allusion reduced into a slang. Meanwhile, there is so much in a history which needs only to be told--so much, which even this author, _skip_ how he may, must relate, for the sake merely of preserving a continuous narrative--and where the perfection of style would be, as all the world knows, that it should draw no attention whatever to itself. A style like this of our author's, once assumed, cannot be laid down for a moment; and the least important incident is related with the same curiosity of diction, and the same startling manner, that delighted us in the _Siege of the Bastile_. To convey mere _information_, it seems quite unserviceable. "How inferior," says our author somewhere himself,--"how inferior for _seeing by_ is the brightest train of fireworks to the humblest farthing candle!" The basis of a history is surely, after all, the narrative, and whatever may be the estimate of others, the _historian_ proceeds on the supposition that the facts he has to relate are, for their own sake, deserving to be had in remembrance. If not, why is he there recording and verifying them? But Mr Carlyle proceeds throughout on quite the contrary supposition, that the fact for itself is worth nothing--that it is valuable only as it presents some peculiar picture to the imagination, or kindles some noteworthy reflection. He maintains throughout the attitude of one who stands apart, looking _at_ the history; rarely does he assume the patient office of that scribe whom we remember to have seen in the frontispiece of our school histories, recording faithfully what the bald headed Time, sitting between his scythe and his hour-glass, was dictating.