one who read anything
read that book. Southey read it six times. Dickens carried it about
with him, and founded on it his Tale of Two Cities. Thackeray wrote
an enthusiastic review of it. Its wisdom and eloquence were a
treasure to Dr. Arnold, who knew, if any man did, what history was.
It was like no other book that had ever been written, and critics
were driven to talk of Aeschylus or Isaiah. Such comparisons profit
little or nothing. The French Revolution is an original book by a
man who believed in God's judgment upon sin. The memoirs of Madame
Dubarry might have suggested it; but it came from Carlyle's own
heart and soul.

Professors may prove to their own satisfaction that it is not
history at all, and Carlyle has been posthumously convicted of
miscalculating the distance from Paris to Varennes. It remains one
of the books that cannot be forgotten, that fascinate all readers,
even the professors themselves. And yet, greater than the book
itself is Carlyle's behaviour when the first volume had been lost by
Mill. Mill, himself in extreme misery, had to come and tell the
author. He stayed a long time, and when he had gone Carlyle said to
his wife, "Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up; we must
endeavour to hide from him how very serious this business is to us."
Maximus in maximis; minimus in minimis; such was Carlyle, and as
such Froude exhibits him, not concealing the fact that in small
matters he could be very small.

The two personalities of Carlyle and his wife are so fascinating
that there may be some excuse for regarding even their quarrels,
which were chiefly on her side,* with interest. But Frederick the
Great will survive these broils, and so long as Carlyle's books are
read his biography will be read too, as his best extraneous
memorial, just, eloquent, appreciative, sincere. Carlyle was no
model of austere, colourless consistency. His reverent admiration of
Peel, whom he knew, is quite irreconcilable with his savage contempt
of Gladstone, whom he did not know. Peel was a great parliamentary
statesman, and Gladstone was his disciple. Both belonged equally to
the class which Carlyle denounced as the ruin of England, and rose
to supreme power through the representative system that he
especially abhorred. On no important point, while Peel was alive,
did they differ. "On the whole," said Gladstone, "Peel was the
greatest man I ever knew," and in finance he was always a Peelite.
That a man who was f