.. had escaped him.... There are no mistakes. Military
students in Germany are set to learn Frederick's battles in Carlyle's
account of them."
During the interval between those tours there are few events of interest
in Carlyle's outer, or phases of his inner life which have not been
already noted. The year 1854 found the country ablaze with the excitement
of the Crimean War, with which he had as little sympathy as had Cobden
or Bright or the members of Sturge's deputation. He had no share in the
popular enthusiasm for what he regarded as a mere newspaper folly. All
his political leaning was on the side of Russia, which, from a safe
distance, having no direct acquaintance with the country, he always
admired as a seat of strong government, the representative of wise
control over barbarous races. Among the worst of these he reckoned the
Turk, "a lazy, ugly, sensual, dark fanatic, whom we have now had for 400
years. I would not buy the continuance of him in Europe at the rate of
sixpence a century." Carlyle had no more faith in the "Balance of power"
than had Byron, who scoffed at it from another, the Republican, side as
"balancing straws on kings' noses instead of wringing them off," _e.g._--
As to Russian increase of strength, he writes, I would wait
till Russia meddled with me before I drew sword to stop his
increase of strength.
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