slough of the conventional, the sensual, the mechanical, to make men
feel, by sheer force of poetry, pathos, and humour, the religious
mystery of life and the "wretchlessness of unclean living"--(as our
Church article hath it)--nothing could be more trumpet-tongued than
_Sartor_. The Gospel according to Teufelsdröckh is, however, a
somewhat Apocalyptic dispensation, and few there be who can "rehearse
the articles of his belief" with anything like precision. Another and
a more serious difficulty is this. How many a "general reader"
steadily reads through _Sartor_ from cover to cover? And of such, how
many entirely understand the inner Philosophy of Clothes, and follow
all the allusions, quips, and nicknames of Sartorian subjectivity. It
would be a fine subject for some Self-Improvement Circle of readers to
write examination papers upon questions as to the exact meaning of all
the inward musings of Teufelsdröckh. The first class of successful
candidates, one fears, would be small. A book--not of science or of
pure philosophy, or any technical art whatever--but a book addressed to
the general reader, and designed for the education of the public, and
which can be intelligently digested and assimilated by so very few of
the public, can hardly be counted as an unqualified success. And the
adepts who have mastered the inwardness of _Sartor_ are rare and few.

The _French Revolution_, however, is far more distinctly a work of art
than _Cromwell_, and far more accessible to the great public than
_Sartor_. Indeed the _French Revolution_ is usually, and very
properly, spoken of and thought of, as a prose poem, if prose poem
there can be. It has the essential character of an epic, short of
rhythm and versification. Its "argument" and its "books"; its
contrasts and "episodes"; its grouping of characters and
_dénoûment_--are as carefully elaborated as the _Gerusalemme_ of Tasso,
or the _Aeneid_ of Virgil. And it produces on the mind the effect of a