Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-03-26

Commons. In fact his intellectual emf
nence was such that his contemporaries
seem never to have thought of questioning
it, and whichever side he was on felt itself
assured of success But it is disagreeable to
observe that Charles Fox threw himself
into the arms of the Kings party without
solicitation, and that he distinguished him.
self by his utter want of scruple and prin-
ciple in assailing that freedom of the press
which afterwards he did SO much to enlarge
and fortify His effrontery and readiness were
equally amazing, and his great powers were
at this period lavishly employed in seconding
the unconstitutional efforts of the King to
reduce the Commons to mere council of
registration, and to transform England into
personal monarchy of the absolutist kind.
This attempt was made at perhaps the very
climax of political corruption in English his
tory, and the fact that Charles Fox should
afterwards have become leader of opposi-
ton is not one of the least convincing proofs
of the fragrant corruption of the age. We,
in short, think that Mr. Trevelyan has, quite
unconsciously to himself, demonstrated the
hopeless absence of principle in his hero's
character Fox was at the beginning head
long, reckless, impudent supporter of thor
oughly vicious government. He stopped at
nothing while filling that role, and he was far
too sagacious and full-minded not to realize
the implications of his position. If, there
fore, at a later period he quilted the ministe
rial benches, and became a champion of pop
ular causes, it cannot be supposed that he
had acquired new convictions, but rather
that he had recourse to the popular side as the
most profitable. 1t must be remembered, how
ever, that the age was vile and yenal, and
that Fox was in few respects worse than his
followers. 1t was time of public gam
bling, of drunkenness in high places, of
three and six bottle statesmen, of shameless
venality, of noble thieves, of Haunting rascali-
ty in all shapes. Yet it was an age when
the letters of Junius made the most powerful
vince and shrink when John Wilkes
laughed to scor1 the full energy of royal and
ministerial hostility when the press, though
still muzzled, was beginning to realize its
power and to try conclusions with those who
sought to confne it. It was, in short, a
transition period, full of chaos and the ex-
piring embers Of effete things; full also of
crude and untried agencies and influences
and potencies vigorous if immoral, and capa-
bic of publication, however debauched A
more graphic and fascinating picture of such
an age has never been drawn than this. Mr..
Trevelyan possesses very much more than the
style of his great relative. He has absorbed
also something of the genius of Lord Macau.
lay. We trust that he will not stop here, but
that in future volumes he will continue the
history of Fox's chequered and exciting pub
lie career.
"REMINISCENCES By THOMAS CARLYLE Edited by
James Anthony Froude. New York Charles
Scribner's Sons.
In this volume Mr.. Froude has given the
world some fragments of photographed
Renaissance from the great treasury of
Carlylean relics in his possession. He
states in the preface that he was chosen
by Carlyle as the writer of his life, and that
to that end the fullest materials were placed
in his hands. The sketches which comprise
the present volume were found among Car
lyle's papers in practically complete state,
and as they embrace many very interesting
and characteristic things, they were put to
press without delay. 1t must be said that
Carlyle's "reminiscences are not altogether
calculated to sooth his contemporaries, for it
is made plain in the course of them that he
carried into private life very much of the
eynicism and contempt for his fellows which
are so abundantly exhibited in his writings
We take the fact to be that Carlyle owed
a good deal of his peculiar humor to the
stern and gloomy Scotch Calvinism in which
he had been reared. and to the chronic dys-
pepsia which made his later years so full of
physical suffering. 1t is we think impossible
to accept his views of society as the output
tings of thoroughly sane intelligence. He
saw all things through dark mist which
emanated from his own morbid condition
and the result was that he formed quite
mistaken judgments of many things. His
honest and healthy hatred of shams was the
influence which alone preserved him from
becoming fantastic and irrational, and even
that was at times powerless to stem the tor
rent OF atrabilious humor that swept over his
mind.
Yet this book shows that with all his
cynicism he was capable of great reverences.
This would be more surprising if it did not
appear upon close investigation that he had
so to speak created the shrines at which
he worshiped. This is tendency to which
very clever men are always liable. They
see through the superficial merits of their con-
temporaries. They perceive clearly that the
current judgment of the world as to its exist
ing celebrities is often quite false and fool
ish. They refuse TO bow down before sham
gods. But at the same time they console
themselves by setting up deities of their
own whose divine attributes few others would
recognize, and who are in fact idealized from
very ordinary materials. Thus John Stuart
Mill elevated his wife upon pinnacle of ador-
alton the revelation of which fairly amazed
all his and her friends, for his posthumous
publication regarding her described person
never recognized by them during her lifetime;
and SO they said to themselves, as inferior
and narrow natures always say with satisfac.
ton on such occasions: So THIS image
also had feet of clayl"
Carlyle's reverence for his father is of this
character. His father was evidently very
commonplace, Manufactured, taciturn, grim
old Scotchman, knowing well how to perform
a mason's work, but possessing little other
knowledge of any but the poorest and mar
rowest kind. Him Carlyle sets upon a
pinnacle and idealizes, yet without at all
efectually concealing the generally unlovely
features of his idol. A certain rugged,
homely virtue, certain massive honesty
and iusistance upon reality and thoroughness,
serve to show where the son derived his saw