No More Learning

But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty.
always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a man, doing
loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality,
conventionality to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that
beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "I might have my
hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only my little.
finger. "
And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how
much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot
withal keep his mind to himself cannot practice any considerable
thing whatever. And we call it "dissimulation," all this? What
would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler
because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier who
pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about every-
thing? - Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a
manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex
of such questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him
through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have
been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not
one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that
ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say
so much?
But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which per-
vert to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as
Cromwell; about their "ambition," "falsity," and suchlike. The
first is what I might call substituting the goal of their career for
the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a
Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being Protector of
England, at the time when he was plowing the marsh lands of
Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped-out: a program of
the whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically un-
folded with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he
went on, the hollow scheming Trozpts, or Play-actor, that he
was! This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such
cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How
much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead
of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of appre-
hensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell
VI-205


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3266
THOMAS CARLYLE
had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which
he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to
enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but
to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall
away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly
in view by History! Historians indeed will tell you that they
do keep it in view; - but look whether such is practically the
fact! Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell's case, omits it alto-
gether; even the best kinds of History only remember it now
and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in
the fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impos-
sible. A very Shakespeare for faculty; or more than Shake-
speare; who could enact a brother man's biography, see with
the brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things
he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few "Historians"
are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perver-
sions which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if
we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence,
as they were; not in the lump, as they are thrown down before
us.
But a second error which I think the generality commit
refers to this same "ambition" itself. We exaggerate the am-
bition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great
Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man
that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery be-
cause he does not shine above other men; who goes about pro-
ducing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims;
struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for
God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over
the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest
sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid
prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital than for
a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He
cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder
at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the
emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is noth-
ing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find some-
thing in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so
much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in
him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this
way.


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3267
Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be "noticed" by
noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him.
He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make him
other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and
Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to be limited, not infi-
nite but finite, and all a measurable matter how it went,- he had
been content to plow the ground, and read his Bible. He in
his old days could not support it any longer, without selling him-
self to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to White-
hall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him,
"Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no
man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for this.
man? From of old was there not in his life a weight of meaning,
a terror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there
as man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment,
and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever
he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of name-
less Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God's
Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was
great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man ambi-
tious," to figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above,
seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: "Keep
your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks,
your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone,
leave me alone; there is too much of life in me already! " Old
Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was
not ambitious. "Corsica Boswell" flaunted at public shows with
printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed
at home. The world-wide soul, wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its
sorrows; what could paradings and ribbons in the hat, do
for it?
«<
-
Ah yes, I will say again: The great silent men! Looking
round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little mean-
ing, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great
Empire of Silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and
there, each in his own department; silently thinking; silently
working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They
are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of
these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no roots; which
had all turned into leaves and boughs;-which must soon wither
and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we


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THOMAS CARLYLE
can show, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence:
higher than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It
alone is great; all else is small. I hope we English will long
maintain our grand talent pour le silence. Let others that cannot
do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all
the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,- become a most
green forest without roots! Solomon says, There is a time to
speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent
Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he
was, by want of money and nothing other, one might ask, "Why
do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found
your sect? »
Truly," he will answer, "I am continent of my
thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in
me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is
not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live
by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the
'honor'? Alas, yes; - but as Cato said of the statue: So many
statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if they ask,
Where is Cato's statue ? "
But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me
say that there are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable,
the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the
great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish
wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether poor and
miserable. "Seekest thou great things, seek them not:" this is
most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in
every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which
Nature has made him of; to speak out, to act out, what Nature
has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay, it is a duty,
and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of
life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To
unfold your self, to work what thing you have the faculty for.
It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our exist-
Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to
speak by this necessity it feels. We will say therefore: To decide.
about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to
take into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the
fitness for the man of the place withal: that is the question.
Perhaps the place was his, perhaps he had a natural right, and
even obligation to seek the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be
Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were "the only
ence.
-
-


