'THO::\I.L S UAl{LYLE VOL. II. I'I/.lXTED BY SPOTTI:;WOODF. A D "0., XE\V...'1TREF.T !"QrARE LO"noX THOl\1AS OARLYLE A HISTORY OF HIS LIFE IN LONDON 1834-1881 BY JA lES ANTHONY FROUDE, ]'1.A. HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEOE, OXFORD WI1 II POlll'lIAI1' L'J.YGRA rEn OX òTETL lX TWo VOLU)l.E:-\ VUL. II. FUURTH i.'DIl'/US LOX])OX LON G 1\1 AN S, G H E E N, AN j) () o. IHH. All r-iyhl., , e .,.t'frl CONTENrrs 01:<' T 1 [E E C () N D Y ( ) L iT .M E. ---- CHAPTER XVII. A.D. 1849-50. Æ'f. 54-;;5. l'AGB Tour in Irelanil-The Irish problem- Impressions in the West- Gweedore- - \ddress at Derry-Return to Hcotland-The Highlands A shooting paradise Reflect.ions on it.-Liberty-Radicalism- Impatience with cant-Article on the Nigger question-" Latt.er- day Pamphlets' CHAPTER XVIlI. A.D. 18.')0. ÆT. 55-56. Reaction from 'Latter-day Pamphlet.s '-Acquaintance with :-\ir Rohert Peel-Dinner in Whitehall Place-Ball at Hath HOl!se- Peel's death-Estimate of Peel's character-Visit to South \Vale:- :::;avage Landor - 1\Ierthyr Tydvil-Scotsbrig- Dcsponilcney- Visits to Kcswick and COlli:,.ton - The Grange-Return to London 3 ' CHA}>TER XIX. A.n. 18õl-:!. ÆT. ;;6-57. Heviews of the Pamphlets-Cheyne ltor.-l'arty at the Grange- 'Life of :-;terling'- Iteception of it- Coleridge and his dbciplcs Hpiri- tual optics-lIyrle Park Exhibition A month at Malvcrn Scot- land-Trip to Paris with Lord Ashburton 6 CH \..PTER XÀ. A.D. 185]-2. ÆT. fi6-57. l'urpol>e formed to write on Frerlerick the tircat - The author of tIll" 'Handbook of Rpain '- .\ffticting visitors Studies for' Freileriek ' -- Visit to Linlathf'n-l'lCIlJû:"lCl tour in (;ermany RoUerdam The Rhine- Bonn-Homburg Frankfurt - "'arthmg Lutht'l rp, mini,..!;r!1('('b "'dmar Rf,rlin Return fn England <;. Yl CONTE.iYTS OF CHAPTER XXI. A.D. 1852-3. ÆT. 57-58. I'AGB The Grange-Cheyne ltow- The Cock Torment-Reflections-An im- proverl house-Funeral of the Duke of Wellington-Beginnings of 'Frederick '-The Grange again-An incident-Public opinion- )[other's illness-The demon fowls-Last letter to his mot.her- Her death-James Carlyle 1:!1 CHAPTER XXII. A.D. 1854. ÆT. 59. C'rimean war-Louis Napoleon-The sound-proof room-Dreams- Death of John Wilson-Charact.er of Wilson-A journal of a day - The economies of Cheyne Row-Carlyle's finances-Budget. of a Fe lll1Jle ill COIlljJ1"Ì.se 150 CHAPTER XXIII. A.D. I 854-j. ÆT. :i9-62. Difficulties over' Frederick '-Crimean war-Louis Napoleon in Eng- land- Edward Fitzgerald- Farlingay-Three weeks at Addis- combe-l\Irs. Carlyle and Lady Ashburton-Scotsbrig-Kinloch Luicharl - Lady Ashburton's death-Effect. on Carlyle-Soliturle in Cheyne Row-Riding costume-Frit.z-Completion of the first two volumes of ' Frederick '-Carlyle as a historian I ï2 CHÁ-\ PTER XXIV. A.D. 1858. ÆT. 63. }\ight in a railway train-Annandale-lVIeditations-A new ward- robe-Visit to Craigenputtock-Second tour in Germany-The Isle of Riig-en-Putbus-Berlin -Silesia-Prag-Weimar-Aix- Fredcrick's battle-tieltls and Carlyle's description of them- Re- turn to Englaml- econd marriage of Lorrl Ashburt.on . :!OIi ('HAPTElt XXV. A.D. 18.39-62. ÆT. 64-67. Efrects of a literary life upon the character-Evenings in Cheyne Row ummer in Fife-Vi!'it t.o Rir Gcorge Sinclair, Thurso Castle- :\1rs. Carlylc's Health - Dcath of Arthur Clough-Intimacy with :\Ir. Ituskin Party at the> {hange- Description of John Keble- . Unto this T.a 1 :!:H THE SECOND VOLUAJE. VII l' HAPTER XXY1. A.D. 1864. ÆT. 69. PAGJ< Personal intercourse- Daily habits-Charities-Conversat ion-l\lo- d.em science anrl its tendencies-Faith without sight - Bishop Colen so-The Broad Church School-Literature-l\lisfortunes of Fritz-Serious accident to Mrs. Carlyle-Her st.range illness- Folkestone-Death of Lord Ashburton-l\Irs. Carlyle in Scotland - Her slow recm-cry-' Frederick' finished. . 54 CHAPTEll XXVII. \.D. 1865-6. ÆT. 70-71. , Frf'derick' completed-Summer in Annandale-:\lrs. Carlyle in ithsilale -Visit to Linlathen-Thomas Erskine-The F.clinburgh Rpctorship Feelings in Cheyne Row about it-Ruskin's' Ethics of the Dust' . 28G CHAPTER XXVIII A.D. 1866. ÆT. 71. PrC'parations for the Rectorship-JournC'y to Edinburgh-Tyndall- The installation-Carlyle's speech- Character of it-- Effect upon the world-Cartoon in 'Punch '-Carlyle stays at Hcotsbrig to recover--lntcnded tea-party in Cheyne Row-Hudl1en death of Mrs. Carlyle-.John Forster-Funeral at Hnclclington-LC'tters from ErskinI' Carlylf"s answ('Ts . 2!' 1 CHAPTER XXIX. A.D. 1866. ÆT. 71. ì\1 pssage of sympathy from thp Quef'n-.Tohn C:ulylp- Rptrosppcts - A future life - Attpmpts at oC'cnpation - :\liss Davenport Bromlp) - The Eyrp Committee-Memories - :\Tf'ntone-Htay there with Lady Ashhnrton-Entries in Journal 3:W ('HAPTEll XXX. A.D. ]867. ÆT. 7'1.. Heturn to Englancl---Intrnrlers in Che'ynp TIo" -\\ ant of emplo). lllent-SC'ttlemcnt of t.he Crnigenputtock f':-tatp- ('harities-Puh- lic affairs Tory Reform BiH ' hooting Kiagara '-A IIC'\\" horse - Vi,.,its in countr:r house's :\Ipditatiom. in .'ollmal- A h0:11ltiflll re- ('oIlcptioll 14 ] VIll CONTENTS OF SECOND VOL UltIE. CHAPTER XXXI. A.D. 1868. ÆT. 73. PAHE The Eyre Committee-Disestablishment of t.he Irish Church-A lec- ture by Tyndall-Visit to Stratton-" S. G. O. '.-Last sight of the Grange-' Letters and Memorials of lrs. Carlyle' -l\Ieditations in Journal-1\1odern Atheism.-Democracy and popular orators- Rcotlanrl-Interview with the Queen-Portraits-l\'forlern Atheism -Strange applimtions-Loss of US8 of the right hand-Uses of anarchy R64 CHAPTER XXXII. A.f). 1870. ÆT. 75. Anne Boleyn --' GillX'S Baby' - The Franco-German wal" - English sympathy with France- Letter to the' Times '-Effect of it-In- ability to write-' Letters anil :\Ipmorials of 1Irs. Carlyle' --Dispo- sition maile of them R9fj f1HAP1'ER XXXIII. A.D. 1872. ÆT. 77. Weariness of life -History of t.he Korse Kings-Portrait of John Knox-Death of John Mill anrl t.he Bishop of Winchester-Mill anrl Carlyle-Irish policy of l\lr. Gladstone-The Prussian Order of Merit-Offer of the Granrl Cross of the Bath-Why refused- - Lord Beacon field anrl the Russo-Turkish war-Letter to the , Times' .U6 CHAPTER XXXIV. A.D. 1877-81. ÆT. 82-8;;. Conversation and habits of life-Estimate of leading politicians- Visit from Lord Wolseley-LordBeaconsfield and l\'Ir. Gladstone- Dislike of Jews The English Liturgy- An afternoon in Westmin- ster Abbey- ProgTPss- Democracy- Rf'ligion - The Bible-Cha- racteristics HR CHAPTER XXXV. A.n. 1877-8]. ÆT. 82-8;;. :-itatues-Portraits-l\Hllais's picture- turly of the :Bible-nIness and death of John Carlyle-Preparation of 'Iemoirs-Last word about it-Longing for death-The enrl-Offer of a tomb in West- minster A bbey- Why rleclinerl-Ecclefechan churchyard - Con- clusion 4f)O INDEX 17;; CA.RLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. ----0.- OHAPTER XVII. A.D. 1849-50. ..ET. 54-55. Tour in Ireland-The Irish problem-Impressions in the 'Vest- Gweedore-Address at Derry-Return to Scotland-The Highland" -A shooting paradise-Reflections on it-Liberty-Radicalism- Impatience with cant-Article on the Nigger question-' Latter- day PamphletA.' CARI.YLE'S purpose of writing a book on Ireland was not to be fulfilled. lIe went thither. He travelled through the four provinces. After his return h jotted down a hurried account of his experiences; but that ,vas all the contribution which he was able to make for the solution of a problelll which he found at once too easy and too hopeleRs. Ireland is an enchanted country. There is a land ready, as any land ever was, to answer to cultivation. There is a people ready to cultivate it, to thrive, and cover the surface of it ,vith happy, prosperous homelS. if ruled, like other nations, by nlCthods whicJl I'U it their temperarnent. If the Anglo-Saxons had set about governing Ireland with the singleness of aim with IV n 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. which they govern India or build their own railways, a few seasons at any tÜne would have seen the end of its misery and discontent. But the Anglo-Saxons have never approached Ireland in any such spirit. They have had the welfare of Ireland on their lips. In their hearts they have thought only of England's welfare or of what in SOlne narrow prejudice they deemed to be such, of England's religious interests, cOlnmercial interests, political interests. So it was when Henry II. set up Popery there. So it was when Elizabeth set up the Protestant Establish- ment there. So it is now when the leaders of the English Liberals again destroy that Establishment to secure the Irish votes to their party in Parliatnent. The curse which has made that wretched island the world's by-word is not in Ireland in itself, but in the inability of its conquerors to recognise that, if they take away a nation's liberty, they lnay not use it as the plaything of their own selfishness or their own fac- tions. For seven hundred years they have followed on the same lines: the principle the saIne, however oppo- site the action. As it was in the days of Strongbow, so it is to-day; and ' healing 111eaSUres,' ushered in no matter with what pOlnp of eloquence or parade of justice remain, and will remain, a mockery. Carlyle soon saw how it was. To write on Ireland, as if a relnedy could be found there, while the poison- ous fountain still flowed at vVestminster unpurified, would be labour vain as spinning ropes of 1110011- shine. He noted down what he had seen, and then dismissed the unhappy subject frOln his n1Înd; giving his manuscript to a friend as sOlnething of which he desired to hear no nlore for ever. It was IRISH TOUR. 3 published after his death, and the briefest summary of what to himself had no value is all that need concern us here. lIe left London on the 30th of June in a Dublin stealllboat. He could sleep sound at sea, and therefore preferred' long sea' to land when thp choice was offered hÏ1n. Running past the Isle of vVight, he saw in the distance Sterling's house at .Yentnor; he saw Plymouth, Fahnouth, the Land's End. Then, crossing St. George's Channel, he came on the Irish coast at vVexfonl, where the chief scenes of the Hebellion of 1798 stand clear against the sky. I thought (he writes) of the battle of Vinegar Hill, but not with interest; with sorrow, rather, and contempt; one of the ten times ten thousand futile, fruitless battles this brawling, unreasonable people has fought; the saddest of distinctions to them among peoples. At Dublin he lnet Gavan Duffy again; stayed several days; saw various notabilities-Petrie, the antiquarian, among others, whose high lnerit he at once recognised; declined an invitation from the Viceroy, and on the 8th (a Sunday), Duhlin and the neighbourhood being done with, he tarted for the south. Kildare was his first stage. Kildare, as I entered it, looked worse and worse-one of the wretchedest wild villages I ever fiaw, and full of ragged beggars: exotic, altogether likp a village in Dahomey, man and church both. Knots of worshipping people hung about the streets, and everywhere round them hovered a harpy swarm of clamorous mendicants-men, women, chil- drf'n; a village winged, a:;: if a flight of harpies had alighted on it. Here for the first time was Iri h beggary itself. In the railway 'a big hlockhead f"atc with his II 4 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. dirty feet on seat opposite, not stirring them for Carlyle, who wanted to sit there.' 'One thing we're aU agreed on,' said he. ' We're very ill governed- "\Vhig, Tory, Radical, Repealer, all adn1Ït we're very ill governed.' Carlyle thought to hÏInself,' Yes, indeed. You govern yourself. He that would govern you well would probably surprise you much, my friend, laying a hearty horsewhip on that back of yours.' Owing to the lnagic companionship of 1\1:1'. Duffy, he met and talked freely with priests and patriots. Lord ltlonteagle's introductions secured hiln attention from the Anglo-Irish gentry. lIe was entertained at the Castle at Lis1110re, saw vVaterford, Y oughal, Castlenlartyr, and then Cork, where he encountered 'one of the two sons of .A.dmn who, sixteen years before, had encouraged Fraser, the bookseller, to go on with "Teufelsdröckh,'" a priest, a Father O'Shea, to whOln for this at least he was grateful. Killarney was the next stage; beauty and squalor there, as everywhere, sadly linked to one another. Near Killarney he stayed with Sir - and his interesting wife; good people, but strong upholders of the Anglo-Irish Church, which, however great its lnerits otherwise, had Inade little of lnissionary work among the Catholic Celts. lIe wished well to all English institutions in Ireland, but he had a fixed conviction that the Anglo-Catholic Church at least, both there anù everywhere, was unequal to its work. He went with his friends to the ' service,' which was ( decently performed.' I felt (he says) how English Protestants, or the sons of such, might with zealous affection like to assemble here IRISH TOUR. 5 once a week and remind themselves of EnglÜ;h purities and decencies and Gospel ordinances, in the midst of a black, howling Babel of superstitious savagery, like Hebrews sit- ting by the streams of Babylon. But I felt more clearly than ever how impossible it was that an extraneous son of Aùam, first seized by the terrible conviction that he had a soul to be saved or damned, that he must read the riddle of this universe or go to perdition everlasting, could for a moment think of taking this respectable 'performance' as the solution of the mystery for him. Oh heavens! never in this world! 'Yeep by the stream of Babel, decent, clean English Irish; weep, for there is cause, till you can do something better than weep; but expect no Baby Ionian or any other mortal to concern himself with that affair of yours. . . . No sadder truth presses itself upon me than the necessity there will soon be, and the call there everyvhere already is, to quit these old rubrics and give up these empty performances altogether. All religions that I fell in with in Ireland seemed to me too irreligious: really, in sad truth, doing mischief to the people instead of good. Limerick, Clare, Lough Derg on the Shannon, Galway, Castlebar, West port-these were the suc- cessive points of the journey. At vYestport was a workhouse and' human swinery at its aClne ;' 30,000 paupers out of a population of 60,000; 'an abomina- tion of desolation.' Thence, through the dreariest parts of :ThIayo, he drove on to Ballina, .where he found Forster, of Rawdon, waiting for him- 'V. E. Forster, then young and earnest, and eager to master in Carlyle's con1pany the enigma which he took in hand as Chief Secretary three years ago (1881, &c.), with what success the world Ly this time knows. Carlyle, at least, is not ref'ponsible for the failure, certain as mathclnatics, of the lri!'h Land Act. Forster perhap!' di coven}c1 at the time that he (j CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDOl\Z would find little to suit hinl in Carlyle's views of the Blatter. They soon parted. Carlyle hastened on to Donegal to see a remarkable experiluent which was then being attelupted there. Lord George Hill was endeavouring to show at Gweedore that, with proper resources of intellect, energy, and money wisely expended, a section of Ireland could be lifted out of its lllisery even under the existing conditions of English adlninistration. His distinct conclusion was that this too, like all else of the kind, was building a house out of sand. lIe ,vent to Gweedore; he stayed with Lord George; he sawall that he was doing or trying to do, and he perceived, with a clearness which the event has justi- fied, that the persua ive charitable method of raising lost nlen out of the dirt and leading thelll of their own accord into the ways that they should go, was, ill Ireland at least, doomed to fail fr0111 the beginning. I bad to repeat often to Lord George (he says), to which he could not refuse essential consent, his is the largest attempt at benevolence and beneficence on the modern system (the emancipation, all for liberty, abolition of capital punishment, roast goose at Christmas system) ever seen by me or like to be seen. Alas! how can it prosper, except to the soul of the noble man himself who earnestly tries it and works at it, making himself a slave to it these seventeen years? It would he interesting to conlpare Carlyle's tour, or any lllodern tour, in Ireland, with Arthur Young's, 80111ething over a hundred years ago-before Grattan's constitution, the Volunteers, the glorious liberties of 1782, Catholic enlancipation, and the rest that haR fol1owed. Carlyle found but one Lord George IIill DERR Y ADDRESS. 7 hopelessly struggling with Ï1npossibilitie ; Arthur Young found not one, but Inany peers and gentle- men working effecti vel y in the face of English discouragelnent: draining, planting, building, Inaking large districts, now all 'gone back to bog' again, habitable by hunlan beings, and successfully aCCOln- plishing at least a part of the ,vork which they were set to do. All that is not waste and wilderness in Ireland is really the work of these poor Inen. Froln Gweedore to Derry was an easy journey. There his travels were to end; he ,vas to find a stemner which would take hiIn to Scotland. Five weeks had passed since he landed. On August 6 he lnet at breakfast a cOlnpany of Derry ('itizen , who had come to hear the inlpression which these weeks hac1left upon him. Emphatic talk to them, far too emphatic: human nerves being worn out with exasperation. Remedy for Ireland? To cease generally from following the Devil! No other remedy that I know of. One general life element of humbug these two centuries. And now it has fallen lJanlcl'l pt. This uni- verse, my worthy brothers, has its laws, terrible as death and judgment if we ' cant' ourselves away from following them. Land tenure? "That is a landlord at this moment in any country if Hhadamanthus looked at him? "'That is an Archbishop? Alas! what is a Queen? 