other truth will disclose themselves in God's own time. Welcoming all vigorous and genuine utterances on either side, we value such works as the best of Miss Yonge's, for their truthful and inspiriting delineations of life from an affirmative and spiritual point of view. But we must always regret that they are marred by a feeble reverence for damnatory theories and sacerdotal fictions, which obscures their spiritual beauty, and must tend to narrow the hearts of those who accept it for truth. We should regret this the more, did we not believe that a large proportion of her readers are more discriminating on these points than herself, and are able, with whatever consciousness of moral and intellectual shortcomings, to repose peacefully on that truth which she has yet to learn,-that, under all creeds and at all times,

ART. X.-THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DR. ALEXANDER CARLYLE.

Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk; containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1860.

A LIFE extending from the year 1722 to the year 1805, and an autobiographical record of its chief incidents down to the year 1770, would, in the case of almost any one, be tempting to the taste not only of the professed antiquary and historian, but of the mass of readers generally. The impressions of men and manners, formed by one who lived through a period commencing while Jacobite conspiracies were still rife in England and Scotland, and before the hopes of the exiled Stuarts had been raised to the highest pitch, and depressed to almost hopeless despondency by the vicissitudes of "the '45,"-and terminating when Great Britain was engaged in a struggle for existence against the imperial despot whose genius had grasped and directed the energies of French Jacobinism, could hardly in the case of any man, however insignificant his position, or however limited his capacity for observation and criticism, fail to convey much curious information beyond the regular his

torians of the period, and throw unintentional light on many obscure points of individual character and national habits. The present autobiography, however, has much more substantial claims on our attention, proceeding as it does from a man who was most favourably situated for gathering and placing on record the feelings and impressions, both of the "vulgar herd" and of the most cultivated and distinguished men of his times, and whose qualifications for availing himself of his opportunities were very much above the average. The Boswellian theory, that the best impression of a great and wise man is to be derived from the gossiping recollections of a very little and very foolish one, whether true or not as an explanation of a singular fact, represents one extreme in the classification of successful memoirwriting, of which such reminiscences as those of Dr. Alexander Carlyle supply us with the other, and between which there is. perhaps to be found little except dull or decent mediocrity. The complete absence of judgment and of the power of critical observation is, perhaps, the next best feature in a biographer to the possession of both these qualities in high perfection; but we may surely claim for the latter the superiority in interest as well as in value. If the former amuses us by its purposeless garrulity, and leaves us in the unfettered exercise of our own faculty of estimating and conceiving character, so making us ourselves do the work of biographers; on the other hand, a masterly delineation of men and occurrences can never supersede the work of the thoughtful reader, though it may define and influence its direction and result, while the least reflecting mind will own the charm of its artistic power.

Dr. Carlyle was a minister of the Established Church of Scotland. The semi-judicial position and exceptional experience of the clergy ought, one might suppose, to render them peculiarly skilful discerners and interpreters of character. They are placed in a sacred chair of spiritual authority, from which they can peruse and study at their leisure the open volume of the motives and actions of their parishioners. But, allowing for exceptions which render the general rule more striking, we do not find among the clergy this clear insight into their fellowmen in a preeminent degree. It may be that their too great. familiarity with the scenes of every-day life renders them less prone to analyse their distinctive features, just as it requires the keen eye of a stranger to detect the special beauties of a landscape on which an inhabitant has long gazed with unintelligent satisfaction. The salient points of character in the members of a parish flock connect themselves generally in the mind of their pastor with some question of local or social politics, or some ecclesiastical controversy. A man is a good Church

man or a Dissenter,-a Puseyite or an Evangelical,--a member of such a party in the vestry-meetings, an habitué of such or such a set in the intercourse of social life; and unless he be flagrantly profligate or aggressively eccentric, the analysis of his character is usually carried no further, or is lost among a host of disconnected or insignificant personal traits. But though Dr. Carlyle did not escape from some of the drawbacks incident to his clerical profession, and was a little too much inclined to classify men according to their approximation or divergence with respect to the "high-flying" and "wild," or the "moderate" and "Carlyle" party, he had so instinctive an appreciation of the peculiarities and minor varieties of character, and so remarkable a power of blending his observations into an harmonious and artistic portrait, that he emancipated himself in a great degree from the shackles of local associations, and drew materials from his pastoral experience which served him well in his wider observations of the outer world. The fact of his own as well as his father's living being in the neighbourhood of a centre of intellectual activity such as Edinburgh, and the friendships formed in his collegiate career, which brought him frequently into contact with the bustle of political life, and the wider experiences of aristocratic circles, must in any case have modified materially the role of a country clergyman, even had that role been more congenial to the bent of Dr. Carlyle's genius than it was. But congenial it can hardly be said to have been; and there was much truth in the complaint made in many quarters at the epoch of his entering on his clerical functions, that he was wanting in "grace." He was emphatically of the Sydney Smith type, and in the eyes of the more rigid professors of the Church of Scotland, into which the leaven of the old Covenanters still largely entered, his unemotional good sense, intolerant and unappreciative of all enthusiasm ; his satirical and somewhat bacchanalian humour; his boyish love of practical jokes; and his addiction to the society of young ladies at dancing assemblies, and of play-writers and players at theatres, must have seemed insuperable disqualifications for a minister of the Word. They were rendered all the more obnoxious because his life was in the most tangible points of morality above their censure, and because his ambitious and commanding mind was not satisfied with the erection of this independent standard of clerical morals, but sought to impress its own stamp on the Church of Scotland itself, by secularising the Presbyterian clergy, and converting the General Assembly into a branch of the civil polity. In the "politics" of the Church at that time Dr. Carlyle found that sphere for his intellectual activity which was not afforded by his pastoral

