CARLYLE. 143 



while he saw only the " burning of a dirty chimney " in 

 the war which a gi-eat people was waging under his very 

 eyes for the idea of nationality and orderly magistrature, 

 and which fixed, let us hope forever, a boundary-line on 

 the map of history and man's advancement toward self- 

 conscious and responsible freedom. The true historical 

 genius, to our thinking, is that which can see the nobler 

 meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is 

 he who detects the divine in the casual ; and we some- 

 what suspect the depth of his insight into the past, who 

 cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that dis- 

 guise in which it always visits us. Shall we hint to Air. 

 Carlyle that a man may look on an heroic age, as well as 

 an heroic master, with the eyes of a valet, as misappre- 

 ciative certainly, though not so ignoble 1 



What Goethe says of a gi'eat poet, that he must be a 

 citizen of his age as well as of his countiy, may be said 

 inversely of a great king. He should be a citizen of his 

 country as well as of his age. Friedrich was certainly 

 the latter in its fullest sense ; whether he was, or could 

 have been, the former, in any sense, may be doubted. 

 The man who spoke and wi'ote French in preference 

 to his mother-tongue, who, dying when Goethe was 

 already drawing toward his fortieth year, Schiller toward 

 his thirtieth, and Lessing had been already five years in 

 his grave, could yet see nothing but barbarism in Ger- 

 man literature, had little of the old Teutonic fibre in his 

 nature. The man who pronounced the Nibelungen Lied 

 not worth a pinch of priming, had little conception of 

 the power of heroic traditions in making heroic men, and 

 especially in strengthening that instinct made up of so 

 many indistinguishable associations which we call love 

 of country. Charlemagne, when he caused the old songs 

 of his people to be gathered and written down, showed a 

 truer sense of the soiirces of national feeling and a 



