Carlyle in his strange, half mad way, has entered the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and shown a vigour and wealth of resource which has no rival in the tourney play of these times--the indubitable champion of England.

Carlyle is the first domestication of the modern system, with its infinity of details, into style.

We have been civilising very fast, building London and Paris, and now planting New England and India, New Holland and Oregon--and it has not appeared in literature; there has been no analogous expansion and recomposition in books.
Carlyle's style is the first emergence of all this wealth and labour with which the world has gone with child so long.

London and Europe, tunneled, graded corn-lawed, with trade-nobility, and East and West Indies for dependencies, and America, with the Rocky Hills in the horizon, have never before been conquered in literature.

This is the first invasion and conquest.