The Calton Hill--Burns's Monument--Character and Writings of "the
Peasant Poet"--His Religious Views--Monument of Professor Dugald
Stewart--Scottish Metaphysics--Thomas Carlyle.
Let us take a walk on the Calton Hill, this afternoon; we shall find
some objects of interest there. At the termination of Prince's Street,
commences Waterloo Place, in which are situated the Stamp Office, Post
Office, Bridewell and the Jail. This also leads to Calton Hill, and is
one of the most delightful promenades in the city. We skirt around the
Hill, a little to the right, pass the beautiful and spacious buildings
of the Edinburgh High School on the left, one of the best educational
institutions in Scotland, continue our walk a short distance, and come
to a round building on the farther declivity of the hill. That is
"Burns's Monument." By giving a small douceur to the keeper, we are
permitted to enter the interior, in the center of which stands a statue
of the poet, by Flaxman. Beautiful and expressive certainly, as a work
of art, but it is not quite equal to one's conception of the poet. The
forehead is particularly fine--open, massive and high, with an air of
lofty repose. The mouth is unpoetical and vulgar--at least _something_
of this is visible in its expression. It wants the chiseled delicacy, as
well as gracious expression of noble and generous feeling which we
naturally look for in the countenance of Burns. But the likeness, we
understand, is defective. In his best days, Burns had a noble, and
almost beautiful countenance. In stature he was about five feet ten
inches, of great agility and muscular vigor. His countenance was open
and ruddy, with a fine, frank, generous expression, eyes large and
radiant, forehead arched and lofty, with curling hair clustering over
it, and his mouth, especially when engaged in animated conversation, or
lighted with a smile, wreathed with intelligence and good humor.
Burns has been termed "the Shakspeare of Scotland." And certainly no
poet has ever been regarded, in that country, with such enthusiastic
love and reverence. With all his faults, some of which were bad enough,
all classes of the Scottish people, from the noble to the peasant,
cherish him in their heart of hearts. Indeed he is a sort of national
idol, to whom all feel bound to do reverence, notwithstanding his
admitted failings. Nor is this a matter of surprise. For, taken as a
whole, the poetry of Burns is the poetry of nature--of the heart--and
especially of the Scottish heart. It represents the genius of the
nation--wild, beautiful and free, shaded by thoughtfulness, and set off
by devotion, at once merry as her mountain brooks, yet deep, strong and
passionate as the stormy ocean which encircles her coast. "Tam
O'Shanter," or "Halloween," the "Cotter's Saturday Night," or "Mary in
Heaven," are the two extremes of the picture. In Burns, Scotland saw
incarnated her poetry and song, her music and passion, her love and
devotion, her seriousness and merriment, her strong-hearted adherence to
integrity and truth, her occasional recklessness and madness of spirit,
her love of nature, her veneration for God. The grave and the gay, the
old and the young, the religious and the reckless, all saw themselves
represented in the glorious fragments of his witching poetry. Hence the
enthusiasm with which his first volume of poems was received. It seemed
as if a new realm had been added to the dominions of the British muse--a
new and glorious creation fresh from the hand of nature. There the humor
of Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne and Richardson, the
real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson, were all united
in delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by the Ayrshire
ploughman! The volume contained matter for all minds--for the lively and
sarcastic, the wild and the thoughtful, the poetical enthusiast and the
man of the world. So eagerly was the book sought after, that when copies
of it could not be obtained, many of the poems were transcribed and sent
round in manuscript among admiring circles. His songs are the songs of
Scotland. A few have been furnished by Tannahill, Fergusson, Ramsay and
others; but the main body of the most exquisite and most popular
Scottish melodies are from the pen of Burns. Evermore they echo among
her heathy hills and bosky dells. You hear them by the sides of her
"bonnie burns," and along the shores of her silver lakes and "rivers
grand." At evening gray, they are heard resounding from gowan'd braes
and "birken shaws," in the shadow of haunted woods, and hoary ruins; and
especially, on winter nights, and "tween and supper times" from her ten
thousand happy "inglesides." In Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night" are
seen his reverence for religion "pure and undefiled," combined with
exquisite description and melodious verse; in "Tam O'Shanter," his vivid
fancy and dramatic energy; in "Halloween," his spirit of humor and fun;
in his "Lines to a Mountain Daisy," his fine moral sense and tenderness
of spirit; and in his "Address to Mary in Heaven," his true heartedness,
and sweet lyric power. His native country is beautifully pictured in all
his poetry. The "Banks of the Dee," "Edina's lofty seat," "Old Coila's
hills and streams"--the "Braes of Yarrow"--"Allan Water"--"Bonnie
Doon"--"Sweet Afton among her green braes"--"Auld hermit Ayr," "Stately
Irwine," "The birks of Aberfeldy,"--where "summer blinks o'er flowery
braes," the "lovely Nith, with fruitful vales and spreading
hawthorns,"--"Gowrie's rich valley and Firth's sunny shores," "the clear
winding Devon,"--"Castle Gordon,--where waters flow and wild woods
rave,"--"the banks and braes and streams around the Castle of
Montgomery,"--Bannockburn, Ellerslie and Sheriff Muir;--these, and a
thousand other beautiful or storied scenes, mirror themselves in the
stream of his sweet and varied verse.
