Capricious it must, of necessity, become.  To be ironical always were insufferable; even for the sake of artistical effect, some personages; and some events, must be treated with a natural feeling of respect or abhorrence; yet if one murder is to be recorded with levity, why not another;—­if one criminal is to be dismissed with a jest, levelled perhaps at some personal oddity, why is an earnest indignation to be bestowed on the next criminal that comes under notice?  The distinctions that will be made will be not fair judgments, but mere favouritism.  Situated thus—­plain moral distinctions having been disparaged—­Mr Carlyle has given way to his admiration of a certain energy of character, and makes the possession of this sole excellence the condition of his favour, the title to his respect, or perhaps, we should say, to an immunity from his contempt.  The man who has an eye—­that is, who glares on you like a tiger—­he who, in an age of revolution, is most thoroughly revolutionary, and swallows all formulas—­he is made a hero, and honourable mention is decreed to him; whilst all who acted with an ill-starred moderation, who strove, with ineffectual but conscientious effort, to stay the wild movement of the revolution, are treated with derision, are dismissed with contempt, or at best with pity for their weakness.

His first hero is Mirabeau, a man of energy enough doubtless, and who had, in a most remarkable degree, that force of character which gives not only influence over, but a sort of possession of, other men’s minds, though they may claim far higher intellectual endowments.  For this one quality he is forgiven every thing.  The selfish ambition of which he must be more than suspected, is not glanced at.  Even the ridicule due to his inordinate vanity, is spared him.  “Yes support that head,” says this dying gladiator to his friend; “would I could bequeath it to thee!” And our caustic Diogenes withholds the lash.  As the history proceeds, Danton is elevated to the place of hero.  He is put in strong contrast with Robespierre.  The one is raised into simple admiration, the other sunk into mere contempt; both are spared the just execration which their crimes have merited.  The one good quality of Danton is, that, like Mirabeau, he had an eye—­did not see through logic spectacles—­had swallowed all formulas.  So that, when question is made of certain massacres in which he was implicated, we are calmly told “that some men have tasks frightfuller than ours.”  The one great vice of Robespierre is, that he lacked courage; for the rest, he is “sea-green and incorruptible”—­“thin and acrid.”  His incorruptibility is always mentioned contemptuously, and generally in connexion with his bilious temperament, as if they related as cause and effect, or were both alike matters of pathology.  Mr Carlyle has a habit of stringing together certain moral with certain physical peculiarities, till the two present themselves as of quite equal importance, and things of the same category.