CAELYLE. 147 



help feeling that the author loses breath somewhat pain- 

 fully under the effort of so prolonged a course. Mr. 

 Carlyle has evidently devoted to his task a labor that 

 may be justly called prodigious. Not only has he sifted 

 all the German histories and memoirs, but has visited 

 every battle-field, and describes them with an eye for 

 country that is without rival among historians. The 

 book is evidently an abridgment of even more abundant 

 collections, and yet as it stands the matter overburdens 

 the work. It is a bundle of lively episodes rather than 

 a continuous narrative. In this respect it contrasts 

 oddly with the concinnity of his own earlier Life of 

 Schiller. But the episodes are lively, the humor and 

 pathos spring from a profound nature, the sketches of 

 character are masterly, the seizure of every picturesque 

 incident infallible, and the literary judgments those of a 

 thorough scholar and critic. There is, of course, the 

 usual amusing objurgation of Dryasdust and his rubbish- 

 heaps, the usual assumption of omniscience, and the 

 usual certainty of the lively French lady of being al- 

 ways in the right ; yet we cannot help thinking that a 

 little of Dryasdust's plodding exactness would have saved 

 Fouquet eleven years of the imprisonment to which Mr. 

 Carlyle condemns him, would have referred us to St 

 Simon rather than to Voltaire for the character of the 

 brothers Belle-Ile, and would have kept clear of a 

 certain ludicrous etymology of the name Antwerp, not 

 to mention some other trifling slips of the like nature. 

 In conclusion, after saying, as honest critics must, that 

 " The History of Friedrich II. called Frederick the 

 Great " is a book to be read in with more satisfaction 

 than to be read through, after declaring that it is open 

 to all manner of criticism, especially in point of moral 

 purpose and tendency, we must admit with thankful- 

 ness, that it has the one prime merit of being the work 



