H

Bacon and Milton the moderns of the richest
strains. Burke sometimes reaches to that exu-
berant fulness, though deficient in depth. Car-
lyle, in his strange, half-mad way, has entered
the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and shown a
vigor and wealth of resource which has no rival
in the tourney-play of these times; the in-
dubitable champion of England. Carlyle is the
first domestication of the modern system, with
its infinity of details, into style. We have been
civilizing very fast, building London and Paris,
and now planting New England and India, New
Holland and Oregon, -and it has not appeared
in literature; there has been no analogous
expansion and recomposition in books. Carlyle's
style is the first emergence of all this wealth
and labor with which the world has
gone
child so long. London and Europe, tunnelled,
graded, corn-lawed, with trade-nobility, and
East and West Indies for dependencies; and
America, with the Rocky Hills in the horizon,
have never before been conquered in literature.
This is the first invasion and conquest. How
like an air-balloon or bird of Jove does he seem
to float over the continent, and, stooping here
and there, pounce on a fact as a symbol which
was never a symbol before. This is the first ex-

with

常

periment, and something of rudeness and haste must be pardoned to so great an achievement. It will be done again and again, sharper, simpler; but fortunate is he who did it first, though never so giant-like and fabulous. This grandiose character pervades his wit and his imagination. We have never had anything in literature so like earthquakes as the laughter of Carlyle. He "shakes with his mountain mirth." It is like the laughter of the Genii in the horizon. These jokes shake down Parliament House and Windsor Castle, Temple and Tower, and the future shall echo the dangerous peals. The other particular of magnificence is in his rhymes. Carlyle is a poet who is altogether too burly in his frame and habit to submit to the limits of metre. Yet he is full of rhythm, not only in the perpetual melody of his periods, but in the burdens, refrains, and grand returns of his sense and music. Whatever thought or motto has once appeared to him fraught with meaning, becomes an omen to him henceforward, and is sure to return with deeper tones and weightier import, now as threat, now as confirmation, in gigantic reverberation, as if the hills, the horizon, and the next ages returned the sound.'

A

VII

A LETTER

S we are very liable, in common with the letter-writing world, to fall behind-hand in our correspondence; and a little more liable because in consequence of our editorial function we receive more epistles than our individual share, we have thought that we might clear our account by writing a quarterly catholic letter to all and several who have honored us, in verse or prose, with their confidence, and expressed a curiosity to know our opinion. We shall be compelled to dispose very rapidly of quite miscellaneous topics.

And first, in regard to the writer who has given us his speculations on Railroads and Airroads, our correspondent shall have his own way. To the railway, we must say,- like the courageous lord mayor at his first hunting, when told the hare was coming, "Let it come, in Heaven's name, I am not afraid on 't." Very unlooked-for political and social effects of the iron road are fast appearing. It will require an expansion of the police of the old world. When a railroad train shoots through Europe every

day from Brussels to Vienna, from Vienna to Constantinople, it cannot stop every twenty or thirty miles at a German custom-house, for examination of property and passports. But when our correspondent proceeds to flying-machines, we have no longer the smallest taper-light of credible information and experience left, and must speak on a priori grounds.

६

Shortly, then, we think the population is not yet quite fit for them, and therefore there will be none. Our friend suggests so many inconveniences from piracy out of the high air to orchards and lone houses, and also to other high fliers, and the total inadequacy of the present system of defence, that we have not the heart to break the sleep of the good public by the repetition of these details. When children come into the library, we put the inkstand and the watch on the high shelf until they be a little older; and Nature has set the sun and moon in plain sight and use, but laid them on the high shelf where her roystering boys may not in some mad Saturday afternoon pull them down or burn their fingers. The sea and the iron road are safe! toys for such ungrown people; we are not ye ripe to be birds.

In the next place, to fifteen letters on Com

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munities, and the Prospects of Culture, and the destinies of the cultivated class, what answer? Excellent reasons have been shown us why the writers, obviously persons of sincerity and elegance, should be dissatisfied with the life they lead, and with their company. They have exhausted all its benefit, and will not bear it much longer. Excellent reasons they have shown why something better should be tried. They want a friend to whom they can speak and from whom they may hear now and then a reasonable word. They are willing to work, so it be with friends. They do not entertain anything absurd or even difficult. They do not wish to force society into hated reforms, nor to break with society. They do not wish a township or any large expenditure or incorporated association, but simply a concentration of chosen people. By the slightest possible concert, persevered in through four or five years, they think that a neighborhood might be formed of friends who would provoke each other to the best activity. They believe that this society would fill up the terrific chasm of ennui, and would give their genius that inspiration which it seems to wait in vain.

But, the selfishness! One of the writers