22 JUNE 1901, Page 26

Makers of the Nineteenth Century. By Richard A. Armstrong, BA.

(T. Fisher Unwin. 3s. 6d. net.)—These sketches of character and work—they are sketches rather than studies—do not call for detailed criticism. Of each of these "makers "—Carlyle, Darwin, Gladstone, "George Eliot," and Bradlaugh, and the others— there is much to be said that Mr. Armstrong has not said. But, then, he did not mean to say it. How could he with semething less than twenty pages for each ? There were two Bradlaughs, for instance, the fiery "iconoclast" who did, though Mr. Arm- strong doubts it, actually deny the existence of God, and the sobered thinker of later years. "George Eliot," too, was markedly more cynical in her later books than in her earlier. Mazzini, also, had his limitations. But Mr. Armstrong does not concern him- self with these things. His portraits have not the "warts," but they have fine, and sometimes even masterly, outlines.