252 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE SOW. 



against all the extant world. The tanned complexion ; 

 that amorphous crag-like face ; the dull black eyes 

 under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite 

 furnaces, needing only to be blown ; the mastiff-mouth 

 accurately closed ; I have not traced as much of silent 

 Berserkir rage, that I remember of, in any other 

 man." In writing his histories Carlyle valued, above 

 almost anything else, a good portrait of his hero, and 

 searched far and wide for such. He roamed through 

 endless picture-galleries in Germany searching for a 

 genuine portrait of Frederick the Great, and at last, 

 chiefly by good luck, hit upon the thing he was in 

 quest of. " If one would buy an indisputably au- 

 thentic old shoe of William Wallace for hundreds of 

 pounds, and run to look at it from all ends of Scot- 

 land, what would one give for an authentic visible 

 shadow of his face, could such, by art natural or art 

 magic, now be had ! " " Often 1 have found a Por- 

 trait superior in real instruction to half a dozen writ- 

 ten * Biographies,' as Biographies are written ; or, 

 rather, let me say, I have found that the Portrait was 

 a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could 

 for the first time be read, and some human interpre- 

 tation be made of them." 



II. 



CARLYLE stands at all times, at all places, for the 

 hero, for power of will, authority of character, ade- 

 quacy, and obligation of personal force. He offsets 