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3269
man in France that could have done any good there"? Hope-
fuler perhaps had he not so clearly felt how much good he could
do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even
felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because
they had flung him out and he was now quit of it, well might
Gibbon mourn over him. - Nature, I say, has provided amply
that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; too amply,
rather!
Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old.
Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was pos-
sible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the
whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made
Law on this Earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, "Thy king-
dom come," was at length to be fulfilled! If you had convinced
his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that he
the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it!
Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed-up into a
divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act;
casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all
affliction and contradiction small, the whole dark element of
his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and light-
ning? It were a true ambition this! And think now how it
actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of
God's Church, true zealous Preachers of the truth flung into
dungeons, whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt-off, God's
Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had
lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it in
silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth; trusting well that
a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come, that such a course
was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now behold
the dawn of it; after twelve years' silent waiting, all England
stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right
will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has
come again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth
being a member of? Cromwell threw down his plow, and
hastened thither.
-
―
He spoke there, rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen
truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he
fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through
cannon-tumult and all else,-on and on, till the Cause triumphed,
its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the


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THOMAS CARLYLE
dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty.
That he stood there as the strongest soul of England, the undis-
puted Hero of all England, what of this? It was possible that
the Law of Christ's Gospel could now establish itself in the
world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might
dream of as a "devout imagination," this practical man, expe-
rienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to
consider as capable of being realized. Those that were highest
in Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the
land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be
SO. Was it not true, God's truth? And if true, was it not then
the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in
England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true pur-
pose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter
into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up
was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense.
and experience of what our world was, History, I think, shows
it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating
point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that "Faith in the
Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it
were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right
supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed
and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands,
an attainable fact!
Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness,
its alertness and expertness in "detecting hypocrites," seems to
me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such States-
man in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever
had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in
the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome.
He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the
million. Had England rallied all round him, - why, then, Eng-
land might have been a Christian land! As it is, vulpine know-
ingness
sits yet at its hopeless problem, "Given a world of
Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action; "-how
cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and
some other places! Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but
also by Heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and
this problem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one.


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3271
THE PROCESSION
From The French Revolution'
WE
E DWELL no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude, for
now, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand!
Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white
cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one
guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as
all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it may; there
is
there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest
of all to do it; that man, as future, not-yet-elected king walks
there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it
With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's-head, fit
to be "shaken" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy
beetle-brows and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face there look
natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,-and burn-
ing fire of genius, like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through
murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mira-
beau, the world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According
to the Baroness de Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked
at askance here, and shakes his black chevelure, or lion's mane,
as if prophetic of great deeds.
be?
Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch, as
Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acqui-
sitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than
any other man; — and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too.
Mark him well.
The National Assembly were all different with-
that one; nay, he might say, with the old Despot:-"The
National Assembly? I am that. "
Of
a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the
Riquettis,
or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the
Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from
generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a
peculiar kindred, irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like
steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes
One ancient Ri-
the
verged towards madness, yet did not reach it.
quetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains
together, and the chain, with its "iron star of five rays," is still
to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and
set it drifting—which also shall be seen?


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3272
THOMAS CARLYLE
Destiny has work for that swart, burly-headed Mirabeau; Des-
tiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not
his Grandfather, stout Col-d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named
him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one
fell day, lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano, while Prince
Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him-only the
flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head;
and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, "Mirabeau
is dead, then! " Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to
breath and miraculous surgery - for Gabriel was yet to be.
With his silver stock he kept his scarred head erect, through
long years, and wedded, and produced tough Marquis Victor, the
friend of men. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this
long-expected, rough-hewn Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the
light; roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed.
How the old lion (for our old Marquis, too, was lion-like, most
unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on
his offspring, and determined to train him as no lion had yet
been! It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay
him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dog-cart of Political
Economy, and be a friend of men; he will not be Thou, but must
and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce law-suits,
" whole family save one in prison, and threescore lettres-de-
cachet" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in
the Isle of Rhé, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the
Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has
been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly
clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;-all by lettre-
de-cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier Jails
(self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the
sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has
pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife), the public
gathering on roofs, to see, since they could not hear: "The
clatter-teeth (claque-dents)! ” snarls singular old Mirabeau; dis-
cerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two
clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum
species.
But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what
has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime min-
isters, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3273
has seen.
All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it
is a social loving heart, that wild unconquerable one more
especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter
at Saintes to that fair young Sophie, Madame Monnier, whom he
could not but "steal" and be beheaded for- in effigy! For
indeed, hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead, to Ali's
admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength
of thirty men. In War again, he has helped to conquer Corsica;
fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons.
In Literature, he has written on 'Despotism,' on 'Lettres-de-
Cachet'; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities;
Books on the Prussian Monarchy,' on 'Cagliostro,' on 'Calonne,'
on The Water-Companies of Paris':- each book comparable, we
will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire, huge, smoky, sudden! The
fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own; but the lum-
ber, of rags, old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish (for all
is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers
of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters
enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is
mine!
―――
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent
for borrowing.
The idea, the faculty of another man, he can
make his; the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and
echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)! " snarls old Mirabeau, who
can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his so-
ciality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of
qualities for him. In that forty years' "struggle against despot-
ism, »
he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not
the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped.
union: this man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in
the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him;
a born king of men!
lost
Rare
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he
has made away with (hume, swallowed, snuffed-up) all Formu
<<
las";
much.
fiercely
a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean
This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of
instincts and insights.
A man, nevertheless, who will glare
on any object, and see through it, and conquer it: for he
has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men.
A man not
with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without Deca-
logue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without


