Laurie, in the 66th year of his age, and 29th of his ministry.

On 28th February, at the manse of Kirkconnel, the Rev. James Richardson, in the 76th year of his age, and 43d of his ministry.

On 5th March, at the manse of Port-of-Monteith, the Rev. William Wylie. On March, at Newburn Mause, Presbytery of St Andrew's, the Rev. Thomas Laurie, D.D., in the 50th year of his ministry.

THE

PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW.

JULY 1843.

No. LXI.

ART. I.-On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Six Lectures. By THOMAS CARLYLE. London: Fraser. 1841.*

LITERARY latitudinarians entertain a like fear for the welfare of literature in the hands of Presbyterians, to that which Puseyism is filled with for the well-being of the church in our cold mountain air. Forgetting, or it may be, not rightly understanding that the spiritual life is the true light of men,-that, in the individual as in the mass, it most generally is matter of history, that a rightly developed intellectuality is the resultant of a previously infused moral earnestness, it is taken for granted that a positive creed, with definite symbols of faith, encroaches on true catholicity, and that attachment to certain truths, or to what is deemed the simplest and most effective way of upholding these truths in the world, necessarily narrows the circle of one's legitimate sympathies with the true,' or the fair,' or the honest.'

But surely the assumption is a groundless one. For it were curiously anomalous that he, whose spirit has been in daily and

Since this article was printed, it being written for last Number, we have read Mr Carlyle's last book, Past and Present. A work like this we cannot speak of in a note, and reserve all comment for a future occasion.

VOL. XVI. NO. II.

L

ants.

nightly contact with the well-spring of all truth, and who has gotten knowledge at the feet of Him who spake as never man spake,' should, by the elevating and purifying exercise, be rendered unfit for appreciating the spoken or written word of a brother mortal; that literature, meaning by this, the worthy thoughts of the worthily thinking,the truths caught by any one soul and reflected back brightly or dimly,-should have no beauty in his eye, nor wake up one responsive emotion. The sneer which Scott causes Burley to throw out on elegant pursuits, is not only reckoned by the foolish an index of the distaste for the beautiful and contempt of profane' authorship, falsely attributed to our ancestors, but is still insinuated as representing the general mind of their descendWith Thomas Carlyle before us, it is enough to put in a disclaimer, to recommend a little open eye-sight; and we pass on. It may seem late in the day to begin to take note of Thomas Carlyle; but it is not want of acquaintance with his writings that has hitherto kept us silent about him. We have read, we believe, and re-read all that he has given to the world; and it is solely from the complex kind of sentence which must be written down in speaking of so very many-sided and apparently heterogeneous a man, that we have refrained from alluding to one who, in the judgment of most thinking spirits, has lastingly stamped the impress of his genius on European, let us say, the world's literature. He is not the kind of writer on whom the merry-hearted critics of our days can dash off their sheet in a night; nor a writer for the merely grammatical, or verbal fault-finder to measure with his footrule; for personifying as he does, in one of its most significant phases, the age we live in, and, in this respect, standing in strict antagonism to the spirit of an era ready to pass away, there are great truths which he loves and earnestly expounds, but truths still greater, whereof, as yet, he has no true knowledge; while it rests with him who would rightly estimate his opinions, — we should have said his impassioned beliefs, for opinions are rootless and decaying things,-to take into account the world's reaction on him, as well as his own force of action on the world, as also the wants which his creed symbolises, and the causes which, apart from idiosyncrasy, have mainly conspired towards its adoption;-a task rendered all the more delicate, if not difficult, from the circumstance that our author has no system formally stated, but utters his views of life, and truth, and duty in detached passages, in hints, aphorisms, even interjections and parentheses, scattered at intervals over his history of the French Revolution,' his five volumes of Miscellaneous Essays,' his treatise on Chartism, Sartor Resartus,' and the work which stands at the head of our article,-views not arranged and labelled in the compartments of a

neat and showy cabinet, but imbedded often deep down in native strata. We said views of life, truth, and duty, for these three words are with him not mere abstractions; they dwell with him as realities of infinite importance, and properly are the only themes he sets himself to handle, almost to sing. The life which we lead in the flesh he represents as the symbol of eternity imprisoned in time,' as having undying issues in eternity; and we are ready to confess that, except in pulpits, and not always there, we have nowhere had urged on us (with what meaning we shall immediately show,) such startling and vivid disclosures of the moment there lies in the 'idlest word' we speak, of the infinite nature of duty,' or of the horrors of the last scene of a life ill spent, without truth, without duty.

