honest, clear-lined, honourable workmanship. I like to think of the young author writing them in the peasant's but-and-ben, and especially of his father beginning to respect him more when he showed him one after the other good Sir David Brewster's fifteen-guinea cheques, and bought for him that pair of marvellous spectacles with the first. I have the greater fellow-feeling, that I know one man who never expects to be happier than when he threw his first. hard-earned ten-pound-note into his mother's lap. CROCKETT, S. R., 1897, ed. Montaigne and Other Essays Chiefly Biographical by Thomas Carlyle Now First Collected, Foreword, p. XII.

Carlyle also was God's prophet-a seer stormy indeed and impetuous, with a great hatred for lies and laziness, and a mighty passion for truth and work; lashing our shams and hypocrisies; telling our materialistic age that it was going straight to the devil, and by a vulgar road at that; pointing out the abyss into which luxury and licentiousness have always plunged. Like Elijah of old, Carlyle loved righteousness, hated cant, and did ever plead for justice, and mercy, and truth. If his every sentence was laden with intellect, it was still more heavily laden with character. To the great Scotchman God gave the prophet's vision and the seer's sympathy and scepter.-HILLIS, NEWELL DWIGHT, 1899, Great Books as Life-Teachers, p. 26.

In spite of all his magniloquent dreaming, Carlyle is true or means to be true to the uncompromising facts of life; he dreams only that he may the more victoriously labor; and in his Gospel of Work and his doctrine of Hero-worship he returns from the misty regions of transcendentalism and confronts the practical concerns of common life. No one is more contemptuous than Carlyle of dilettante webspinning, or of idle playing with emotion.-GATES, LEWIS E., 1900, English Literature of the Nineteenth Century, The Critic, vol. 36.

Carlyle, like Rousseau or Shelley, was an imaginative setter forth of abstract principles. It was only by such a writer that Rousseau could at all be combated in the long run. But there was this difference between the Frenchman and the Scot, that while the abstractions of the one were either purely fanciful inventions, with no experience whatever to support them, or at best abstractions from groups of facts

looked at imperfectly, the abstractions of the other were derived from very definite facts contemplated with the utmost exactitude of rigorous observation; or, if invented in the first instance as mere theories, were verifiable and subjected to the most rigid verification of fact. One of Carlyle's favourite ideas, the danger of shams, that is, of worn-out institutions and doctrines-and also of mere blind amiability in human affairs, was a lesson learnt directly from the Revolution. From other historical examples, studied more precisely than the "ancient classical concern" was by Rousseau, he evolved the doctrine embodied in the ringing phrase "might is right.". This was Carlyle's most powerful weapon, the Talus flail with which he laid about him among the shams, the new as well as the old, the deceptive but enticing ideals that floated over the world from the kingdom of the Celts, and certain sturdier ones of native growth, smashing them alike unsparingly.-LARMINIE. WILLIAM, 1900, Carlyle and Shelley, The Contemporary Review, vol. 77, p. 732.

The resemblance between Ruskin and Carlyle seems to me to have been purely superficial, and the frequent bracketing of their names-less frequent than it was, and growing daily rarer-is based upon a misconception of the real natures of both of these extraordinary men. . . . Ruskin did, all the same, verily believe in God; Carlyle believed only in himself. Ruskin's impatience was of a noble kind, Carlyle's of an ignoble. Ruskin was grieved that the generation with which his life was cast should deny God. Carlyle was violently angry that anybody should deny Carlyle, or should presume to think otherwise than he thought. . . . Ruskin's religion came from his heart, Carlyle's from his liver. Carlyle broke his wife's heart, and I have never heard of any living soul to whom he gave a sixpence or for whose help or comfort he would have walked a mile. . . Nobody should read Carlyle's books till he is of an age to bring his own experience of the world as a necessary counter-poison, till he can smile at their atrabilious denunciations of things in general, and relish their one truly valuable quality-literary excellence.-MURRAY, HENRY, 1901, Ruskin and Carlyle, Robert Buchanan and Other Essays, pp. 144, 145, 146.

His

spicuous object. . . . Disraeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem to be a victim to consumption. eye is as black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously—

"With thy incomparable oil, Macassar!" -WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER, 1835, Pencillings by the Way.

He has a strongly marked Hebrew face, with brilliant eyes, and intensely black hair. -LEVERT, OCTAVIA WALTON, 1853, Souvenirs of Travel, vol. 1, p. 27.

Though in general society he was habitually silent and reserved, he was closely observant. It required generally a subject of more than common interest to produce a fitting degree of enthusiasm to animate and to stimulate him into the exercise of his marvelous powers of conversation. When duly excited, however, his command of language was truly wonderful, his sarcasm unsurpassed; the readiness of his wit, the quickness of his perception, the grasp of mind that enabled him to seize on all the parts of any subject under discussion, those only would venture to call in question who had never been in his company at the period I refer to [1831].-MADDEN, RICHARD ROBERT, 1855, Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, vol. II, p. 209.

By and by came a rather tall, slender person, in a black frock-coat, buttoned up, and black pantaloons, taking long steps, but I thought rather feebly or listlessly. His shoulders were round, or else he had a habitual stoop in them. He had a prominent nose, a thin face, and a sallow, very sallow complexion; . . . and had I seen him in America I should have taken him for a hardworked editor of a newspaper, weary and worn with night-labor and want of exercise,

and I never saw any other Englishman look in the least like him; though, in America, his appearance would not attract notice as being unusual.-HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 1856, English Note-Books, vol. II, p. 20.

Lady Dufferin made herself very agreeable all dinner-time. I told her I had just heard Disraeli speak. She said she had always known him and liked him in spite of his tergiversations and absurdities. When he was very young and had made his first appearance in London society as the author of "Vivian Grey," there was something almost incredible in his aspect. She assured me that she did not exaggerate in the slightest degree in describing to me his dress when she first met him at a dinner party. He wore a black velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several brilliant rings outside them, and long black ringlets rippling down upon his shoulders. It seemed impossible that such a Guy Fawkes could have been tolerated in any society. His audacity, which has proved more perennial than brass, was always the solid foundation of his character. She told him, however, that he made a fool of himself by appearing in such fantastic shape, and he afterwards modified his costume, but he was never to be put down.—MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP, 1858, To his Wife, June 13; Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, ed. Curtis, vol. 1, p. 264.

If Mr. Disraeli had, as he once said, the "best of wives," he, on his part, proved the best of husbands. Till the last day of her life he paid to his wife those attentions which are too often associated rather with the romance of youthful intercourse than with the routine of married life. When he rose to the highest point of his ambition, the only favor he would accept of the Queen was a coronet for his wife. He was scarcely ever absent from her side until the dark day when the fast friends were to be parted. She knew that she was dying, but refrained from telling him so, in order that he might be spared the pain of bidding her farewell. He also knew that her last hour was at hand but kept silence lest he should distress her. Thus they parted, each anxious to avoid striking a blow at the other's heart. The domestic lives of public men are properly