who had founded families, developed races, brought order out of chaos, had made civilizations possible, had ordained peace and security, and had been the force of upward evolution. It was thus that the freedom which the heart had given to the head was used to prove how fallible that generous heart was. Then out of all of this groping regret, out of this new knowledge, there arose, with excursions and alarums, Carlyle; the first who dared frankly impeach the new theory and decry its results. Through all his vociferousness, through all his droning tautology, his buzzing, banging, and butting among phrases like an angry cock-chafer, through the general egregiousness of his intolerable style, there rang out clear once again the pæon of the strong. Here was no talk of the rights of man. His right as of old was to do his duty and walk in the fear of the Lord. ... "A king or leader in all bodies of men there must be," he says. "Be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, and position is fittest of all to do it." For the aggregate wisdom of the multitude, to which Democracy pinned its faith, he had only scorn. ... "To find a Parliament more and more the expression of the people, could, unless the people chanced to be wise, give no satisfaction.... But to find some sort of King made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the people, if not their spoken wishes yet their dumb wants, and what they would at last find to be their instinctive will--which is a far different matter usually in this babbling world of ours" ... _that_ was the thing to be desired. "He who is to be my ruler, whose will is higher than my will, was chosen for me by heaven. Neither, except in obedience to the heaven-chosen, is freedom so much as conceivable." Here was the old doctrine of the divine right of the strong man to rule, come to life again, and masquerading in democratic garments. No revolution resulted. Democracy did not fall in ruins even at the blast of his stertorous trumpet, but the serious-minded of his day were deeply stirred by his words, more especially as that comfortable middle-class prosperity and content, to which the democrat pointed as the best testimony to the virtue of his doctrines, was being attacked at the same time from another quarter. Not only did Carlyle scornfully declare that this bourgeois prosperity was a thing unimportant, almost contemptible, but the proletariat--a new factor in the argument--began to mutter and growl that he had not been given his proper share in it, and he found it as oppressive and unjust as we had found the arrogant prosperity of the nobles intolerable.