of this doctrine as applied to the case of Robert Burns. The world, it is alleged, is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men, since it decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes, and not positively but negatively,—less on what is done right, than on what is or is not done wrong. Whereas, by Mr. Carlyle’s doctrine, not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily measured, but the _ratio_ of these to the whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. “This orbit may be a planet’s, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be a city hippodrome; nay, the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured; and it is assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared to them!” Here, according to our author, lies the root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens to with approval. “Granted, the ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not been all-wise and all-powerful: but to know _how_ blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.” To a very different style of sinners the same judgment—rather the same refusal to judge—is accorded, when the doom of Chaumette, Gobel, and other reddest of red-republican reprobates, is rehearsed, in the history of France’s reign of terror, while the revolution was devouring so greedily her own children. “For Anaxagoras Chaumette, the sleek head now [April 1794] stript of its _bonnet rouge_ [and a traveller by tumbril to Sainte Guillotine], what hope is there? Unless Death _were_ ‘an eternal sleep’? Wretched Anaxagoras! God shall judge thee, not I.” Once more: “Unhappy soul! who shall judge him?” is the historian’s deprecating query in the instance of August of Poland, the physically strong,—who dies, confessedly a _very_ great sinner, early in 1733. Who shall judge him? “Hereafter?—And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book To find his failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own shortcomings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors!” Corporal Trim was once moved to avow his belief—rather hotly, for his _esprit de corps_ was piqued—that when a soldier “gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson—though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy. Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim, said my uncle Toby—for God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, Corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then)—it will be seen who have done their duties in this world, and who have not.”