But let us say beforehand that we can never write of Thomas Carlyle with bitterness. We have received too much good from him in past days. He is our "Lost Leader," but we have loved and honored him as few men were ever loved and honored. It is therefore with tenderness, and not any cold, indifferent criticism, that we find fault with him now. We shall always be grateful to the real Carlyle, the old Carlyle of "Sartor Resartus," of the "French Revolution," of the "Life of Schiller," of "Heroes and Hero-Worship," and of that long and noble series of articles in the Edinburgh, Foreign Review, Westminster, and Frazer, each of which illuminated some theme, and threw the glory of genius over whatever his mind touched or his pencil drew. * * * * * Carlyle's "Frederick the Great"[25] seems to us a badly written book. Let us consider the volume containing the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters. Nothing in these chapters is brought out clearly. When we have finished the book, the mind is filled with a confusion of vague images. We know that Mr. Carlyle is not bound to "provide us with brains" as well as with a history, but neither was he so bound in other days. Yet no such confusion was left after reading the "French Revolution." How brilliantly distinct was every leading event, every influential person, every pathetic or poetic episode, in that charmed narrative! Who can forget Carlyle's account of the "Menads," the King's "Flight to Varennes," the Constitutions that "would not march," the "September Massacres," "Charlotte Corday,"--every chief tragic movement, every grotesque episode, moving forward, distinct and clear, to the final issue, "a whiff of grapeshot"? Is there anything like that in this confused "Frederick"? Compare, for example, the chapters on Voltaire in the present volume with the article on Voltaire published in 1829.