As regards Great Britain, Carlyle considers that the only practical way to remedy its evils, is to reject all cant about liberty and constitutional government, and enslave the lower classes. He accordingly recommends to the English government a plan of enforced labor, and puts an imaginary speech in the mouth of the Prime Minister, addressed to the “floods of Irish and other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary, and the General Assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the Pauper Populations of these Realms.” This speech sounds well enough as a joke, provided a man can view a horde of men as he would so many horses, but it is ridiculous as a practical exposition of principles. It is certain that in one hour after a British minister had made such a declaration, army, navy, and party would melt away from him, and he would be on the gallows or in Bedlam. As a politician, Carlyle is little more than a philosopher of sneers and negations, without one positive practical principle. His idea of government implies a falsehood in fact, reposing on the monstrous assumption that civilized society is composed of a vast collection of men, little better than brutes, who would endure the tyranny of a smaller number of despots, little better than Carlyle. * * * * * _Modern Literature and Literary Men: Being a Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. By George Gilfillan: New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._ Mr. Emerson has remarked that “it makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.” We hardly think that there is a true man behind the best of Mr. Gilfillan’s sentences. He has a mind of much sensitiveness to his own merits, and some to the merits of others, and welters readily into the expression of both; but his inspiration seems to spring from presumption and whisky-punch. The reader is teased into attention by Mr. Gilfillan’s confident manner, without having his attention rewarded by intimacy with Mr. Gilfillan’s nature. There is merit in his occasional thoughts, and truth in his detached remarks, but the impression of the whole is of a slush of shining words. The subject is only an occasion for the author to pour out his own memories and fancies, and thus to exhibit himself. The movement of his mind is half-way between a strut and a reel, and his faculties are ever in a state of pert intoxication. He paws rather than handles a great poet, and we never witness his approach to a Milton or Wordsworth without a shudder. Having in his intellect no presiding will or even principle, his compositions are an anarchy of opinions and terms, without any intellectual conscientiousness or austere regard for the truth of things; and their popularity is the result of that sack of the dictionary which has made so much of our popular literature a mere debauch in words. * * * * *