Here is the problem we have to solve. How came this change from the Carlyle of the Past to the Carlyle of the Present,--from Carlyle the universal believer to Carlyle the universal skeptic,--from him to whom the world was full of wonder and beauty, to him who can see in it nothing but Force on the one side and Shams on the other? What changed that tender, loving, brave soul into this hard cynic? And how was it, as Faith and Love faded out of him, that the life passed from his thought, the glory from his pen, and the page, once alive with flashing ideas, turned into this confused heap of rubbish, in which silver spoons, old shoes, gold sovereigns, and copper pennies are pitched out promiscuously, for the patient reader to sift and pick over as he can? In reading the Carlyle of thirty years ago, we were like California miners,--come upon a rich _placer_, never before opened, where we could all become rich in a day. Now the reader of Carlyle is a _chiffonier_, raking in a heap of street dust for whatever precious matters may turn up. To investigate this question is our purpose now,--and in doing so we will consider, in succession, these two Carlyles. I. It was about the year 1830 that readers of books in this vicinity became aware of a new power coming up in the literary republic. Opinions concerning him varied widely. To some he seemed a Jack Cade, leader of rebels, foe to good taste and all sound opinions. Especially did his admiration for Goethe and for German literature seem to many preposterous and extravagant. It was said of these, that "the force of folly could no further go,"--that they "constituted a burlesque too extravagant to be amusing." The tone of Carlyle was said to be of "unbounded assumption;" his language to be "obscure and barbarous;" his ideas composed of "extravagant paradoxes, familiar truths or familiar falsehoods;" "wildest extravagance and merest silliness."