Some vulgar and foolish things he has written; and we condemn them as
heartily as others. But his poetry embodies much that is pure and
beautiful and true, much of which Burns had no occasion to repent, even
on a deathbed, and much of which his native country may well be proud.
He was somewhat intemperate, but not to the extent which is generally
supposed. Strong temptations,--the habits of the times--the folly of his
friends, who thoughtlessly introduced him to the gaities of the
metropolis, and then left him to contempt and penury, broke down his
constitution, and consigned him to a premature grave. But he was not a
man of base and vulgar passions. His was not the cold heart of the
sceptic, nor the envenomed spirit of the villain. It was a wild and
wayward heart, I grant, but honest and true, generous and kind. The
temple was shattered by the lightnings of Heaven, but it was a temple
still; and from its broken altars ever and anon ascended the sweet
incense of prayer and praise. Burns could never forget his good old
father, and the hallowed influences of religion, shed upon his young
heart. He loved the Psalms of David, and the holy melodies of his native
land; and we presume often sang them, of an evening, accompanied, as he
himself intimates, with "the wild woodland note," of his beloved wife.
Several of his letters to Miss Dunlop and others indicate a strong
conviction of the Divine existence and the immortality of the soul, his
struggles against the doubts which haunted his spirit, and his earnest
longing for purity and perfection. "You may perhaps think it an
extravagant fancy," he says in a letter to Mr. Aiken, "but it is a
sentiment which strikes home to my very soul; though sceptical on some
points of our current belief, yet I think, I have every evidence for the
reality of a life beyond the stinted bourn of our present existence;"
and then adds--"O thou great, unknown Power, thou Almighty God! who has
lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with immortality! I have
frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the
perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me."
Having expressed to Mrs. Dunlop his strong conviction of the immortality
of the soul, he writes as follows, "I know not whether I have ever sent
you the following lines, or if you have ever seen them; but it is one of
my favorite quotations, which I keep constantly by me in my progress
through life, in the language of the Book of Job,
"Against the day of battle and of war."--
spoken of religion:
"'Tis _this_ my friend that streaks our morning bright,
'Tis this that gilds the horror of our night.
When wealth forsakes us, and when friends are few;
When friends are faithless, or when foes pursue;
'Tis this that wards the blow, or stills the smart,
Disarms affliction, or repels her dart;
Within the breast bids purest raptures rise.
Bids smiling Conscience spread her cloudless skies."
One of the most beautiful letters ever written by Burns has reference to
this subject, and was addressed to the same lady, on New Year's
day.--"This, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes; and would to God that I
came under the Apostle James's description!--'the prayer of the
righteous man availeth much.' In that case, Madam, you should welcome in
a year full of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs
tranquillity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure
that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a
Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than
ordinary acts of devotion for breaking in on that habitual routine of
life and thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of
instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little
superior to mere machinery.
"This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue skyed noon, sometime
about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the
end of Autumn,--these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of
holy day. * * * * I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the
Spectator, "The Vision of Mirza;" a piece that struck my young fancy
before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables. 'On
the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my
forefathers, I always _keep holy_, after having washed myself, and
offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdad, in
order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.'
"We know nothing, or next to nothing of the substance or structure of
our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that
one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that,
which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression.
