Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/39

 Hugh Peters, Philip Nye: the Printer has done for them what he could, and Mr. Speaker gave them the thanks of the House: —and no most astonishing Review-Article, or tenth-edition Pamphlet, of our day can have half such ‘brilliancy,’ such ‘spirit, ‘eloquence,’—such virtue to produce belief, which is the highest and in reality the only literary success,—as these poor little dumpy quartos once had. And behold, they are become inarticulate quartos; spectral; and instead of speak- ing, do but screech and gibber! All Puritanism has grown inarticulate; its fervent preachings, prayings, pamphleteerings are sunk into one indiscriminate moaning hum, mournful as the voice of subterranean winds. So much falls silent: human Speech, unless by rare chance it touch on the ‘Eternal Melodies,’ and harmonise with them; human Action, Interest, if divorced from the Eternal Melodies, sinks all silent. The fashion of this world passeth away.

The Age of the Puritans is not extinct only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the capabilities of Memory herself; it is grown unintelligible, what we may call incredible. Its earnest Purport awakens now no resonance in our frivolous hearts. We understand not even in imagination, one of a thousand of us, what it ever could have meant. It seems delirious, delusive; the sound of it has become tedious as a tale of past stupidities. Not the body of heroic Puritan- ism only, which was bound to die, but the soul of it also, which was and should have been, and yet shall be immortal, has for the present passed away. As Harrison said of his Banner, and Lion of the ‘Tribe of Judah: ‘Who shall rouse him up?’—

‘For indisputably,’ exclaims the above-cited Author in his vehement way, ‘this too was a Heroism; and the soul of it remains part of the eternal soul of things! Here, of our own land and lineage, in practical English shape, were Heroes on the Earth once more. Who knew in every fibre, and with heroic daring laid to heart, That an Almighty Justice does verily rule this world; that it is good to fight on God’s side,