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or approval, the exceptions are clear-cut and definitely stated. There are apparently but two classes of books in the world for him: unmitigated trash and works of lofty and dignified eloquence. Personally, Macaulay was an honorable, industrious, just, and worthy man. His memory was wonderful, and his conversational powers remarkable, though he was so fluent that Sydney Smith said that a "few brilliant flashes of silence" were needed. No young man should fail to read Macaulay's "Essays." Their construction is excellent, and the vigorous style holds the attention.

Macaulay wrote some verse: "Lays of Ancient Rome," and one or two other martial ballads. He lacked entirely the "poetic vision"; there was nothing dreamy or mysterious about the world as he saw it. The "Lays" are vigorous, brass-band rhyming, and little more, and make us regret that the time spent over them was not given to the production of another volume of the "History."

Thomas
Carlyle,

Thomas Macaulay was a man of brilliant talent; Thomas Carlyle was a man of intense though limited genius. Though five years Macaulay's senior, Carlyle is not only more modern in tone of thought, but 1795-1881. he matured much later and lived much longer than his more successful contemporary. He was the son of a Scotch stone mason of Dumfriesshire, and was sent to the University of Edinburgh with the intention that he should enter the ministry; but religious doubts in a mind of utter sincerity caused him to forego qualifying for the profession. In college he distinguished himself in the study of mathematics, and after graduation he acted as private tutor for a few years and then resolved to devote himself to literature. He published a "Life of Schiller," which

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attracted some attention. In 1826 he married a Miss Jane Welsh and removed to a small lonely farm which she owned in Dumfriesshire. Here he worked hard in retirement for eight years. He became a master of German literature, and some of his translations and essays on German authors had much effect in introducing the English-reading public to Goethe, Richter, Novalis, and others of the great Germans. Here he wrote "Sartor Resartus" (the tailor retailored), a compound of biography, satire, world philosophy, and allegory, in a strange, half-German style. Although a work of undoubted power, the novelty and originality of the form made it difficult for the author to find a publisher. Finally Fraser's Magazine in London printed it in 1834. As a rule, the public were mystified by the style and diction in spite of the many passages marked by humor, insight, and imagination. Carlyle went to London that he might be nearer the center of ideas, carrying with him the larger part of his work on the French Revolution. This was published in 1837, and fixed his reputation, which, though never a popular one, is well established in the judgment of the thoughtful. delivered some courses of lectures, of which "Heroes and Hero Worship" was the published report. He published the "Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell," and vindicated the Protector as one of the greatest of rulers. The "History of Frederick the Great" cost him fifteen years of unremitting labor, and is his magnum opus. After the printing of this in 1865, he wrote his reminiscences, the publication of which by Mr. Froude after his death gave rise to much feeling.

He

The eccentricities and oddities of Carlyle's style are so pronounced that he can never become widely popular. His great merits as an historian are his power of realizing

historical scenes and historical characters and of grasping the significance and force of the great currents that sway masses of people. This gives his "French Revolution" an epico-dramatic character which makes a profound impression on the reader. He possessed a grim, satiric humor, the vehicle sometimes of scorn and contempt, and sometimes of a rugged pathos. He was master, too, of the art of inventing epithets to characterize persons. In his histories these epithets seem a little artificial sometimes, but in his reminiscences they are attached to his acquaintances with a caustic and pungent wit that to all but the victims must have been very amusing. He was an uncompromising truth-teller and felt a profound belief in realities and an equally profound hatred of shams and injustice. His doctrine that the progress of society depended on the hero," the strong, able man under whose guidance the people are passive, is not borne out in history, for the strong, able man" is as frequently reactionary as progressive. Carlyle fails to appreciate the nature of the great, democratic development of the English-speaking race. He was born too early to assimilate the essential doctrines of evolution as applied to the slow forward movement of the human race, and he declared that the British islands were inhabited by "twenty-three millions of human beings, mostly fools." His belief that spiritual forces and principles underlie all phenomena, social and material, was unswerving, and this gives his writings essential truth and a stimulating effect on the moral nature greater than that of any other books of the century. Mentally and morally, Carlyle was a great man; even his faults have an element of the colossal and gigantesque. His "French Revolution" should be read by every one, not for the sake of historical information,

but to build up in the mind a lurid picture of a disorganized society. But it is to be feared that his "stonecrusher style" will repel most of the younger generation. His "Essay on Burns," however, presents none of his perversities and idiosyncrasies.

James An

Froude, the youngest son of the Archdeacon of Totness, was a Westminster boy and went to Oriel College, Oxford. He took deacon's orders in 1844, but thony Froude, after the secession of John Henry Newman to 1818-1894. the Roman Church, he fell into skepticism on doctrinal matters. His book, the "Nemesis of Faith," expressive of this reaction, made it impossible for him to hope for preferment in the Church, and he turned to literature as a profession. He contributed to Fraser's and the Westminster and wrote largely, principally on historical subjects. His most important work is his "History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada," finished in 1870. The list of his books is a long one, including among others the "Life of Carlyle," "Short Studies on Great Subjects," the "Two Chiefs of Dunboy" (a novel), and the "Life and Letters of Erasmus." In the latter years of his life he was appointed professor of history at Oxford.

The second half of the nineteenth century has been very fruitful in historical study. Original sources of information have been made available and the past has been criticised in a realistic and scientific spirit. Froude is the most readable of all the modern historians, and, though he has been charged with carelessness in investigation, he has succeeded best in reviving the past as far as "reviving" means making to live again. His style is admirable, his story dramatically told, and his historic characters are

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