'Yhat is a British specimen of the genus homo in thf>se generations? A bundle of hearsays and authentic appctites-a canaille whom the gods are about to cha tise and to extinguish if he cannot alter himself, &c. Derry aristocrats behaved very well under all this. Kot a pleasant Lreakfast; but, oh! it is the last. This was 1\Iollday, ..L\.ugust G. On the 7th, Carlyle waf: in hi own lalld agaill, havillg left t})(' 'hllgC' 8 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. suppuration' to suppurate n10re and n10re till it burst, he feeling that any true speech upon it would be like speaking to the deaf winds. On reaching Scotsbrig, he exclaimed: Thank Heaven for the sight of real human industry, with human fruits from it, once more. The sight of fenced fields, weeded crops, and human creatures with whole clothes on their back-it was as if one had got into spring water out of dunghill puddles. lIis wife had 111eallwhile gone to Scotland on her own account. She had spent three singularly interesting days at Haddingtoll (which she has herself described 1), where she wandered like a returned spirit auout the hOlne of her childhood. She had gone thence to her relations at Auchtertool, in Fife, and was there staying when her husband was at Gweedore. A characteristic letter of hers survives, written thence, which lnust have been onlÏtted by accident in Carlyle's eollection. It was to her brother-in-law John, and is in her liveliest style. John's translation of Dante's , Inferno' was just out, and the fan1Ïly were busy reading it and talking about it. To John Cærlyle. Auchtertool Mall e : July 27, 1849. 'Ve had been talking about you, and had sunk silent. uddenly my uncle turned his head to me and said, sbaking it gravely, , He has made an awesome plooster 0' that place.' , '\'ho? what place, uncle?' ''''hew! the place ye'll maybe gang to if ye dinna tak care.' I really believe he considers all those circles of your invention. "r alter 2 performed the marnage service over a cOllI)le of 1 Letters and .Jlcmorilll.'1, vol. ii. p. 53. 2 A cousin just ordained. A SCOTCH lVEDD1NG. 9 collier the day after I came. I happened to be in his study when they came in, and asked leave to remain. The man was a good-looking man enough, dreadfully agitated, partly with the busine he was come on, partly with drink. He had evidently taken a glass too much to keep his heart up. The girl had one very large inflamed eye and one little one, which looked perfectly composed, while the large eye stared wildly and had a tear in it. 'Yalter married them very well indeed; and his affecting words, together with the bridegroom's pale, excited face, and the bride's ugliness, and the lìoverty, penury, and want imprinted on the whole business, and above all fellow-feeling with tbe poor wretches then rushing on their fate-all that so overcame me that I fell crying as despe- rately as if I had been getting married to the collier myself, and, when the ceremony was over, extended my hand to the unfortunates, and actually (in such an enthusiasm of pity did I find myself) I presented the new husband with a snuff- box which I happened to have in my hand, being just about presenting it to ".,. alter when the creatures came in. This unexpected Hi?nmelsenclung finished turning the man's head; he wrung my hand over and over, leaving his mark for some hours after, and ended his grateful speeches with '011, :i\liss! Oh, Liddy! may ye hae mail' comfort and l'lea ure in your life than ever you have had yet!' which Ulight easily be. Carlyle btayed quict at ScotsLrig, lllcditating on the break-down of the proposed Irish Look, and unccrtain what hc should turn to instcad. lIe haù prmnised to join the Ashburtons in the course of the autumn at a Highland shooting-box. Dhooting parties wcre out of his linc altogether, Lut }>C'rllaps he did Hot object to t-ceing fÓr once what sueh a thinp: wa:-i like. ScotsLrig, too, was not agreeing with hiln. La):it T1Ìght (he says in a letter thence) ( awoke at three, and made nothing more of it, 0\\ ing to ('o<:k and (ìt her 10 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOJ\CflO.Lv' blessed fellow-inhabitants of this planet, not all of whom are friendly to me, I perceive. In fact, this planet was not wholly made for me, but for me and others, including cocks, unclean things many, and even the Devil; that is the real secret of it. Alas! a human creature with these particu- larities in mere sleep, not to speak of any others, is he not a creature to be prayed for? I I He relnained there till the end of August, and then started on his expedition. Glen TruiIn, to which he "yas bound, was in the far North, in 1\Iac- pherson of Cinnie's country. The railroad was yet unfinished, and the journey-long and tedious-had to be transacted by coach. He was going against the grain. Perhaps his wife thought that he ,vould hayc done Illore wisely to decline. He stopped on the way at Auchtertool to see her; 'had,' he says, 'a nliserable enough hugger-lnugger tinle; Iny own hI allIe-none others so DUlCh;' 'saw that always.' Certainly, as the event proved, he would have been better off out of the way of the' gunner bodies.' If lie was Iniðerable in Fife, he "\yas far froln happy with his grand friends in Glen Truim. To Jane TVelsh Carlyle. Glen Truim: September 2, It;4!). "That can I do but write to you, even if I were not bound hy the natural law of the wayfarer? It is my course when- ever I am out of sorts or in low spirits among strangers; emphatically my case just now in this closet of a house, among rains and highland mosses, with a nervous system all 'dadded about' by coach travel, rail travel, multiplied confusion, and finally by an almost totally sleepless night. Happily, this closet is my own for the time being. Here is paper. Here are pens. I will tell my woes to poor Goody. GLE1V TRULJf. II " ell do I know that, in spite of prepossessions, she will have some pity of me. . . . You may fancy what the route was. . . . The fat oM landlord at Dunkeld, grown grey and much broader, was the only known living creature. l A still, olive-coloured mist hung over all the country. Kinnaird and the old house which was my sleeping-pla.ce when I used to write to you were greyly discernible across the river amid their trees. 1 thought of the waterhen you have heard me mention, of the pony I used to ride, of the whole world that then lived, dead now mostly, fallen silent for evermore, even as the poor Bullers are, and as we shall shortly be. Such reflections, when they do not issue pusillanimously, are as good as the sight of l\Iichael Angelo's 'Last Judgment,' and deserve their place from time to time. The journey to lnvernessshire is detailed with copious minuteness. His eye always caught small details when they had 111eaning in thenl. The coach dropped hirn finally at the roadside, in sight of Glen Truiln-' the house, a rather foolish-Iookinf!, turretted, din1Ïl1utive, pretentious, grey granite sort of a place, half a nlile off;' the country an undulated plain-a very hroad valley with no high hill but OIle near by, , bare for the rest, and by no nleans a Garden of Eden in an)" re pert.' He continues :- The gillie that was to wait for us was by no means waiting. He' mif'took the time.' Kothing but solitary, bare moor was waiting. I took the next cottage, left my goods there, walked; found nobody, as usual. In brief, oh, Cioody, Goody! it was four o'clock before I actually founù landlorrl; four anrl a half landlady; 1 walking all the while, with 110 refection but cigars: five before I could get hold of my luggage, and eight, after vain attempts at sle<,p 1 Remembered from the time when he had l1cen the HulleT:'>' tutor, t wl'nt)'-Sf'\"L'n year.., b('fore. 12 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOiVDOiY. amidst noises as of a sacked city, before any nourishment, for which indeed I had no appetite at all, was ministered to me. From the hospitalities of the great world, even when kindly affected to us, good Lord deliver hooz! . . . In fact, when I think of the Grange, and Eath House, and Addiscombe, and consider this \uetched establishment, and 500l. for two months of it, I am lost in amazement. The house is not actually much beyond Craigenputtock -say two Craigenputtocks ill contrived and ill managed. Nor is the prospect in a higher ratio; and for society, really Corson, l except that he was not called Lord, and had occasionally 'his forehead all elevated into inequalities,' Corson, I say, was intrinsically equal to the average of 'gunner bodies.' Oh, Jeannie dear, when I think of our poverty even at the present, and see this wealth, which do you imagine I prefer? The two Lords we have here are a fat -, a sensual, proud-looking man, of whom or his genesis or environment I know nothing, and then a small, leanish -, neither of whom is worth a doit to me. Their wives are politp, elegant-looking women, but hardly beyond the - range; not a better, though a haughtier. Poor Lord Ashburton looks rustic and healthy, but seems more absent and oblivious than ever. A few reasonable words with me seem as if suddenly to awaken him to surprised remem- brance. Young Lord N. you know. :l\1erchant E., really one of the sensiblest figures here, he and l\liss Emily Earing make up the lot, and we are crammed like herrings in a barrel. The two lads are in one room. This apartment of mine, looking out towards Aberdeenshire and the brown, wavy moors, is of nine feet by seven: a French bed, and hot water not to be had for scarcity of jugs. I awoke after an hour and a quarter's sleep, and one of those Peers of the Realm snored auùibly to me. . . . In fact, it is rather clear I shall do no good here unless things alter exceedingly. I mean to petition to be off to the bothy 2 to-morrow, where at lea::;t will be some kind of silence. I must go, and will if I 1 A farmer who lived near Cl'ai t'llputtock. :! .\.. lod e borne mileb di tal1t. A SHOOTING PARADISE. 13 miss another night of sleep and have to dine again at eight amidst talk of' birds;' and, on the whole, as soon as I can get what little bit of duty I have discovered for myself to do here done, the sooner I cut cable or lift anchor for other latitudes, I decidedly find it will be the better. . . . Pity me when thou canst, poor little sonl! or laugh at me if thou wilt. Oh! if you could read my heart and whole thought at this moment, there is surely one sad thing you would cease to do henceforth. But enough of all these sad niaise1'ies, which indeed I myself partly laugh at; for really I am wonderfully well to-day, and have this impregnable closet, with a window that pulls down, and the wide High- land moors before me worth looking at for once. And we shall get out of this adventure handsomely enough, if I mis- calculate not, by-and-by. :l\1ilnes is to be here in a day or two, and these Lords of Parliament with their gunboxes and retinue are to go. " e shall know shooting-boxes for the time to come. The Ashburtons were as attentive to Carlyle's pcculiarities as it was possible to be. No prince's confessor, in the ages of faith, could havc Illore con- sideration shown hirn than he in this restricted Inan- sion. The best apartment was made over to him as soon as it was vacant. .....\.. special dinner was arranged for him at his own hour. But he was out of his elclnent. September 7. I have got a big waste room, and in spite of noises and turmoils contrive to get nightly in in!'talments some !'ix hours of !'leep. But on the whole my visit prospers as ill as could be wished. Double, double, toil and trouhle I-that 3n<1 nothing else at all. No reasonable word is heard, or hardly one, in the twenty-four hours. I cannot even get a washing- tuh. l\ly last attempt at washing was in a foot-pail, as unfit for it as a teacup would have been, and it brought on the hun- bago. PntiP-ntia! I have known now what Highland shooting paradises are, and on experiment, [ think, will be quitf> 14 C1RLYLE'S LIFE IN LOP/DON enough. On the whole, I feel hourly there will be nothing for it but to get my visit done and fly across the hills again, quam p1'imum. It is, in fact, such a scene of folly as no sane man could wish to continue in or return to. Oh, my wise little Goody! what a blessing in comparison with all the Peerage books and Eldorados in the world is a little solid sense derived from Heaven! Poor' shooting paradise'! It answered the pur- pose it was intended for. "\V ork, even to the aristo- cracy, is exacting in these days. Pleasure is even ITIOre exacting; and unless they could rough it now and then in prin1Ïtive fashion and artificial plainness of living, they would sink under the burden of their splendours and the weariness of their duties. Carlyle had no business in such a scene. He never fired off a gun in his life. He never lived in habitual luxury, and therefore could not enjoy the absence of COlnnlon conveniences. He was out of humour with what he saw. He was out of hunlour with himself for being a part of it. Three weeks of solitude at Scotsbrig, to which he hastened to retreat, scarcely repaired his sufferings at Glen TruiIl1. To Jane Wel81t Carlyle. Scotsbrig: September 17, I8.!!). I am lazy beyond measure. I sleep and smoke, and would fain do nothing else at all. If they would but let me sit alone in this room, I think I should be tempted to stay long in it, forgetting and forgotten, so inexpressibly wearied is my poor body and poor soul. Ah me! People ought not to be angry at me. People ought to let me alone. Perhaps they would if they rightly understood what I was doing and suffering in this Life Pilgrimage at times; but they cannot, the good friendly souls! Ah me! or, rather: Courage! courage! The rough billowR and cross winds shall not beat SCOTSBRIG. 15 us yet; not at this stage of the voyage, and harbour almost within sight. The fact is that just now I am very weary, and the more sleep I get I seem to grow the wearier. Yes- terday I took a ride; the lanes aU silent, fields full of stooks, and Rurnswark and the everlasting hills looking quite clear upon me. Jog! jog! So went the little shelty at its own slow will; and death seemed to me almost all one with life, and eternity much the same as time. 1 September 24. Alas, my poor little Goody! These are not good times at all. . . . Your poor hand, and heart too, were in sad case on Friday. Let me hope you have well slept since that, given up , thinking of the old 'un,' and much modified the' Gum- midge' view of affairs. Sickness and distraction of nen.e is a good excuse for almost any degree of despondency. . . . But we can by no means permit ourselves a philosophy Ù in Gummidge-not at. all, poor lone critturs though we be. In fact, there remains at all times and in all conceivable situations, short of Tophet itself, a set of quite infinite prizes for us to strive after-namely, of duiies to do; and not till after they are done can we talk of retiring to the' House.' Oh no! Give up that, I entreat you; for it is mere want of sleep and other unreality, I tell you. There has nothing changed in the heavens nor in the earth since times were much more tolerable than that. Poor thing! You arC' utterly worn out; and I hope a little, though I have no right properly, to get a letterkin to-morrow with a Cheel"ier report of matters. Furthermore, I am coming home mysp]f in some two days, and I reasonably calculate, not u.nreason- ably according to all the light I have, that our life may bp much more comfortable together than it has been for ome years past. In me, if I can help it, there :o;hall not be any- thing wanting for an issue so desirable, so indispensable in fact. If you will open your own eyes and shut Jour evil demon's imaginings and dreamings, I firmly belie\e all will soon be well. God grant it. Amen, amen! 1 love thee always, little a thou wilt believe it. J In answpl' to n melanchuly ll'ttt'r. 16 CARLYLE'S LIFE I./.V LONDON. September 25. For two nights past I have got into t.he bad habit of dividing my sleep in two; waking a couple of hours by way of interlude, and then sleeping t.ill ten o'clock-a bad habit, if I could mend it; but who can? My two hours of waking pass in wondrous resuscitations and reviews of all manner of dead events, not quite unprofitably perhaps, and though sadly, not unpleasantly-sad as death, but also quiet as death, and with a faint reflex of sacred joy (if I could be worthy of it), like the light which is beyond death. No earthly fortune is very formidable to me, nor very desirable. A soul of something heavenly I do seem to see in every human life, and in my own too, and that is truly and for ever of importance to me. . . . Oh my best little Jeannie!- for on the whole there is none of them all worth naming beside thee when thy better genius is not banished-try to sleep to compose thy poor little heart and nerves, to love me as of old, at least not to hate me. l\ly heart is very weary, wayworn too with fifty-three rough years behind me: but it is bound to thee, poor soul! as I can never bind it to any other. Help me to lead well what of life may still remain, and I will be for ever grateful.-God bless you always. T . CARLYLE. The three Inonths of holiday were thus spent- strange holidays. But a man carries his shadow clinging to hiln, and cannot part with it, except in a novel. He was now driven by accunlulation of dis- content to disburden his heart of its secretions. During the last two revolutionary years he had cuvered Inany sheets with his reflections. At the bottom of his whole nature lay abhorrence of false- hood. To see facts as they actually were, and, if that was impossible, at least to desire to see them, to be sincere with his own soul, and to speak to others exactly what he himself believed, was to hi111 the LETTER TO ERSK/1VE. 17 hieJ'hest of all llllluan duties. Therefore he detested L> cant with a perfect hatred. Cant ,vas organised hypo- --- - crlsy, the art of Inaking thiiigSSeem what they were not; an art so deadly that it killed the very souls of those who practised it, carrying them beyond the staO'e of conscious falsehood into a belief in their own o illusions, and reducing theIn to the wretchedest of pos=,ible conditions, that of being sincerely insincere. \Vith cant of this kind he sawall Europe, all America, overrun; but beyond all, his own England appeared to hiIIl to be drenched in cant-cant religious, cant political, cant Illora], cant artistic, cant everywhere anù in everything. A letter to lr. Erskine, written ùefore the French Revolution, shows what he was thell thinking about it; and all that had happened since had wrought his conviction to whiter heat. To Tlt01na, Erskine, Linlatlzen. June 12, 1847. One is warned by Nature herself not to ' sit down by the side of !