selfish and morally trivial; it cherishes nothing but our Vanity, which may in general be left safely enough to shift for itself. Little discourse of reason,' in any sense, is implied in Ridicule: a scoffing man is in no lofty mood for the time; shows more of the imp than the angel."

Noble words these. Contempt is in verity "a dangerous element to sport in; a deadly one, if we habitually live in it." And, as we shall have occasion sorrowfully to show, Carlyle has in his writings much more than sported in it, and for no inconsiderable period of his career has lived in it. But those periods are yet far off in the future. We shall come to them all too soon.

Of the manner and spirit in which history and biography should be written, Carlyle had a clear and distinct conviction, which he has clearly and distinctly enunciated over and over again. Thus :

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

"It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' will give us more real insight into the History of England during those days then twenty other Books, falsely entitled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special aim. What good is it to me though innumerable Smolletts and Belshams keep dinning in my ears that a man named George the Third was born and bred up, and a man named George the Second died; that Walpole and the Pelhams, and Chatham and Rockingham, and Shelburne and North, with their Coalition or

their Separation Ministries, all ousted one another, and vehemently scrambled for the thing they called the Rudder of Government, but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxation? That debates were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning took place; and Road-bills and Enclosure-bills, and Laws which no man can number, which happily few men needed to trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, were enacted and printed by the King's Stationer? That he who sat in Chancery and rayed out speculation from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, now a man that did not squint?

"To the hungry and thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and these things, we indeed know did swim, by strength or by specific levity, as apples or as horse-dung, on the top of the current; but is it by painfully noting the courses, eddyings and bobbyings hither and thither of such drift-articles, that you will unfold to me the nature of the current itself; of the mighty-rolling, loud-roaring Life-current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe, mysterious as its Author? The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists and Court Calendars and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward enjoyment, its inward principle; how and what it was, whence it proceeded, and whither it was tending."

The article on "Boswell's Johnson," from which the two foregoing and the following extracts have been taken, was written in 1832, when men had no Macaulay or Motley or Froude; no

Carlyle as a historian. For English history there was nothing better than Hume and Lingard--not altogether bad in their way. Carlyle even then hints at least at something better:

HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN.

"Mournful it is to behold what the business called History,' in these so enlightened and illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow to an answer to this great question: How men lived and had their being, were it but economically, as, what wages they got, and what they bought with these? At the point where living memory fails, it is all darkness. Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must still debate this simplest of all elements in the condition of the past: Were men better off in their mere larders and pantries, or were they worse off than now? History, as it stands, is but a shade more instructive than the wooden volumes of a backgammon-board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of less moment to me than how my House Servant was hired. In these days, ten ordinary' Histories' were well exchanged against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers.

"For example, I would know the History of Scotland: Who can tell it to me? 'Robertson,' say innumerable voices; 'Robertson against the world!' I open Robertson; and find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented in the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to this question: 'By whom, and by what means, and when was this fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, Institutions,

Poetry, Spirit, National Character, created, and made arable, verdant, peculiar, great, here, as I can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (like some Bacchus-tamed lion), from the Castle hill of Edinburgh?' —but to this other question: 'How did the King keep himself alive in those old days; and restrain so many Butcher-Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating one another, so that killing went on in some sort of moderation?""

Here we have something of a feature of Carlyle's mode of thought of which more will have to be said hereafter: a perpetual habit of considering the one thing which he at the moment chanced to be looking at or for, as the one only important thing to be looked for or at. It is indeed well worth knowing how Scotland got itself tilled and more or less civilized; but it is also quite worthy of finding out by what means it was secured that “killing went on in some sort of moderation," so that, in the long run, a few more Scotch souls were born into the world than went out of it, by natural means or otherwise. Carlyle, notably in his "French Revolution" and "Chartism," has given us some fine examples of the manner in which the history of long ages, "too confused for narrative," may be "presented in the way of epitBut here he pro

ome and distilled essence."

ceeds to touch upon a turning-point in Scottish history:

THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.

"At length, however, we come to a luminous age, interesting enough; to the age of the Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life; the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. Το the herdsmen, among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude heath-thatched workshop, among his rude guild-brethren; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen; in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent look, and governed or ungovernable tongues; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty.

"We ask, with breathless eagerness: How was it; how went it on? Let us understand it, let us see and know it!' In reply, is handed us a really graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over-lightheaded; and Henry Darnley, a booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder: this, and not the History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something like a horseload of other books have been written to prove that it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all being effectually done, concerns us little. To know Scotland, at that epoch, were a valuable increase of knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and see him, with burning candle, from centre to skin were no increase of knowledge at all. Thus is History written."