A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 233 



bias of the nineteenth century. But here also is 

 reality, here is the creative touch, here are men and 

 things made alive again, palpable to the understand- 

 ing and enticing to the imagination. Of all histories 

 that have fallen into my hands " Frederick " is the 

 most vital and real. If the current novels were half 

 so entertaining I fear I should read little else. The 

 portrait-painting is like that of Rembrandt; the eye 

 for battles and battle-fields is like that of Napoleon, or 

 Frederick himself ; the sifting of events, and the sep- 

 arating of the false from the true, is that of the most 

 patient and laborious science ; the descriptive pas- 

 sages are equaled by those of no other man ; while 

 the work as a whole, as Emerson says, " is a Judg- 

 ment Day, for its moral verdict, on the men and na- 

 tions and manners of modern times." It is to be 

 read for its honest history ; it is to be read for its 

 inexhaustible wit and humor ; it is to be read for its 

 poetic fire, for its felicities of style, for its burden of 

 human sympathy and effort, its heroic attractions and 

 stimulating moral judgments. All Carlyle's histories 

 have the quick, penetrating glance, that stroke of the 

 eye, as the French say, that lays the matter open to 

 the heart. He did not write 'in the old way of a 

 topographical survey of the surface ; his " French 

 Revolution " is more like a transverse section ; more 

 like a geologist's map than like a geographer's : the 

 depths are laid open ; the abyss yawns ; the cosmic 

 forces and fires stalk forth and become visible and 

 real. It was this power to detach and dislocate 



