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 epitome and distilled essence." But here he proceeds 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. To 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."

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, what 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."

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 none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there the man ac