d been our fate to be
eye-witnesses. The division into chapters, embracing masses of
intimately connected events, gives a clearness to the historical
sequence that otherwise might have been only too easily confused, while,
at the same time, the individual events in each chapter are described
with a clearness and a vividness quite invaluable.

I read the work in the original, and the impression it made upon me was
thus free from the disturbing influence of a foreign medium. I found
myself listening to the words of a patriotic Briton, who finds it
impossible to regard the actions of the enemy with a favourable eye,--an
honest citizen this, whose desire is, that while political
considerations shall always receive due weight, the demands of morality
shall never be overlooked; one who, while the enemy is borne along in
his wanton course of good fortune, cannot forbear to point with warning
finger to the inevitable consequences, and in his bitterest disaster can
with difficulty find him worthy of a tear.

The book was in yet another respect of the greatest importance to me, in
that it brought back to my remembrance events through which I had
lived--now showing me much that I had overlooked, now transplanting me
to some unexpected standpoint, thus forcing me to reconsider a question
which I had looked upon as settled, and in a special manner putting me
in a position to pass judgment upon the unfavourable critics of this
book--for these cannot fail--and to estimate at their true value the
objections which are sure to be made from their side. From all this you
will understand how the end of last year could have brought with it no
gift more welcome to me than this book. The work has become to me as it
were a golden net, wherewith I can recover from out the waves of Lethe
the shadowy pictures of my past life, and in that rich draught I am
finding my present employment.

I intend making a few remarks to the same purpose in the next number of
_Kunst und Alterthum_.[527]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[526] It is much to be regretted that Scott and Carlyle never met. The
probable explanation is that the admirable letter now printed _in
extenso_, coming into a house where there was sickness, and amid the
turmoil of London life, was carefully laid aside for reply at a more
convenient season. This season, unfortunately, never came. Scott did not
return to Scotland until June 3d, and by that time Carlyle