The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-06-22

stable one. Mr.. Emerson had the mysticism
without the pugnacity and he elevated our
souls. Victor Hugo had the yehemence for ac-
ton without the passive philosophy, and he
swept the French people on in a foodtide OF
passion. Carlyle united both, and dld not
reach either mind or heart so perfectly. Whlle
Emerson was teaching indiyidualism and
avoiding self-assertion Carlyle preached hero
worship with unbounded egotism, and urged
action while he fouted reform. An ideallst,
he grew to scorn ideas. He threw himself IN
to the past to create world that no present
could ever give.
These three men, Emerson, Hugo and Gar
lyle belonged to the same general awakening,
and need to be studied together: the nrst rep
resenting the IDEAL the second the real and
the third the reactionary elements. Ihey were
all three men of strong imagination, though oil
very different kinds. They were almost poets
Neither Carlyle nor Victor Hugo had the lofty
and refined spiritual insight of Emerson, Dut
they had far more pictorial Imagination. botn
of them, and especially the Frenehman, eouid
coniure up before our eyes the scenes OF their
fancy with life-like reality and yividness that
no other author of our time, except Hawthorne,
has approached. But both, in their weaker
moments load their pages with an lntolerapie
mass of detail, from which Emerson's are Tree.
The intellectual methods OF the three men
had much similarity. They each broke away
from the old creeds without losing their reVer-
ence for the Divine. Neither of them was
vigorous reaSoner or 8 sound critic: Ihey
swayed US by their eloquence, not their logic
But their individualism led them into an ex-
travagance and an egotistic brnsqueness OF
style that at times becomes harshly abrupt:
The dreams of Carlyle and Emerson and VIC
tor Hugo were an epoch in the intellectual
growth of the century, but the world moves on
by more substantial means than dreams. LII
has left them behind and we do not believe
Al, will oxynp rat prT
back often to the sound thought, the careful
reasoning, of the past, but not to its conJec-
lures, however splendid For permanent prog
ress is made by accurate reasoning in which
each successive step is firmly fixed, ana not Dy
soaring intuition, however lofty its flight.
In CARLYLE, as in Emerson and IN victor
Hugo there was the same unconquerable re-
bellion against the narrow and tyrannous spirit
of the time, and return to humanity, a deVo-
ton to it, an adoring love OF it, as the motiVe
of life. But the manly enthusiasm OF the fol-
lowers of the Scotchman has faded before
new gospel of clothes; and in America trans
cendentalsm meltS away before the POSITIVE
spirit of the new culture. In France, IN gen.
eral way Victor Hugo has triumphed, for ne
threw himself into the democratic current OF
the time, and now the stage is free from the
classic letters that he struggled with IN his
youth and the democracy that he gave his ma
turer life to has gained at last not only the
sceptre, but the power to use 1t, as we'll. Inc
new literary elements that he contributed,
however, the romance, the melodrama, the
horrible violence, have not been lasting either
in plays or novels. All his wondrous powers o.
enthusiasm and imagination have not founded
a school, or reconcied gay Paris to the terrible
conceptions of LIE Roi s. Amuse.
These men were the prophets of new era
which they felt rather than saw; and the worlc
hailed them with delight. But it soon craveo
| something solder than prophecy; something
which neither Carlyle, nor Emerson, nor Vic
| tor Hugo could giye,-science.