This feature was especially marked in his next work, Sartor Resartus, professedly a translation from a German treatise on the philosophy of clothes. In this curious miscellany, under a quaint form, and in a diction and phraseology strangely outlandish, the author ventilates his opinions on a great variety of subjects, and with a freshness, vigor, and acuteness of thought, that show on every page the master-hand. Sartor Resartus gave Carlyle his first strong hold upon the public mind; and he has been recognized ever since as a leading force in the world of opinion.

His subsequent works have been Chartism; Hero-Worship; Past and Present; Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell; Life of John Sterling; Latter-Day Pamphlets; The French Revolution; and Life of Frederick the Great. He has published also five volumes of Miscellanies.

Mr. Carlyle has a great contempt for weakness, either in individuals or in races, and a corresponding admiration for strength, and is not far from saying, in so many words, that might makes right. Indeed, his special delight is in saying and boldly avowing whatever is glaringly paradoxical. His chief heroes, above all other men, are Mohammed, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great. He is provokingly arrogant and dogmatic, and yet he charms and fascinates. He calls us all fools, blockheads, knaves, scoundrels, and yet he does it with such an imperial air, that we all like to hear him; we listen to his voice as though it were verily that of Jupiter Tonans speaking audibly from Mount Olympus.

Ruskin.

JOHN RUSKIN, 1819 is the father of the modern English school of art-criticism, and one of the greatest masters of English prose.

Mr. Ruskin is a native of London. He studied at Oxford, and received lessons in drawing and painting from Copley, Fielding, and others.

The majority of critics and even of ordinary readers are not disposed to assent unqualifiedly to the critical dictation of Mr. Ruskin; yet no one certainly has given such an impetus to the cause of art, no one has succeeded in interesting so many readers in matters of art, and arousing them to active thought and inquiry on the subject. No one has done more to free art from conventionalism and superficiality, and to reveal its spirit and its depth. At the same time, Mr. Ruskin labors under many serious defects. He is diffuse and digressive, at times even to incoherency. He is illogical, overbearing in statement, a fanatical high-priest of art. Nor is he even willing to abide by his own vocation, but makes it a point of starting for all kinds of digression upon literature, philosophy, morals, etc.

In general it may be said that his morals are sound, but his philosophisings are thin, and his literary criticisms untrustworthy. Some of them, indeed, are so absurdly incorrect as to provoke merriment. He never seems to have attained, for instance, any idea of the dramatic element in poetry. With all his errors and shortcomings, however, Ruskin's services in behalf of art are too great and too manifold to be unjustly underrated.

Works. His earliest work was Modern Painters, intended to show their superiority over the ancients in landscape painting. This was followed by the Seven Lamps of Architecture, i. e., the seven moral or psychical principles of architecture. In 1851 appeared what will probably be regarded by future generations as his greatest work, The Stones of Venice, accompanied by examples of Venetian architecture. Ruskin devoted to this work years of patient toil and study, copying on the spot all the chief architectural features of the city. Many of the originals have already disappeared, or

will soon disappear, through decay and neglect or in the march of so-called modern improvement.

In addition to these greater works, Ruskin has delivered and published a great number of lectures on various art-subjects. One of his most interesting sketches is that on Pre-Raphaelitism. He has also prepared an excellent manual on the Elements of Drawing, and a similar one on Perspective. His latest work, under the fanciful title of the Queen of the Air, is a study of the Greek myths of cloud and storm. His lectures on Work, Traffic, and War, by their unjust strictures on the American Civil War, just then closed, gave no little offence to his American admirers.

Mr. Ruskin has one idol in art, and that idol is Turner. No one is disposed, of course, to deny Turner's supremacy in landscape painting. But Ruskin's incessant harping upon Turner's excellence becomes at times intolerable.

Ruskin's powers of description, although often over-exerted, are very great, and his style has the great merit of suggestiveness. No one with a cultivated mind can read at random in Ruskin's writings without seizing and carrying off some idea capable of indefinite development by the reader himself. This it is, after all, which constitutes the lasting merit of Ruskin's works.

Max Müller.

FREDERICK MAX MÜLLER, 1823 —, has done a signal public service, and has connected himself indissolubly with English letters, by his successive works on the Science of Language.

Prof. Müller is a native of Germany, and the son of the well-known German poet Wilhelm Müller, commonly called Maler Müller, because of his being both painter and poet. Max Müller has passed by far the greater part of his life in England, and has written nearly all his works in English. The foundations of his oriental researches, however, were laid in Germany and France, under the teachings of Brockhaus, Bopp, Rückert, Burnouf, and others.

