censure; whilst the reader will note with delight, applied to the
trifling concerns of life, those extraordinary gifts of observation
and apprehension which have so often charmed him in the pages of
history and biography.

These peccant volumes contain but four sketches: one of his father,
written in 1832; the other three, of Edward Irving, Lord Jeffrey, and
Mrs. Carlyle, all written after the death of the last-named, in 1866.

The only fault that has been found with the first sketch is, that in
it Carlyle hazards the assertion that Scotland does not now contain
his father's like. It ought surely to be possible to dispute this
opinion without exhibiting emotion. To think well of their forbears is
one of the few weaknesses of Scotchmen. This sketch, as a whole, must
be carried to Carlyle's credit, and is a permanent addition to
literature. It is pious, after the high Roman fashion. It satisfies
our finest sense of the fit and proper. Just exactly so should a
literate son write of an illiterate peasant father. How immeasurable
seems the distance between the man from whom proceeded the thirty-four
volumes we have been writing about and the Calvinistic mason who
didn't even know his Burns!--and yet here we find the whole distance
spanned by filial love.

The sketch of Lord Jeffrey is inimitable. One was getting tired of
Jeffrey, and prepared to give him the go-by, when Carlyle creates him
afresh, and, for the first time, we see the bright little man
bewitching us by what he is, disappointing us by what he is not. The
spiteful remarks the sketch contains may be considered, along with
those of the same nature to be found only too plentifully in the
remaining two papers.