In 1837 he delivered lectures on German Literature' in Willis's Rooms; and in the following year another course in Edward Street, Portman Square, on the History of Literature, or the Successive Periods of European Culture. Two other courses of Lectures-one on the Revolutions of Modern Europe,' 1839, and the other on 'Heroes and Hero Worship,' 1840-added to the popularity of Mr. Carlyle. 'It appeared,' said Leigh Hunt, as if some Puritan had come to life again, liberalised by German philosophy and his own intense reflections and experience.' This vein of Puritanism running through the speculations of the lecturer and moral censor, has been claimed as peculiarly northern. That earnestness,' says Mr. Hannay, 'that grim humour-that queer, half-sarcastic, half-sympathetic fun --is quite Scotch. It appears in Knox and Buchanan, and it appears in Burns. I was not surprised when a school-fellow of Carlyle's told me that his favourite poem as a boy was 'Death and Dr. Hornbook.' And if I were asked to explain this originality, I should say that he was a Covenanter coming in the wake of the eighteenth century and the transcendental philosophy. He has gone into the hills against "shams," as they did against Prelacy, Erastianism, and so forth. But he lives in a quieter age and in a literary position. So he can give play to te humour which existed in them as well, and he overflows with a range of reading and speculation to which they were necessarily strangers.' But at least one-half the originality here sketched, style as well as sentiment, must be placed to the account of German studies. In 1837 appeared The French Revolution, a History, by Thomas Carlyle.' This is the ablest of all the author's works, and is indeed one of the most remarkable books of the age. The first perusal of it forms a sort of era in a man's life, and fixes for ever in his memory the ghastly panorama of the Revolution, its scenes and actors.

In 1828 Mr. Carlyle collected his contributions to the Reviews, and published them under the title of Miscellanies,' extending to five volumes. The biographical portion of these volumes-essays on Voltaire, Mirabeau, Johnson and Boswell, Burns, Sir Walter Scott, &c.-is admirably executed. They are compact, complete, and at once highly picturesque and suggestive. The character and history of Burns he has drawn with a degree of insight, true wisdom, and pathos not surpassed in any biographical or critical production of the present century. Mr. Thackeray's essay on Swift resembles it in power, but it is more of a sketch. The next two appearances of Mr. Carlyle were political, and on this ground he seems shorn of his strength. Chartism,' 1839, and Past and Present,' 1843, contain many weighty truths and shrewd observations, directed against all shams, cant, formulas, speciosities, &c.; but when we look for a remedy for existing evils, and ask how we are to replace the forms and institutions which Mr. Carlyle would have extinguished, we find little to guide us in our author's prelections. The only tangible

measures he proposes are education and emigration, with a strict enforcement of the penal laws. We would earnestly desire to extend still more the benefits of education; but when Mr. Carlyle vituperates the present age in comparison with the past, he should recollect how much has been done of late years to promote the instruction of the people. The next work of our author was a special service to history and to the memory of one of England's historical worthies. His collection of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations,' two volumes, 1845, is a go d work well done. The authentic utterances of the man Oliver himself,' he says, 'I have gathered them from far and near; fished them up from the foul Lethean quagmires where they lay buried; I have washed or endeavoured to wash them clean from foreign stupidities-such a job of buck-washing as I do not long to repeat-and the world shall now see them in their own shape.' The world was thankful for the service, and the book, though large and expensive, had a rapid sale. The speeches and letters of Cromwell thus presented, the spelling and punctuation rectified, and a few words occasionally added for the sake of perspicuity, were first made intelligible and effective by Mr. Carlyle; while his editorial ‘elucidations,' descriptive and historical, are often felicitous. Here is his picture of Oliver in 1653:

Personal Appearance of Cromwell.

'His Highness.' says Whitelocke, was in a rich but plain suit-black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold. Does the reader see him? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some five feet ten or more; a man of strong, solid stature, and dignifled, now partly military carriage: the expression of him valour and devout intelligence-energy and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fiftyfour years old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray. A figure of sufficient impressiveness-not lovely to the man-milliner species, not pretending to be so. Massive stature; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect; wart above the right eyebrow; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all flercenesses and rigours; deep. loving eyes-call them grave, call them stern-looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labour and endeavour: on the whole, a right noble lion-face and hero-face; and to me royal enough.

Another series of political tracts, entitled 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' 1850, formed Mr. Carlyle's next work. In these the censor appeared in his most irate and uncompromising mood, and with his peculiarities of style and expression in greater growth and deformity. He seemed to be the worshipper of mere brute-force, the advocate of all harsh, coercive measures. Model prisons and schools for the reform of criminals, poor-laws, churches, as at present constituted, the aris tocracy, parliament, and other institutions, were assailed and ridiculed in unmeasured terms, and, generally, the English public was set down as composed of sham-heroes and a valet or flunkey world. On some political questions and administrative abuses, bold truths and merited satire appear in the Pamphlets; but, on the whole, they must be considered, whether viewed as literary or philosophical productions, as

unworthy of their author. The Life of John Sterling,' 1851, was an affectionate tribute by Mr. Carlyle to the memory of a friend. Mr. Sterling, son of Captain Sterling, the Thunderer of the "Times,' had written some few volumes in prose and verse, which cannot be said to have possessed any feature of originality; but he was amiable, accomplished, and brilliant in conversation. His friends were strongly attached to him, and among those friends were Archdeacon Hare and Mr. Carlyle. The former, after Sterling's death in 1844 (in his thirtyeighth year), published a selection of his 'Tales and Essays' with a Life of their author.