His works may be grouped, in a general way, into two classes: those on comparative philology and mythology, and those on Sanscrit proper. The latter are embodied in the edition of the Rig-Veda, made by Müller for the East India Company; his translation of the Rig-Veda, of which the first volume has appeared; his Sanscrit Grammar; his History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature; and a number of scattered essays and contributions. As a writer on comparative philology and mythology, he is best known by his Lectures on the Science of Language, in two volumes, and by a number of articles that, for a long while, were scattered through reviews and scientific journals, but are now collected into a series of volumes entitled Chips from a German Workshop.

Max Müller occupies the chair of Modern Languages at Oxford, and is the most eminent Sanscrit scholar that England has possessed since the death of Wilson. He is here an original investigator, and his contributions to Sanscrit philology are second to those of none. In comparative philology, however, he is not so strong. His services in this branch are confined chiefly to connecting and popularizing the results of the labors of such men as Kühn, Oppert, Steinthal, Curtius, Julien, Wilhelm Humboldt. No one, perhaps, has done more to diffuse a knowledge of the general principles of philology and mythology than Max Müller. His style is clearness itself, and he is successful in investing even very abstruse subjects with a charm for the lay reader,

EDWARD YOUNG, --- of Cambridge, has called in question the dogmas on art propounded by Ruskin and others of the Pre-Raffaelite School. Mr. Young is

indeed the leader of the Anti-Ruskin party in art-criticism. He has published PreRaffaelitism, a popular inquiry into some newly-asserted principles connected with the philosophy, religion, and revolution of Art; The Harp of God, twelve Lectures on Liturgical Music, its import, history, present state, and reformation; Art, its constitution and capacities.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis.

SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS, 1806 is among the ablest and most original critics of the day, especially on historical subjects.

Sir George studied at Oxford, and was admitted to the bar, but never practised. He has held several important offices under the English Government, among them the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and he was for a brief time editor of the Edinburgh Review.

He has translated from the German Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens; K. 0. Müller's Dorier; the first half of K. O. Müller's History of the Literature of Greece, (from the author's MS.); the latter half was translated by J. W. Donaldson, who also completed the work left unfinished in the original. Besides these translations, Sir George has published a treatise On the Use and Abuse of Political Terms, On the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, and An Inquiry into the Credibil· ity of Early Roman History.

Sir George is a vigorous writer and able scholar, belonging to the so-called destruc. tive school of criticism. He rejects the entire early history of Rome, even Niebuhr's theory of it, as utterly without historic evidence. Whether or not future research may lead to a different conclusion, it is at all events certain that Sir George Lewis's fresh and independent spirit will always exercise a wholesome influence upon readers and scholars.

Prof. Latham.

ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, F. R. S., 1812 among English philologists.

holds a high rank

Prof. Latham is a native of Lincolnshire. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge; and in 1840 was appointed Professor of English Literature in University College, London.

Dr. Latham has published a number of works on philology and contributions to scientific journals. His best known writings are: A Translation of Tegner's Axel; A Treatise on the English Language; An Elementary English Grammar, for the use of schools; Man and his Migrations; Ethnology of Europe; and (just completed) Latham's and Todd's Johnson's Dictionary, in 4 vols., 4to. Latham's contributions to the study and to the right teaching of the English language are of great practical as well as scientific value.

WILLIAM MURE, 1799–1860, gained distinction as a writer on the literature of Greece.

He was a native of Scotland, and was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently in Germany. Colonel Mure, as he is generally styled, is the author of a Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands, which was received with great favor.

His chief work is A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Greece, from

the Earliest Period to the Death of Solon, in 5 vols. This is a most valuable contribution to the study of Greek literature in its formative period, and covers the so-called Homeric or Epic period. Col. Mure takes very decided ground against the views of Wolf and his followers, and maintains strenuously Homeric unity. The work has been supplemented recently, but not superseded, by Gladstone's Studies on Homer, and the two constitute the most complete course of critical reading for the English student. Col. Mure was honored in 1855 with the election to the Lord-Rectorship of the University of Glasgow.

Craik.

GEORGE L. CRAIK, 1799-1866, was Professor of English Literature and History, in Queen's College, Belfast.