-'ad thoughts,' as my friend Oliver has it, and dweU voluntarily with what is sorrowful and painful. Yet at the same time one has to say for oneself-at least I have-that aU the good I ever got came to me rather in the shape of sorrow: th;t there is nothing noble or godlike in this world imt has in it something of 'infinite sadness,' vC'ry different indeed from what the current moral philosophies represent it to us: and surely in a time like ours, if in any time, it is gooù for a man to be d'ì'íven, were it by nf'ver such harsh method:-;, into looking at this great universe with his own eyt's, for himself and not for another, and trying to adjust himself truly there. By the helps and traditions of others he never will adjust himself: others are but offering him their miserable spyglasses; Puseyite, Presbyterian, Free Kirk, 01(1 Jew, old Greek, midùle-age Italian, imperfect, not IV. C 18 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDO]". to say distorted, semi-opaque, whoHy opaque and altogether melancholy and rejectable spyglasses, one and all, if one has eyes left. On me, too, the pressure of these things falls very heavy: indeed I often feel the loneliest of all the sons of Adam; and, in the jargon of poor grimacing men, it is as if one listened to the jabbering of spectres-not a cheerful situation at all while it lasts. In fact, I am quite idle so far as the outer hand goes at present. Silent, not from having nothing, but from baving infinitely too much, to say: out of which perplexity I know no road except that of getting more and more miserable in it, till one is forced to say so?ne- thing, and so carryon the work a little. I must not complain. I must try to get my work done while the days and years are. Nay, is not that the thing I would, before all others, have chosen, had the universe and all its felicities been freely offered me to take my share from? The great soul of this world is Just. "Tith a voice soft as the harmony of spheres, yet stronger, sterner, than aU thtmders, this message does now and then reach us through the hollow jargon of things. This great fact we live in, and were made by. It is 'a noble Spartan J,lother' to all of us that dare be sons to it. Courage! we must not quit our shields; we must return home 'l. pon our shields, having fought in the battle till we died. That is verily the law. :l\1any a time I remember that of Dante, the inscription on the gate of hell: 'Eternal love made me '-made even me; a word which the paltry generations of this time shriek over, and do not in the least understand. I confess their 'Exeter Hall,' with its froth oceans, benevolence, &c. &c., seems to me amongst the most degraded platitudes this world ever saw; a more brutal idolatry l>erhaps-for they are white men, and their century is the nineteenth-than that of l\lumbo Jumbo itself! This, you perceive, is strong talking. This I have got to say yet, or try what I can do toward saying if [live. }'rom Dan to Been.heba I find the same most mournful fact written down for me; mutely calling on me to read it and speak it abroad if I be not a lazy coward and slave, which I would fain avoid heillg. . . . It is every way yery strange to consider what .iJfEA.l'{IiVG OF RELIGIOiY. 19 'Christianity,' so called, has grown to within these two cen- turies, on the Howard and Fry side as on every other-a paltry, mealy-mouthed' religion of cowards,' who can have no religion but a sham one, which also, as I believe, awaits its 'abolition' from the avenging power. If men will turn away their face from God, and set up idols, temporary phan- tasms, instead of the Eternal One- las! the consequences are from of old well known. Religio n, a religion that was true, Ineant a rule of conduct according to the law of God. Religion, as it existed in England, had becolne a thing of opinion, of emotion flowing over into benevolence as an ÎInagineù substitute for justice. Over the conduct of Inen in their ordinary business it had ceased to operate at all, and therefore, to Carlyle, it was a hollow appear- ance, a word wjthout force or controlling power in it. Religion was obligation, a cOffiInand which bound nlen to duty, as something ,vhich they were cOlnpelled to do under trelnendous penalties. The Inodern worlù, even the religious part of it, had supposed that the grand ainl was to abolish compulsion, to establish universal freedOln , leaving each Inan to the light of his own c n science or his own will. FreedOln-that was the worc1- the glorious birthright which, once realised, was to turn earth into paradise. Anù this was cant; and those who were loudest about it could not themsehTes believe it, but could only pretend to believe it. In a conditioned existence like ours, freedom was inlpo siLle. To the race as a race, the alternative was work or starvation-all were hound to work in their several ways; some must work or all would die; and the result of the buasted political liberty was an arrangelnent where the cunning or the strong appropriated the lion's share of the harve t. C .) 20 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDOA without working, while the Inultitude lived on by toil, and toiled to get the Ineans of living. That was the actual outcome of the doctrine of liberty, as seen in existing society; nor in fact to any kind of man an:ywhere was freedom possible in the popular sense of the word. Each one of us was COlll passed round with restrictions on his personal will, and the wills èven of the strongest were slaves to inclination. The serf whose visible fetters "were struck off was a serf still under the law of nature. He Inight change his master, but a master he must have of some kind, or die; and to speak of 'eIllancipation' in and by itself, as any lllighty gain or step in progress, was the wildest of illusions. No' progress' "would or could be Illade on the lines of Radicals or philan- thropists. The' ty,' the only liberty, attainable by the lllultitude of ignorant mortals, was in being guided or else cOlllpelled by some one wiser than theillselves. They gained nothing if they exchanged the bondage to man for bondage to the devil. It was assullled in the talk of the day that 'elnancipation' created manliness, self-respect, improvement of cha- ra( ter. l rro Carlyle, who looked at facts, all this 1 Mr. Gladstone somewhere quotes Homer in support of t.his argu- ment. .ql-UCTV yáp T' àpfTij &rroaívvTUL fVPV07TU ZfV àVÉpo , f T' êJ.v P.LV KaTà ovXwv p.ap ;X'[JCTLV. 'Jove strips a man of half his virtue on the day when slavery lays hold on him.' Homer, be it observed, places these words in the mout.h of Eumæus, who was himself a slave. Eumæus and another slave were alone found faithful to their king when the free citizens of Ithaca had forgotten him. Eumæus was speaking of the valets left at home in their master's absence. The free valets in a modern house left in similar circumstances would probably have not been very superi0r to them. LIBERTY: 21 was wind. Those' grinders,' for instancp, WhOlll he had seen in that Manchester cellar, earning high wages, that they n1Ïght live merrily for a year or two, and die at the end of them-"were they iln- proveù ? vVas freedolll to kill thenlsel ves for drink such a ble sed thing ? Were they really better off than slaves who were at least as well cared for as their In aster's cattle? The cant on this subject enraged him. He, starting froln the other pole, believing not in the rights of man, but in the duties of lnan, could see nothing in it but deteRtable selfish- ness disguised in the phunage of angels-a shmneful substitute for the neglect of the lnnnan ties by which Dlan was bound to man. 'Facit indignatio ver8lun.' Wrath with the things which he saw around hiIn inspired the Ronlan poet; wrath drove Carlyle into writing the' Latter-day Panlphlets.' Journal. þ,rovember 11, 18-19.-Went to Ireland-wandered about there all through July, have half forcibly recalled all my re- membrances, and thrown them down on a paper since my return. Ugly spectacle, sad health, sad humour, a thing unjoyful to look back upon. The whole country figures in my mind like a ragged coat or huge beggar's gaberdine, not patched or patchable any longer; far from a joyful or beautiful spectacle. "r ent afterwards from Annandale to the Highlands as far m; Glen Truim ; spent there ten wretched days. To Annandale a second time, and thence home after a fortnight, leaving my poor mother ill of a face coM, from which she is not yet quite entirely recovered. The last glimpses of her at the door, whither she had followed me, contrary to bargain; these are things that lie beyond speech. How lonely I am now grown in th(' world; how hanI: many 22 CARLYLE'S LIFE hV L01VDO]'{. times as if I were made of stone! All the old tremulous affection lies in me, but it is as if frozen. So mocked, and scourged, and driven mad hy contradictions, it has, as it were, lain down in a kind of iron sleep. The general history of man? Somewhat, I suppose, and yet not wholly. 'Yords cannot express the love and sorrow of myoId memories, chiefly out of boyhood, as they occasionally rise upon me, and I have now no voice for them at all. One's heart becomes a grim Hades, peopled only with silent preternaturalism. No more of this! God help me God soften me again-so far as now softness can be suitable for such a soul; or rather let me pray for.wisdo'n1, for silent capability to manage this huge haggard world-at once a Hades and an Elysium, a celestial and infernal as I see, which has been given me to inhabit for a time and to rule over as I can. No lonelier soul, I do believe, lies under the sky at this moment than myself. l\Iasses of written stuff, which I grudge a little to burn, and trying to sort something out of them for magazine articles, series of pamphlets, or whatever they will promise to turn to-does not yet succeed with me at all: am not yet in the 'paroxysm of clairvoyance' which is indispensable. Is it? All these paper bundles were written last summer, and are wrongish, every word of them. l\Iight serve as newspaper or pamphletary introduction, overture, or accom- paniment to the unnameable book I have to write. In dissent from all the world; in black contradiction, deep as the bases of my life, to all the philanthropic, emancipatory, constitutional, and other anarchic revolutionary jargon, with which the world, so far as I can conceive is now full. Alas! and the governors of the world are as anarchic as anybody (witness the Canada Parliament and governor just now, witness, &c. &c., all over the world); not pleasing at all to be in a minority of one in regard to everything. The worst is, however, I am not yet true to myself; I cannot yet call in my wandering truant being, al1d bid it wholly set to the work fit for it in this hour. 0h, let me persist, persist-may t he heavens grant me power to persist in that till I do l:5ucceed in it 'LA TTER-DA Y PAAIPHLE , TS. 23 Noventber 16, 1849.-A sad feature in employments like mine, that you cannot carry them on continuously. l\Iy work needs all to be done with my nerves in a kind of blaze; such a state of soul and body as would soon kill me, if not intermitted. I have to rest accordingly; to stop and sink into total collapse, the getting out of which again is a labour of labours. Papers on the ' Negro Question,' fraction of said rubbish coming out in the next' Fraser.' A paper on the Negro or Nigger question, properly the first of the' Latter-day Panlphlets,' was Carlyle's declaration of war against nlodern Radical- iSln. IIitherto, though his orthodoxy was question- able, the Radicals haù been glad to clainl him as belonging to them; and if Radicalism Ineant an opinion that modern ociety required to be recon- stituted from the root, he had been, was, and remained the nlost thoroughgoing of them all. His objection was to the cant of Radicalism; the philosophy of it, 'bred of philanthropy and the Dismal Science,' the purport of which was to cast the atOlns of human society adrift, lllocked with the nmne of liberty, to sink or swim as they could. Negro elllancipation had been the special boast and glory of the new theory of universal happiness. The twenty lnillions of indelnnity and the free 'Vest Indies had been chanted and celebrated for a quarter of a century fronl press and platform. vVeekly, alnlost daily, the English newspapers were crowing over the Alneri- cans, flinging in their teeth the Declaration of Iude- penùence, blowing up in AlTIerica itself a flame which was ripening towarùs a furious war, while the result of the experiuwnt o far had been the luaterial ruin of rolonie:-- ()I\('C t 11<:, lllo:-:t prccious that wc had, anù the 24 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. nloral ruin of the blacks themselves, who were rotting away in sensuous idleness amidst the wrecks of the plantations. He was touching the shield with the point of his lance when he chose this sacredly sensi- tive subject for his first onslaught. He did not mean that the' Riggers' should have been kept as cattle, and sold as cattle at their owners' pleasure. lIe did mean that they ought to have been treated as hUlllan beings, for whose souls and bodies the whites were responsible; that they should have been placed in a position suited to their capacity, like that of the Engli 'h serf under the Plantagenets ; protected against ill-usage by law; attached to the soil; not allowed to be idle, but cared for theIllselves, their wives and their children, in health, in sickness, and in old age. He said all this; but he said it fiercely, scorn- fully, in the tone which could least conciliate atten- tion. . Black Quashee and his friends were spattered 1vith Tidicule which stung the Illore fron1 the justice of it. The following passage could least be pardoned because the truth which it contained could least be denied :- Dead corpses, the rotting body of a brother man, whom fate or unjust men have killed, this is not a pleasant spec- tacle. But what say you to the dead soul of a man in a body which still pretends to be vigorously alive, and can drink rum? An idle white gentleman is not pleasant to me, but what say you to an idle black gentleman with his rum bottle in his hand (for a little additional pumpkin you can have red herrings and rum in Demerara), no breeches on his body, pumpkin at discrption, and the fruitfullest region of the earth going back to jungle round him? Such things the sun looks down upon in our fine times, and I for one 'LATTER-DA Y PAiJIPHLETS.' 25 would rather have no hand in them. . . . Yes-this is the eternal law uf nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, compelled to do what work the l\laker of him has intended for this world. Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the ".,.. est India Islands, is or can be the blessedness of our black friend; but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have heen be- stowed on him for that. And his own happiness and that of others round him will alone be possible by his and their getting into such a relation that this can be permitted him, and in case of need that this can be compelled him. I beg you to understand this, for you seem to have a little for- gotten it; and there lie a thousand influences in it not quite useless for Exeter Hall at present. The idle black man in the 'Vest Indies had not long since the right, and will again, under better form, if it please Heaven, have the right-ac- tually the first' right of man' for an indolent person-to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the .:\laker's will who had constructed him with such and such capabilities and prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven that all men, the whitest alike and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, had attained precisely the same right, the Divine right of being compelled (if' permitted' will not antiwer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute in a life which is so short, and where iùleness so soon runs to putrescence. Alas! we had then a perfect world, and the :l\Iillennium, and the 'organisation of labour' and reign of complete blessedness for all workers and men had then arrived, which in their own poor districts of this planet, as we all lament to know, it i:5 very far from having got done. I once asked Carlyle if he had ever thouf!ht of going into Parliament, for I knew that the upportunity must have heen offered hinl. ' "\Vell,' he said, 'I did think of it at the tillle of the" Latter-day ralllphlct ." I felt that nuthing could prevent lne from getting 26 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. up in the House and saying all that.' He was powerful, but he was not powerful enough to have discharged with his single voice the vast vohulle of conventional electricity with which the collective wisdonl of the nation was, and remains, charged. It is better that his thoughts should have been COln- lnitted to enduring print, where they relnain to be reviewed hereafter by the light of fact. The article on the' Nigger question' gave, as 111Ìgh t have been expected, universal offence. l\lany of his old admirers drew back after this, and 'walked no n10re with him.' John }\;Iill replied fiercely in the sallIe lllagazine. They had long ceased to be intÏ1nate ; they were henceforth 'rent asunder,' not to be again united. Each went his own course; but neither 1\Iill nor Carlyle forgot that they had once been friends, and each to the last spoke of the other with affec- tionate regret. The Pamphlets cOIlllllenced at the beginning of 1850, and went on lnonth after month, each sepa- rately published, no magazine daring to beconle responsible for theIne The first was on ' The Present Tilne,' on the advent and prospects of Deillocracy. The revolutions of 1848 had been the bankruptcy of falsehood, 'the tUlnbling out of impostures into the street.' The probleln left before the world ,vas how nations were hereafter to be governed. The English people iInagined that it could be done by 'suffrages' and the ballot-box; a system under which St. Paul and Judas Iscariot would each have an equal vote, and one would have as llluch power as the other. This was like saying that when a ship was going on a voyage round the wor1t1 the ('few were to lJC brought 'LATTER-DA Y PA.J.JIPHLE , TS. 27 together to elect their own officers, and vote the course which was to be followed. Unanimity on board ship-yes indeed, the ship's crew maybéVë'i:y unanimous, which doubtless for the time being will be very comfortable for the ship's crew, and to their phantasm captain, if they have one. But if the tack they unanimously steer upon is guiding them into the belly of the abyss, it will not profit them much. Ships accordingly do not use the ballot-box, and they reject the phantasm species of captains. One wishes much some other entities, since all el1titús lie under the same rigorous set of laws, could be brought to show as much wisdom and sense at least of self-preservation, the first command of nature. .J.. The words in italics contain the essence of Carlyle's teaching. If they are true, the inference is equally true that in Democracy there can be no finality. If the laws are fixed under which nations are allowed to prosper, nlen fittest by capacity and experience to read those laws Inust be placed in conlllland, and the ballot-box never will and never can select the fittest; it will select the sham fittest, or the unfittest. The suffrage, the right of every Ulan to a vuice in the selection of his rulers, was, and is, the first article of the Uadical l\lagna Charta, the articulus stantis vel cadentis IleipuUicæ, and is so accepted by every modern Liberal statesman. Carlyle nlet it with a denial as complete and scornful as Luther flung at Tetzel and his Indulgences-not, however, with the same approval fronl those 'whm11 he addressed. Luther found the grass dry and ready to kindle. The belief which Carlylc as ailed was alive and grecll with hope and vi uur. 28 CARLYLE'S LiFE IN LONDON. Journal. Febr'lwry 7, 1850.