devils proper; who have nevertheless grown to seem respectable, or infinitely respectable! For the thing

which was not they, which was not anything, has fallen away piecemeal, and become avowedly babble and confused shadow, and no-thing; the thing which was they remains. Depend on it, Harmodius and Aristogiton, as clear as they now look, had illegal plottings, conclaves of the Jacobins' Church at Athens; and very intemperate things were spoken, and also done. Thus, too, Marcus Brutus and the elder Junius, are they not palpable Heroes? Their praise is in all Debating Societies; but didst thou read what the Morning Papers said of those transactions of theirs, the week after? Nay, Old Noll, whose bones were dug up and hung in chains here at home, as the just emblem of himself and his deserts, the offal of creation at that time,—has he not got to be a very respectable grim bronze-figure, though it is yet only a century and a half since; of whom England seems proud rather than otherwise?"

THE FOOLISHEST MAN.

"No known Head so wooden, but there might be other heads to which it were a genius and a Friar Bacon's Oracle. For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every kind; and the most foolish man in the earth is now indubitably living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even now digesting the same; and looks out on the world with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable theory thereof; yet where shall the authentically Existing be personally met with? Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with him? No one. Deep as we

dive in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opened: where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new scenes of being we must pass before reaching it (except that we know it must lie somewhere, and might by human faculty and opportunity be reached), is altogether a mystery to us. Strange tantalizing pursuit! We have the fullest assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and board of some kind in London; but that several persons have been, or perhaps are now speaking face to face with him while for us, chase it as we may, such scientific blessedness will too probably be for ever denied.”

RIDICULE.

"There are things in this world to be laughed at, as well as things to be admired; and it is no complete mind that can not give to each sort its due. Nevertheless, contempt is a dangerous element to sport in; a deadly one if we habitually live in it. How indeed, to take the lowest view of this matter, shall a man accomplish great enterprises, enduring all toil, resisting temptation, laying aside every weight,-unless he zealously loves what he pursues? The faculty of Love, of Admiration, is to be regarded as the sign and the measure of high souls: unwisely directed, it leads to many evils; but without it there can not be any good. Ridicule, on the other hand, is indeed a faculty much prized by its possessors; yet, intrinsically, it is a small faculty; we may say the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to Thought, to Knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is Denial, which hovers only on the surface, while Knowledge dwells far below. Moreover, it is by nature

selfish and morally trivial; it cherishes nothing but our Vanity, which may in general be left safely enough to Ishift 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.

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"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,