I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain
daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier rose, the budding
birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular
delight. I never heard the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a
summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an
autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the
enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can
this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which like the Aeolian harp,
passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these
workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself
partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities--a God
that made all things--man's immaterial and immortal nature--and a world
of weal or woe beyond death and the grave."
A fit comment on this and other passages of similar import in his
letters is the following affecting poem, entitled "A Prayer in the
Prospect of Death." It seems to us to utter the deep throbbings of the
poet's spirit:
"Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between;
Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms;
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms;
I tremble to approach an angry God,
And justly smart beneath his sin avenging rod.
Fain would I say, 'forgive my foul offence!'
Fain promise never more to disobey;
But should my Author health again dispense,
Again I might desert fair virtue's way;
Again in folly's path might go astray;
Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray;
Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran?
O thou great Governor of all below,
If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee,
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
Or still the tumult of the raging sea;
With that controling power assist ev'n me,
Those headlong furious passions to confine,
For all unfit I feel my powers to be,
To rule their torrent in the allowed line;
O aid me with thy help, Omnipotence Divine!"
After writing thus far, we read for the first time, "The Genius and
Character of Burns," by Professor Wilson, the richest garland yet
wreathed around the poet's brow; and we are happy to find the views
expressed above fully corroborated by that distinguished writer. It is
true that Wilson delineates the character of Burns with enthusiastic
admiration; but his views are so discriminating, and withal backed by
such an array of facts, that no candid man can deny their correctness.
We cannot therefore resist the temptation of making the following
extract, in which the finest discrimination is blended with the largest
charity. Long may the Literature of Scotland be guarded by such a
critic! But one thing must not be forgotten here, namely, that no one,
and especially one personally unacquainted with Burns, can pronounce in
regard to his actual spiritual state. Whether he was truly 'born of
God,' and notwithstanding the errors of his life, died a Christian and
went to heaven, is happily not a question which we are called to decide.
"We have said but little hitherto of Burns's religion. Some have denied
that he had any religion at all--a rash and cruel denial--made in the
face of his genius, his character, and his life. What man in his senses
ever lived without religion? "The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God"--was Burns an atheist? We do not fear to say that he was
religious far beyond the common run of men, even them who may have had a
more consistent and better considered creed. The lessons he received in
the "auld clay biggin" were not forgotten through life. He speaks--and
we believe him--of his "early ingrained piety" having been long
remembered to good purpose--what he called his "idiot piety"--not
meaning thereby to disparage it, but merely that it was in childhood an
instinct. "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" is
breathed from the lips of infancy with the same feeling at its heart
that beats towards its father on earth, as it kneels in prayer by his
side. No one surely will doubt his sincerity when he writes from Irvine
to his father--"Honor'd sir--I am quite transported at the thought,
that ere long, perhaps soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the
pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this weary life; for I
assure you I am heartily tired of it, and, if I do not very much deceive
myself, I could contentedly and gladly resign it. It is for this reason
I am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the 7th
chapter of Revelations, than with any ten times as many verses in the
whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they
inspire me, for all that this world has to offer. '15. Therefore are
they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 16. They shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on
them, nor any heat. 17. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters;
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'" When he gives
lessons to a young man for his conduct in life, one of them is, "The
great Creator to adore;" when he consoles a friend on the death of a
relative, "he points the brimful grief-worn eyes to scenes beyond the
grave;" when he expresses benevolence to a distressed family, he
beseeches the aid of Him "who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" when
he feels the need of aid to control his passions, he implores that of
the "Great Governor of all below;" when in sickness, he has a prayer for
the pardon of all his errors, and an expression of confidence in the
goodness of God; when suffering from the ills of life, he asks for the
grace of resignation, "because they are thy will;" when he observes the
sufferings of the virtuous, he remembers a rectifying futurity;--he is
religious not only when surprised by occasions such as these, but also
on set occasions; he had regular worship in his family while at
Ellisland--we know not how it was at Dumfries, but we do know that there
he catechised his children every Saturday evening;--Nay, he does not
enter a Druidical circle without a prayer to God.