-Trying to write my 'Latter-day Pam- phlets.' Such form, after infinite haggling, has the thing now assumed. Some twelve pamphlets, if I can but get them written at all; then leave the matter lying. No.1 came out a week ago; yields me a most confused respon see Little save abuse hitherto, and the sale reported to be vigorous. Abuse enough, and almost that only, is what I have to look for with confidence. Nigger article has roused the ire of all philanthropist.s to a quite unexpected pitch. Among other very poor attacks on it was one in ' Fraser; , most shrill, thin, poor and insignificant, which I was surprised to learn proceeded from John l\1ill. . . . He has neither told me nor reminded me of anything that I did not very well know beforehand. No use in writing that kind of criticism. For some years back l\'lill, who once volunteered a close con- stant intimacy for a long time, has volunteered a complete withdrawal of himself; and now, instead of reverent dis- cipleship, which he aspired to, seems to have taken the func- tion of getting up to contradict whatever I say. Curious enough. But poor I\,Iill's fate in various ways has been very tragic. His misery, when I chance to see him in the street or otherwise (for we never had a word of quarrel), appeals to my pity if any anger was rising. . . . The Pamphlets re all as bad as need be. If r could but get my meaning explained at all, I should care little in what style it was. But my state of health and heart is highly unfavourable. Nay, worst of all, a kind of stony indifference is spreading over me. I am getting weary of suffering, feel as if I could sit down in it and say, '''''ell, then, I shall soon die at any rate.' Truly all human things, fames, promotions, pleasures, prosperities, seem to me inexpressibly contemptible at times. The second palnphlet, on 'Model Prisons,' was as savage as the first. Society, conscious at heart that it was itself unjust, and did not Blean to nlend itself, was devcloping out of its uneasiness a universal' Scounùrel 1 LATTER-DA Y PA.JIP.lILETS.' 29 Protection' sentiInent. Society was concluding that inequalities of condition were inevitable; that those who suffered under theIn, and rebelled, could not fairly be punished, but were to be looked upon as misguided brethren suffering under nlental disorders, to be cured in Illoral hospitals, called Ly euphen1Ïslll Houses of Correction. 'Pity for hUInan' calamity,' the PaIl1- phlet said, , was very beautiful, but the deep oblivion of the la\v of right and \vrong, the indiscriminate mashing up of right and wrong into a patent treacle, \vas not beautiful at all.' Wishing to see the systeITI at work with his own eyes, Carlyle had visited the 1\fillbank Penitentiary. He found 1,200 prisoners, 'notable nIurderesses aIllong theIn,' in airy apartInents of perfect cleanliness, COlll- fortably .wanned and clothed, quietly, and not too severely, picking oakum; their diet, bread, soup, Ineat, all superlatively excellent. He saw a literary Chartist rebel in a private court, master of his own tinIe and spiritual resources; and he felt that 'he hilllself, so left with paper, ink, and all taxes and botherations shut out fronl hinI, could have written such a book as no reader would ever get frolll him.' lIe looked at felon after felon. lIe sa\v ' ape faces, imp faces, angry dog faces, heavy sullen ox faces, degraded underfoot perverse creatures, sons of greedy 111utinous darkness.' To give the owners of such faces their 'due' could be attenlptec1 only wherß there was an effort to give everyone his due, and to be fair all round; and as this was not to be thought of, , they were to be reclainlCd by the method of love. , IIopeless for evennore such a project.' And these fine hospitals were maintained by ratc levied on the 3 0 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. I honest outs de, who were struggling to support thenl- selves without becolning fclons-' rates on the poor servants of God and Her 1ajesty, who were still try- ing to serve both, to boil right soup for t.he Devil's declared elect.' He did not expect that his protests would be attended to then, but in tvtenty years he thought there might be lnore agreen1ent with hiln. This, like nlauy other prophecies of his, has proved true. vVe hang and flog now with slnall outcry and slnall COln- punction. But the ferocity with which he struck right and left at honoured nan1es, the contenlpt which he heaped on an amiable, if not a wise experÜnent, gave an inlpression of his own character as false as it was un- pleasant. He was really the most tender-hearted of Ulen. His savageness was but affection turned sour, and what he said was the oppo ite of what he did. J\fallya tin1e I have remonstrated when I saw hiul give a shilling to sOlne wTetch 'with 'Devil's elect' on his forehead. , No dou ht he is a son of Gehenna,' Carlyle would say; , but you can see it is very low water with hin1. This modern life hardens our hearts more than it should.' On the Palllphlets rushed. The third was on 'Downing Street and iodern Governn1ent.' Lord John Russell, I relnember, plaintively spoke of it in the lIouse of COllln10ns. The fourth was on a ' New Downing Street, such as it n1Ïght and ought to become.' The fifth, on 'Stump Oratory,' was perhaps the lnost in1por- tant of the set, for it touched a problem of moment then, and now every clay ùec01ning of greater nlonlent; for the necessary tendency of Delll0Cracy is to throw the power of the State into the hands of eloquent speakers, and eloquent speakers have never since the 'LATTER-DA l' PAMPIiLETS.' 3 1 world began been wise statesmen. Carlyle had not read Aristotle's 'Politics,' but he had arrived in his own road at Aristotle's conclusions All fonns of goverUlnent, Aristotle says, are ruined by parasites and flatterers. The parasite of the nlonarc h is th e favourite who flatters his vanity and hides the truth frOln hin1. The parasite of a delnocracy is the orator; the people are his masters, anù he rules by pleasing them. He dares not tell then1 unpleasant truths, lest he lose his popularity; he must call their passions emotions of justice, and their prejudices conclusions of reason. He dares not look facts in the face, and facts prove too strong for hÎln. To the end of his life Carlyle thought ,vith extrenle anxiety on this subject, and, as will be seen, had III ore to say about it. I need not follow the Pan1phlets in detail. There were to have been twelve originally; one, I think, on the' Exodus from Houndsditch,' for he occasionally reproached himself afterwards for over-reticence on that subject. lIe was not likely to have been deterred by fear of giving offence. Rut the argUl11ents against speaking out about it were always as present with him as the arglunents for openness. Perhaps he con- cluded, on the whole, that the good which he luight do would not outbalance the pain he would inflict. The series, at any rate, ended with the eighth-upon , Jesuitism,' a word to which he gave a wider signifi- cance than technically belongs to it. England sup- posed that it had repudiated sufficiently Ignatius Loyola. and the COlnpany of Jesus; but, little as Eng- land knew it, Ignatius's peculiar doctrines had gone into its heart, and were pouring through all it:, vcil1 3 2 C RLJLE'S LIFE hV LO.i.VDOJ.Y. and arteries. J esuitislll to Carlyle was the deliberate shutting of the eyes to truth; the deliberate insin- cerity which, if persisted in, becOllles itself sincere. You choose to tell a lie because, for various reasons, it is convenient; you defend it with argument-till at length you are given over to believe it-and the religious side of your lllind being thus penally para- lysed; lllorality becOlnes t.alk and conscience becOlues emotion; and your actual life has no authoritative guide left but personal selfishness. Thus, by the side of a profession of Christianity, England had adopted for a working creed Political Econon1Y, which is the contradictory of Christianity, imagining that it could believe both together. Christianity tells us that we are not to care for the things of the earth. Political econOlny is concerned with nothing else. Christianity says that the desire to 111ake money is the root of all evil. Political econOluy says that the more each luan struggles to 'make n10ney' the better for the conunonwealth. Christianity says that it is the busi- ness of the lllagistrate to execute justice and lnaintain truth. Political econOlny (or the system of govern- nlent founded upon it) limits' justice' to the keeping of the peace, declares that the luagistrate has nothing to do with lllaintaining truth, and that every luan must be left free to hold his own opinions and ad- vance his own interests in any way that he pleases, short of fraud and violence. Jesuitism, or the art of finding reasons for what- ever we wish to believe, had enabled Englishn1en to persuade thelnselves that both these theories of life could be true at the same tiu1e. They kept one for Sunùays, thE; other for the working days; and the 'LATTER-DA Y PA.L'IPHLETS.' 33 practicallTIoral code thus evolved, Carlylc throw out in a wild frcak of InuTIour, GOlTIparablc only to the lTIenl0rahle epitaph on the fal110US Raron in 'Sarto'r Resartus.' It is placed in the TIlouth of his ilnaginary frien(l, Sauertcig, who is generally responsibJe for every extravagant utterance. Pig Plâloðophy. If the inestimable talent of literature should, in these swift days of progress, be extended to the brute creation, having fairly taken in all the human, so that swine and oxell could communicate to us on paper what t.hey thought of the universe, then might curious results, not uninstructive to some of us, ensue. Supposing swine (I mean four-footed swine) of sensibility and superior logical parts had attained such culture, and could, after survey and reflection, jot down for us their notion of the universe and of their interests and duties there, might it not well interest a discerning pubJic, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a stimulus to the languishing book trade? The votes of all creatures, it if> understood at present., ought to be had, that you may legis- late for them with better insight. 'How can you govern a thing,' say many, , without first asking its vote?' Unless, indeed, you already chance to know its vote, alld even some- thing more-namely, what you are to think of its vote, what it wants by its vote, and, still more important, what Nature wants, which latter at the end of the account is the only thing that will be got. Pig propositions in a vague form are somewhat as follows :- 1. The universe, so far as Salle conjecture can go, is an immeasurahle swine's trough, consisting of solid and liquid and of other contrasts and kinds; especially consist- ing of attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater (luantities for most pigs. 2. l\Ioral evil is unattainabilit.y of pig's wash; moral good, attainability of ditto. 3. \\Yhat is P:uarlisp or tlu"> Rtatp of Innocence? Para- IL n . 34 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. dise, called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to pigs of weak judgment) un- limited attainability of pig' wash; perfect fulfilment of one's wishes, so that pigs' imaginat.ion could not outrun realit.y: a fable and an impossibility, as pigs of sense now see. 4. Define the whole duty of pigs. It is the misRion of universal pighood to dirnini h the quantity of unattainable, and increase that of attainable. AlJ knowledge and desire anù effort ought to be directed thither, and thither only. Pig science, pig enthusiasm and devotion have this one aim. It is the whole duty of pigs. 5. Pig poetry ought to consist of universal recognition of the excellenee of pig's wash and ground barley, and the felicity of pigs whose trough is in order, and who have had enongh. Hrumph! 6. The pig knows the weather. He ought to look out what kind of weather it will be. 7. V{ho made the pig? IT nknown. Perhaps the pork- butcher. 8. Have you law and justice in Pigc1om? Pigs of obser- vation have diseerned that there is, or was onee snpp0sed to be, a thing called justice. Undeniably, at least there is a sentiment in pig nature called indignation, revenge, &c., &c., which, if one pig 11rovoke another, comes out in a more or less destructive manner; hence laws are necessary-amazing C)u311tities of laws. For quarrelling is attended with Im;s of blood, of life-at any rate, with frightful effusion of the general stock of hog's wash, anù ruin, temporary ruin, to large sections of the universal swine's trough. "Therefore let. justice be observed, so that quarrelling be avoided. 9. 'Yhat is justice ? Your own share of the general swine's trough; not any portion of my share. 10. But what is 'my share'? Ah! there, in fact, lieg the grand difficulty, upon whicl1 pig science, meditating this long while, can settle absolutely nothing. .l\ly share! Hrumph! my share is, on t.he whole, whatever I can con- tri,.e to get without heing hanged or sent to the hullu;. 'LA TTER-DA Y PAJIPHLETS.' 35 For there are gibbets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which lawyers have prescribed. II. "Tho are lawyers? Servants of God, appointed re- vealers of the oracles of God, who read off to us from day to day what is the eternal commandment of God in reference to the mutual claims of His creatures in this world. 12. \Yhere do they find that written? In Coke upon Littleton. 13. "no made Coke ? Unknown. The maker of Coke's wig is discoverable. "That became of Coke? Died. And then? \Vent to the undertakers. \Yent to the - But we must pull up. Sauerteig's fierce humour, confounding even farther in his haste the four-footed with the two-footed animal, rushes into wilder and wilder forms of satirical torch-dancing, and threatens to end in a universal Rape of the \Yigs, which, in a person of his character, looks ominous and dangerous. Here, for example, is his 51 st proposition, as he calls it :_ 51. \Yhat are Bishops? Overseers of souls. \Yhat is a soul? The thing that keeps the body alive. How do they oversee that? They tie on a kind of aprons, publish charges-I believe they pray dreadfully- macerate themselves nearly dead with continued grief that they cannot in the least oversee it. , And are much honoured? ' By the wise, very much. 52. 'Define the Church.' I had rather not. , Do you believe in a future state?' Y P!', !'urely. '''That is it?' Heaven, so called. , To everybody? ' I understand so-hope so. , \Yhat is it thought to be ?' Hrumph! 'Xo Hell, then, at all ?' Hrumph! This was written thirty-three years ago, when political economy was our sovereign political science. As the centre of gravity of political 1'ow('.o ha changed, the scienre has changet1 along with it. Statesmen have dis('ovf>red that lni8sezjaiJ"c, though dOH htl(' tnw in a lwtff'r tah"" of f'xl!'tcn('f', is in:ll'- p 3 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. plicaLle to our irnperfect planet. They llave at- telnpted, with Irish Land Bills, &c., to regulate in SOIne degree tile distriLution of the hog's wash, and will doubtless, as democracy extends, do n10re in that direction. But when the PaInphlets appeared, this and the other dOl:trines enunciated in them were re- ceived with astonished indignation. 'Carlyle taken to whisky' .was the popular impression; or perhaps he had gone 111nd. 'Punch,' the lTIOst friendly to hÏ1n of all the London periodicals, protested affection- ately. The delinquent was brought up for trial be- fore him, I think for injuring his reputation. He ,vas admonished, but stood Ìlllpenitent, and even 'called the worthy 11lagistrate a windbag and a shmn.' I suppose it was Thackeray who wrote this, or SOl11e other kind friend, who feared, like Emerson, 'that the world would turn its back on hill1.' lIe was under no illusion hÌlnself as to the effect whieh he was producing. To John Carlyle. April 29, 1850. The barking babble of the world continues in regard to these Pamphlets, hardly any wise word at all rpaching me in reference to them; but I must say ont my say in one shape or another, and will, if Heaven help me, not minding that at all. The world is not here for my objects. The world is here for its own; but let me too be here for my own. No h1urnan word, or hardly any, once in the month, is uttered to me by any fellow-mortal-a state of things I have long be- wailerl, but learn ever better to endure, and silently draw inferences from. The prettiest person l feature during the ap- pearance of the Pamphlets was a small excursion 'LATTER-DA Y PA.J.1IPHLETS.' 37 for 'a day in the country,' which Carlyle and hi wife lllade together, when the seventh, on IIudson's statue, was off his hands. They went by rail to Richmond on a bright Iay n10rl1ing, and thence by oll1nibus to Ham Comlnon, where they strolled about alnong the trees and the gorse. They had their luncheon with them in the shape of a packet of biscuits. They bought a single bottle of soda-water. He had his cigar-case and a lllatch-box. It \vas like the old days at Craigenputtock, when, after an article was finished, they used to drive oIl' together in the ancient gig for a holiday, with the tobacco-pipe in a pocket of the apron. The last Pamphlet appeared in July. 