This very well represented Carlyle's view, but it occupies but a small place in his writings. All his books, his letters, pamphlets, histories, essays show his profound living belief in the worth of individual men, as the salt of the earth, and the young are always greatly influenced by strong personalities. But the mature mind that struggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him as "the idle chatter of apes" and "the talk of Fools." Mazzini's world-wide sympathies, his life of many deaths for his country, were unintelligible to Carlyle, who also described, as "a sawdust kind of talk," John Stuart Mill's expression of belief and interest in reforming and raising the whole social mass of toiling millions. Bracing and stimulating, as is Carlyle's strong, stern doctrine of independence, of work, and of adherence to Truth for its own sake, we feel the loss his character sustained, through the contempt that grew upon him for the greater part of humanity. The Nemesis of contempt was shown in his inability at last to see even in individuals, the greatest things. Physical force came to be admired by him for itself. From hero-worship, he passed "to strong rulers, and saviours of society." The worth of the individual, withered and changed, and Carlyle's hopes rested finally on strength alone, just as George Eliot's thoughts centred on the influence human beings exercised on each other, and there is extraordinary beauty in this idea. How striking is her conception of the good we all receive from even the simplest lives, if they have been true lives. "The growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." But some who read her books feel an underlying tone of sadness--a melancholy whisper as of a finality, an inevitable end to all future development, even of the greatest personalities. Many other writers have believed that men live in the world's memory only by what they have done in the world, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that personality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on being: "The sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense, So shall I join the Choir Invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world." Both George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other the individual. Mazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two.