Mr. Carlyle was dissatisfied with this Life of Sterling. The archdeacon had considered the deceased too exclusively as a clergyman, whereas Sterling had been a curate for only eight months, and latterly had lapsed into sceptciism, or at least into a belief different from that of the church. Truc,' says Mr. Carlyle, he had his religion to seek, and painfully shape together for himself, out of the abysses of conflicting disbelief and sham-belief and bedlam delusion, now filling the world, as all men of reflection have; and in this respect too-more especially as his lot in the battle appointed for us all was, if you can understand it, victory and not defeat-he is an expressive emblem of his time, and an instruction and possession to his contemporaries.' The tone adopted by the biographer in treating of Sterling's religious lapse, exposed him to considerable censure. Even the mild and liberal George Brimley, in reviewing Mr. Carlyle's book, judged it necessary to put in a disclaimer against the tendency it was likely to have: Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier. He ought to have said nothing, or said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the slightest obscuring of the hope of immortality brought to light by the gospel, and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to awaken his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery.' As a literary work, the Life of Sterling' is a finished, artistic performance. There was little in the hero of the piece to demand skilful portrait-painting; but we have the great Coleridge and the Times' Thunderer placed before us with the clearness of a daguerreotype-the former, perhaps, a little caricatured.

Portrait of Coleridge.

Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, he a one in England, the key of German and other trancendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by the reason' what the understanding' had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and conld

still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and say and print to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Est perpetua, A sublime man; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood; escaping from the black materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with God, Freedom, Immortality' still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove-Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate-whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon. The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or excitation of any sort. round their sage; nevertheless, access to him. if a youth did reverently wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the pleasant garden with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the place-perhaps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with a rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A really charming outlook, in fine weather. Close at hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy gardens, their few houses mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled under blossomy umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill; gloriously issuing in wide-rufted undulating paincountry, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green; dotted all over with handsome villas, handsome groves; crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a musica hum; and behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer day, with the set of the air going southward-southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not you but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an intelligent or failing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker extant in this world-and to some small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent. . . . Brow and head were round. and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes of a light hazel were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy laden, high-aspiring, and surely mach-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive suuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preaching-you would have said preaching earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and and subject.' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them into om-m-mject' and 'sum-m-mject.” with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk in his century, or in any other, could be more surprising.

In 1858 appeared the first portion of Mr. Carlyle's long-expected work, the History of Friedrich II., called 'Frederick the Great,' volumes i. and ii. The third and fourth volumes were published in 1862, and the fifth and sixth, completing the work, in 1865. A considerable part of the first volume is devoted to clearing the way' for the approach of the hero, and tracing the Houses of Brandenburg and Hohenzollern. Frederick, as Mr. Carlyle admits, was rather a questionable hero. But he was a reality, and had nothing whatever of the hypocrite or phantasm.' This was the biographer's inducement and encouragement to study his life. 'How this man, officially a king withal, comported himself in the eighteenth century, and managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his century was, de

serves to be seen a little by men and kings, and may silently have didactic meanings in it.' And the eighteenth century is cordially abused as a period of worthlessness and inanity. What little it did, we must call Friedrich; what little it thought, Voltaire.' But as the eighteenth century had also David Hume, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Henry Fielding, and Robert Burns-to say nothing of Chatham and Burke, we must demur to such extravagant and wholesale condemnation. These idiosyncrasies and prejudices of Mr. Carlyle must be taken, like his peculiar style, because they are accompanied by better things-by patient historical research, by 'vivid glances across the mists of history,' by humour, pathos, and eloquence.

Shortly after the completion of this laborious History, Mr. Carlyle was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, and on April 2, 1866, he delivered his installation a ldress-an extemporaneous effusion, or at least spoken without notes, and quite equal, in literary power, to his published works. His triumph on this occasion was followed by a heavy calamity, the loss of his wife, who died before his return to England. For forty years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could, in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April 1 66, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out.' Such is part of the inscription on the tomb of this excellent woman.

The subsequent publications of Mr. Carlyle have been short addresses on the topics of the day. In 1867 an article in Macmillan's Magazine' entitled Shooting Niagara,' in the style of the Latterday Pamphlets,' predicted a series of evils and disasters from the Reform Act; another occasional utteranc was in favour of emigration; and a third, on the war between France and Germany (1870), expressed the joy of the writer over the defe t of France. The fame of Mr. Carlyle has been gradually extending, and a cheap edition of his works has reached the great sale of 30,000 copies.

A brother of Mr. Carlyle-DR. J. A. CARLYLE, an accomplished physician-has published an admirable prose translation of the 'Inferno' of Dante.

Frederick the Great.

About fonrscore years ago, there used to be seen sauntering on the terraces of Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner, on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdm region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure whose name among strangers was King Friedrich the Second' or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, was 'Vater Fritz-Father Fred-a name of familiarity which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture: no crown but an old military cocked-hat-generelly old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute softness if now; no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, a walking-stick cut