'Latter-day Pamphlets' (he says) either dead or else abused and execrated by allmortals-Iwn flocci f(tciu, com- paratively speaking. Had a letter frum Emerson explaining that I was quite wrong to get so angry, &c. I really value these savage utterances of mine at. nothing. I am glad only -and this is an inalienable benefit-that they are out of me. Stump orator, Parliament, Jesuitism, &c., were and are a real deliverance to me. The outcry, curiously, had no effect on the sale of Carlyle's works. lIe had a certain public, slowly growing, which bought everything that he published. The praise of the new papers never, he told lne, ::-en- :sibly increased the circulation; their blalne never em;Ïbly dinlÍnished it. lIis unknown ùis('iplcR be- lieved in him as a tcacher wh01n they were to learn from, not to criticise. There were then about three thou and who hought his hooks. Now, who call ay how many there are? I[e, for him clf. had dclivereù his soul, awl wa:-: ('omparati\'ely at rC':-\t. 38 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN L01'{DON. I am not so heavy-laden to-day (he writes, when it was over) as I have been for many a day. I have money enough (no beggarly terrors about finance now at all). I have still some strength, the chance of some years of time. If I be true to myself, how can the whole posterity of Adam, and its united follies and miseries, quite make shipwreck of me? The relief, as ulight be expected, was not of -very long continuance. POPULAR PHILOSOP.FIY': 39 CllAPTEU XVIII. A.D. 1850. ÆT. 55-56. Reaction from' Latter-day Pamphlets '-Acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel-Dinner in 'Vhitehall Plo1ce-Ball at Bath House-Peel's death-ERtimate of Peel's character-Visit to South Wales- Da age Lanùor - Merthyr rryùvil- ScotsLrig - Despondency- Yisits to Keswick and Coniston-The Grange-Return to London. I the intervals between Carlyle's larger works, a discharge of spiritual bile ,\Tas always necessary. 1\lodern English life, and the opinion;:; popularly cur- rent mnong TI1en, were a constant proyocation to him. The one object of everyone (a very few ('hm en souls excepted) seelDed to he to nlake nlOney, and with nlOney increase hiR own idle luxury. The talk of people, whether written or spoken, was an extra- vagant and never-cea jng laudation of an a e whidl was contcnt to l>e so clllployed, as if the like of it had ncver been secn upon carth before. The thinkers in their closets, the politicians on platfoflll or in Par- lim11ent, reviews and magazincs, weekly newspapers and dailies, sang all thc same note, that tlwrc had never since the world beHan 1C(,11 a time when thc r' English part of lnankind had been happier or better than they were then. They lwd only to he let alonf', to havc Inore and more liberty, and fix their eyC's 4 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IlV LOlVDOiV. tcadily on ' increasing the quantity of attainable hog's wash,' and there would be such a world as no philo- sophy had ever drean1t of. Sonlething of this kind really was the prevalent creed thirty years ago, under the sudden increase of wealth which sct in with rail- ways and free trade; and to Carlyle it appeared a false creed throughout, froln principle to inference. In his judgment the conllnon weal of men and nations depended on their characters; and the road which we had to travel, if we were to make a good enù, \vas the sanle as the Christian pilgrÜn had tra veIled on his ,vay to the Celestial City, no prÌ1nrose path thither having been yet made by God or lnan. The austereI' virtues-manliness, thrift, simplicity, self- denial-were dispensed with in the boasted progress. There was no dCluand for these, no need of theln. The heaven aspired after was enjoyulent, and the passport thither was only lnoney. Let there be only 1110ney enough, and the gate lay open. lIe could not believe this doctrine. He abhorred it frOl11 the bOttOI11 of his soul. Such a heaven was no heaven for a man. Thc boasted prosperity would sooner or later be over- taken by , GoJ's juùgluent.' Especially hc was angry when he saw nlen to whom nature had given talents lending thcll1sel ves to this accur::;ed persuasion; states- l}len, theologians, philosophers composedly swÏ1nming with the stremn, carelcss of truth, or with no longer any 11lcasure of truth except their own advantage. Some who had eyes were afraid to open thCln ; others, and the lllost, had deliberately extingui hed their eyes. They used their faculties only to dress the popular theories in plausible language, and were carried away hy their own eloqucnee, till they actually believed HABITS OF DECLA.iJ1A TION. 4 1 what they were ::;aJ ing. Respect for fact they had none. :Fact to them was the view of things conven- tionally received, or what the world and they to- gethcr agreed to adnlÏt. That the facts either of religion or politics were '/lot such as bishops and statesnlen represented them to be, was frightfully evident to Carlyle, and he could not be silent if he wished. Thus, after he had written the' French Revolution,' 'Chartisnl' had to COllle out of hiIn, and 'Past and Present,' before he could settle to 'Cromwell.' 'Cromwell' done, the fierce acid had acculnulated again and had been discharged in the 'Latter-clay PaJllphlets '-discharged, however, still iInperfectly, for his whole soul was loaded with biliou indignation. 1\Iany an evening, aLout this tillIe, I heal'll him flinging off the Inatter intended for the re t of the series which had been left unwritten, pouring out, for hours together, a torrent of sulphurous denunciation. No one could check hin1. If anyone trieJ contradiction, the cataract rose against the obstacle till it rushed over it and drowned it. But, in general, his listeners sate silent. Thc inlagcry, his wild play of humour, the inunense knowledge always evident in the grotesque forms which it assuilled, were in thelllselves so dazzling anJ so entertaining, that we lost the use of our own faculties till it was over. lIe did not like 111aking these displays, and avoidetl thelll when he could; but he was ea ily provoked, and when excited could llOt restrain hilllsclf. vVhether he expected to make converts by the ramphlet , I cannot ay. His sentences, perhaps, fell herc amI thcre like seeds and ffrew to sOlllethiuff ill lllilld that , b b could rcceive thclll. III the cllcral ho:,tility, he was 4 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. experiencing the invariable fate of all Inen who see what is cODling before those who are about thelll see it; and he lived to see Inost of the unpalatable doctrines which the Palnphlets contained verified by painful experience and practically acted on. In the ulidst of the storm which he had raised, he was surprised agreeably by an invitation to dine with Sir Robert Peel. He had liked Peel ever since he had luet him at Lord Ashburton's. Peel, who had read his books, had been struck equally with hiIn, and wished to know nlore of hin1. The dinner was in the second week of lVlay. The ostensible object was to bring about a Ineeting between Carlyle and Prescott. The account of it is in his Journal. There was a great party, Prescott, :l\1ilman, Barry (architect), Lord :l\Iahon, Sheil, Gibson (sculptor), Cubitt (builder), &c., &c. About Prescott I cared little, anù indeed, there or elsewhere, did not sppak with him at all; but what I noted of Peel I will now put down. I was the second that entered the big drawing-room, a picture gallery as well, which looks out over the Thames ('Yhitehall Garùens, second house to the eastward of .Montague House), commands "T est- minster Bridge too, with its wrecked parapets (old "T est- minster Bridge), and the new Parliament Houses, being, I fancy, of semicirculw' figure in that part anl projecting iuto the shore of the river. Old Cubitt, a hoary, modest, sensible- looking man, was alone with Peel when I entered. l\ly re- ception was abundantly cordial. Talk went on about the new Houses of Parliament, and the impossibility or difficulty of hearing in them-others entering, l\1ilman &c., joined in it as I had done. Sir Robert, in his mild kindly voice, talked of the difficulties architects had in making out that part of their problem. Nobody then knew how it was to be done: filling of a room with people sometimes made it aurlible (witness his own experience at Glasgow in thp rollege Hector's time, which lw hriefJy mentioned to us), SIR ROBERT PEEL. 43 sometimes it had been managed by hanging up cloth curtains &c. Joseph Hume, reporting from certain Edinburgh mathe- maticians, had stated that the best big room for being heard in, that was known in England, was a Quakers' meeting- house near Cheltenham. I have forgot the precise place. Peoplc now came in thick and rapid. I went about the gaHery with those already come, and saw little more of Sir Robert then. I remember in presenting Barry to Prescott he said with kindly emphasis, 'I have wished to show you ome of our most distinguished men: allow me to introduce,' &c. Barry had beel! getting rebuked in the House of Commons in those very days or hours, and had been defended there by Sir Robert. Barry, when I looked at him, did not turn out by any means such a fool as his pepper-box architecture would have led one to guess-on the contrary, a broad solid man with much ingenuity and even delicacy of expresl:iion, who had well employed hil:i sixty years or so of life in looking out for himself, and had unhappily found pepper-box architecture his Goshen! From the distance I did not dislike him at all. Panizzi, even Scribe, came to the dinner, no ladies there; nothing but two sons of Peel, one at each end, he himself in the middle about op}Josite to where I sate; :\lahon on his left hand, on his right Yan de \\T eyer ( Belgian ambassador); not a creature there for whom I cared one penny, except Peel himself. Dinner sumptuous and excellently served, but I should think rather wearisome to everybody, as it certainly was to me. After all the :-;ervants but the butler were gone, we began to hear a little uf Peel's quiet talk across the table, unimportant, distin- guished by its sense of the ludicrous shining through a strong official rationality and even seriou!:'ness of temper. Di:-:- traeted address of a letter from somebody to Queen Yictona. 'The most noble George Yictoria, Queen of England, Knight and Baronet,' or something like that. A man had once written to Peel himself, while secretary, , that he was weary of life, that if any gentleman wanted for his park-woods a hermit, he, &c.,' all which wa very pretty ;111(1 human as Peel gave it n:-:. In ri:-;ing \H' had :-:ome que ti()n about the l'idure in 44 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LO.LVDON. his dining-room, which are \Vilkie's (odious) John Knox at the entrance end, and at the opposite three, or perhaps four, all by Reynolds; Dr. Johnson, original of the engravings one sees; Heynolds himself by his own pencil, and two, or perhaps three, other pictures. Doubts rising about who l:iome lady portrait was, I went to the window and asked Sir Hobert himself, who turned with alacrity and talked to us about that an0 the rest. The hand in Johnson's portrait brought an anecdote from him aboRt \Yilkie and it at Drayton. Peel spread his own hand over it, an inch or two off, to illustrate or enforce-as fine a man's hand as I re- member to have seen, strong, delicate, and scrupulously clean. Uþstairs, most of the people having soon gone, he l:ihowed us hil:i volumes of autographs-l\Iirabeau, Johnson, Byron, Scott, and many English kings and officialities: excel- lent cheerful talk and description; human, but official in all things. Then, with a cordial shake of the hand, dismissal; and the Bishop of Uxford (mirum I), insisting on it, took me home in his carriage. Carlyle had probably encountered the Bishop of Üxford before, at the Ashburtons'; but this Ineeting at Sir Robert Peel's was the beginning of an intimacy which grew up between these singularly opposite nIen, who, in spite of diiferences, discovereL1 that they thought, at bottonl, on serious subjects, very nHlCh alike. The Bishop once told nle he considerell Carlyle a HlOst eminently religious Inan. 'Ah, Sanl !' said Car- lyle to me one day, 'he is a very clever fellow; I do not hate hiln near as much as I fear I ought to do.' Once again, a few days later, Carlyle Inct Peel at a dinner at Bath IIouse-' a real state mIall' as he now discerned hini to be. 'lIe was fresh and hearty, with delicate, gentle, yet frank Inanners; a kindly Inan. IIis reserve as to all great or public Inatters sits hilli quite naturally and enhances your respect- CARL YLE A T A BALL. 45 a wann sense of fun, really of genuine broad drollery, looks through hilll; the hopefullest feature I could clearly see in this last interview or the other. At tea he talked to us readily, on slight hint fr0111 me, about Byron (Birron he called him) and their 01<1 school-days :- kindly rm11iniscences, agreeable to hear at first hand, though nothing new in thel11 to us.' 1\t Bath House also, this season, Carlyle was to nlCet (though ,vithout an introduction) a man whonl he regarded with freer adn1Ïration than he had learnt to feel even for Peel. lIe was tenlpted to a ball there, the first and last occasion on which he was ever present at such a scene. lIe was anxious to see the thing for once, and he saw along with it the hero of Waterloo. Journal. Jnne 25, lR50.-I..ast night at a grand ball at Rath House, the only hall of any description 1 pver saw. :From five to seven hundred select aristocracy; the lights, decora- tion , houseroom and arrangements perfect (1 suppose); the whole thing worth having seen for a couple of hours. Of the many women, only a few were to be called beautiful. I remember the languid, careless, slow air with which thp elderly peeresses came into the room and thereafter lounged about. A .Miss L-( a general's daughter) was the prettiest 1 remember of the sch;jneil, !{in(lern. Old Londonderry looked sad, foolish, and surly. His :!\Iarchioness, once a beauty YOlt could see, had the finest diamond of the party, Jane tell me. I..ord and Lady Lovelace, .Marquis of Breadalhanp, thickset farmer-looking man, round steel-grey head with bald crown. llctt Nichts zn ve(lenten. Anglesea, fine-looking olll man trailing his cork leg, shows bettcr on horsl'back. American Lawrence (minister here), broad, burly, pncrg(,tie- ally sagaciou.:;-looking, a man of ixty with long grey hair swirled round the ball] parts of his hig lw;u]; frightful 46 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. American lady, his wife, à la Cushman; chin like a powder- horn, sallow, parchment complexion, very tall, very lean, ex- pression thrift-in all senses of the word. 'Thrift, Horatio.' Prescott, and the other Americans there, not beautiful any of them. By far the most interesting figure present was the old Duke of "\Yellington, who appeared between twelve and one, and slowly glided through the rooms-truly a beautiful old man; I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is about the old hero when you see him close at hand. His very size had hitherto deceived me. He is a shortish slightish figure, about five feet eight, of good breadth however, and all muscle or bone. His legs, I think, must be the short part of him, for certainly on horseback I have always taken him to be tall. Eyes beautiful light blue, full of mild valour, with infinitely more faculty and geniality than I had fancied before; the face wholly gentle, wise, valiant, and venerable. The voice too, as I again heard, is 'aquiline' clear, perfectly equable-uncracked, that is-and perhaps almost musical, but essentiaHy tenor or almost treble voice-eighty-two, I understand. He glided slowly along, slightly saluting this and that other, clear, clean, fresh as this June evening itself, till the silver buckle of his stock vanished into the door of the next room, and I saw him no more. Except Dr. Chalmers) I have not for many years seen so beautiful an old man. In his early Radical days, Carlyle had spoken scornfully, as usual, of Peel and vVellington, not dis- tinguishing them from the herd of average politicians. He was learning to know thClll better, to recognise better, perhaps, how great a rnan must essentially be who can accomplish anything good under the existing lin1Ïtations. But the knowledge Caine too late to ripen into practical acq uailltance. \Vellington's sun was setting, Peel was actually gone in a few \vpeks frOln the dinner at Bath House, and VV clling-ton had passed DEATH OF PEEL. 47 that singular eulogy upon hin1 in the IIouse of Lords -singular, but most instructive commentary on the political life of our days, as if Peel was the only public luan of whom such a character could be gi,-en. , lie had never knuwn him tell a deliberate falsehood.' In the interval, Carlyle met Peel once in the street. He lifted his hat; the only time (he says) we had ever saluted, owing to mutual bashfulness and pride of humility, I do believe. Sir Robert, with smiling look, extended his left hand and cordially grasped mine in it, with a ' How are you? ' pleasant to think of. It struck me that there might certainly be some valuable reform work still in Peel, though the look of all thing::;, his own strict conservatism and even officiality of view, and still more the cohue of objects and persons his life was cast amidst, did not increase my hopes of a great result. But he seemed happy and humane and hopeful, still strong and fresh to look upon. Except him, there was nobody I had the smalle!:5t hope in; and what he would do, which seemed now soon to be tried, was always an interesting featurp of the coming time for mp. I had an authentic regard for this man and a wish to know more of him-nearly the one man alive of whom I could say so much. The last great English statesman-the last great constitutional stateslnan perhaps that England wi]] ever have-died through a fall f1'o111 his horse in the Iniddle of this Slllllmer, 1830. From .Journal. On a aturday pvening, nright sunny weather, Jane being out at Addiscombc and I to go next day, 29th of June it mast have heen, I had gone up Piccadilly between four and five p.m., and was returning; half-pa t six when I got to Hyde Park Corner. Old .l\Iarquis of Anglf'sey was riding a hrisk skittish horse. a good way down Piccarli1ly, just allf':Jd of me; hp énterCtl the park as I passed, hi::, hor:-:e (':Jpt'ring 4 8 CARLYLE'S LIFE flV LOlVDOlV. among the carriages, somewhat to my alarm, not to his. It must have been some five or ten minutes before this, that Sir Robert had been thrown on Constitution Hill and got his death-hurt. I did not hear of it at all till next day at Addiscombe, when the anxiety, which I had hoped was ex- aggerated, was considerable about him. To this hour, it. is impossible to know how the fall took place. Peel had no , fit,' I think. He was a poor rider, short in the legs, long and heavy in the body. His horse took both to rearing and flinging up its heels, says a witness. He came down, it upon him, collar-bone broken. It turned out after death that a rib had been broken (also), driven in upon the region of the lungs or heart. It had been enough. On l\Ionday I walked up to some club to get the bulletin, which pretended to be favourable. "r e went then to the house itself, saw carriages, a scattered crowd simmering about, learnt nothing further, but came home in hope. Tuesday morning, 2nd of July, , Postman' reported 'a bad night;' uncertain rum ours of good and evil through the day. (Ruskin &c. here in the evening; good report from Aubrey de Vere, about 11 p.m.) I had still an obstinate hope. 