The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1881-02-16
DEATH OF THOs. CARLYLE.

OF THOS CARL LIE.
lhos. Carlyle, perhaps the most brilliant
satirist the world has ever produced, is dead.
HIS Writings on contemporaneous history are
the most profound productions Of modern
thought. They portray, in crisp, cutting and
powerful language, the animating causes Of
human action, and for a complete synthesis
OF national character he eurpasses even Gui-
cot. The most advanced among the great
liberal spirits Of this age, he has been termed
Its most captious cynic, and his peculiar and
grabbed manner has given him a kind of un-
popularity with those who only judge the
man BY the %roughness Of his ways. His rhet-
oric was quaint, but language, in his hands,
was q tWo-edged sword, and its powerful
strokes have more than once sWayed the tide
OF British sympathy from the ways Of con-
sentative and iconoclastic error. He was the
avowed champion of those political elements
which are OF 9 communal tendency, and de-
fined the holloWness, and helplessness, and
despotism known as the modern republican
idea, and the Whole wages system. He did not
believe in popular government as it is under
stood generally, and was a profound admir-
er Of men Of power and those who are termed
''ttyrants,' by the sentimentalists. His eulogy
Of Dr.. Francia, the P~araguayan Dictator, is
perhaps the best illustration of his belief, and
bis faith in the ultimate triumph of democ-
racy on the feudal principle, never left him.
His life was spent in q War on ''shame,' SO
cial, political and commercial, in which this
age was to him the worst.
1t will be long before he will be properly
understood, for bis writings present a mass
Of apparent incongruities which are beyond
popular comprehension, and to this extent
his life was a political failure. He is the an
tithesis Of sympathetic, and there was not q
particle Of personal magnetism in his compo-
sition. Von popu1j vou dS was to him some
thing unreal and impossible.
What he has said of Goethe may be applied
as appropriately to himself, for it is equally
as truthful and gives also the reason for popu-
lar misrepresentation of his Writinge:-'His
literary life divides itself into two portions,
widely different in character; the products of
the first, once SO new and original, have long
been familiar to US; with the products Of the
second, equally original, and in our day far
more precious, we are yet little acquainted, at
first view in strong contradiction, yet in
truth connected together by the %strictest Sc
quence."
He could condemn a~grarianism, If it was
rampant, with the same cold-blooded indiffer-
ence to its obllteration by the hand of power
that was forestated by Michaivella in THE
Prince, y and at the same time he could con-
denim the power thatdestroyed it unless it was
done In defense of agrarian principles, with
equal power and more acerbity. He was op-
posed to republicanism because its tendency
was to throw off discipline, and was a radical
democrat, because the principle Of commun-
ism requiredthe most intense discipline to rem
der it effective. Two of his most notable
papers was Count Caghiostro,' and the
Diamond Necklace" in which be gives the
most powerful pictures ever penned OF the
way the absurdest, weakest and most despic-
able elements of society control its destinies
and overthrow empires. Sartor Resartus
was q satire OF the age, and which brought
him into prominence; but it was at first con-
sidered absurd and stupid. He admired force,
whether manifested in q Frederick, q Robes
ierre, a Napoleon, or q DR.. Francia, and Of
ten overlooked their shortcomings in other
ways in his eulogies. While q hater Of revo-
lutions he admired the power Of the French
one Of 1892 because it was the majesty Of
strength, and while be affected to desplse
popular force, the bent Of his mind was fas-
cinated with its manifestation. His power
of inVectiVe transcribed that OF any writer.
Of English, and his analysis OF Bertrand