CARLYLE* 



A FEELING of comical sadness is likely to come 

 over the mind of any middle-aged man who sets 

 himself to recollecting the names of different authors 

 that have been famous, and the number of contemporary 

 immortalities whose end he has seen since coming to man- 

 hood. Many a light, hailed by too careless observers as 

 a fixed star, has proved to be only a short-lived lantern 

 at the tail of a newspaper kite. That literary heaven 

 which our youth saw dotted thick with rival glories, we 

 find now to have been a stage-sky merely, artificially 

 enkindled from behind ; and the cynical daylight which 

 is sure to follow all theatrical enthusiasms shows us 

 ragged holes where once were luminaries, sheer vacancy 

 instead of lustre. Our earthly reputations, says a great 

 poet, are the color of grass, and the same sun that 

 makes the green bleaches it out again. But next morn- 

 ing is not the time to criticise the scene-painter's firma- 

 ment, nor is it quite fair to examine coldly a part of 

 some general illusion in the absence of that sympathetic 

 enthusiasm, that self-surrender of the fancy, which made 

 it what it was. It would not be safe for all neglected 

 authors to comfort themselves in Wordsworth's fashion, 

 inferring genius in an inverse proportion to public favor, 

 and a high and solitary merit from the world's indiffer- 

 ence. On the contrary, it would be more just to 

 argue from popularity a certain amount of real value, 

 * Apropos of his Frederick the Great. 