'Vednesday morning' Postman' re- ported Sir Robert Peel died last night, I think about nine. Ehel ! eheu! Great expressions of national sorrow, really a serious expression of regret in the public; an affectionate appreciation of this man which he himself was far from being sure of, or aware of, while he lived. I myself have said nothing: hardly know what to think-feel only in general that I have now no definite hope of peaceable improvement for this country; that the one statesman we had, or the least similitude of a statesman so far as I know or can guess, is suddenly snatched away from us. 'Vhat wil1 become of it? God knows. A peaceable result I now hardly expect for this huge wen of corruptions and diseases and misprips ; and in the meanwhile the wrigglings and strugglings in I'ar1iament, how they now 0.0, or what they now do there, have become mere zero to me, tedious as a tale that has been told. Dr. Foucart, who was present, told Farre, Sir Robert was frequently insensible; wandered, talking about his watch, ahout getting to bed. 'Let 11S light the candJes and DEATH OF PEEL. 49 go to bed.' 'Have you wound up that watch?' &c. :Kever alluded to his hurt. He lay all the while in that dining- room, made them take off his bandages as intolerable, would not be examined or manipulated further; got away from his water-bed; slept eight hours upon a sofa, the only sleep he had. 'God bless you all!' he said in a faint voice to his children, clear and weak, and so went his way. TÉÀoS'. Great men die, like little BIen; 'there is nu ùifference,' and the world goes its way without them. Parlianlent was to 'wriggle on' with no longer any Peel to guide; 'the wen,' as CobLett (' lled Lou- don, was to double its alreaù y overgrown, Illollstrous bulk, and Carlyle had still thirty years before hiIll to watch and shudder at its extending: but froln this time he cared little about contelnporary politics, which he regarded as beating the wind. vVhat he hinlself was next to do was a probleln to hinl which he did not see his way through. SOlne tilHe or other he Ineant to write a ' Life of Sterling,' but as yet he had not sufficient composure. Up tu this tinle he haù perhaps some hope or purpose of being elnployeù actively in public life. All idea of this kind, if he ever seriously entertained it, had now vanished. As a writer of books, and as this only, he was to Inake his mark on his generation, but what book was to be written next was entirely vague to him. 'fhe house in Chebea required paint and whitewash again-a process which, for everyone's sake, it was desirable that he should not be present to witne:ss. Iris fi'iend, ],11'. Hedwood, again invited hÜn to South Wales. He had been dreadfully 'bored' there; but he waR affected, too, hy Redwood's loyal attachment. He agreed to go to hÏ1n for a week or two, and int('ndell afterwarùs to lllake his way intu SLotlaud. IV. E SO CARL JZE'S LIFE IN L01VDON On the way to Cardin: he pent a night with Savage Landor, who was then living apart fr0111 his family in Bath. Landor (he wrote) was in his house, in a fine quiet -street like aNew Town Edinburgh one, waiting for me, attended only by a nice Bologna dog. Dinner not faT fTom ready; his apartments all hung round with queer old Italian pictures; the very doors had pictures on them. Dinner was elaborately simple. The brave Landor forced me to talk far too much, and we did very near a bottle of claret, besides two glasses of sherry; far too much liquor and excitement for a poor fellow like me. However, he was really stirring company: a proud, irascible, trenchant, yet gene- rous, veracious, and very dignified old man; quite a ducal or royal man in the temper of him; reminded me some- thing of old Sterling, except that for Irish hlarney yon must substitute a fund of 'Yelsh choler. He left me to go smoking along the st.reets about ten at night, he himself retiring then, having walked me through the Crescent., Park, &c., in the dusk before. Bat.h is decidedly t.he pretties1 town in all England. Nay, Edinhurgh itself, except for thp sea and the Grampians, does not equal it. Regular, but by no means formal streets, all clean, all quiet, yet not dead, winding up in picturesque, lively varieties along the face of a large, broad sweep of woody green sandstone bill, with large outlook to the opposite side of the valley; and finp, decent, clean people sauntering about it, mostly small country gentry, I waf' told; 'li"p here for 1 ,2COl. a yenr,' sairl Landor. l\'lr. Redwood "'"as no longer at Llandough, but had 1110vec1 to Boverton, a place at no great distance. I3overton was nearer to the sea, and the daily bathe could be effected without difficulty. The cocks, cuddies, &c., were as troublesome as usual, though l)l'rhaps less so than Carlyle's vivid anathemas on the poor creatures wouh1 lead one to suppo e. IIi host VISIT TO SOUTfl IVrlLE5.. 5] entertained hiI11 with Inore honour than he would have paid to a prince or an archbishop, and Carlyle could not hut be gratefuL To Jane JVel-:h Carlyle. Boverton: Aug. 12, 18;'0. Redwood is friendliness itself, poor fellow; discloses a great quantity of passive intelligence amid his great pro- fundity of dulness: nay, a kind of humour at times, and certainly excels in good terrnpe'ì' all the human creatures I have been near lately. Several times his fussiness and fikery have brought angry growlings out of me, and spurts of fierce impatience which he has taken more like an angel than a"'" elshman. Perfection of temper! And his pony is very swift anù good, and his household is hospitably furnished, and all that he has is at my disposal. On the whole I shall handsomely make out my three weeks, and hope to get profit from it after all. Carlyle would have been the most perfcct of guide-book writers. Nothing escaped his obscrva- tion; and he never rested till he had learnt all that could be known about any place which he visited: first and foreIllost, the 111eaning of the name of it, if it was unC01111non or suggestive. His daily letters to Chelsea were full of de criptions of the neighbourhood, all singularly vivid. Here, for instancc, is an account of 1\Ierthyr Tydvil, to which his friend carried hÜn :- In 1755 .i\Ierthyr Tydvil was a mountain hamlet of five or six houses, stagnant and silent as it had been ever sincp Tydvil, the king's or laird's daughter, was martyred here, say 1,300 years before. About that time a certain .l\Ir. Bacon, a cunning Y orkshireman, passing that way, discovered that there was iron in the ground-iron and coal. He took a 99 years' lease in consequence, anù-in brief, there are nuw ahout 50,000 grimy mortals, hlack and e1ammy with F.2 52 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON soot and sweat, screwing out a livelihood for themselves in that spot of t.he Taft'Valley. Such a set of unguided, hard- worked, fierce, and miserable-looking sons of Adam I never saw before. Ah me! It is like a vision of Hell, and will never leave me, that of these poor creatures broiling, aU in sweat and dirt, amid their furnaces, pits, and rolling mills. For here is absolutely 'no' aristocracy or guiding class; nothing but one or two huge iron-masters; and the rest are operatives, petty shopkeepers, Scotch hawkers, &c. &c. The town might be, and will be, one of the prettiest places in the world. It is one of the sootiest, squalidest, and ugliest: all cinders and dust-mounds and soot. Their very greèlls they bring from Bristol, though the ground is excellent all round. Nobody thinks of gardening in such a locality-all devoted to metallic gambling. The house-cleaning at Chelsea 'was complicated by the misconduct of servants. 1\1rs. Carlyle was struggling in the midst of it all, happy that her husband was away, but wishing perhaps that when he was at hOlne he would show hÜnself a little more appreciative of the troubles she was undergoing. No one ever laid hilllself more open to being misunder- stood in such matters than Carlyle did. He was the gratefullest of men, but, from a shy reluctance to speak of his feelings, he left his gratitude unuttered. He seemed to take whatever was done for him as a matter of course, and to growl if anything was not to his mind. It was only in his letters that he showed what was really in his heart. To Jane JVelsh Carlyle. Boverton: Aug. 10, 1850. Keep yourself quiet. Do not let that scandalous randy of a girl disturb you a moment more; and be as patient with your poor, 80ft dumpling of an apprentice as you can, in VISIT TO SOUTH rVALEs. 53 hopes of better by-and-by. ' Servants' are at a strange pass in these times. I continually foresee tbat before very long there will be on all bands a necessity and determination on tbe part of wise people to do without servants. That is actually a stage of progress that is ahead of us. How I feel at this moment the blessedness of such a possibility, had one been trained to do a little ordinary work, and were the due preliminaries well arranged! 'Servants,' on tbe present principle, are a mere deceptive imagination. Command is nowbere; obedience nowhere. The devil will get it all if it do not mend. Oh! my dear little Jeannie, what a quantity of ugly feats you have always taken upon you in this respect; bow you have lain between me and these annoyances, and wrapt me like a cloak agaiust them! I know this well, whether I speak of it or not. Aug. 21. Thanks to thee! Oh! know that I have thanked thee sometimes in my silent hours as no words could. For indeed I am sometimes terribly driven into corners in this my life pilgrimage, of late especially; and the thing that is in my heart is known, or can be known, to the Almighty laker alone. lie stayed three weeks at Boverton, and then grate- fully took leave. ' The good Redwood,' as he called his host, died the year f()llowing, and he never saw hÍ1n again. His route to Scotsol'ig was, as usual, by the Liverpool and .ltllnan :-;teanler. The discolllforts of his journey were not diflerent frol11 other people's in Ünilar Cil'CUlllstallces. It wa the traveller who was difIereut; and his Iniseries, cOIllical as they sound, were real enough to so sensitive a suJIerer. lIe cnt a history of thClll to Chelsea 011 his arrival. , I mn,' he said, 'a very unthankful, ill-conditioned, bilious, \vayward, and heartworn son of ...\.dam, I do su:-:;pect. \Vell, you shall hear my cÙInplaiuts. To whom can we c0mplain, if uot to one another, nfter 54 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. all ? ' He had reached Liverpool "\vithout misadven- ture. He haù gone on board late in the evening. The night, as the vessel ran down the Mersey, was soft anù beautiful. He walked and sn10ked for an hour on deck, and then went in search of his sleeping- place. 'This way the gents' cab.in, sir!' and in truth it was almost worth a little voyage to see such a cabin of gents ; for never in all my travels had I seen the like before, nor probably shall again. The little crib of a place which I had glanced at two hours before and found six beds in had now developed itself by hinge-shelves (which in the day were parts of sofas) and iron brackets into the practical sleeping- place of at least sixteen of the gent species. There they all lay, my crib the only empty one; a pile of clothes up to the very ceiling, and all round it gent packed on gent, few inches between the nose of one gent and the nape of the other gent's neck; not a particle of air, all orifices closed. Five or six of said gents already raging and snoring. And a smell! Ach Gott! I suppose it must resemble that of the slave-ships in the middle passage. It was positively immoral to think of sleeping in such a receptacle of abominations. He sought the deck again; but the night turned to rain, and the deck of a stemner in wet and dark- ness is not delightful, even in August. When the vessel reached Annan, and' he was flung into the street,' the unfortunate' Jonah' could but adùress a silent word of thanks to the :I\Ierciful Power, anù 'appeal to Goody and posterity.' At Scotsbrig he could do as he liked-be silent frOln 11l0rning till night, wanùer about alone mnong the hills, see no one, and be nursed in mind and body by the kindest hands; but he was out of order in one as well as the other. "'fhe rCë1ct.Íon after the raIHphlct wa now REST AT SCOTSßRIG. 55 telling upon him. Very strange, very characteristic, i::; the account which he writes of his condition. To Jane JVeÙih Carlyle. Scotsbrig: Septemb'Jl" 4, 18.30. I find it good that all one's ugly thoughts-ugly as sin and Satan several of them-should come uninterrupted before one and look and do their very worst. Many things tend towards settlement in that way, and silently beginnings of arrangement and determination show themselves. " hy, oh! why, should a living man complain after all? " e get, each one of us, the common fortune, with superficial varia- tions. A man ought to know that he is nut ill-used; that if he miss the thing one way he gets it in another. Your 'beautiful blessings,' I have them not. I cannot train my- self by having them. 'VeIl, then, by doing without them I can train myself. It is there tbat I go ahead of you. There, too, lie prizes if you knew it. September 6. Nothing so like a Sabbath has been vouchsafed to me for many heavy months as these last ten days at poor Scot - brig are. Let me be thankful for them. They were very necessary to me. They will open my heart to sad and affectionate thoughts, which the intolerable burden of my own mean sufferings has stifled for a long time. I do nothing here, and pretend to do nothing but sit silent in the middle of old unutterable reminiscences and poor simple scenes more interesting to me on this side Hades-lOne Hhould be content to admit tbat one is Nothing: a poor, vainly struggling Houl, yet seen with pity by the Eternal Powers, I do nelieve, and whose struggles at worst are benrl- ing towards their close. This puts one to peace when nothing plse can; and the beggarly miseries of the mere boùy abating a little, as with me they sensibly do, it is strange what dark curtains drop off of their own accord, amI how the promise of clearer skies again visits one. These la t three J Sentence apparently uncompleted. 56 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN L01\/DON. days have heen of surpassing beauty--clear, calm Reptember days, the sky bright and blue, with fluctuating masses of bright clouds. The hills are all spotted with pure light and pure shade; everything of the liveliest yellow on the live- liest green in this lower region. On riding up from the Kirtlebridge side hitherward, I could not but admit that the bright scene, with Burnswark and the infinite azure behind it, was one of the loveliest that I had anywhere seen. Poor olrl Annandale, after all! . . . A note to IÆdy Ashburton, after I arrived here, brought this answer yesterday. Great Gmuleamu8 at the Grange, it would seem. Between life there and life here, as I now have it, it must be admitted there is a contrast. ".. e are about the two extremes of decent human lodging, and I know which answers the best for me. Remember me generally to all friends. Good souls! I like them all better than perhaps they would suspect from my g'J'im ways. Sometimes it has struck me, Could not I continue this Sabbatic period in a room at Craigenputtock, perhaps? Alas! alas! The evident uncertainty as to his future occupa- tions which appears in these letters, taken with what he told rIle of his thoughts of public life at the tÍ1ne of his Parnphlets, confirms lne in IllY inlpression that he had nourished smue practical hopes frmu those Pamphlets, and had imagined that he 111ight perhaps be hÍInself invited to assist in carrying out some of the changes which he had there insisted on. Such hopes, if he had fornled theIn, he Illust have seen by this tÍ1ne were utterly groundless. 'Vhatever inl- provenlents l11ight be atteInpted, no statesnUUl would ever call on him to take part in the process. To this, which was now a certainty, he had to enùeavour to adjust hi1ll elf; but he was in low spirits-unusually low, even for hÍIn. lIe filleù his letters with anecdotes of n1i fortulles, n1Ïseries, tragedies, among his AUllan- DISCONTENTS. 