Centuries ago, well-nigh two score, it was written by the most philosophic, and perhaps the best, of Roman emperors, that men’s actions look worse than they are; and, says he, “one must be thoroughly informed of a great many things before one can be rightly qualified to give judgment in the case.” The sceptic Bayle was a better Christian than Scaliger, when he protested against the assertion of that peremptory scholar that Bellarmin did not believe a word of what he wrote, and was at heart an atheist: besides the testimony of Bellarmin’s life and deathbed to the contrary, such judgments are, said Bayle (and no friend to the Jesuits he), a usurpation of the rights of One who alone is the Judge of hearts, and before whom there is no dissembling. An apostle’s reason given for the counsel, Speak not evil one of another, brethren,—is this: that whoso speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law. Now, there is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy; who art thou that judgest another? “Oh what are we, Frail creatures as we are, that we should sit In judgment man on man! and what were we, If the All-merciful should mete to us With the same rigorous measure wherewithal Sinner to sinner metes!” No observant reader of Mr. Carlyle but will have noticed, if not (which were better) laid to heart, his habitual abstention from that dogmatism of the judgment-seat in which smaller spirits delight. For instance, in his moral estimate of so erring a genius as Hoffmann, if, in judging him, Mr. Carlyle is forced to condemn him, it is with mildness, with a desire to do justice. Let us not forget, urges the critic, that for a mind like Hoffmann’s, the path of propriety was difficult to find—still more difficult to keep. “Moody, sensitive, and fantastic, he wandered through the world like a foreign presence, subject to influences of which common natures have happily no glimpse.” A good or a wise man we must not call him; but among the ordinary population of this world, “to note him with the mark of reprobation were ungrateful and unjust.” So, again, in the same author’s review of the life and writings of Werner—who, always in some degree an enigma to himself, may well be obscure to us. For “there are mysteries and unsounded abysses in every human heart; and that is but a questionable philosophy which undertakes so readily to explain them.” Religious belief especially, Mr. Carlyle urges, at least when it seems heartfelt and well-intentioned, is no subject for harsh or even irreverent investigation. “He is a wise man that, having such a belief, knows and sees clearly the grounds of it in himself; and those, we imagine, who have explored with strictest scrutiny the secret of their own bosoms, will be least apt to rush with intolerant violence into that of other men’s.” Still more elaborate and emphatic is the exposition