He is a fact, and not a shadow.  Alive in this year Forty-three, able and willing to do his work.  In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far.  Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances, have all changed and again changed; but the human battle-engine, in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size.

“Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on.  Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection—­this of successfully killing one another?  Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection.  It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding, and regimenting, you can make of men.  These thousand straight-standing, firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat, and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity; few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they?  Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets—­an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill.  But the persuasive sergeant came; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you have made them this!  Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining, and commanding among men.  Let no man despair of Governments who look on these two sentries at the Horse Guards!”—­P. 349.

Passages there are in the work which a political agitator might be glad enough to seize on; but, upon the whole, it is very little that Radicalism or Chartism obtain from Mr Carlyle.  No political party would choose him for its champion, or find in him a serviceable ally.  Observe how he demolishes the hope of those who expect, by new systems of election, to secure some incomparably pure and wise body of legislators—­some aristocracy of talent!

“We must have more wisdom to govern us, we must be governed by the wisest, we must have an aristocracy of talent! cry many.  True, most true; but how to get it?  The following extract from our young friend of the Houndsditch Indicator is worth perusing—­’At this time,’ says he, ’while there is a cry every where, articulate or inarticulate, for an aristocracy of talent, a governing class, namely, what did govern, not merely which took the wages of governing, and could not with all our industry be kept from misgoverning, corn-lawing, and playing the very deuce, with us—­it may not be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an aristocracy is!