57 dale neighbour , mocking at the idea that this world was Blade for happiness. He went to stay with his sister at Dumfries. The kindness of these friends (he said), their very kind- ness, works me misery of which they have no idea. In the gloom of my own imagination I seem to myself a pitiable man. J-1ast night I had, in spite of noises and confusions man y, a tolerable sleep, most welcome to me, for on the l\Ionday night here I did not sleep at all. Yesterday was accordingly a day! l\ly poor mother, too, is very weak, and there are clothes a-buying, and confw;ions very many; md no minute can I be left alone to let my sad thoughts settle into sad composure, but every minute I must talk, talk. God help me! To be dead altogether! But fie! fie! This is very weak, and I am but a spoony to write so. To- morrow I will write to you more deliberately. I had no idea I was so sick of heart and haed. made such progress towards age and steady dispiritment. Alas! alas! I ought to be wrapped in cotton wool, and laid in a locked drawer at present. I can stand nothing. I am really ashamed of the figure I cut among creatures in the ordinary human situa- tion. One couldn t do without human creatures altogether. Oh! no. But at present, in such moods as I am now in, it were such an inexpre sible saving of fret and botheration and futile distress if they would but let me alone. ,V oe's me! Woe is me ! It was in this humour that Carlyle read 'Alton Lockc,' which Kingsley sent hinl. I wcll rClllClnhcr t he gratification with which Kingsley showed HIe his approving criticitiln; and it speaks volunlcs for the merit of that book that at such a time Carlylc could takc plcasure in it. Little did cithcr of us thcn gucss in what a depth of depression it had found him. The cluud lifted aftcr a while; but thcse fits whcn thcy CaIlle wcre entirely disabling. Uohust constitutional strcngth, which iti half of it inscn::::iLility, wa not among 58 CARL YLE'S LIFE LV LOl\7DO '. the gifts which Nature had bestowed on Carlyle. His strength was moral; it lay in an unalterable resolu- tion to do what was right and to speak what was true -a strength noLly sufficient for the broad direction of his life and intellect, but leaving hinl a helpless victim of the snlall vexations which prey like mos- quitoes on the nerves of unfortunate Inen of genius. Sometimes, indeed, by the help of Providence, his irritations neutralised one another. In his steady thrift, he had his clothes nlade for him in Annandale, the cloth bought at Dlllnfries and lllade up Ly an Ecclefechan tailor. His wardrobe required refitting before his return to London, and the need of attend- ing to it proved an antidote to his present n1Íseries. A.fter relating his exertions in the tailor departInent he says very prettily:- Do not regret these contrivances of a 'rude age,' dear Goody mine. They are still useful for our circumstances, and are always beautiful, as human virtue is. Weare not yet rich, my woman, nor likely ever to be. Devil may care for that part of it! No new 'suit of virtues:' only not quite so tight a fit as the old one; one advantage that, un- doubtedly. But Chapman's account for the Pamphlets I might teach us moderation if we were forgetting oursel \'e::;. Such a return of money for so much toil and endurance of reproach, and other things, as has not often come athwart the Literary Lion. Devil may care for that, too! He says the account is all right. He will pay you your bit of an allowance this week, however. And so let him and his trade ledgers go their gates again. 'The littJe that a just man hath is more and better far, &c.,' said the old Psalmist, a most true and comfortable saying. With the end of SeptenlLer London and Cheyne How canle in sight again. The repairs were finished. I The outer.,' stupp d the sale of them for many mouths and even years. THE l'rfARSHALLS AT CONISTON. S9 At Scotsbrig, when the clothes had come in, he found himself' a ùistempered lnunan soul that had :slept ill, and was terribly dadded about: a phenomenon not quite unfamiliar to his wife's observation.' He had thought of a trip to lona before going hOIne, but the season was too far advanced. A short visit was to he Illanaged to his friends in Cumberland. Then he would hasten back, anù be as an1Ïable as he could when he arrived. lrs. CarlJ'1e, in one of the saddest uf her sad letters, had regretted that her c0111pany had beC01lle so useless to him.' , Oh !' he said, 'if you could but cease being conscious of what your company is to me! The consciousness is all the malady in that. Ah me! Ah me! But that, too, willl11end if it pleases God.' On the 27th of SepteI11ber he parted sorrowfully frOl11 his mother at Scotsbrig, after a wild nlidnight walk in wind and rain the evening before. Three days were given to the Speddings at Keswick, and t hence, on pressing invitation, he went to the :l\Iarshalls at Coniston, where he nlCt the Tennysons, then lately married. Neither of these visits brought nluch eon1- fort. Ir. Spedding had gone with the rest of the world in di approvillg the' Latter-day Panlphlets.' At the ßlar::;halls' he was prevented froln sleeping by , poultry, children, and fiunkeys.' Love of the picturp::;nd, and a heart stout enough for this adventure you are upon; that is the best good of all. , I remain, yours very sincerely, 'T. CARLYLE.' This is one of thousands of such letters, written out of Carlyle's heart, and preserved by those t.o whom they were addressed as their most pre- ciuus POSI:!{'SSiOll. LIFE OF STERLLVG. 7S delicate. He was no longer censuring the world as a prophet, but delighting it as an artist. The secular part of society pardoned the fierceness váth which he had tralllpled on theln for so beautiful an evidence of the tenùerness of his real heart. The religious world was not so well satisfied. Anglicans Pro- testants, Catholics had hoped fronl 'Cromwell,' and even from the Pamphlets, that, as against spiritual Radicalisln, he would be on their side. They found themselves entirely mistaken. 'Does not believe in us either, then?' was the cry. ' Not one of the re- li.viones licitæ will this man acknowledge.' Frede- rick 1\1:aurice's friends were the lnost displeased of all. The irreverence with which he had treated Coleridge was not to be forgiven. From all that section of Ilhnninati who had hitherto believed thel11selves his achnirers, he had cut hinlself off for ever, and, as a teacher, he was left without disciples, save a poor handful who had longed for such an utterance frolll hin1. He himself gathered no conscious pleasure froDl what he had done. 'A poor tatter of a thing,' he called it, valuable only as an honest tribute of affection to a lost friend. It was so always. The execution of all his work fell so far short of his in- tention that when completed it seelHed to be worth nothing. To .i.1Iargaret Carlyle, Scotsúri!J. Chelsea: April 5, 1851. I told the Doctor about' John Sterling's Life,' a ::;mall, in:-;ignificant book or pamphlet I have been writing. The booksellers got it away from me the other morning, to see how much there is of it, in the first place. I know not altogether myself whether it is worth printing or not, but rather think that will be the end of it whethd or uot. It 76 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOiVDON. has cost little trouble, and need not do much ill, if it do no great amount of good. . . . Alas, alas! I have so many things still to write- immense masses of things; and the time for writing them gets ever shorter, and, as it seems, the com- posure, strength, and other opportunity less and less. We must do what we can. I am weak, very irritable, too, under my bits of burdens, and bad company for anybody, and shall need a long spell of the country somewhere if I can get it. In general, I feel as if it would be very good for me to be covered under a tub wherever I go, or, at least, set to work, like James Aitkin's half-mad friend, 'ay maistly in a place by himsel'. AInong the' irritations' was a portrait which had been taken of hiln in Annandale, and of which an engraving was now sent to hirn. No painter ever succeeded with Carlyle. One had made him ' like a flayed horse;' of the present one he says :- Three months ago - solicited me to sit for this thing. I refused; she entreated; I consented, and here it is. No more abominable blotch, without one feature of mine, was ever called by the name of a rational man. It is the por- trait of an idiot that has taken Glauber salts and lost his eyesight. We burn it and forget it. N.B.-Never again consent to the like; learn generally to say' No.' Ah! could I ? The character attached, written by some young man unknown to me, is very kind, and not bad at all. To the fire! To the fire! This was nothing. The real uneasiness was about , the imn1ense masses of things' on which he wanted to write, and project after project rose and faded before he could see his way. The' Exodus fruIn IIoundsditch' was still one of theln; ought he, or ought he not, to be explicit in that great Inatter, and sketch the outlines of a creed which might hereafter be sincerely Lclieved ? SPIRITUAL OPTICS. 77 'Birth ofa cherry' in the spring of the year (he writes); birth of a planet in the spring of the æons. The All pro- duces them alike, builds them together out of its floating atoms, out of its infinite opulences. The germ of an idea lies behind that. Another 'spiritual world,' its blaze of splendour as yet all veiled, hangs struggling behind those wrecks and dust-clouds-Hebrew, Greek, &c. 'Yhen will it be born into clearness? Again, April 1851 :- In the spiritual world, as in the astronomical, it is the e((/dh that turns and produces the phenomena of the heavens. In all manner of senses this is true; we are in the thick of the confusion attendant on learning this; and thus all is at present so chaotic with us. Let this stand as an aphoristic saying? or work it out with some lucidity of detail? l\Iost true it is, and it forms the secret of the spiritual epoch we are in. Attempt to work it out Carlyle did in the two fragments on 'Spiritual Optics' which I printed in the second volume of his early life. He there seen1S to say that something of the sort was expected of him, and even obligatory upon hin1. But either he felt that the age was not ripe, or he could not de- velop the idea satisfactorily, and he left what he had written to lnature in smne other mind. 'Few men,' he says at this time, "were ever more puzzled to find their ro 1 than I am just now. Be silent! Look and seek!' lEs test of progress-of the moral worth of his -- . own or any other age-was the Jnen that It produced. lie aÙlnired most of all things in this world single- n1Ïnded and sincere people, who believed honestly what they professed to believe, and lived it out in their actions. Properly, he admired nothing else, and his special genius lay in depicting such ages and ï8 CARL YLE'.s LIFE IN LOl\TDOl\1. persons. The' Cid,' as he was looking about hÏ1n for subjects, tempted hÏ1n for a few weeks. The story of the Cid is the roughest, truest, lllOSt genial of the epics ofnlodern Europe, and some picture, he thought, lnight be drawn out of it of the struggle of Spanish chivalry with the 1\Ioslem. He read various books - 1üller's, Southey's, &c.-with this view, but he found, as everyone else has found, that although Buy Diaz in the poem is as real as Achilles, nothing can be 111ade of him in the shape of history. 1\Iuller he found 'stilting and affected, 'walking as if he were half- skatÙl!l;' other learned writers ostentatious and windy. , On the whole,' he said, , I can n1ake less of the Cid than I expected, and, in fact, cannot get any clear face view of hÏ1n at all.' Should he try 'Villian1 the Conqueror and the Norsemen? This seelned more feasible, and his own syrnpathies-his own heart itself ,vas Scandinavian; all the virtues 've possessed he be- lieved to have con1e to us out of our Norse ancestry. But this, too, faded, and his lnind wandered froDl thing to thing.! 1 Had Carlyle turned his mind to it, he would have been a great philologist. I find in his Note-book at this period a remark on a peculiarity of the English language too valuable to be omitted:- , Did I mark anywhere the absurd st.ate of our irifinitive of verbs used as a substantive? Building is good. Bâtil' est bon. Æ'cli/ìcw'e bonum est. Brmen 1:st gut. In all languages, and by the nature of speech itself, it. is the infim"tive that we use in such cases. How, in the name of wonder, does English alone seem to give us the present palticiple? Many years ago I percei\'ed the reason to be this: Build (the verb) was anciently B1tilden. All infinitives, as they still do in Gennan, ended in en; our beaut.iful Lindley Iurray, alarmed at a mispronunciation like" Buildin'," stuck a 9 to the end of it., anù so here we are with one of the most pf'rfect solecisms daily in our mouths-a participle where a participle cannot be. I cannot pretend to give any specific appreciation of the English as compared with other languages. It often seems to me, though with many intrinsic merits and lost capabilities, one of the most bar- CRrSTAL PALACE. 79 A new cant CaIne up at this epoch to put hinl out of patience-Prince Albert's Grand Industrial Exhi- bition and Palace of Aladdin in Hyde Park, a temple for the consecration of commerce, &c., with the Archbishop of Canterbury for fuglenlan, a contriv- ance which was to bring in a new era, and do for lliankillcl what Christianity had tried and failed to do. For such a thing as this Carlyle could have no feeling but contelnpt. Journal. April 21, 1851.-Crystal Palace-bless the mark !-is f.'lst getting ready, and bearded figures already grow fre- fluent on the streets; 'all nations' crowding to us with their so-called industry or ostentatious frothery. All the loose population of London pours itself every holiday into Hyrlc Park round this strange edifice. Over in Surrey there is a strange agreeable solitude in the walks one has. )Iy mad humour is urging me to flight from this monstrous place-flight' over to Denmark to learn Norse,' for example. barous t.ongues now spoken by ci.ilised creatures; a language chiefly adapted for im.oices, drill-sergeant words of command, and such like. The dropping of t.he Y ('Ie in German) from our preterit.e participle , so t.hat participle and aorist., except. by position, are undisting-uish- able, i an immense loss of resource; your sentence is t.hus foot-shackled t.o an amazing e tent. Other losses, virtual loss of declension (all but one casf') , of infle ion (almost altof!et.her); these a.lso, though a Ilain of speed for invoices, &c., are a sad loss for speech or writing and shacUe YOll very sore. Yet Shakespeare wrote in English. Honour the Shakespeare who subdued the most obstinate matelial, and made it melt before him. ".hat will become of English? I can by no means pre- dict eternity for our present hid(>bound dialect of En:rlish ; but there is such a solid note of worth in this language, and it. is spoken by uch a multitude of important human creatures just now, that. it has evidently a great IJalt to play yet, and ,,,ill enter largely int.o the speech of the future, when all Europe shall gradually have, if not one speech, say three :_ 1. Teut.onic-English for the heart of it, with Danish, German, Dutch, &c.; 2, Roman-French the head element; and 3, Scla\"onic-Rus,;:ian t he ditto. Tho:-;e will be grand timl's, )frs. lli:.rmarole-ont', iam 8ati. .' 80 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDOl\ Every season my suffering and resistance drives me on to some such mad project, and every season it fails. 'I can't get out.' There was certainly no element ever contrived in which the life of man was rendered more barren and un- wholesome than this same. Not to be helped at present, it would seem. Heigho! old age is stern and sad, but not un- beautiful if we could guide it wisely. Try to keep a little piety in thy heart; in spite of all mad contradictionR, enough to drive oneself utterly mad if one had no patience, try to maintain a small altar-flame burning there. Eheu ! eheu ! Alay 3.-Cold grey weather. All the world busy wit.h their Indus4:.rial Exhibition. I am sick, very sad, and, as usual for a long time back, not able to get on with anything. l\iy silence and isolation, my utter loneliness in this world, is complete. Never in my life did I feel so utterly windbound, lamed, bewildered, incapable of stirring from the spot in any good direction whatever. Da wär guter Rctth the:tter; and not even an attempt towards it can be made. The human beings that come round one have the effect generally upon me of beings that can or will give me no help in this my extreme need, and that ought not to be so unkind as to hinder me when I am so near the wall. One law only is clear to me: Hold thy peace! Admit not into thy counsel those that cannot have any business there; and, with shut lips, walk on the best thou with thy lamed limbs canst, and not a word more here or elsewhere. Poor' human beings that caIne round hin1 '! How could they help, how could they offer to help? They came to worship. It was not for then1 to advise or encourage. He was their teacher. They caIne to learn of him and receive humbly what he might please to give them, and he himself was sick and Inoulting. His feverishly active intellect had no fixed employment, and the 111cntal juices were preying upon thernselves. When SUInmer cmne, and the Exhibition _1fAL VER V. fI opened, London grew intolerahle The enthusiasul for this new patent invention to regenerate the ]u1.lnan race was altogether too Hutch for him. He fted to )Ialvern for the water-cure, and becmne, with his wife, for a few weeks the guest of Dl1. Gully, who, long years afterwards, was brought back so terribly to his renlelnbrance. After long \vavering he wa beginning seriously to think of Frederick the Great as his next subject; if not a hero to his mind, yet. at be::;t a man who had played a lofty part in Europe without stooping to cant of any kind. vVith Frederick lOOlning before him he went to cool his fever in thc Malvern waters. The di ease wa:>: not in his body, loudly as he cOlllplained of it. The bathing, packing, drinking proved useless-worse, in his opinion, than useless. 'He found by degrees that water, taken as Illedicine, was the nlost destructive drug he had ever tried.' He' had paid his tax to contemporary stupor.' That was all. Gully himself, who would take no fees from him, he had not disliked, anù wa grateful for his hospitality. He stayed a month in all. IIi wife went to her ti.iends in 1v1anchester he hastened to hide hinlself in Bcot.sbrig, full of gloom and heaviness, and totally out of health. In a letter which 1\lrs. Carlyle wrote t.o him after they separated, she reprilnanc1ed him somewhatRharply for having come to her, as she snppúsed, for a parting kis , with a lighted cigar in his mouth, and in the , Letters and l\IClnorial:;:' he allowed the reproaC' h to stand without explanation. l Evie himself. This blockhead, nevertheless, is actually making quite a fU'i>Q'i>e at Glasgow and all over the west country, such is the anti-Popish humour of the people. They take him for a kind of Italian Knox (God help them I), and one ass, whom I heard the bray of in some Glasgow newspaper, says,' He strikingly reminds you of our grand hater of shams, T. Carlyle.' Certainly a very striking resemblance indeed! Oh, I am sick of the stupidity of mankind-a se'i'vum pecus. I had no idea till late times what a bottomless fund of darkness there is in the human animal, especially when congregated in masses, and set to build Crystal Palaces, &c., under King Cole, Prince Albert and Company. The profoundest Orcus or belly of chaos itself, this is the emblem of them. Scotsbrig lasted three weeks. There had been an old arrangement that Carlyle should spend a few days at Paris with the Ashburtons. Lord and Lady Ash- burton were now there, and wrote to sunllllon hinl to join them. At such a cOllulland the effort :5eemed not impossible. He went to London, joined Browning at the South Eastern Railway station, and the same even- ing found hÏ1n at Ieurice's. The first forty-eight hours were tolerable: 'nothing to do except anUlse hinlself,' which he thought could be borne for a day or two. Lord.A.shburton of course saw everyone that was worth seeing. 