This is Carlyle’s grandest work—a prose epic on the great event of modern history. In our narrow limits we cannot hope to do any thing like justice, to the imagination, fancy, learning, humor, pathos, sublimity, characterization, with which the volumes abound. In spite of some obstinate faults, in spite of much false and pernicious doctrine, in spite of the style, no work ever written on the French Revolution equals this in the clearness with which it represents the causes of that revolution, in the vividness with which it brings up its different events in magnificent pictures, speaking directly to the eye, and in the grandeur of its delineations of the principal actors in the drama. The portraits of Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, are masterpieces. Every page glows with vital life. The words are all alive with meaning. They paint objects so distinctly that we become observers of the scenes to which they relate. Carlyle, in truth, is a master of expression as distinguished from mere fluency. He selects the “inevitable best word,” or compounds it, with an unmistakable tact and sureness. If to his other great qualities he joined calmness, comprehension, mental honesty, the present work would be almost perfect. Viewing it with an eye to all its faults, it must be pronounced a work of great genius and power. * * * * * _The Life and Correspondence of John Foster. Edited by J. E. Ryland. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 2 vols. 12mo._