when they will all be happily got rid of, together with the majority of the human race, and make room for a grand Wittenagemote of Abbot Samsons, Teufelsdröckhs, heroes, and German mystagogues, who will, by virtue of their veracity and power of seeing the thing that is, at once distinguish their Canning, Kon-ning, Cunning or Able-man, and by universal acclamation, and amid grand diapasons of the Sphere-Harmonies, elect Thomas Carlyle to rule this fortunate planet as Chief Nebulosity or AbsoluteNightmare.

Let any one after diligent perusal of Carlyle's works first realise the impression of life and society they have left on him. There he will see depicted, in the darkest and most lurid colours, the spectacle of a world sinking to ruin, inhabited by nations of men, living a life of habitual hopeless baseness and untruth, amid the tattered mockeries of governments and religions. Then let him clear his brain of that image, and look abroad on England. He will see laws as equitably administered, government as honest and enlightened, charities as active, and a clergy of life as exemplary, and of religion as genuine as in any age he can point to. He will look on much misery, but also on as large a proportion of happiness as has fallen to the lot of any generation. He will find wrong and evil receiving a publicity which, while it renders them unduly conspicuous over right and good, gives them also a far better chance

of being remedied. He will see daily evidence of appalling crime, and also of widespread benevolence. He will see a thriving people, whose sense is as strong as ever, their minds no less quick and energetic and far more cultivated than those of their ancestors, and who, with much self-seeking and haste to be rich, display also much conscientiousness and regard for duty. When he has considered all this, he may, perhaps, catch a glimpse of a philosopher, whose eyes are suffused with maudlin tears, surveying the scene through spectacles tinted with the hues of jaundice.

His remedial doctrines are urged with imagination, eloquence, earnestness. Their want is the fatal want of feasibility. If we are fainting with thirst, shall we listen to him who tells us in eloquent but general terms to drink, assuring us that liquid is all we want, or to him who shows us water even in the muddiest puddle? The difficulty is not to be a philosopher, but to be a practical philosopher. Grant that we may dispense with possibilities in our conclusions, and systems of philosophy may be devised as fast as the Abbé Sièyes devised constitutions. Carlyle dwells habitually in the endless mirages of the unpractical. Work, he says-choose your divinest man-see life as I see it, in truth, not in appearance-act in accordance with the eternal facts; and on this theme he rings the changes with intense satisfaction to himself, while the reader,

who asks anxiously and honestly How? waits in vain for an answer. The tale is certainly not told by an idiot; but it is full of sound and fury, and signifies-nothing.

For this reason we call this a Mirage Philosophy -a sort of inverse mirage-not where the seer, in extremely uncomfortable circumstances, has bright visions of unreal gardens and groves watered by imaginary rivulets, but where, blessed with every comfort that liberty and enlightenment can confer, he sees in the fair, broad, honest face of England only a howling wilderness.

HISTORY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.

The foregoing preamble, we hope, may afford a standpoint from whence to view, with some fair sense of appreciation, a work of Carlyle, which, seen from the ordinary level, would appear in violently disturbed perspective. Generally the later work of a well-known author may be considered on its own ground simply, without reference to previous performances. But there are many passages in this history which must be unintelligible to those who are not familiar with the doctrines and imagery shadowed forth with dusky vividness in his former

works; for, like some distinguished writers in other walks of literature, he seems to take it for granted that all his readers have carefully perused, and religiously remember, everything that he has previously written; and this is the case, not only with the ideas and images, but with the phraseology. Strange phrases, epithets, and nicknames, occur so frequently, that a concordance, or at least a glossary, seems necessary to render them intelligible to a reader who has begun with the author's last work. He is expected to be not merely a reader, but a student; with each successive production he is supposed to start, not from its beginning, but from the last landing-place; and for the intelligent prosecution of his career, he is required not only to equip himself with all the author's previous conclusions, but to encumber himself with all his crotchets and absurdities. For instance, we find in one of his early papers, that on Thurtell's trial some witness said, "he considered Thurtell a respectable man, because he kept a gig." This criterion has found so suitable a place in one of the many queer corners of Carlyle's mind as to have become part of its regular furniture. Henceforth all respectability depending on outward show (vesture or appearance), and therefore worthy to be derided, is "gig- respectability." In each successive work the gig is the symbol of this degree in social existence; till at last we find what some people might call respectability in reduced circum

stances figuring in the singular paraphrase of "gigmanity disgigged."

But we have already indicated the links which seem to bind our author's works into a consecutive whole; and therefore he may have a better plea than most for his continual reference to personages and passages occurring in former productions, of which the one in hand may be considered as the legitimate continuation. Looking at his subject always from the same point of view, he thus saves himself much repetition by assuming that what has been once indicated, explained, or established, shall in future be taken for granted. Whether the plea will avail with the reader must depend on his opinion of the originality of the philosophy on which he is thus required to bestow the coherent attention due to a scientific work; and to some, therefore, the practice will appear as an agreeable stimulant, to others as an egotistical impertinence.

In no previous work is his determination to obtrude his own personality more uncompromising than in this History of Frederick. His quips and cranks and wanton wiles begin with the first page, and continue in endless succession, sometimes monotonous, sometimes highly diversified, till the last. But though there still remains much to puzzle the reader, to whom all this is new, yet we hope that what we have already written may render many of the chief peculiarities intelligible, and account for others suffi