Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/22

xvi believe. But for the rest, for the other representatives of that Church, that monarchy, that social order, which Carlyle declares to have degenerated into a 'sham,' the nobler part of them manfully enough upheld their cause and laboured for it, fought for it, died for it, without apparently the faintest suspicion that a sham it was; while as for the baser sort among them, surely the unfrocked priest who 'rallied' or 'ratted' to the Revolution wrote himself down, not charlatan, but rather timeserver, and the recreant noble who tried to save his skin by deserting his order did so not because he was a Quack but because he was a Sneak.

Carlyle, however, like many another preacher of his nationality, was far more charitable than his preachments. That is to say, he comes into far closer contact with the realities of life, and, in judging men's actions, approaches much nearer to that standard of the all-comprehending which is the all-forgiving when he descends from the pulpit. Once he has descended, the rich humanity of the man and his Shakespearean breadth of sympathy assert themselves; he forgets his Radical or Tory-Radical crotchets, his Puritan prejudices; and the partisans of either cause, the lofty and the base alike, take life upon his pages, portrayed for us not only with a touch of magic but with a just and equal hand. Once in the swing of his narrative, and his moralisings for the time abandoned, Carlyle does not find Quackery or look for it. He writes, as has been said, with all his quick sensibilities responsive to the subtlest impressions, and all his wonderful array of intellectual faculties on the alert. The shadows, of necessity, fall thick and heavy over his sombre subject; but every ray that is shed upon it from any quarter is caught instantaneously on the mirror of his artistic genius, and flashed back upon us with redoubled brilliancy from the broken facets of his style. Bravery, beauty, dignity, devotion—the noble, the tragic, the pathetic, the grotesque,—these things never appeal to him in vain. The charm, the courage, and the fate alike of Marie Antoinette and of Charlotte Corday, attract him irresistibly, and make him almost forget that