His writings are numerous, and are extremely valuable for their accuracy and their many beauties of style and diction. He was one of the leading contributors to the Penny Cyclopædia, in the department of history and biography. He also wrote a large part of Knight's Pictorial History of England, 8 vols., r. 8vo, contributing to it the articles on religion, commerce, industry, and literature. His separate publications are: Romance of the Peerage, 4 vols., 8vo; Bacon, his Writings and Philosophy, 3 vols., 18mo; Spenser and his Poetry, 3 vols., 18mo; Paris and its Historical Scenes, 2 vols., 18mo; Evils of Popular Tumults, 18mo; History of British Commerce, 3 vols., 18mo; Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties, 5 vols., 18mo; History of English Literature and Language, 6 vols., 18mo. The last-named work has been republished in the United States in two large vols., 8vo, and is one of the very best works on the subject yet printed.

"Scrupulous accuracy, unwearied research, and sound criticism, united with an ardent desire for the safe and gradual advance of all that may practically improve the condition of society, are the leading characteristics of Mr. Craik's writings.” Knight's Eng. Cyclopædia.

James Mill.

JAMES MILL, 1773-1836, was a writer of note on subjects connected with statesmanship and political economy.

Mr. Mill belongs properly to the preceding chapter, but he is mentioned here on account of the connection of himself and his opinions with his illustrious son, John Stuart Mill.

Mr. Mill was a native of Scotland. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards removed to London, and became a writer for the reviews, chiefly the Edinburgh.

Mr. Mill's chief work is his History of British India, in 5 vols. It is conceived and written in a manner exactly the reverse of Sir John Malcolm's history. Sir John's style is lively and agreeable, that of Mr. Mill is heavy; Sir John extols the administration of the East India Company, Mr. Mill systematically exposes all its faults and errors. Mill's history is the better work of the two; it is conceived in a more philosophic spirit, and is also more accurate. Notwithstanding the freedom of its criticisms, it obtained for the author the position of Head of the India Correspondence in the India House.

A number of Mr. Mill's essays, which appeared originally in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, were collected and published in book-form, in 1828. They are upon Liberty of the Press, Jurisprudence, Prison Reform, Education, etc. Their 46*

2 K

republication was the occasion of a lively controversy between Macaulay and Bentham, carried on in the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews. Mill was an intimate friend of Bentham, and an inculcator of his views. He published also the Elements of Political Economy, 1821, and an Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 1829.

John Stuart Mill.

JOHN STUART MILL, 1806-1873, a son of James Mill, the historian of India, was educated in London, entered the India service, and succeeded his father as Head of the Indian Correspondence.

John Stuart Mill was a contributor to the leading reviews, and was, for several years, co-editor of the Westminster. He also took a prominent part in politics, and was honored with an election to Parliament. He belonged to the radical, progressive

party in England. His essay on the State of Philosophy in England and his review of Whately's Logic attracted great attention.

Besides his scattered pieces, Mr. Mill edited Jeremy Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, and published the following works: A System of Logic, 2 vols.; Principles of Political Economy, 2 vols.; An Essay On Liberty; and An Essay On the Subjection of Woman; and he left unpublished an Autobiography.

John Stuart Mill was during his life the most prominent writer in England on political economy. What final position his works may occupy in the realms of thought and letters cannot yet be pronounced.

As a writer on philosophical or abstract subjects, no one ever surpassed Mr. Mill for clearness and cogency of statement. As a scholar, his reputation was great and well founded. As a thinker, he was clear-headed and earnest. Whether or not his views are sound, still remains to be proven. Many, even of the same party, fear that they are too ultra, too theoretical to be applied with safety to practical subjects. His treatise on the Subjection of Woman is undoubtedly justified as a protest against the legal status of woman in England. But its positive side, the claims which it puts forth in behalf of woman's intellectual and artistic equality with man, must be regarded as anything but established. In political economy, Mr. Mill was a champion of free-trade, and a fearless opponent of the present absorption of land in England by a few enormously wealthy owners.

RT. HON. JAMES WILSON, M. P., 1805-1860, was born at Hawick, Scotland. After failing as a tradesman, he turned his attention to political economy, and became very distinguished, both as a writer on that subject, and as a political administrator. He began in 1843 The Economist, which he conducted for many years with marked ability, and he has received from the Government a series of important appointments connected with the administration of the finances, the last being that of Financial member of the Council of India. His career in India in putting its finances in a healthy and vigorous condition was one of brilliant success, though cut short by his death after being there only a year. He published Capital, Currency, and Banking; a collection of articles from The Economist; The Revenues, or What Should the Chancellor Do? Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures; Influence of the Corn Laws; Financial Measures for India.