Meanwhile we will indulge in no vain prophecies as to Carlyle’s probable rank with posterity. That a man’s influence shall be permanent depends first on his having grasped elemental facts in human nature, and next on his having given them an enduring form. Systems struggle into existence, mature, and pass away, but the needs of the individual remain. Though we were to wake up to-morrow in Utopia, the next day Utopia would have vanished, unless we ourselves had been miraculously transformed. To teach the individual soul the way of purification; to make it a worthy citizen of Eternity which laps it around; to kindle its conscience; to fortify it with courage; to humanize it with sympathy; to make it true,--this has been Carlyle’s mission, performed with all the vigor of a spirit “in earnest with the universe,” and with intellectual gifts most various, most powerful, most rare. It will be strange if, in time to come, souls with these needs, which are perpetual, lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in the future, Carlyle’s past is secure. He has influenced the _élite_ of two generations: men as different as Tyndall and Ruskin, as Mill and Tennyson, as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt the infusion of his moral force. And to the new generation we would say: “Open your ‘Sartor;’ there you shall hear the deepest utterances of Britain in our century on matters which concern you most; there, peradventure, you shall discover yourselves.” TINTORET.[5] [5] First printed in _The Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1891. I. HIS LIFE.