Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/251

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following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to:—

"Well, I am now busy with Frederick the Great; I am not now astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to produce such a clear terse set of utterances; and yet I do not feel the work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after battles, lies after lies, called Diplomacy; it's fearful to read all this, and one wonders how he that set himself to this—He, of all men—could have the rare patience to produce such a laboured, heart-rending piece of work. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste of our moneys by our forefathers, to see our National Debt (the curse to our labour now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair chance of competition in our day) thus created, and for what? Even Carlyle cannot tell; then how are we to tell? Now, who will deliver us? that is the question; who will help us in these days of idle or no work, while our foreign neighbours have plenty and are actually selling their produce