Among
High Churchmen Carlyle commended Dr. Pusey as "solid and judicious," and
fraternised with the Bishop of Oxford; but he called Keble "an ape,"
and said of Cardinal Newman that he had "no more brains than an
ordinary-sized rabbit."
These years are otherwise marked by his most glaring political blunder.
The Civil War, then raging in America, brought, with its close, the
abolition of Slavery throughout the States, a consummation for which he
cared little, for he had never professed to regard the negroes as fit for
freedom; but this result, though inevitable, was incidental. As is known
to every one who has the remotest knowledge of Transatlantic history,
the war was in great measure a struggle for the preservation of National
Unity: but it was essentially more; it was the vindication of Law and
Order against the lawless and disorderly violence of those who, when
defeated at the polling-booth, flew to the bowie knife; an assertion of
Right as Might for which Carlyle cared everything: yet all he had to
say of it was his "Ilias Americana in nuce," published in _Macmillan's
Magazine_, August 1863.
_Peter of the North_ (to Paul of the South): "Paul, you
unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for
life, not by the month or year as I do. You are going
straight to Hell, you----"
_Paul_: "Good words, Peter. The risk is my own.
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