146 CARLYLE. 



command. For organization he had a masterly talent ; 

 but he could not apply it to the arts of peace, both be- 

 cause he wanted experience and because the rash decision 

 of the battle-field will not serve in matters which are 

 governed by natural laws of growth. He seems, indeed, 

 to have had a coarse, soldier's contempt for all civil dis- 

 tinction, altogether unworthy of a wise king, or even 

 of a prudent one. He confers the title of Hofrath on 

 the husband of a woman with whom his General Wal- 

 rave is living in what Mr. Carlyle justly calls " brutish 

 polygamy," and this at Walrave's request, on the ground 

 that " a general's drab ought to have a handle to her 

 i-ame.'' Mr. Carlyle murmurs in a mild parenthesis that 

 " we rather regret this " ! (Vol. III. p. 559.) This is 

 his usual way of treating unpleasant matters, sidling by 

 with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders. Not that 

 he ever wilfully suppresses anything. On the contrary, 

 there is no greater proof of his genius than the way in 

 which, while he seems to paint a character with all its 

 disagreeable traits, he contrives to win our sympathy for 

 it, nay, almost our liking. This is conspicuously true 

 of his portrait of Friedrich's father ; and that he does 

 not succeed in making Friedrich himself attractive is a 

 strong argument with us that the fault is in the subject 

 and not the artist. 



The book, we believe, has been comparatively unsuc- 

 cessful as a literary venture. Nor do we wonder at it. 

 It is disproportionately long, and too much made up of 

 those descriptions of battles to read which seems even 

 more difficult than to have won the victory itself, more 

 disheartening than to have suffered the defeat. To an 

 American, also, the warfare seemed Liliputian in the 

 presence of a conflict so much larger in its proportions 

 and significant in its results. The interest, moreover, 

 flags decidedly toward the close, where the reader cannot 



