ict the actors in each, to present vividly in
clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. Outside of
the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth
and difficulty that has been done so well? A theme of unusual grandeur
and significance is here greatly treated.

The foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try
whether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer
to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested,
or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with
a fire from the writer's soul. Of this, the most perfect exhibition is
in poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of
passion, is born a something new, which, through the strong
creativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own.
With this power Mr. Carlyle is highly endowed. Not only, as already
said, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and
healthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes
each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the French
Revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly
that this life has been lighted up by his. Where in history is there a
picture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few
strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid
chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then
his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the
queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille
Desmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his
throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true
being. The giant Mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too
gigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that
have come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and
swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him.

For a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself. Making
allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so
eccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he
does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of "Sartor
Resartus," wherein, under the head of "Characteristics," he comments
on the professor's Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself. From
this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences. It opens
thus:--

"It