He viewed the Creator chiefly in his attributes of love, goodness and
mercy. "In proportion as we are wrung with grief, or distracted with
anxiety, the ideas of a superintending Deity, an Almighty protector, are
doubly dear." Him he never lost sight of, or confidence in, even in the
depths of his remorse. An avenging God was too seldom in his
contemplations--from the little severity in his own character--from a
philosophical view of the inscrutable causes of human frailty--and most
of all, from a diseased aversion to what was so much the theme of the
sour Calvanism around him; but which would have risen up an appalling
truth in such a soul as his, had it been habituated to profounder
thought on the mysterious corruption of our fallen nature.
Sceptical thoughts as to revealed religion had assailed his mind, while
with expanding powers it "communed with the glorious universe;" and in
1787 he writes from Edinburgh to a "Mr. James M'Candlish, student in
physic, College, Glasgow," who had favored him with a long
argumentative infidel letter, "I, likewise, since you and I were first
acquainted, in the pride of despising old women's stories, ventured on
'the daring path Spinoza trod;' but experience of the weakness, not the
strength of human powers, _made me glad to grasp at revealed religion_."
When at Ellisland, he writes to Mrs. Dunlop, "My idle reasonings
sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart
always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who looks for the heart
weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence
fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving,
constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with
these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life! No: to find
them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search
among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty and
distress." And again, next year, from the same place to the same
correspondent, "That there is an incomprehensibly Great Being, to whom I
owe my existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the
operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent
outward deportment of this creature he has made--these are, I think,
self-evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction
between vice and virtue, and consequently, that I am an accountable
creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as
from the evident imperfection, nay positive injustice, in the
administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there
must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave, must, I
think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's
reflection. I will go farther and affirm, that from the sublimity,
excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled, by
all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though
_to appearance_ he was himself the obscurest and most illiterate of our
species: therefore Jesus was from God." Indeed, all his best letters to
Mrs. Dunlop are full of the expression of religious feeling and
religious faith; though it must be confessed with pain, that he speaks
with more confidence in the truth of natural than of revealed religion,
and too often lets sentiments inadvertently escape him, that, taken by
themselves, would imply that his religious belief was but a
Christianized Theism. Of the immortality of the soul, he never expresses
any serious doubt, though now and then, his expressions, though
beautiful, want their usual force, as if he felt the inadequacy of the
human mind to the magnitude of the theme. "Ye venerable sages, and holy
flamens, is there probability in your conjectures, truth in your
stories, of another world beyond death; or are they all alike baseless
visions and fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must be only
for the just, the amiable, and the humane. What a flattering idea this
of the world to come! Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently
wish it."
How, then, could honored Thomas Carlyle bring himself to affirm, "that
Burns had no religion?" His religion was in much imperfect--but its
incompleteness you discern only on a survey of all his effusions, and by
inference; for his particular expressions of a religious kind are
genuine, and as acknowledgments of the superabundant goodness and
greatness of God, they are in unison with the sentiments of the
devoutest Christian. But remorse never suggests to him the inevitable
corruption of man; Christian humility he too seldom dwells on, though
without it there cannot be Christian faith: and he is silent on the need
of reconcilement between the divine attributes of Justice and Mercy. The
absence of all this might pass unnoticed, were not the religious
sentiment so prevalent in his confidential communications with his
friends in his most serious and solemn moods. In them there is frequent,
habitual recognition of the Creator; and who that finds joy and beauty
in nature has not the same? It may be well supposed that if common men
are more ideal in religion than in other things, so would be Burns. He
who has lent the colors of his fancy to common things, would not
withhold them from divine. Something--he knew not what--he would exact
of man--more impressively reverential than anything he is wont to offer
to God, or perhaps can offer in the way of institution--in temples made
with hands. The _heartfelt_ adoration always has a grace for him--in the
silent bosom--in the lonely cottage--in any place where circumstances
are a pledge of its reality; but the moment it ceases to be _heartfelt_,
and visibly so, it loses his respect, it seems as profanation. "Mine is
the religion of the breast;" and if it be not, what is it worth? But it
must also revive a right spirit within us; and there may be gratitude
for goodness, without such change as is required of us in the gospel. He
was too buoyant with immortal spirit within him not to credit its
immortal destination; he was too thoughtful in his human love not to
feel how different must be our affections if they are towards flowers
which the blast of death may wither, or towards spirits which are but
beginning to live in our sight, and are gathering good and evil here for
an eternal life. Burns believed that by his own unassisted
understanding, and his own unassisted heart, he saw and felt those great
truths, forgetful of this great truth, that he had been taught them in
the Written Word. Had all he learned in the "auld clay biggin" become a
blank--all the knowledge inspired into his heart during the evenings,
when "the sire turned o'er wi' patriarchal air, the big ha'-bible, ance
his father's pride," how little or how much would he then have known of
God and Immortality? In that delusion he shared more or less with one
and all--whether poets or philosophers--who have put their trust in
natural Theology. As to the glooms in which his sceptical reason had
been involved, they do not seem to have been so thick--so dense--as in
the case of men without number, who have, by the blessing of God, become
true Christians. Of his levities on certain celebrations of religious
rites, we before ventured an explanation; and while it is to be
lamented that he did not more frequently dedicate the genius that shed
so holy a lustre over "The Cotter's Saturday Night," to the service of
religion, let it be remembered how few poets have done so--alas! too
few--that he, like his tuneful brethren, must often have been deterred
by a sense of his own unworthiness from approaching its awful
mysteries--and above all, that he was called to his account before he
had attained his thoughtful prime."
