Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strength of this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an old farmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foibles fascinating. Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "Shooting Niagara"--and "the Nigger Question,"--and didn't at all admire our United States? (I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad words about us as we deserve.) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands, with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to understand the last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain--the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness. The way to test how much he has left his country were to consider, or try to consider, for a moment, the array of British thought, the resultant _ensemble_ of the last fifty years, as existing to-day, _but with Carlyle left out_. It would be like an army with no artillery. The show were still a gay and rich one--Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and many more--horsemen and rapid infantry, and banners flying--but the last heavy roar so dear to the ear of the train'd soldier, and that settles fate and victory, would be lacking.