This book is full of humanity, and nothing is more excellent in this as in all Mr.
Carlyle's works than the attitude of the writer.

He has the dignity of a man of letters, who knows what belongs to him, and never deviates from his sphere; a continuer of the great line of scholars, and sustains their office in the highest credit and honour.

If the good heaven have any good word to impart to this unworthy generation, here is one scribe qualified and clothed for its occasion.

One excellence he has in an age of Mammon and of criticism, that he never suffers the eye of his wonder to close.
Let who will be the dupe of trifles, he cannot keep his eye oft from that gracious Infinite which embosoms us.
As a literary artist he has great merits, beginning with the main one that he never wrote one dull line.

How well-read, how adroit, what thousand arts in his one art of writing; with his expedient for expressing those unproven opinions which he entertains but will not endorse, by summoning one of his men of straw from the cell,--and the respectable Sauerteig, or Teufelsdrockh, or Dryasdust, or Picturesque Traveler, says what is put into his mouth, and disappears.