it

office; and by the preeminence into which this more and more brought him, he was thrown into a miscellaneous society, which supplied him with rich materials for his keen appreciation of character, and sharpened and improved it by constant and constantly-varied exercise.

This volume gives us a vivid impression of what the man must have been in the intercourse of social life in the days of his mature strength. His autobiography was commenced at an age when the pen usually drops from the languid fingers; yet, with the exception of a slight tendency to garrulity, occasional repetitions, and a general want of concentrative arrangement in his matter, it possesses all the freshness and vigour of unimpaired manhood. A more delightful and graphic picture of the every-day life of our ancestors it has never been our good fortune to meet with. The minuteness of record, which seems inconsistent with the lapse of time before the work of recollection was commenced, is explained by the Editor to a great degree by the existence of short diaries of the later portion of his life, and the consequent probability that there were formerly similar entries relating to the earlier portion, the chief points of which have been incorporated into the autobiography, so far as goes. The idea also of becoming his own biographer seems to have been entertained by him from an early period; and the habit of extempore preaching would enable him to compose and retain in his memory many passages of his narrative a long time before they were embodied in any systematic record. Of this there are traces in the verbal repetition of some of the incidents. A collection of autobiographical anecdotes, drawn up by him for the amusement of one of his friends, also gives the Editor some means of testing and occasionally of amplifying (in a note) the text of this autobiography itself. His correspondence, of which the Editor gives us some specimens in a rather dull "supplementary chapter," is very unequal to the biography, and seems to prove that the art of epistolary composition was not one of Dr. Carlyle's strong points. There is a straining at effect, and a ponderous and elaborate jocosity, which proves that the special gift of Charles Lamb was in this case wanting.* But it is a want of which the charming autobiography itself scarcely allows us to be sensible.

* Almost the solitary good thing in this correspondence is the following notice of a much-celebrated theory. Dr. Carlyle, it must be remembered, is writing to his friend Lady Frances Scott, sister of the Duke of Buccleuch. "Lord Monboddo, one of the most learned judges, is just about publishing a book in which he demonstrates that mankind walked originally on all fours, like other animals, and had tails like most of them. That it was most likely 5000 years before they learned to walk in an erect posture, and 5000 more before they could learn the use of speech. The females, he thinks, might speak two or three centuries

sooner."

We have spoken of the satirical humour of Dr. Carlyle. We are afraid that a touch of something approaching to ill-nature is almost essential to a clever delineator of contemporary characters. Every one must have felt how difficult it is to give a complete and lively picture of a friend to one who is unacquainted with him, without either suppressing some characteristic traits, or bringing into too strong a light some peculiar foible, which we identify so entirely with the individual, that we should scarcely recognise or perhaps love him so much without it, but the recital of which to a stranger might mar the whole effect of the favourable impression of our friend which we have been endeavouring to convey. It seems to require a common acquaintance with the subject of such a conversation, and a common appreciation of the commanding merits of his character to carry off the effects of the disparagement otherwise conveyed in this more minute description. At any rate, there appears to be strong need of the watchful eye of jealous affection during the delineation, ready to catch and correct at the moment the false impression as it arises in the face of the auditor. To the autobiographer, however, whose sketches of character will generally, as in the present case, pass under the eyes of an auditory who have no means of estimating the comparative weight of the censure and the praise, and who are influenced by little telling innuendos more than by elaborate praise, it is almost impossible to draw the features characteristically enough, without giving his sketch somewhat too much. of the appearance of an ill-natured caricature. It may be an essential of the craft of memoir-writing rather than any thing personal to Dr. Carlyle himself; for we find that his friendships were well chosen, firm, and lasting;-but still any one who runs his eye through the present volume and sees that scarcely one male friend of the writer, however panegyrical the terms in which he may be introduced on the stage, is dismissed without a parting touch of satirical disparagement, can hardly help turning to the speaking portrait which faces the title-page, and fancying that he detects in the curious curve of the lines of the eyebrow and mouth some indication of a disposition not altogether amiable, though far removed from positive cynicism.

The facts of Dr. Carlyle's life lie within small compass, and are not in themselves of any great variety or importance. He was, as already intimated, the son of a minister of the Scotch Kirk, whose parish was that Prestonpans which the defeat of Sir John Cope has rendered memorable in the annals of this country. He received the substantial part of his education at the University of Edinburgh, and, as we might have expected, the Church was the profession to which his natural tastes