storm, and, perhaps, is softer and more golden in proportion to the roughness of the tempest. Mr. Carlyle, here, seems absolutely in love! Not above ten sentences of vituperation occur in the 344 pages. We suspect that the reception of the "Model Prisons" has taught him that even his dynasty is not infallible, and that bulls from Chelsea must modify their bellowings, if they would not wish to be treated like bulls from the Vatican. Whether he be or be not aware of the fact, his giant shadow is passing swiftly from off the face of the public mind, nor will the present change of tone retard its down-going. It is too late. The gospel of negations has had its day, and served its generation, and must give place to another and a nobler evangel.

The book is most interesting from its relation to the biographer, and its true name is "Sterling's Carlyle." Few as the religious allusions in it are, they are such as leave no doubt upon our minds as to Carlyle's own views. His sneers at Coleridge's theosophic moonshine-at Sterling's belief in a personal God:" his suppression of an argument on this subject, drawn out by Sterling in a letter to himself (page 152)his language in page 126, no stars-nor ever were, save certain old Jew ones, which have gone out"-the unmitigated contempt he pours out here and there on the clergy, and on the Church, and, by inference and insinuation, upon the "traditions" and the "incredibilities" of Christianity-all point to the foregone conclusion, which he has, we fear, long ago reached. With this conclusion we do not at present mean to grapple; but we mean to mark, and very strongly to condemn, the manner and spirit in which he has, although only here and there, stated and enforced it.

Now, in the first place, although he must be sceptical, why should he be profane? He may curse, but why should he swear? He may despise hypocrisy, and trample on cant, but why should he insult sincere, albeit weak-minded belief? Why such words as these, in reference to a Methodist, who had displayed, in critical circumstances, a most heroic and noble degree of courage "The last time I heard of him, he was a prosperous, modest dairyman, thankful for the upper light, and for deliverance from the warth to come?"

Words these,"wrath to come," which shook the souls of

Cromwell, Milton and Howe, to their depths; which are still capable of moving millions to fear, to faith, to morality, and to love; and which yet can only excite Mr. Carlyle to contemptuous derision. If there be one thought in the Christian theology more tremendous than another, it is that of an unceasing outflow of just vengeance, like a "pulsing aurora of wrath," like an ever-rising sun of shame and fear, like a storm, the clouds of which return after the rain-not to be compared to other wrathful phenomena, to the thunder-cloud which gathers, bursts, passes on to other lands or to other worlds, while the blue sky arises behind it in its calm immortality; nor to the pestilence, which breaks out like the sudden springing of a mine, stamps with its foot, and awakens death, but passes quickly away, and leaves the joy of health and security behind; nor to the earthquake, which starts up like a giant from his slumber, heaves mountains, troubles oceans, swallows up cities, but speedily subsides, and again the eternal hills rest and are silent; but to itself only, for it alone deserves the name of wrath! And without dogmatising or speculating on the real meaning or extent of this predicted vengeance, surely a sneer can neither explain, nor illuminate, nor prevent its coming! There are many besides poor Methodistic miners, who tremble at the words, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," and one of them, unless we are much mistaken, is, at times, the melancholy Polyphemus of Chelsea.

Secondly, why does he so often edge his evident earnestness with a levity and a mockery which remind you of Voltaire himself? Why thus delight in forming an ungainly and horrible hybrid? Deep solemn thought is on his brow; love is swimming wildly in his eye; but a sneer, keen as if it were the essence of all sneers, past, present, and to come, ever and anon palpitates on his lips. Why is this? Even as an engine of assault, such ridicule is powerless. Laughter, ere it can kill, must be given forth with all one's heart and soul, and mind and strength; must be serious, and total. But Thomas Carlyle cannot thus laugh at any sincere faith; his mirth, like Cromwell's speeches, "breaks down," chokes in his throat, or dies away in a quaver of consternation. But why ever begin what his heart will not permit him to finish?

Thirdly, his contempt for the office of the Christian ministry is so violent, and almost ferocious, as to increase the suspicion that he loves Christianity as little as he does its clergy. He speaks of Sterling's brief curateship as the great mistake of his life-nay, as if it amounted to a stain and crime. It did not appear so to poor Sterling himself, who, when dying, begged for the old Bible he used at Herstmonceux among the cottages, and seems to have died with it in his arms. It does not appear so to us. A curate, however mistaken, "going about doing good," is a nobler spectacle, we fancy, than a soured and stationary litterateur, sitting with a pipe in his mouth, and, like the character in the Psalms, "puffing out despite" at all his real or imaginary foes. Sir James Macintosh thought otherwise of ministerial work, when he congratulated Hall on having turned from philosophy and letters to the "far nobler task of soothing the afflicted, succoring the distressed, and remembering the forgotten." We have no passion, verily for "surplices," nor respect for many whom they cover; but we know that they have been worn by men whose shoe-latchets neither John Sterling nor Thomas Carlyle are worthy to unloose; and are still worn by some, at least, their equals in powers and in virtues, in scrupulosity of conscience, and in tenderness and dignity of walk. John Sterling would have been a far better, happier, and greater man, had he remained a working curate to the last, instead of becoming a sort of petty Prometheus, equally miserable, and nearly as idle, with a big black crow (elegantly mistaken for a vulture) pecking at his morbid liver. And, for our part, we would rather be a humble city missionary, grappling with vulgar sin and misery, in the lanes of one of our cities-nay, a little child repeating, "Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me," at his mother's knee, than sit with Sartor on his burning and tottering throne!

