Indubitably, history of the highest kind may be written from the evolutionist’s standpoint, but as yet works of the lower variety predominate. Therefore, in a time when the development of institutions chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, who magnifies individuals, will naturally be neglected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are needed to supplement each other. All institutions originate and exist in the activities of individuals. The hero, the great man, makes concrete and human what would otherwise be abstract. Environment does not wholly explain him. It is easy to show wherein he resembles his fellows; that difference from them which constitutes his peculiar, original gift is the real mystery, which the study of resemblances cannot solve. Men will cease to be men when personality shall lose its power over them. Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism in the two points of view,--antagonism which implies parity and not the necessary extinction of one by the other,--we can judge Carlyle fairly. Among historians he excels in vividness. Perhaps more than any other who has attempted to chronicle the past, he has visualized the past. The men he describes are not lay figures, with wooden frames and sawdust vitals, to be called Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen according as a different costume is draped upon them; but human beings, each swayed by his own passions, striving and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are actors in a real drama: such as they are, Carlyle has seen them; such as he has seen, he depicts them. To go back to Carlyle from one of the “scientific historians” is like passing from a museum of mummies out into the throng of living men. If his portraits differ from those of another artist, it does not follow that they are false. In ordinary affairs, two witnesses may give a different report of the same event, yet each may, from his angle of observation, have given exact testimony. Absolute truth, who shall utter it? Since history of the highest, architectonic kind is interpretation, its value must depend on the character of the interpreter. Not to be greatly esteemed, we suspect, are those grubbers among the rubbish heaps who imagine that Carlyle’s interpretation of the French Revolution, or of Cromwell, or of Frederick, may be ignored. Character, insight, and imagination went to the production of works like these: they require kindred gifts to be appreciated.