Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr. Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the country; and those who watch eagerly the signs of the times have their eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough, and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry us--state, church, and sacred property--down along with it. But whither would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery. Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom which he would do well to heed: "O thou that after toil and storm May'st seem to have reached a purer air, Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself to form, "Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, Her early heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days. "Her faith through form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good. Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood To which she links a truth divine! "See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And even for want of such a type."