with a whip-lash like some renowned charioteers,--in all this
glad and needful venting of his redundant spirits, he does yet
ever and anon, as if catching the glance of one wise man in the
crowd, quit his tempestuous key, and lance at him in clear level
tone the very word, and then with new glee return to his game.
He is like a lover or an outlaw who wraps up his message in a
serenade, which is nonsense to the sentinel, but salvation to the
ear for which it is meant. He does not dodge the question, but
gives sincerity where it is due.

One word more respecting this remarkable style. We have in
literature few specimens of magnificence. Plato is the purple
ancient, and Bacon and Milton the moderns of the richest strains.
Burke sometimes reaches to that exuberant fullness, though
deficient in depth. Carlyle in his strange, half mad way, has
entered the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and shown a vigour and
wealth of resource which has no rival in the tourney play of
these times--the indubitable champion of England. Carlyle is the
first domestication of the modern system, with its infinity of
details, into style. We have been civilising 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
labour with which the world has gone with child so long. London
and Europe, tunneled, 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