humourist of Chinon has told us, among other qualities of King Shrove-tide, that when he whistled it was whole scuttles full of green apes.' Mr. Carlyle in the present work calls the French Revolution that whirlwind of the universe-lights obliterated-and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the Empyrean-black whirlwind which made even apes serious, and drove most of them mad.' Then we find such expressions as 'Mudgods' and 'Cesspools of the Universe,' the old Apes of the Dead Sea;' Frederick himself, in his old age, on the terrace at Sans Souci, is 'like an old snuffy lion on the watch;' the Wendish idol Triglaph was a three-headed monster, 'something like three whales cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead drunk.' And we have of course the old vocabulary repeated which is destined to try so severely the temper and the judgment of future lexicographers of the English tongue. With all this we have an astonishing number of individual portraits, and at times we may fancy that we are sitting at one of the late Mr. Mathews's entertainments; so ready is Mr. Carlyle in his varied impersonations of the different historical characters. But like the theatrical performer, he relies too often on the most obvious external characteristics of his personages. This may be necessary to produce a rapid effect upon the stage, but it is without excuse in writing. Those, for instance, to whom Leibnitz may be introduced for the first time do not get a very profound notion of that philospher, when he is only described as a rather weak but hugely ingenious old gentleman, with bright eyes and long nose, with vast black peruke and bandy legs.' Mr. Carlyle again dives for a moment below his table, and re-appears as Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau with his 'gunpowder face' and his iron-ramrod;' or as 'Margaret Pouch-Mouth,' alluding to that facial peculiarity. Then we have the Countess of Darlington and the Duchess of Kendal, George I.'s fat and lean mistresses, one of whom is always laboriously designated and distinguished as a cataract of fluid tallow,' and the other as 'the May-pole,' or lean human nailrod.' Both of them indeed had been better omitted altogether from a tableau already crowded, and in which their presence is of no significance whatever.

Again we encounter the old unworthy device to excite attention-the comic business of our old friends Dryasdust and Sauerteig; the former an imaginary personage, who comes on like the pantaloon in the pantomime to be thwacked and rendered ridiculous as the representative of old-fashioned history; the latter the pseudonym under which are introduced such fragments and extracts from Mr. Carlyle's own note-books as cannot be well incorporated with his main text.

The

The proper business of the book is ushered in by some three hundred pages of antecedent history. With an extensive violation of the Horatian precept, not to begin the history of the Siege of Troy with an account of the accouchement of Leda, it has been thought necessary to lay the foundation of the work so deep as in the tenth century, and the history of the house of Brandenburg is traced from the days of Henry the Fowler. Probably no other Englishman, competent to the task, would have encountered the labour of going through the voluminous masses of German history which have been conscientiously studied for this summary. Original documents do not appear to have been much consulted for any portion of the work; but the accumulated stores of many an old German Dryasdust have been rifled, and we cannot help remarking that the poor Dryasdusts have been very badly treated. They have been first laid under contribution, and then outrageously vilified by their whimsical persecutor.

What is most seriously to be regretted is the waste of time involved in this mode of writing history. Mr. Carlyle has traversed eight hundred years of German annals, and has shown in flashes an acquaintance with his subject which has astonished the most learned of the Teutons themselves. It is not likely that the same task will be speedily undertaken again, and we cannot help deploring that such an opportunity has been lost for throwing a steady light, in the shape of a good English history, upon the Germanic centuries through which Mr. Carlyle has taken his glancing and irregular flight. A vast deal more valuable matter might surely have been sifted out, and been rescued from the 'dust-bins of creation,' to which Mr. Carlyle has, with groanings and despair, returned so much of the contents of his sieve. A good service might thus have been done, for which both Germany and England would have been grateful.

We have no desire to insist too strongly upon the duty of maintaining the dignity of historical writing. That style is best which most effectually fulfils its purpose in the truthful representation of incidents, of the actors, and of the motives and mutual relations of the various agents. But we have a right to expect that the fittest use shall be made of materials; that nothing shall be capriciously rejected; and that the reader's attention shall not be distracted by the antic gestures of the exhibitor, who has undertaken to pass before him the panorama of events. Yet among so much that is rather to, be lamented than to be admired, there are many passages which both for thought and style are worthy of a great writer. The supposed

origin of the name of the Hohenzollerns is amusingly mentioned, in this quaint and picturesque, yet exact manner :

'Hohenzollern lies far south in Schwaben (Suabia), on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its lake, but well aloft near the springs of the Danube; its back leaning on the Black Forest: it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the Schwartzwald (Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. Fanciful Dryasdust, doing a little etymology, will tell you the name Zollern is equivalent to Tollery, or place of tolls, whereby Hohenzollern comes to mean the High or upper Tollery, and gives one the notion of antique pedlars climbing painfully, out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus far; unstrapping their pack-horses here, and chaffering in unknown dialect about toll. Poor souls! it may be so, but we do not know, nor shall it concern us.'-vol. i. p. 98.

