our times Prime Minister of England could have
been a canting hypocrite, deceiving himself and others, implies that
the whole nation was fit for a lunatic asylum. Carlyle seldom
studied a political question thoroughly, and of public men with whom
he was acquainted only through the newspapers he was no judge.
Personal contact produced estimates which, though they might be
harsh, hasty, and unfair, were always interesting, and sometimes
marvellously accurate. Of Peel, for instance, though he saw him very
seldom, he has left a finished portrait, not omitting the great
Minister's humour, for any trace of which the Peel papers may be
searched in vain.

--
* "Both he and she were noble and generous, but his was the soft heart
and hers the stern one."---Carlyle's Life in London, vol. ii. p. 171.
--

The same can be said of Thirlwall, barring the groundless
insinuation that he was dishonest in accepting a bishopric. A very
different sort of bishop, Samuel Wilberforce, Carlyle liked for his
cleverness, though here too he could not help suggesting that on the
foundation, or rather baselessness, of the Christian religion, "Sam"
agreed with him. The great historian of the age he did not
appreciate at all. But, then, he never met Macaulay. "Some little
ape called Keble," is not a happy formula for the author of the
Christian Year, and this is one of the phrases which I think Froude
might well have omitted, as meaning no more than a casual
execration. Yet how minute are these defects, when set beside the
intrinsic grandeur of the central figure in the book. Carlyle mixed
with all sorts and conditions of men and women, from the peasants of
Annandale to the best intellectual society of London. He was always,
or almost always, the first man in the company, not elated, nor
over-awed," standing on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting
aside all props and shoars." From snobbishness, the corroding vice
of English society, he was, though he once jocularly charged himself
with it, entirely free. He judged individuals on their merits with
an eye as piercing and as pitiless as Saint Simon's. On pretence and
affectation he had no mercy. Learning, intellect, character,
humility, integrity, worth, he held always in true esteem. As Froude
says, and it is the final word, Carlyle's "extraordinary talents
were devoted, with an equally extraordinary purity of purpose, to
his Maker's service, so far as he could see and understand that
Maker'