Is it so?
Truth is very old, but the merit of seers is not to invent but to dispose objects in their right places, and he is the commander who is always in the mount, whose eye not only sees details, but throws crowds of details into their right arrangement and a larger and juster totality than any other.

The book makes great approaches to true contemporary history, a very rare success, and firmly holds up to daylight the absurdities still tolerated in the English and European system.

It is such an appeal to the conscience and honour of England as cannot be forgotten, or be feigned to be forgotten.

It has the merit which belongs to every honest book, that it was self-examining before it was eloquent, and so hits all other men, and, as the country people say of good preaching, "comes bounce down into every pew." Every reader shall carry away something.

The scholar shall read and write, the farmer and mechanic shall toil, with new resolution, nor forget the book when they resume their labour.
Though no theocrat, and more than most philosophers, a believer in political systems, Mr.Carlyle very fairly finds the calamity of the times, not in bad bills of Parliament, nor the remedy in good bills, but the vice in false and superficial aims of the people, and the remedy in honesty and insight.