Speaking of Burns's last sickness, Professor Wilson says: "But he had
his Bible with him in his lodgings, and he read it almost
continually--often when seated on a bank, from which he had difficulty
in rising without assistance, for his weakness was extreme, and in his
emaciation he was like a ghost. The fire of his eye was not
dimmed--indeed fever had lighted it up beyond even its natural
brightness; and though his voice, once so various, was now hollow, his
discourse was still that of a Poet. To the last he loved the sunshine,
the grass, and the flowers; to the last he had a kind look and word for
the passers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Laboring men, on their way
from work, would step aside to the two or three houses called the Brow,
to know if there was any hope of his life; and it is not to be doubted
that devout people remembered him, who had written the Cotter's Saturday
Night, in their prayers. His sceptical doubts no longer troubled him;
they had never been more than shadows; and he had at last the faith of a
confiding Christian."
Leaving Burns's Monument, we ascend the hill, in the opposite direction,
pass the unfinished Parthenon, consisting only of a few elegant columns,
and intended to commemorate the battle of Waterloo, the Observatory, and
the Monument of Professor Playfair, the celebrated mathematician and
astronomer, and reach the elegant though not imposing monument of
Professor Dugald Stewart, not the most acute, but certainly the most
finished and instructive of all the writers of the Scottish metaphysical
school. Let us linger here, a few moments, for the name of Professor
Stewart is peculiarly dear to Scotland. No man was ever more
enthusiastically regarded by his pupils, or more generally loved and
revered by the community. Dr. Reid of Glasgow University, the immediate
predecessor and preceptor of Stewart, was a man of an acute and original
mind, though not possessed of half the grace and fluency of his
illustrious pupil. It was Reid however that first gave clearness and
method to the metaphysics of Scotland. His writings on first principles,
or, as he called them, principles of Common Sense, gave a death-blow, at
least in Scotland, to the _ideal theory_ of Berkeley and Hume, and
greatly affected the course of philosophical investigation not only in
England but in France. In fact, his philosophy supplanted, for a time,
the infidel metaphysics of Hume and the French rationalists. It cut the
roots equally of idealism and sensualism, and was eagerly received by
thoughtful men in Europe and in this country. It can be seen running
like a sunbeam, through the speculations of Royer Collard, Constant,
Jouffroy and even of Cousin. Based on the Baconian method, it proceeded,
modestly and unostentatiously, to ascertain, and then to classify the
facts of mind; and, because it projected no splendid theories, or
blazing fancies, it has been rejected by superficial and visionary
thinkers, with some degree of contempt. After all, it may yet be
recognized, by all genuine philosophers, as the only true scientific
method. In the hands of Stewart and of Brown, his colleague and
successor, it began to assume a lofty and attractive position; but alas!
it has remained stationary for the want of strong and true-hearted
defenders. Stigmatized by the Germans as "pallid and insular--timid and
cold," it has been forsaken, of late, by the more popular metaphysical
writers, for the brilliant and astounding, but ever varying visions of
the Transcendental School. Smitten with the love of Ontology, or the
doctrine of "the absolute and the essential," scorning the methods of
Bacon and Newton as empirical and shallow, and setting their foot on the
modest, perhaps timid speculations of Reid and Stewart, metaphysicians
have plunged one after another into the abyss of an absolute
Spiritualism, where, amid the glimmerings of a half-dark and lurid
radiance, may be seen the disciples of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and
Schelling, floundering in the gloom, changing places continually, now
rising towards the light of heaven, and then sinking in the "abysmal
dark."