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3274
THOMAS CARLYLE
a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there; a Reality, not
an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty
years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas,"
shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the
same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to
cast off despotism, to make away with her old formulas,- having
found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will
make away with such formulas; and even go bare, if need be,
till she have found new ones.
-
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singu
lar Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-
locks under the slouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery,
fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but
would fill all France with smoke! And now it has got air; it
will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too,
and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that
smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory
over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high;
and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame
and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Won-
der-sign of an amazed Europe;- and then lies hollow, cold for-
ever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest
of them all in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation,
there is none like and none second to thee.
But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six
Hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious,
slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his
eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face,
snuffing dimly the uncertain future time; complexion of a
multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the
pale sea-green. That greenish-colored (verdâtre) individual is
an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The
son of an Advocate; his father founded Mason-lodges under
Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien,
the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille
Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at
Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the
patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favor of a
younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed, home
paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there, and pleaded, not
unsuccessfully, "in favor of the first Franklin thunder-rod. ”
to


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3275
With a strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear
and ready, he grew in favor with official persons, who could
foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free
from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him Judge of his diocese, and he faithfully does justice to the
people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime mer-
its hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his
conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to
die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolu-
tions? whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-
ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar, — the
mother of ever-new alegar; - till all France were grown acetous
virulent? We shall see.
-
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so
many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in
that
Procession! There is Cazalès, the learned young soldier,
who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the
shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet,
whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things
shall soon leave stranded. A Pétion has left his gown and briefs
at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten
his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he
is still young; convictions, beliefs placid-unalterable, are in that
man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-
clerical Rabaut-St. -Étienne, a slender young eloquent and ve-
hement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so
of them young.
Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer
to marry: but how many men here under thirty; com-
ing to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a
many
a man
world
of such! The old to heal up rents, the young to remove
rubbish:- which latter is it not, indeed, the task here?
with
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou
noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens,
Slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier
of doléances with this singular clause, and more such, in it:-
"That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with
new
――――――
guild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two
being more than sufficient! " The Rennes people have elected
farmer Gérard, "a man of natural sense and rectitude without
any learning. " He walks there with solid step; unique, "in his
rustic farmer-clothes;" which he will wear always, careless of


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THOMAS CARLYLE
short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gérard, or "Père Gérard,
Father Gérard," as they please to call him, will fly far, borne
about in endless banter, in Royalist satires, in Republican Didactic
Almanacks. As for the man Gérard, being asked once what he
did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,-
"I think," answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels
among us. "
So walks Father Gérard, solid in his thick shoes,
whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one
other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see
him with the eye of prophecy; for indeed the Parisian Deputies
are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner:
doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that
ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of
oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in
all cases of medical police and hygiène be a present aid: but
greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code,' and
reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which
shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of
Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation and reading;
which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine
derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine!
"With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais
sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain; " — whereat
they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years
he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing
but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander,
as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and
Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honored Historian of Astron-
omy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beauti-
ful Philosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thin-
ness, ends in foul thick confusion of Presidency, Mayorship,
diplomatic officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlast-
ing Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Gal-
axy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that
last hell-day, thou must "tremble," though only with cold-
"de froid. " Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not
so miserable, but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day
when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild
Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay,


