as embodying some potent idea, attain to a permanent place in the world
of letters. Many a great book ceases very early to command readers:
and many books continue to be read although they are far from great.

The first question that arises is this:--Do the chief works of Carlyle
belong to that class of books which attain an enduring and increasing
power, or to that class which effect great things for one or two
generations and then become practically obsolete? It would not be safe
to put his masterpieces in any exclusive sense into either of these
categories; but we may infer that they will ultimately tend to the
second class rather than the first. Books which attain to an enduring
and increasing power are such books as the _Ethics_, the _Politics_,
and the _Republic_, the _Thoughts_ of Marcus Aurelius and of
Vauvenargues, the _Essays_ of Bacon and of Hume, Plutarch's _Lives_ and
Gibbon's _Rome_. In these we have a mass of pregnant and ever-fertile
thought in a form that is perennially luminous and inspiring. It can
hardly be said that even the masterpieces of Carlyle--no! not the
_Revolution_, _Cromwell_, or the _Heroes_--reach this point of immortal
wisdom clothed with consummate art. The "personal equation" of
Teufelsdröckhian humour, its whimsies, and conundrums, its wild
outbursts of hate and scorn, not a few false judgments, and perverse
likes and dislikes--all this is too common and too glaring in the
Carlylean cycle, to permit its master to pass into the portals where
dwell the wise, serene, just, and immortal spirits. Not of such is the
Kingdom of the literary Immortals.

On the other hand, if these masterpieces of sixty years ago are not
quite amongst the great books of the world, it would be preposterous to
regard them as obsolete, or such as now interest only the historian of
literature. They are read to-day practically as much as ever, and are