The writings of Reid, Stewart and Brown have exerted a great influence
on the thinking of Scotland, which, even among the common people, has a
somewhat metaphysical turn. Combining with religion and poetry, it has
given to both a peculiar depth and earnestness of tone. In some it is
deeply practical, in others speculative and visionary.
Thomas Carlyle, the product chiefly of Scotland, but partly also of
Germany--or perhaps, rather, a magnificent "lusus naturae," has a large
amount of Scottish shrewdness, enthusiasm and speculation, overlaid and
burnished with German spiritualism and romance. A native of Annandale,
and imbued with the religion of the Covenant, and the poetry of the
hills, he has wandered off into the fields of metaphysical speculation,
where, amid dreams of gorgeous and beautiful enchantment, he is evermore
uttering his burning oracular words, of half pagan, and half Christian,
wisdom. A genuine _Teufelsdroeckh_,--he is yet a genuine _Scot_, and
cannot therefore forget the holy wisdom of his venerable mother, and his
Annandale home.[16]
[Footnote 16: The following graphic description of the residence,
personal appearance and conversation of Carlyle is from the pen of
Elizur Wright, Junr. "Passing the long lines of new buildings which have
stretched from Westminster up the Thames, and engulphed the old village
of Chelsea, in omnivorous London, you recognize at last the old Chelsea
Hospital, one of the world-famous clusters of low brick palaces, where
Britain nurses her fighting men when they can fight no more. A little
past this and an old ivy-clad church, with its buried generations lying
around it, you come to an antique street running at right angles with
the Thames, and a few steps from the river, you find Carlyle's name on
the door. A Scotch lass ushers you into the second story front chamber,
which is the spacious workshop of the world-maker. Here are lots of
books--ponderous tomes in Latin, Greek, and black letter English,--some
are on shelves occupying nearly all the walls, and some are piled on
tables and a reading rack as having just been read. The furniture speaks
of Scotch economy, and the whole face of things of more than common
Scotch tidiness. In fact, a superbly wrought bell-rope indicates that
the wife is a true hero worshipper. Carlyle is a mere man, ordinary
size, lofty and jutting brow, keen--exceedingly keen eye, and modest
unassuming manners. His voice is melodious, and with its rich Scotch
cadence, and rapid flow, reminds you of Thalberg's music in some strange
out of the way key. Just set him agoing, and he runs without stopping,
giving you whole masses of history, painting and poetry, and a great
mass of the boundless system of Carlyleism. There is nothing which he
does not touch; and figures of speech come tumbling in from all corners,
top and bottom of the universe, as the merest matter of course. Doubt,
hesitation or qualification have no place among his opinions, he having
kicked them all out of doors when he began his philosophy."
Many inquiries have been made respecting Carlyle's religious opinions;
but it is difficult to say anything very decisive in reply. That he has
a deep reverence for the Christian faith,--that he strongly inclines to
a sort of transcendental orthodoxy,--that he loves, moreover,
true-hearted piety, and is himself a model of integrity and affection
cannot be doubted. He often speaks of Jesus as divine,--as the most
perfect of all heroes--as the God man--as the Divine man. He possesses a
profound sympathy for the higher and more beautiful forms of Christian
virtue, and describes the lives and characters of good men with the
liveliest relish. We incline therefore to believe, that notwithstanding
his transcendental speculations, and philosophical doubts, he has a true
(though not thoroughly defined) heart faith in the essential doctrines
of the Christian system. Clouds and darkness hang upon the horizon of
his spiritual vision, but gloriously irradiated with light from heaven,
and here and there opening into vistas of serene and ineffable beauty.
Many of his followers, we think, do not understand him, and we fear,
will never reach his purity and elevation of mind. They are more likely
to be led astray, by the magnificent illusions of his gifted but
somewhat erring fancy. Instead of resting in the simple-hearted and
heroic faith which he loves so much to describe, they may plunge into
the abysses of doubt and despair.]