superhuman gift of prayer. This crowning feature of Irving's character as a divine, has been so beautifully analyzed by the eloquent Gilfillan, that we are tempted to adopt his words. We may here premise, however, that we have heard many majestic devotional utterances from the lips of Hall, Channing, Chalmers, Melville, and others; but none that we remember ever sounded so rich and sonorous, or impressed us with a power so soul-exalting and heaven-inspiring as his. It was this that convinced all who heard Irving, of his deep, earnest, and fervent piety, and of the sincerity, simplicity, and integrity of his moral, as well as the splendour of his intellectual attainments.

"Some few of his contemporaries," says the writer referred to, "might possibly equal him in preaching, but none approached to the very hem of his garment while rapt up into the heaven of devotion. It struck you as the prayer of a great being, conversing with the invisible Deity. The solemnity of the tones convinced you that he was conscious of an unearthly presence, and speaking to it, not to you. The diction and imagery showed that his faculties were wrought up to their highest pitch, and tasked to their noblest endeavour in that 'celestial colloquy sublime.' A profusion of Scripture was used; and never did inspired language better become human lips than those of Irving. His public prayers told to those who could interpret their language, of many a secret conference with Heaven; they pointed to wrestlings all unseen, and groanings all unheard; they drew aside, involuntarily, the veil of his retirement, and let in a light into the sanctuary of the closet itself. Prayers more elegant, and beautiful, and melting, may have often been heard; but more majestic, and organ-like, and Miltonic, never. The fastidious Canning, when told by Sir James Mackintosh of Irving praying for a family of orphans, as 'cast upon the fatherhood of God,' was compelled to start and confess the beauty of the expression.'

The limits of this paper are well nigh exhausted, and we have scarcely alluded to any of Mr. Irving's private characteristics: a few brief notices of the more prominent of these, and we shall draw to a close. We have already intimated that he exhibited singular simplicity of character, combined with great benevolence and amiability of heart. This was manifest in numerous instances, as well as in his liberal charities and alms-deeds, which were indulged even at the expense of prudence; to such extent, indeed, that his wife deemed it expedient to empty his pockets before he left his house, as their contents, pence or pounds, were otherwise frequently expended ere he returned. In his personal friendships he was most ardent, constant, and generous; so that all who knew him, could not but love

and revere him. But for his extremely excitable temperament, and insatiable thirst for novelty, as well as the infatuation of a few misguided and fanatical adherents, Irving might possibly have long retained his high position of usefulness and distinction in the Church. An unconquerable yearning for novelty, and its consequent fatal susceptibility of erratic opinions, however, too surely tended to his fall. He endorsed the sentiment that the gift of tongues and miracles, with other primitive immunities of the apostolic Church, were still within its range of privileges; and hence the solemn mummeries of which his auditory so frequently were compelled to become the painful witnesses. Another theological tenet which he at one time strenuously advocated, was the peccability of our Lord's human body: a metaphysical nicety which few fully appreciated, however; for with it he also maintained the impossibility of its contact with sin. Carlyle has given a glowing account of poor Irving's demisean event that excited in the religious world mingled emotions of found sorrow, the tenderest pity, and hopeful exultation. He expired at Kirkaldy-the birth-place of Mrs. Irving-after many days of patient endurance of the wasting disease-pulmonary consumptionin the act of singing the twenty-third Psalm, in Hebrew: yielding his spirit in sweet serenity of Christian hope. It cannot but be regarded as a matter of deep regret, that his transcendent powers of mind should have thus been perverted from their high design, and obscured by the advocacy of dogmas so eccentric and injurious, because dangerous; and it is stated that, at the close, his own convictions of their fallacy became, too, the subject of painful admission.

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We leave the subject of our fond and most cherished recollections with a mixture of conflicting emotions; but, among them all, pitying love and reverence hold the sway: for nothing can, in our estimate, impeach his exceeding purity of motive and aim, and his earnest and deep-seated piety. His errors were of the judgment, not of the will or the heart; and we feel convinced that all candid minds, by whom this truly great and good man was duly appreciated, will consent to a like decision.

ART. VIII.—THOMAS CARLYLE.

1. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By THOMAS CARLYLE, author of the History of the French Revolution. A new edition, complete in one volume. Pp. 568, Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1848.

2. Past and Present, Chartism, and Sartor Resartus. By THOMAS CARLYLE. Com. plete in one volume. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1848.

3. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations. By THOMAS CARLYLE. In two volumes. Pp. 560, 437. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1848.

It cannot have escaped the notice of the most casual observer of the literature of Europe and America, that its whole tone and current have been changed within thirty years. There is not a department of thought in which this is not manifest. In religious literature, where the change is least obvious, there is still a marked difference between the essays, sermons, and books, that exert an influence now, and the Porteus, Blair, and Tillotson school, that were then in the ascendant. The spirit of activity and earnestness, which, half a century ago, was regarded, in a Whitefield and a Wesley, as a species of amiable insanity, has now become, if not the common, at least the approved feeling of the Church in all her departments. In history, the cold polish of a Gibbon, and the sneering shallowness of a Hume and a Voltaire, have given place to a school of thinkers, who see some significance in the life of the human race, and who apply themselves with something of a reverent spirit to the study of its problems. In poetry, the jingling aphorisms of Pope, the metallic lustre of Gray, and the Satanic fire of Byron, have given place to far higher conceptions of the proper mission of Song. So too in philosophy, belles-lettres, and political literature, there is a manifest change of both tone and sentiment in many important respects.

