Now, there can be no doubt that a more contemptible booby never lived than this fine-legged Henry Darnley, though he had in his veins scarcely a drop of blood other than that of the Plantagenets and Tudors and Stuarts; but we hold that if we could really come to know this booby "from centre to skin," it would be a quite valuable increase to our stores of knowledge. And as for Mary Stuart, no woman ever lived whose life is better worth the writing or the reading. The man who shall write it fairly will hardly ask more time on the part of his readers than Carlyle asks to let them know how Joseph Balsamo, genuine "Prince of Scoundrels," and self-dubbed "Count Cagliostro," traveled in state with his demirep "Countess" through Europe, filling his purse by the sale of elixirs to restore vigor to worn-out debauchees of both sexes; or how a dubious Madame Lamotte gulled a disreputable Cardinal de Rohan out of the famous Diamond Necklace. One may fairly ask of what use to any man of the nineteenth century is it to know that a century before his time four such disreputable persons actually trod this planet? To which we reply, that the knowledge of nothing which concerns human beings is absolutely worthless; and we are not altogether without a touch of gratitude to Mr. Carlyle for telling us something which we should not otherwise have been likely to know about Cagliostro and Lamotte.

Of the "Miscellanies" of Carlyle, the best are undoubtedly the more strictly biographical essays; and of these the best-the best of the sort, we think, in our language-is that upon Robert Burns. Almost at the outset of this essay, Carlyle lays down the principle upon which the biography of any one whose life is really worth the reading should be written:

THE IDEAL OF A BIOGRAPHY.

"Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and the man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did coexisting circumstances modify him from without; how did he modify these from within? With what endeavor and what efficacy did he rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He who should answer these questions in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in Biography."

what

As pregnant of thought, and as well worthy of consideration as anything which Carlyle-or, for the matter of that, as any other man-has ever written, is the following:

JUDGING OF GREAT MEN.

"The world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which this one may be stated as the substance: It decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not positively but negatively; less on what is done right, than on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be a city hippodrome, nay even the circle of a gin-horse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured; and it is assumed that the diameter of the gin-horse and that of the planet will yield the same ratio when compared with them. Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor with · shrouds and tackles damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful; but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs."

This idea is amplified and illustrated in a thoughtful passage in his "Heroes and HeroWorship: "

IMPERFECTIONS AND FAULTS.

"On the whole, we make too much of faults. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there 'the man ac

none.

cording to God's own heart?' David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers sneer and ask, 'Is this your man according to God's own heart?' The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one.

"What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten?' It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact, is dead; it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure.

"David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest men will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls?' Man can

do no other. In this wild element of Life, he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is."

In the summer of 1833 Carlyle received a visit from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who some years later published an account of this visit, which we abridge:

"I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and, being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtoch. It was a farm in the parish of Dunscore, fifteen miles distant. I found the house amid desolate, heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. Few were the objects, and lonely the man, 'not a person to speak to within fifteen miles, except the minister of Dunscore;' so that books inevitably made his topics. He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing; hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the verge of bankruptcy.

"He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish abnegation by public men of all that public persons should perform. 'Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house; but here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it.'