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3277
lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have.
ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of
Letters; 374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbé
Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him,
the light, thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the
pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-
conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which in its
independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into
transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indif-
ference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom
Ishall die with him. This is the Sieyès who shall be System-
builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions (as
many as wanted) sky-high,-which shall all unfortunately fall
before he get the scaffolding away. "La Politique," said he to
Dumont, "polity is a science I think I have completed (achevée). »
What things, O Sieyès, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou
to see! But were it not curious to know how Sieyès, now in
these days (for he is said to be still alive) looks out on all that
Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme
age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcend-
entalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished
one pleased Sieyès (victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid sky-rending vivats, and blessings from
every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled
by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning
both of whom it might be asked What they specially have come
for. Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this ques-
tion, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's
fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is
begging or stealing? Woe, woe to themselves and to all, if they
can only answer; Collecting tithes, Preserving game! Remark,
meanwhile, how D'Orléans affects to step before his own Order
and mingle with the Commons. For him are vivats; few for the
rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and
have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the
young Languedocian gentleman,—and indeed many a peer more
or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal Anglo-
maniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal


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THOMAS CARLYLE
Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be
Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a "formula" has
this Lafayette, too, made away with; yet not all formulas. He
sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick; --
and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the
tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and
water, is found still hanging. Happy for him, be it glorious or
not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and
right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect
character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our
old parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espréménil. He is
returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist,
repentant to the finger-ends; — unsettled-looking; whose light,
dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the
National Assembly will by and by, to save time, "regard as in a
state of distraction. " Note lastly that globular Younger Mira-
beau, indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons; it
is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel
Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of
strong liquor he contains.
-
There, then, walks our French noblesse. All in the old pomp
of chivalry; and yet, alas, how changed from the old position;
drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs
got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these
Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually
lead the world,-were it only toward battle-spoil, where lay
the world's best wages then; moreover, being the ablest leaders
going, they had their lion's share, these Duces, which none could
grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Plow-
shares, Steam-Engines, and Bills of Exchange have been invented;
and for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eigh-
teen pence a day, what mean these gold-mantled Chivalry Fig-
ures, walking there in "black-velvet cloaks," in high-plumed "hats
of a feudal cut"? Reeds shaken in the wind!
――――――――――
The clergy have got up; with Cahiers for abolishing pluralities,
enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. The
Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numer-
ous Undignified,-who, indeed, are properly little other than
Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by
strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are
greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. For one


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THOMAS CARLYLE
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example out of many, mark that plausible Grégoire: one day
Curé Grégoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wan-
dering distracted, as Bishops in partibus. With other thought,
mark also the Abbé Maury; his broad bold face, mouth accu-
rately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,-
the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it
sophistical. Skillfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make
it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier,
"You will see; I shall be in the Academy before you. " Likely
indeed, thou skillfulest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's
hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the long run-mere
oblivion, like the rest of us, and six feet of earth! What boots
it, vamping rotten leather on these terms? Glorious in compari-
son is the livelihood thy good old Father earns by making shoes,
one may hope, in a sufficient manner. Maury does not want
for audacity. He shall wear pistols by-and-by; and at death-
cries of "La lanterne, The Lamp-iron! " answer coolly, "Friends,
will you see better there? "
-
――
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop
Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grim-
ness lies in that irreverend Reverence of Autun. He will do and
suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest
things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in false-
hood and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man:
there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one
may hope; hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was pos-
sible only for this age of ours-Age of Paper, and of the Burn-
ing of Paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette
as the topmost of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at
what they did and what they were, O tempus ferax rerum!
On
the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also
drifted
in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude?
anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a
dim
understanding that it can understand nothing. They were
once
a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy
that is in Man; a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth):
but now? -They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have
been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them.
King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in
this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his
Minister. Not so the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily


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THOMAS CARLYLE
any more.
Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many
cares and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks:
black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name- ineffaceably
while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la reine, voices
insult her with Vive d'Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little
remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty,
rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein
joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to
have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick, noble in-
stincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the
work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee,
bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the
heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one,
shut thy eyes on the future!
And so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of
France. Some toward honor and quick fire-consummation; most
toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigra-
tion, desperation: all toward Eternity! So many heterogeneities
cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable
action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments,
to work out healing for a sick, Moribund System of Society!
Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that
ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thou-
sand-fold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite
depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule
for themselves, other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean
Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest,
man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty
round him; except it be "to make the Constitution. " He is with-
out Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in
the world.
-
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these
Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in
heraldic scutcheons; in 'the divine right of Kings, in the divine
right of Game-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
half-belief; or worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense-of-belief,-
in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old
Italian Man! Nevertheless, in that immeasurable Confusion and
Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less con-
fused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of
a New Life discernible — the deep fixed Determination to have
-


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3281
done with Shams. A determination which, consciously or uncon-
sciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more fixed, into very mad-
ness and fixed-idea; which, in such embodiment as lies provided
there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous, stupendous,
unspeakable; new for long thousands of years! How has the
heaven's light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder
and electric murkiness, and descend as molten lightning, blasting,
if purifying! Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness, and
atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light?
The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the
Destruction of a World?
THE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE
From The French Revolution>
——
tion.
UT, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morn-
Under all roofs of this distracted City is the
nodus of a Drama, not untragical, crowding toward solu-
The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and menaces;
the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my sons, ye shall
quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs; by
the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red
wrath: help for you is none, if not in your own right hands.
This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has
heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms!
Arms! Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you,
may think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty
thousand of us, and but the third man furnished with so much
as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful: with arms we are
an unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without arms, a
rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.
Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,- that
there lie muskets at the Hôtel des Invalides. Thither will we:
King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of author-
ity a Permanent Committee can lend, shall go with us. Besen-
val's Camp is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us,
we shall but die.
Alas! poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that
manner, has not the smallest humor to fire! At five o'clock this
VI-206


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THOMAS CARLYLE
morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the École Militaire, a
"figure" stood suddenly at his bedside; "with face rather hand-
some, eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious: " such
a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of
the figure was that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood
flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and
vanished. "Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck
Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but
did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid
and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille
Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with "vio-
lent motions all night at the Palais Royal"? Fame names him
"Young M. Meillar"; then shuts her lips about him forever.
In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our National
Volunteers, rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the
Hôtel des Invalides, in search of the one thing needful. King's
Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Curé
of Saint-Étienne du Mont marches unpacific at the head of
his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see
marching, now Volunteers of the Palais Royal; - National Volun-
teers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind.
The King's Muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil,
how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Som-
breuil would fain hold parley, send couriers, but it skills not:
the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be
flung open.
Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grunsel up
to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging dis-
tractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it?
The arms are found; all safe there, lying packed in straw,-
apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than
famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangor and
vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching,-to
the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture, and probable extinc-
tion of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such protracted crash
of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is
changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are
on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out
of darkness into fiery light.
Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets as they
flash by! Gardes Françaises, it is said, have cannon leveled on
him; ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3283
river. Motionless sits he; "astonished," one may flatter one's
self, "at the proud bearing (fière contenance) of the Parisians. ”
And now to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grape-
shot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now
tending.
Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew into his interior »
soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since,
hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest con-
flict of uncertainties. The Hôtel-de-Ville "invites" him to admit
National Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the
other hand, his Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is
but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young
Swiss; his walls, indeed, are nine feet thick; he has cannon and
powder, but alas! only one day's provision of victuals. The
city, too, is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous
old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere:
To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of citizens" have been
here, passionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed
by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon, Elector
Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance, finds De Launay indis-
posed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place,
rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements; heaps of
paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly lev-
eled;
in every embrasure a cannon, only drawn back a little!
But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on,
welling through every street, tocsin furiously pealing, all drums
beating the générale; the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hither-
ward wholly as one man!
Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou,
0 Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this mo-
ment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories and loud-gibber-
ing Spectral Realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt!
"Que voulez-vous? " said De Launay, turning pale at the sight,
with
an air of reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," said
Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, "what mean you? Con-
sider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height," -
say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch! Where-
De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some
pinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes-
cent, then descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed
also to the Invalides, on whom however it produces but a mixed,
upon
-


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3284
THOMAS CARLYLE
indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest;
besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages.
(prodigue des buissons). They think they will not fire if not
fired on if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled
considerably by circumstances.