Absence of Truth in French Society. 337 Fanny attentively. Fanny is the portrait of a whole class. herself is the type of the modern Frenchwoman; a charming creature in mere drawing-room life, in whom there is nothing profound or genuine, and who is incontestably the voluntary accomplice of her own mischievous deeds, because she is never led astray by passion. It is eternally true that reaction is everywhere equal to action. Now, from a cruel and humbly-accepted expiation, you may infer a passionate love, as a really blind and self-immolating love leads almost invariably either to death or to a sincere and lasting repentance. The fruits prove the nature of the tree. The soul that bore the strong love will bear the strong remorse, and the strong honesty, which, recoiling from the idea of theft, yearns to pay as dearly as it can for what has been enjoyed. There was a time when the women of France were other than they are now, and when their honesty was ready to pay the price of happiness to which they had no right. The names of Madlle. de Lafayette, Madame de Longueville, Madame de la Vallière, and many, many others, are there to testify that this assertion is correct. the sin that is sincerely, honestly sought to be atoned for; before the punishment unrepiningly accepted for what we must then suppose was a really irresistible attraction, we may pity and deplore, we must pause ere we condemn; for we touch upon the limits of man's fallibility, and upon that delicate, scarcely-visible boundary line beyond which lies the measureless expanse of Divine mercy. Before In all this there is truth; and where truth is, even though coupled with frailty, we should hesitate to judge. But the case we have to do with at present is just the opposite one. The one thing that marks the civilisation of France in our present day is absence of truth. Everything is a matter of seeming, of grimace. All is hollow in the morals of the French race, and hollowest of all is the feminine portion of that race. Strength is the root of all honesty, and the leading defect of the French race is its moral weakness. The author of Fanny' makes his heroine exclaim upon one occasion, I know, and I confess it, nature has not given me any strength of soul! There lies the harm. There is nothing large or generous; no generous desire to expiate, but also no ungovernable impetus driving passionwards. Frenchwomen of this day cannot invoke the power of the Irresistible as an excuse, for the very reason that in their own narrowness of feeling lies their faculty of resistance. Passion is suffering; to love sincerely is to suffer; and to those who really suffer, forgiveness may be vouchsafed. But what shall be the measure of indulgence to those who, without suffering, sin?-to those who are dishonest at once both to duty and to love? We 6 We will not answer this; but we refer those who may think us prejudiced in our opinions upon modern France, to the works of contemporary French literature, in which the ordinary run' (i. e., the large majority) of French people profess to recognise the truest picture of French society. If any venture, for we cannot recommend them, to read 'Fanny' and 'Les Lionnes pauvres,' after the perusal, let them say whether the principal difficulty of the English critic be not that of choosing from among the details wherewith each page abounds those that he can offer to the English public as proofs of the degradation depicted. ART. III.-History of Friedrich the Second, called Frederick the Great. By Thomas Carlyle. Vols. I. and II. London: Chapman and Hall. 1858. THE appearance of a new work from the pen of Mr. Thomas Carlyle carries with it an interest which it has seldom been the lot of authorship to command. No sooner are the public cognisant of the fact than journalists and reviewers, at all points of the compass, are seen ready, pen in hand, to do their part for the benefit of their readers, by way of extracts, criticism, and judicious comment. The whetted appetite grows by what it feeds on. The demands of the impatient reading public must be supplied. Booksellers are courteous and accommodating; and a new edition is called for in a few weeks. Thus the author, who fought his way into general notice with slow enough advances, has at length gained a position to command an immediate audience in his own and other lands. No modern author is now better known than Carlyle, yet few are more imperfectly understood. In politics he has been claimed by both Conservatives and Liberals, though most assuredly he is of no political party. His speculative views and opinions have been characterised as of German growth; yet no author of the present age is a more independent thinker, or draws less from foreign sources. His phraseology and diction, in which he is certainly the most original of writers, have been charged with Germanism, affectation, defection from the orthodox standards of her Majesty's English, and one knows not what; though his style and mode of expression are, to him, perfectly natural and unaffected. It is a curious fact, not known to most of his critics, that his style is, in reality, a hereditary and family style. This singular circumstance was observed long ago by the Rev. Edward Irving, who, on visiting Mr. Carlyle's family, and conversing with his father, remarked to his son: "I have often wondered how you had acquired that peculiar peculiar, original, and forcible manner of expressing your ideas; but I have now discovered you inherit it from your father." Indeed, we have a strong persuasion that some acquaintance with Mr. Carlyle's parentage, juvenile training, and early history, is necessary to rightly understanding and appreciating his intellectual character, mental biases, and peculiar opinions. To these we purpose briefly to draw the attention of our readers. This we do the more willingly as we regard Mr. Carlyle as a noble example of what may be achieved by energy, perseverance, and talents rightly directed, in spite of the disadvantage of early position; exhibiting, at the same time, the importance of a virtuous example and education to youth. Every man, it is true, cannot be a Carlyle; but every man has talents of some description, which might be made available to society, and to the advancement in life of the individual possessor; and it will be his own fault and loss if they are not turned to right account. Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan (i. e., the Church of St. Fechan), in Dumfries-shire, in 1796. His family, it is said, can trace their descent from the rough old Border Barons, Lords of Torthorwald, of other days, who rejoiced, most of all, in a wellfought battle-field or border foray. His father, James Carlyle, was a creditable Annandale farmer, in comfortable rather than affluent circumstances, who owed his position in society to his own energy, judicious economy, and active exertion. Mentally considered, he was a very remarkable man, possessed of strong natural sense and very superior intelligence for his opportunities and station in society; and was much respected for his moral worth and inflexible honesty. He abounded in rich sarcastic wit; and the originality of his mind was strikingly apparent in the expression of his ideas, even in his ordinary style of conversation, which was unlike that of any other man's. Decision of character, firmness of purpose, and an unswerving love of truth and honesty characterised all his dealings and transactions in life. But while resolutely just and honest himself, and little disposed to palliate even his own faults, he had not much toleration for the faults and shortcomings of others. The sworn enemy he was of all scoundrelism, knavery, and rascality, whatever guise they might assume; a man who abhorred a liar as the gates of hell;' would have hurled a thunderbolt at the head of a traitor, and trampled a tyrant in the dust; a true village Hampden' he might be called,' who never feared the face of man; no fiercer enemy of unveracityveritable as the old rocks-an unwedgable and gnarled block of manhood.' One might be almost tempted to believe that his eminent son had transferred the leading features of his father's character to his portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, so much similarity may be observed-no unassignable cause of Mr. Carlyle's marked marked partiality for his hero. In intellectual power, however, the royal prototype falls considerably short; still more in qualities of heart. Of the two men, the Scottish yeoman, as it appears to us, was intrinsically much the nobler, and more kingly. Like Cincinnatus of old, he lived and laboured on his little farm with independent and honourable frugality, an example to his neighbourhood of every manly and Christian virtue; guiding his affairs with wisdom and prudence, and governing his family with parental kindness united to parental authority. A slight leaning he might sometimes indicate to the severer virtues, which are not the least needed in this foolish, frivolous, and losel world of ours. This worthy man gave to his country a numerous family, endowed with the same virtues and qualities which had enabled himself to accomplish the journey of life with a desirable measure of comfort and independence. On one son he bestowed an excellent medical education-Dr. John A. Carlyle-who is not only a skilful physician, but a man of high literary attainments, which is abundantly evinced in his translation of Dante. His eldest son, Thomas-a man of eminent learning and genius, and well known as a distinguished writer-is the author, among other productions, of the Life of Frederick the Great,' recently published-a work of which the value of the workmanship greatly exceeds that of the materials; and it may be left in doubt whether the author be not a man of higher mark than the hero he undertakes to celebrate. If the genius of Livy was equal to the majesty of the Roman empire, the genius of Carlyle is assuredly not unequal to the majesty of Frederick II. of Prussia. Yet there are individuals still to be found who will confidently affirm that naturally, in mental capacity, Carlyle the son is inferior to Carlyle the father. He was an earnest Christian man withal, happy in his religion, and one who never entertained a doubt of its spiritual power and divine authority; a man who could accept of no apology for irreligion and immorality from any one, however eminent and high in rank, though ready to honour virtue in the meanest garb. Mr. Carlyle's mother was also regarded as a very superior, sensible, and pious woman, altogether worthy of her excellent husband. Both were adherents of the dissenting Presbyterian Church founded by the Erskines, which was, at that period, perhaps the most rigid in discipline and strict in morals of any of the Calvinistic denominations, and still retained much of the stern old covenanting spirit. Under the watchful eye and careful religious training of such parents, young Carlyle passed his tender years. From them he received his first knowledge of right and wrong, his first notions of his being's use and end.' His earliest convictions in regard to all the relative and social duties of life were impressed upon his young susceptible mind by their precepts and and example; and the impressions he then received have remained with him through life, legibly stamped on his character and writings. Whatever may be his own opinions on the evidences of Christianity, he has lived by the faith' of his venerated parents; the impress of their character left upon his mind has never been effaced. His highest wisdom, his noblest sentiments, his finest sense of honour, integrity, veracity, and every moral duty are, with him, all hereditary-the rich legacy left him by parental precept and example. Hence his wisdom is just the rare old Hebrew wisdom, issuing, as he might say, from the inmost heart of nature, shedding light and guidance on man's darkling path; though dressed up in a garb of philosophy, and embellished with flowers of rhetoric and flashes of oratory. His good father had not got quit of that old-fashioned notion that Solomon was, in reality, the wisest of men, with the exception of Him who 'spake as never man spake.' The Hebrew monarch was very much in the habit of looking into the inner facts of nature,' and of measuring men and their doings by the eternal laws of the universe, or laws of the eternal Maker of the universe. In that old Hebrew wisdom, which we call the revealed will of God,' Mr. Carlyle was carefully instructed in his youthful years. He still acknowledges the precepts therein contained as the 'eternal laws of the universe,' the will and purpose of the divine Maker of the universe, divine laws, the violation of which must inflict on men and nations unspeakable misery and ruin, and in the keeping of which there is a great reward-guidance towards their true good in this life, the portal of infinite good in a life to come." With a noble inspiration, caught from his father's faith and mother's piety, and the terrible earnestness and fervent spirit of an old Scottish Covenanter-the sword lying across the Bible-he follows in the steps of the royal Hebrew Preacher, who astonished the ancient world with his wisdom; or appropriates and enjoins apostolic precepts with the zeal and eloquence of the disciple of Gamaliel. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' says the Preacher. There where thou art, work, work,' says Carlyle; whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it,-with the hand of a man, not of a phantasm; be that thy unnoticed blessedness.' Do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God,' enjoins the prophet. Humbly and valiantly with God,' adds Carlyle; struggling to make the earth heavenly; instead of walking sumptuously and pridefully with Mammon, leaving the earth to grow hellish as it liked.' And so of other Christian duties: Labour not to be rich,' for that is mammon-worship;' The love of money is the root of all evil.' Carlyle approves of rigorous discipline and enforcement of duty. So it seems did Solomon: Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from |