Grand old figures are made to start up from their darkness under effects that would be always fine, if the grotesque were not made so often to predominate. Barbarossa, the Knights of the great Teutonic Order, Saint Elizabeth, and others, cross the field of view in the wild phantasmagoria. A striking, and at this moment opportune, point is made of the well-known event of the poisoning of Henry of Luxemburg, in the sacramental wine, by a Dominican monk, when he was entering Italy to support the Ghibelline cause in 1313:

"Poisoned in the wine of his sacrament: the Florentines, it is said, were at the bottom of it, and had hired the rat-eyed Dominican : "O Italia, O Firenze!" That is not the way to achieve Italian Liberty, or Obedience to God: that is the way to confirm, as by frightful stygian oath, Italian Slavery, or continual Obedience, under varying forms to the other Party! The voice of Dante, then alive among men, proclaims, sad and loving as a mother's voice, and implacable as a voice of Doom, that you are wandering, and have wandered, in a terrible manner!'-vol. i. p. 148.

But the feelings raised by such a passage as this are presently altered by the sudden entrance of Zisca, described as a kind of human rhinoceros driven mad.' Such strange forms of expression are incessant. The nickname of Sigismund, super grammaticam, given to the Emperor of the Council of Constance, may be forgiven for the sake of the anecdote which accounts for it :

He is now (A.D. 1414) holding this Council of Constance by way of healing the Church, which is sick of three simultaneous Popes, and of much else. He finds the problem difficult; finds he will have to run into Spain to persuade a refractory Pope there, if eloquence can (as it cannot); all which requires money, money.

This

passage

of his opening

opening speech is what I recollect best of him there : "Right Reverend Fathers, date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with, which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a Cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius" (Schisma is neuter, your Majesty), Sigismund loftily replies, "Ego sum Rex Romanus, et super grammaticam" (I am King of the Romans and above grammar)! For which reason I call him in my note-books, Sigismund super grammaticam, to distinguish him in the imbroglio of Kaisers.'-vol. i. p. 187.

In other places some slight circumstance is rendered intolerable by excessive iteration. There is a story of Frederick of Hohenzollern, Margrave of Nuremburg, and the first Elector of Brandenburg (in the fifteenth century), who has to deal with a contumacious baron, and brings against his strong-house a piece of artillery of large dimensions. This cannon got to be called Faule Grete'--Heavy, or Lazy Peg; and the name of Lazy Peg has so strongly commended itself to Mr. Carlyle's fancy, that it is mentioned six times in one page (p. 197), and often afterwards. The only other gun famous in literature to which it can be compared is the gun in the 'Critic,' which was fired so often, and which made Mr. Puff say—' Give those fellows a good thing, and they never know when to have done with it.' Further onwards, such expressions as Kaiser's spectre-hunt,' 'Tobacco-Parliament,' 'big wigs wagging,' and a poor little brown woman' applied to the Czarina Catherine, together with many other stock phrases, are repeated over and over again, and become tiresome beyond all powers of endurance.

The Reformation, the great event of the sixteenth century for all Europe, and greatest of all for Germany, gives occasion for some fine reflections on its significance, and upon the subsequent fate of the countries which accepted or rejected it :

'Protestant or not Protestant? The question meant everywhere— "Is there anything of nobleness in you, O nation, or is there nothing? Are there, in this nation, enough of heroic men to venture forward, and to battle for God's Truth versus the Devil's Falsehood, at the peril of life and more? Men who prefer death and all else to living under Falsehood-who once for all will not live under Falsehood; but having drawn the sword against it (the time being come for that rare and important step), throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious clearness, with their whole soul, Come on then! Life under Falsehood is not good for me; and we will try it out now. Let it be to the death between us, then !”—vol. i. p. 264.

Only one more specimen of a lucid interval, and in a different manner, shall be given from this region of the book. The Duchy of Cleve of 1609, or rather its members, the Duchies of Jülich

and

and Berg, with their disputed succession, are to play so large a part hereafter upon Frederick William's confined stage, that its earlier history is not inappropriately elucidated, and its general condition at that time is described in a few words which, if alt were like them, Mr. Carlyle's new work might rank not only as the most precise, but as the most fascinating of historical narratives :

'It amounted perhaps to two Yorkshires in extent. A naturally opulent country, of fertile meadows, shipping capabilities, metalliferous hills, and, at this time, in consequence of the Dutch-Spanish war, and the multitude of Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, and rising to be, what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages, in those old days-"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Jülich, and only bleached, stamped, and sold by the Dutch," says Büsching. A country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom.'-p. 302.

On the whole, however, we cannot say that Mr. Carlyle has been very successful in laying out his short cut from the tenth to the eighteenth century through the alleged intervening jungles of German history. The reader is gratified by some good prospects and bird's-eye views; but the general impression derived in the course of the journey along the new route is confused. The vehicle offered is an uneasy one-the drive is a succession of jolts, and the grumblings of the driver do not assist to alleviate the natural difficulties of the road. We are glad when the Great Elector at last comes in sight, and we feel that we are approaching the district through which alone any one in search of the facts of Frederick II.'s life could much expect or desire to be carried.

Perhaps no historical personage of modern times is more familiarly known than the second King of Prussia, the father of Frederick II.-the virtuoso whose taste lay in the collection of gigantic specimens of humanity for his famous grenadier guards. Dressed like the old Duke of Cumberland, or the Marquis of Granby, on an English sign-board, and with the manners, tastes, and temper of Squire Western, his external appearance has always been easily realised. His character and policy are not less well known from the numerous memoirs in which he figures, and from the pains taken by Prussian writers to do ample justice to whatever good qualities he possessed. Notwithstanding his many deficiencies, it is not for Prussians to deny merit to. the sovereign whose administration of its army and finances kept his country in a respectable, if not formidable, position in Europe, at the time when it was young as a kingdom, and when