ABSTRACT
Mark Twain called Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution 'one of the greatest creations that ever flowed from a pen', and in 1896 made a pilgrimage to Carlyle's home in Cheyne Row, where he saw the only surviving manuscript fragment of the otherwise burnt first volume. The immediate context of Twain's attack is almost certainly Carlyle's pamphlet Shooting Niagara: And After?, in which he attacks egalitarianism. Twain was undoubtedly familiar with the intense reaction against Shooting Niagara in the American press. Twain implies that Carlyle is incapable of proposing positive solutions to Britain's social problems. In Shooting Niagara Carlyle vaguely demands that the 'better kind of our Nobility' and the 'silent Industrial Hero' do something. Twain's attitude to democracy becomes increasingly irreverent. He valorises the law of precedence over the law of the legislator. In doing so, he implies that true freedom transcends the restrictions put upon individuals by public institutions.
