Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

';212 LETTERS "VVEITTEIS BY THOMAS CARLYLE TOthe direction of Oliver Cromwell and our greatPuritan Civil War, what I call the 'Apotheosis ofProtestantism.' I do not count with any certaintythat I shall ever get a book out of it : but in themeanwhile it leads to various results for me ; acrossall the portentous rubbish and pedantry of twocenturies I have got a fair stout view, also, of theflaming sun-countenance of Cromwell,—and find itgreat and godlike enough, tho' entirely wwutterableto these days. Our Histories of him contemporaryand subsequent are numerous; all stupid,some of them almost infinitely stupid. The manremains imprisoned, as under Aetna Mountains ofrubbish; unutterable, I suppose, for ever. But themeaning of this preamble was that I had an inquiryto make of yon. Whether, namely, there exists inGerman any intelligent and intelligible Book aboutthe military antiquities of Gustavus Adolphus's time?Much in our Cromwell's methods of fighting &c.,remains obstinately obscure to me. I understandonly that it was the German and Swedish methodthe chief officers of our Civil War, especially greatmultitudes ofScotch, had served in the Thirty-Years'War. Often have I reflected, in gazing into militarypuzzles of that period, Would that 'I had Varnhagenhere, the soldier and thinker, to tell me what thismeans !I decide on asking, if there is any German Book,at least. But I fear there is none. We have a late