One can scarcely overrate the importance of thus holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Emerson’s work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth’s poetry is, in my judgment, the most important work done in verse, in our language, during the present century, so Emerson’s _Essays_ are, I think, the most important work done in prose. His work is more important than Carlyle’s. Let us be just to Carlyle, provoking though he often is. Not only has he that genius of his which makes Emerson say truly of his letters, that ‘they savour always of eternity.’ More than this may be said of him. The scope and upshot of his teaching are true; ‘his guiding genius,’ to quote Emerson again, is really ‘his moral sense, his perception of the sole importance of truth and justice.’ But consider Carlyle’s temper, as we have been considering Emerson’s! take his own account of it! ‘Perhaps London is the proper place for me after all, seeing all places are _im_proper: who knows? Meanwhile, I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life; consuming, if possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain; glad when any strength is left in me for writing, which is the only use I can see in myself,—too rare a case of late. The ground of my existence is black as death; too black, when all _void_ too; but at times there paint themselves on it pictures of gold, and rainbow, and lightning; all the brighter for the black ground, I suppose. Withal, I am very much of a fool.’—No, not a fool, but turbid and morbid, wilful and perverse. ‘We judge of a man’s wisdom by his hope.’ Carlyle’s perverse attitude towards happiness cuts him off from hope. He fiercely attacks the desire for happiness; his grand point in _Sartor_, his secret in which the soul may find rest, is that one shall cease to desire happiness, that one should learn to say to oneself: ‘What if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy!’ He is wrong; Saint Augustine is the better philosopher, who says: ‘Act we _must_ in pursuance of what gives us most delight.’ Epictetus and Augustine can be severe moralists enough; but both of them know and frankly say that the desire for happiness is the root and ground of man’s being. Tell him and show him that he places his happiness wrong, that he seeks for delight where delight will never be really found; then you illumine and further him. But you only confuse him by telling him to cease to desire happiness; and you will not tell him this unless you are already confused yourself. Carlyle preached the dignity of labour, the necessity of righteousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of shams. He is said by many people to be a great teacher, a great helper for us, because he does so. But what is the due and eternal result of labour, righteousness, veracity?—Happiness. And how are we drawn to them by one who, instead of making us feel that with them is happiness, tells us that perhaps we were predestined not to be happy but to be unhappy?