The causes of this change we do not propose at present to discuss; they lie too deep, and stretch too far, for a mere passing notice. Some of the instruments, however, by which these hidden causes acted, are obvious to the most superficial observer. A few men appeared in Great Britain and America whose souls were pervaded with a new spirit, which they sought to embody in their writings. Pre-eminent among these are the men who encountered such a storm of derision on their first appearance, and were called, in contempt, the Lakers; but who now stand, by universal suffrage, in the very foremost rank of English literature. We doubt whether the history of letters presents a more wonderful triumph achieved in a single life of calm and patient toil, than that which has been won,

from the first bitter sneers of Byron, and the contemptuous "This will never do," of Jeffrey, to the crown of reverence and might that now encircles the brow of the noble old patriarch of Rydal-mere.

But while we fully recognize the agency of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Macaulay, and others in this change, we believe that few men have had a more decided influence in bringing it about than Thomas Carlyle. It has been his fate, like that of every other man of genius who differs greatly from his fellows, to be extravagantly commended and as extravagantly condemned. By some he is regarded as a drivelling dreamer, who seeks, by an uncouth and fantastic phraseology, to obtain a reputation for depth which he does not possess; and by others, as an inspired oracle, whose mystic utterances are fraught with the profoundest wisdom. On the one hand, he is regarded as a skeptical Pantheist, secretly undermining Christianity, and endeavouring to efface the ancient landmarks of religion and morality; on the other, he is looked upon as the very high priest of all true and reverent piety. It is worth while to seek the truth concerning one of whom there are such various and conflicting opinions. This we propose to attempt, in setting forth, plainly, what he has actually written, and thus furnishing the elements at least from which his real sentiments, character, and influence are to be ascertained.

Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, near the River Annan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. His father was a substantial farmer, an elder in the United Secession Church, and a man of strong native powers of mind. His mother, who, we believe, still lives, is said to be a fine specimen of the strong-hearted, earnest matrons of Scotland; and has, doubtless, impressed much of her character on her gifted son. His early years were spent in obscurity, poverty, and struggling efforts to obtain an education. The res angusta domi made it necessary for him to support himself in part, during his early studies, by tuition, translations, and similar employments. These facts in his youthful career will go far to explain some of those peculiarities of thought and feeling that we find in his subsequent writings. His intense sympathy with, and deep comprehension of, such men as Burns, Heyne, and Richter, who resembled him in these particulars; and his earnest battlings for the struggling masses, may be readily traced to this early training under the stern tutelage of poverty and sorrow.

The grand fact in his life, however, was his early study of German literature. It was this that gave tone and character to his mind, and shaped his literary career. He would under any circumstances have been a peculiar man; but the form and hue of almost all his

peculiarities are distinctly traceable to his early acquaintance and deep sympathy with the strange and wonderful literature of Germany. He was originally destined for the ministry; but, for reasons that may perhaps be gathered from some of his writings, abandoned it for the more congenial pursuits of a literary career. At one period in his life he taught an academy, during which time he enjoyed the acquaintance of one, similarly employed, who resembled him in many important respects, and to whom he has erected a most touching and beautiful memorial-we mean the eccentric and gifted, but unfortunate, Edward Irving. Had their paths in life been exchanged, and the one become the orator of Hatton Garden, and the other the profound German student, how differently might we have read the history of these men! and how differently the history of English letters!

After his marriage he resided partly in Edinburgh, partly in a wild and mountainous part of Dumfriesshire, and latterly in Chelsea, London. The peculiarities of his intellectual character gather around him in his present abode men of every shade of opinion; and his tea-table sometimes offers a not distant resemblance to Volney's Convention.

His mental history presents three distinct epochs: the first, the purely Scottish, the result of his early training amid scenes such as those immortalized in the Cotter's Saturday Night; the second, the German, when his mind was completely enthralled by the fascinating spell of that witchery that hangs around much of the German literature; and the third, the Germano-Scottish, in which his mind began to move with more independence, and to strike out for itself an original course, which is the resultant of the forces previously acting upon him, and which, we trust, will be the noblest phase of his character. These epochs are marked by incidents sufficiently characteristic. In his first phase, he was the bosom friend of Edward Irving, as genuine an impersonation of the genus perfervidum Scotorum as his land has ever produced; and one who would have scowled and thundered the most savage contempt on much that Carlyle afterwards loved, and much that he afterwards became. In the second phase, when public attention had been directed to this modern Diogenes, he was visited by Dr. Chalmers. The two great Scotsmen parted in mutual disgust. They never met again until a short time before the death of Dr. Chalmers, during his last visit to London. The mind of Carlyle had, meanwhile, reached its third phase; and when they met, they enjoyed several hours of congenial intercourse, and parted with mutual respect and admiration.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. I-8