We have something more still to add. We respect and love much about Mr. Carlyle; we think him naturally a great, earnest, true-hearted man. We sympathise cordially with his crusade against shams. We can pardon, or at least wink hard at, the recent outpourings of his wrath against the most eminent of practical philanthropists, tracing them to a foul stomach, and not to a black heart. But we should like him to

"deliver his soul" more even than here, on a topic to which he often alludes, but on which he is never so explicit as he should be-Christianity. We think we know his sentiments on the subject. He does not, we fear, acknowledge its peculiar and divine claims. Seeing clearly that there are but two alternatives, revelation or despair, he has deliberately chosen the latter. The authority of the Bible is one of those things "which the light of his own mind, the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible."

But a large proportion of the public are still in the dark as to his religious sentiments. We have heard him claimed by intelligent ministers of the Free Church of Scotland as a Christian, nay, a Puritan. Others, not quite so far astray, look upon his religious opinions as uncertain, vague, indefinite, perhaps not yet fully formed. This is the fault of his mystic and tantalising mode of expression. Not every eye can pierce through the fantastic veil he wears, and see behind it the features of a mere nature and duty worshipper. That veil, we think, he is, as an honest and earnest man, bound entirely to drop. Masks may be pardoned in a tournament, but not in hot and eager battle. The question as to the truth of Christianity has become the engrossing question of this age, and we cannot now bear with men who appear to halt between two opinions. The cry was never more distinctly or loudly sounded than it is at present, "Who is on the Lord's side, who?" Differences of opinion on minor matters of religion may be pardoned; "orthodoxy" and "heterodoxy" have become terms equally unmeaning, and equally contemptible. But this is now the point at issue: Is Christianity, as a whole, a truth or a falsehood, a sham or a reality—the lie of the earth, or the one thing in its history worth loving, valuing, or trusting in? While the more resolute of sceptics, such as the worthies of the "Westminster Review," have taken their stand, and proclaimed "war to the knife," and while the defenders of Christianity are buckling on their armor, it will not much longer do for men like Mr. Carlyle to utter an uncertain sound, and to hang off on the outskirts of the great battle. In this "Life of Sterling," its author had a good opportunity of declaring himself fully on the subject, and the

public were expecting it; but they have been again doomed to disappointment.

With regard to John Sterling, there is not very much added to our previous information; but beautiful lights, like the golden gleams of an autumn afternoon, are cast upon his character. His "nomadic" existence-a wanderer in evasion of

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death is most picturesquely narrated. Bute, Glamorganshire, Madeira, St. Vincent, Italy, and Clifton, all sit for portraits, which are alike faithful and poetic. Old Sterling of the "Times"-" Captain Whirlwind"-comes and goes in a very striking manner. Coleridge sits in Highgate, weaving endless webs of "theosophic moonshine," or walks along both sides of the garden gravel, from uncertainty as to which to take! (Hazlitt, we remember, describes him even when young as perpetually crossing the road, and ascribes it to instability of purpose.) And the various members of the Sterling Club, including Carlyle himself, are introduced at intervals, to add life and interest to the somewhat melancholy and monotonous story.

It is indeed a sad narrative. John Sterling died a young man; but he had passed through ages of bodily suffering and mental endurance. He "lived fast," although not in the common sense of that expression. His life was one hectic fever; and yet his peculiarly buoyant and sanguine temperament enabled him to endure with grace and dignity. His mental struggles, though severe, were not of that awful earthquaking kind which shook the soul of Arnold, and drove Sartor howling through the Everlasting No, like a lion caught in a forest of fire. It was rather a swift succession of miseries, than one deep devouring anguish. Yet the close was truly tragical. How affecting the words of his last letter to his biographer, "I tread the common road into the great darkness without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have none."

He adds, in reference to Carlyle, "Towards me it is still more true than towards England, that no man has been, and done like you." We are tempted to a very opposite conclusion; we think, that unintentionally Mr. Carlyle was the means of mortal injury to Sterling's mind. He shook his attachment to Coleridge, and thus to Christianity; stripping