"No idlest word thou speakest, but is a seed cast into time, and grows through all eternity. The recording angel, consider it well, is no fable, but the truest of truths; the paper tablets thou canst burn, of the iron-leaf' there is no burning. Truly if we can permit God Almighty to note ever down our conversation, thinking it good enough for him, any poor Boswell need not scruple to work his will of it." Miscell. Essays, vol. iv. 52.

"Man's actions here are of infinite moment to him, and never end or die at all; man with his little life reaches upwards high as heaven, downwards low as hell, and in his threescore years of time holds an eternity wonderfully and fearfully hidden. . . It is not better to do the one than the other; the one is to the other as life is to death, as heaven is to hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other must in nowise be undone."-Hero- Worship, P. 122. He thus, in a way not very usual with ordinary manufacturers of history, writes of the death-bed of Louis XV.

« Frightful to all men is death, from of old named king of terrors. Our little compact home of an existence, where we dwelt, complaining yet as in a home, is passing in dark agonies into an unknown state of separation, foreignness, unconditioned possibility. The heathen emperor asks of his soul: Unto what place art thou now departing? The catholic king must answer: To the judgment-bar of the most high God. Yes, it is a summoning up of life, a final settling and giving in of the accounts of the deeds done in the body;' they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear their fruits long as eternity shall last.

Louis had always the kingliest abhorrence of death... He would not suffer death to be spoken of; avoided the sight of church-yards, funereal monuments, and whatever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the ostrich, who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his unseeing body is not unseen too. But figure his thoughts when death is now clutching at his own heartstrings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, death has found thee. No palace walls, no lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries, or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomes a reality; sumptuous Versailles burst asunder, like a dream, into wide immensity; time is done, and all the scaffolding of time falls wrecked with hideous clangor around thy soul; the pale kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a

thought is thine. Hell fire, now all too possible, in the prospect; in the retrospect, alas, what thing didst thou that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help, what sorrows hadst thou mercy on? Do the five hundred thousand' ghosts,-who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields, from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy harlot might take revenge for an epigram,-crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! 'thou hast done evil as thou couldst;' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion. ... Wert thou a fabulous griffin devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave; clad also in scales that no spear could pierce-no spear but death's? A griffin, not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem those moments for thee. We will pry no farther into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed. . . . ' Wa, wa,' as the wild Clotaire groaned out, when his life was departing, 'what great God is this, that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings!" French Revol. vol. i. p. 33.

Such deep and heart-piercing thoughts are brought in, ever and anon, as choral accompaniments of lofty song to his highly dramatic representations of human character; and the passages themselves we have quoted, almost at random, to show how it is that his biographies stand well nigh alone in our literature, as also how naturally biography-the life of man-becomes the haunt and main region of his song; for to him the unseen and the eternal ever overshadow this mortal life of ours, as the sky and stars nightly overcanopy the earth. It is the spirit thou workest in, and not thy work, that alone is of value or continuance.' Accordingly, it is the inward life that he pourtrays; and while pictorially he exhibits outward life and nature only as a true poet,-make he verses, or use he paint brushes, can-his pictures derive all their lustre and truthfulness from the light that radiates on them from within.

The volume before us is a condensed, yet luminous synopsis of our author's other productions, and, bating in the second lecture, which we had liked never to have read, one recognises in the picture-gallery old familiar faces.' Before taking up the work, however, and to enable us to climb to Carlyle's own hill of vision, and to see in what, and to what his antagonism lies, it is necessary for us to go back a little in history.

'A mere echo of Germany,' is the pithy response we have often heard one smatterer give to another, when asked about this remarkable man. We should think that the echo of Germany is just as musical as the echo of Babel, with its thousand re-echoes sounding in confused, chaotic, earthly jar from dull, godless, editorial newspaper cells, up through sensual novels and magazines, with their tales of horror, amid loud clamour of corn-law agitation, to the senate house in our land. Nay, granting that Germany were Egypt itself, we do not see any reason why, if the Egyptians have anything good, we may not spoil them of it for worthy purposes. Must the new