Here we come to the final problem. Cromwell's Parliament, he says, failed in their attempt to realise their 'noble, and surely necessary, attempt.' Nay, they 'could not but fail;' they had 'the sluggishness, the slavish half-and-halfness, the greediness, the cowardice, and general fatuity and falsity of some ten million men against it—alas! the whole world and what we call the Devil and all his angels against it!' This is the true revolutionary doctrine. The fact that a reform would only succeed fully if men were angels is with the ordinary Conservative a reason for not reforming at all; and with your genuine fanatic a reason not for declining the impracticable, but for denouncing the facts. We have, however, to ask how it fits in with any such theory of progress as was possible for Carlyle. For some such theory must be held by anyone who makes the victory of truth and justice over shams and falsehoods a corner-stone of his system. It has been asked, in fact, whether there is not a gross inconsistency here. If Cromwell's success proved him to be a hero, did not the Restoration upset the proof? The answer, frequently and emphatically given by Carlyle, as in the lecture on the hero as king, is an obvious one. Cromwell represents an intermediate stage between Luther and the French Revolution. Luther told the Pope that he was a 'chimera;' and the French gave the same piece of information to other 'chimeras.' The whole process is a revolt against certain gigantic shams, and the success very inadequately measured by any special incident in the struggle. The French Revolution, with all its horrors, was a 'return to truth,' though, as it were, to a truth 'clad in hellfire:' and its advent should be hailed as 'shipwrecked mariners might hail the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all of baseless seas and waves.' And throughout this vast revolutionary process, our hope rests upon the 'certainty of heroes being sent us;' and that certainty 'shines like a polestar, through murk dustclouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration.'