In such _Dynamics_ it is that Mr Carlyle deals. To speak in our own plain common-place diction, it is to the elements of all religious feeling, to the broad unalterable principles of morality, that he addresses himself; stirring up in the minds of his readers those sentiments of reverence to the Highest, and of justice to all, even to the lowest, which can never utterly die out in any man, but which slumber in the greater number of us. It is by no means necessary to teach any peculiar or positive doctrine in order to exert an influence on society. After all, there is a moral heart beating at the very centre of this world. Touch _it_, and there is a responsive movement through the whole system of the world. Undoubtedly external circumstances rule in their turn over this same central pulsation: alter, arrange, and modify, these external circumstances as best you can, but he who, by the _word_ he speaks or writes, can reach this central pulse immediately--is he idle, is he profitless? Or put it thus: there is a justice between man and man--older, and more stable, and more lofty in its requisitions, than that which sits in ermine, or, if our author pleases, in "horse-hair," at Westminster Hall; there is a morality recognized by the intellect and the heart of all reflective men, higher and purer than what the present forms of society exact or render feasible--or rather say, a morality of more exalted character than that which has hitherto determined those forms of society. No man who believes that the teaching of Christ was authorized of heaven--no man who believes this only, that his doctrine has obtained and preserved its heavenly character from the successful, unanswerable, appeal which it makes to the human heart--can dispute this fact. Is he an idler, then, or a dreamer in the land, who comes forth, and on the high-road of our popular literature, insists on it that men should assume their full _moral strength_, and declares that herein lies the salvation of the world? But what can he do if the external circumstances of life are against him?--if they crush this moral energy?--if they discountenance this elevation of character? Alone--perhaps nothing. He with both hands is raising one end of the beam; go you with your tackle, with rope and pulley, and all mechanical appliances, to the other end, and who knows but something may be effected?