'Thiel's CaIne the second afternoon and talked inwLe'Juse quantities of watery enough vain matter.' Thiel's was followed by two other' Inen of letters,' 'one Mérimée,' , one Laborde,' Þ,Ticlds Z'll !Jedellten. The thirù and fourth nights sleep unfortunately failea, with the usual consequences. lIe grew de:5perate, , found that he had made a fruitless jlllnp iuto a Red Sea uf IllUd.' G :2 ò4 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. The last renlainsofhis patience vanished whenl\IériInée dared to say that he' thought Goethe an inferior French apprentice.' This was enough of literature. He packed hIS bag and fled hOlne to Chelsea. He had better have stayed out his time at Scotsbrig. On his arrival he recorded his Paris adventures in his Journal. Went to Paris for a week, travelling with the Brownings, and got nothing by the business but confusion, pain, dis- a.PlJointment; total (or almost total) want of sleep; and, in rine, returned homp by express train and Calais packet in one day; glad beyond all things, and almost incredulous of the fact, to find myself in my own hed again, in my own poor hut again, with the prospect of arrangements that suited me a little. Saw at Paris, besides English people of high name, but small significance, Thiel's several times- not expressly visiting me-a lively little Provençal figure, not dislikeable, very far from estiul,able in any sense: item, 'lérimée-wooden pedant, not without conciseness, perti- nency, and a certain sarcastic insight-on the whole, no mortal of the slightest interest or value to me. To be at the trouble of speaking a foreign language (so ill) with such people on such topics as ours was a perpetual burden to ruP. Had letters to some others, but burnt them. Found some interest in looking over the physical aspects of Paris again, and contrasting it and myself with what had existed twenty- six years before. The town had a dirt.y nnswept look still; otherwise was much changpd for the better. Ride in the Bois de Boulogne with I ord Ashburton, horses swift and good, furnished by an Englishman-nothing else worth much-roads all in dust-whirlwinds, with omnibuses and scrubby vehicles; the Bois itself nearly solitary, and with a soft sandy riding-coursp; otherwise dirty, unkempt, a smack of the sQrdid grating everywhere on one's ill-humour. Articulate-speaking France was altogethPT without bpallty or meaning to me in my then diseased mood; hut I saw traces of the inarticl11atp, industrial, &e., heit:g t he true Frallce and mudl worthier. FIRST TÞfOUGHTS OF FREDERICK. 85 CH PTER XX. A.D. 1851-2. ÆT. :Jü-5ï. Purpose formed to write on Frederick the Great-The author of the , Handbook of Spain' -Afflicting visitors-Studies for' Frederick '- Yi",it to Linlathen-Proposed tour in German;y-Rotterdam-The Rhine -Bonn - Homhurg- Frankfurt- \V artburg- Luther rem i- niscences-\Veimar-Ber1Ïn-Return to England. FOR several years now, with the exception of the short interval when he wrote Sterling's life, Carlyle had been growling in print and talk over all nlanner of llwn and things. The revolutions of 1848 had aggravated his natural tendencies. He had thought ill enough before of the modern methods of acting and thinking. and had foreseen that no good would C0111e of them. The universal crash of European society had confirmed his convictions. He saw Eng- land hurrying on to a sÏ1nilar catastrophe. He had lifted up his voice in warning, and no one ,voldd listen to hiln, and he was irritated, disappointed, and perhaps surprised at the ilnpotence of his own ac1- lllOuitions. To go on with them, to continue railing like Timon, was waste of time and breath; and time and breath had been given to hinl to use and not to waste. 1[i:-: best resource, he knew, was to engaf!l\ with SOllle Sl1 bject large enough and difTicult enough to take up all his attention, an(1 he had fixed at la t 86 CARL YLE'S LIFE I.J.V LOJVD01\T. on Frederick of Prussia. He had discerned for one thing that Prussia, in those days of tottering thrones, was, or would be, the centre of European stability, and that it was Frederick who had made Prussia what she was. It was an enormous undertaking; nothing less than the entire history, secular and spiritual, of the eighteenth century. He was not one of those easy writers who take without inquiry the accredited histories, and let their own work consist in hashing and seasoning and flavouring. He never stated a fact without having himself gone to the original authority for it, knowing what facts suffer in the cooking pro- cess. For Carlyle to write a book on Frederick would involve the reading of a mountain of books, Inemoirs, journals, letters, state papers. The work with Crom- well would be child's play to it. He would have to travel over a large part of Germany, to see Berlin and Potsdam, to exan1Ïne battle-fields and the plans of can1paigns. He 'would have to nlake a special study, entirely new to hiln, of lllÏlitary science and the art of war; all this ,he would have to do, and do it thoroughly, for he never went into any work by halves. He was now fifty-six years old, and might well pause before such a plunge. Frederick himself, too, was not a man after Carlyle's heart. He had' no piety' like CromweH, no fiery convictions, no zeal for any 'cause of God,' real or imagined. He lived in an age whcn sincere spiritual belief had become diffi- cult, if not impossible. But he had one suprmne merit, that he was not a hypocrite: what he did not feel he did not pretend to feel. Of cant-either con- scious cant, or the 'sincere cant' whidl Carlyle found to be so 10athsOll1e in England-there was in FREDERiCK THE GREAT. 87 Frederick absolutely none. lIe was a Iuan of supreme intellectual ability. One belief he had, and it was the explanation of his strength-a belief in facts. To know the fact always exactly as it was, and to Inake his actions conform to it, was the first condition with him; never to allow facts to be concealed fronl hÌ1u- self, or distorted, or pleasantly flavoured with words or spurious sentiuwnts; and therefore Frederick, if not a religious man, was a true luan, the nearest approach to a religious man that Carl}Tle believed perhaps to be in these days possible. He might not be true in the sense that he never deceived others. Politicians, with a large stake upon the board, do not play with their cards on the table. But he never, if he could help it, deceived himself; never hid his own heart frOIl1 hirnsclf by specious phrases, or allowed voluntary hallucinations to blind his eyes, and thus he stood out an exceptional figure in the lllodern world. vVhether at his age he could go through with such an enterprise was still uncertain to him; but he resolved to try, and on cOIning back froln Paris sat down to read whatever would come first to hand. lie diel not recover his good-humour. Lady Ashburton invited 1\lrs. Carlyle to spcnd Decenlber with her at the Grange, to help ill amusing some visitors. She did not wish to go, and yet hardly dared say no. She consulted John Carlyle. Heaven knows (she wrote) what is to be said from me individually. If I refuse this time, she will (Iuarrel with me outright. That is her way; and as quarrelling with her would involve also quarrelliug with .Mr. C. it is not a thing to be ùone lightly. I wi h I knew ,\hat to answer for the best. 88 CARL YLE'S LIFE I.LV LONDO.LV. Not a pleasant position for a wife, but she D1ade the best of it and subnlÍtted. She ,vent to the Grange. lIe stayed behind with Jomini and the Seven Years' \VaI', patiently reading, attending to his health, dining out. eeing his friends, and at least endeavouring to reeovcr some ort of lnunan condit.ion-even, as it seems, deansinf! the Cheyne now premises with his own hands. To Jane TVelslt Carlyle, at the G}'(ln!le. Chel:;ea: December 8, 1851. On attu'day last in the morning I did what is probably my chief 3C't of virtue Hince you went; namely, I decided nut to walk, but to take water and a scrub-brush, and Hwash into some degree of tolerability those greasy clammy flags in the back area. I did it without rebuke of Anne. I said ::;he coulùn't do it in her present state of illness; and on the wholt' proceeded, and founù it decidedly hard work for three- quarters of an hour. Some ten or twelve pails of water with vigorous scrubbing did, howev èr, reduce the affair to order, whereupon I washed myself and sat down to breakfast in vic- torious peace. 'Dirt shall not be around me,' Raid Cobbett, , so long as I can handle a broom.' . . . Our weathf'r here is now absolutely beautifu1. I executed a deal of riding yesterday, auù after near four hours' foot and horse exercise wa::; at South Place little after time. ' )[utton chop with Ford?' I There was a graml dinner wllf'n I arrived en frac, 'Irs. Ford, LawrenC'e, and the girls all dressed like tulipR; Anthony (Sterling) himself in white waistcoat, all very grand indeed. I was reaBy provoked, but said nothing. Happily r Wél8 dean as new snow, and had not come in my pilot jacket; and in short I could not help it. Ford, though a man with- out hwmunr or any gracefulness or loveability of eharacter, I Author of the' IIandbool{ of Spain,' and parent of the whole hand- hook seriei'. STUDiES i OR 'FREDERiCK.' 89 is not the worst of men to dine with at all; has abundance uf authentic information-not duller than Iacaulay's, and much more certain and more social too---and talks away about Sl'{mi h wines, anecdotes, and things of Spain. I got away about eleven, not quite nlined, though not intending to go back soon. December 11. Do but think: I have had a letter from tbat bird-like, emi-idiot son of poor -, thanking me for the mention of hi father in ' Sterling,' anò forwarding for my judgment a plan to renovate suffering society! a big printed piece with ':\[S. annotations, accompaniments, &c.-an association to do it all. ly answer was, in brief,' A pack of damned non- sense, you unfortunate fool! ' December 12. Last night, just as tea was in prospect, and the hope of a quiet, busy evening to a day completely lust, enter, with a loud knock, poor - leading his little hoy ; a huge, hairy, good-humoured, stupid-looking fellow the ize of a house gable, and aU over with hair, except a little patch on the cro\\ n, which was bald; the boy noisy, snappi h, and inclined to be of himself intolerable. I gave them tea tried to talk. Poor - has no talent. You expect good-humoured idio'fnatic I'implicity at least, and you do not get even that. He turns like a door on a hinge from every kind of opinion or a sertion, and is a colossus of gossamer. They bored me to death, and at half-past nine, to complete the matter, Saffil enters. Oh, heavens! the whole night, likp the day, was a painful wreck for the rational soul of man. Amiction would come, but Carlylc's c ::'elltially kiud heart put up with them. IIp had to ::,ecurc him- ('lf morc C'fIcdually Leforc he uuld makc pr()gre H with .Frederick, whidl still hung Lefurc him uncertain. He joincd his wIfe at the Grange in thc middle of the month, alld tayed out tll<' year tlll're. I Fril'nci flf :\Iazzini; f:À-trilllll\ il' of Home, 9 0 CARL YLE'S LIrE LV LOl\-nOiy. J oU1'nal. January, 1852.-Took to reading about Frederick the Great soon after my return from Paris,at which work, with little definite prospect or even object-for I am grown very poor in hope and resolution now-l still continue. V{as at the Grange before and till New Year's Day, three weeks in aI], Jane five weeks-rode daily, got no other good-Lords Lansdowne and Grey; Thackeray, :Macaulay, TwÜdeton, Clough, a huge company coming and going. Lonely I, solitary almost as the dead. Infinitely glad to get home again to a slighter measure of dyspepsia, inertia, and other heaviness, ineptiturle, and gloom. Keep reading Frederick. Precise, exact, copiou , dullest of men, ArchenhoItz (my first German book near thirty years ago), J omini, Lloyd, and now Frederick's own writings. I make slow progress, and am very sensible how lame I now am in such things. I!2J!.e is what I now want. Hope is as if dead within me for most part; which makes me affect soli- tude and wish much, if wishing were worth aught, that I had even one serious intelligent man to take counsel with, and communicate my thoughts to. But this is weak, so no more of this; know what the inevitable years have brought thee, and reconcile thyself to it.. An unspeakable grandeur withal sometimes shines out of all this, like eternal light across the scandalous London fogs of time. Patience! courage! steady, steady! Sterling's Life out, and even second edition of it-very well received as a piece of writing and portrait-painting. TVus bede?.J.-tet's aber? Religious reviews, I believe, are in a terrible humour with me and it. Don't look at one of them. Yarious foolish letters about it. 'Latter- day Pamphlets' have turned nine-tenths of the world dread- fully against me - uncl clas auch, was becleutet's? Can .Frederick be my next subject-or what? Six lnonths now followed of steady reading aud excerpting. He went out little, except to ride in the afternoons, or walk at midnight when the day's work was over. A few friends were admitted oe a:;iollany STUDIES FOR 'FREDERICK' 9 1 to tea. If any called Lefore, he left theIl1 to his wife and refused to be disturbed. I was then living in "\Vaies, and saw and heard nothing of him except in SOlne rare note. In the Journal there are no entries of consequence except the characteristIc one of Aprill. You talk fondly of 'immortal memory,' &c. But it is not so. Our memory itself can only hold a certain quantity. Thus for every new thing that we remember, there must some old thing go out of the mind; so that here, too, it is but death and birth in the old fashion, though on a wider scale and with singular difference in the longevities. Lon- gevities run from 3,000 years or more to nine days or less; but otherwise death at last is the common doom. The temper does not seeIn to have lnuch lnended. There were sTI1all aihnents and the usual fretfulness under them. vVhen June CaIne he sent his mother a flourishing account of himself, but his wife added a sac1-Inerry postscript as a corrective :- June 5. It is quite true that he is done with that illness, and might have been done with it much sooner if he had treated himself with ordinary sense. I am surprised that so good and ensible a woman as yourself should lmve brought up her son so badly that he should not know what patience and self- denial mean-merely observing 'Thou'st gf'Y ill to deal wi'.' trey ill indeed, and always the longer the worse. \Yhen he was ill this last time, he said to Anne (the servant) one morning, 'I should like tea for breakfast this morning, [m,t you need not hU1>ry.' The fact was, he was purposing to wash all over with soap and water; but Anne didn't know that, and thought he must be dangerously in, that he should ever have thought of saying you needn't hU'J"J'Y, ' It was such an unlikely thing for the master to say, that it (p1Ïte m:H}p flesh crf'('p.' You see the kind of thing Wf' :-;tiJl go on with. 92 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LO_VDO V. He had decided OIl going to Gennany in Augu t. \' ith the exception of the yacht trip to Ostend, he ha Erskine, Linlathe'l. Chelsea: July 12, 185:2. Dear lr. Erskine,--l foresee that, by stress of weather and of other evil circumstances, I Rhall, in spite of my reluc- tance and inertia, be driven out of this shelter of mine-- where I have already fled into the topmost corner with a few books; and, aided by a watering-pot, would so gladly defend myself as at first I hoped to do. The blaze of heat is almost intolerable to everybody; and alas! we, in addition, have the house full of workers, armed with planes, saws, pickaxes, dust-boxes, mortar-hods, the two upper storeys getting a 'complete repair' which hitherto fills everything with noise, dust, confusion, and premonitions of despair. I foresee, especially if this hot weather holds, that I shall have to run. :\Iy wife, who is architect and factotum, will retire to some neighbour's hOl1se and sleep; but cannot leave the ground till she .qee these two upper storeys made into her image of them. I have fled into a dressing-room far aloft ; it there very busy with certain books, also with watering- pot, which, all carpets &c. heing off, is a great help to me. Herp I would so gladly hold out; but in rite of wholpsomp VISIT TO LINLATHEN. 93 amI unwholesome inertia!:;, shall too probably be obliged to fly. "Thitherward ? i now the question, and I am look- ing round on various azimuths to answer the same. Tell me, if you are, or are likely to be, tolerably solitary for a ten days at Linlathen, and about what time. A draught attracts me thither, so as to few other places. But alas! in every way there lie lions for me, weak in body and strong in imagination as I am. It seems sometimes as if, could you leave me daily six hours strictly private for my German read- ing, and send me down once a day to bathe in your glorious Rea, I could try well not to be sulky company at other hours, and might do very well beside so friendly a soul as yours is to me always. Tell me, at any rate, how you are situated, and regard this pious thought, whether it becomes an action or not, as proof of my quiet trust in you. Hearty good wishes to all. Yours ever truly, T. CARLYLE. Erskine, who loved Carlyle and delighted in hi cOlupany, responded with a hearty invitation, and on July iI, the weather still flaming hot, Carlyle droppf'd down the river in a hoat fronl Chelsea to the Dundee' steamer, which was lying in the Pool, his wife and Nero accolupanying to see hiln off. She was de'- lip-hted that he should go, for her own sake as well as for his. \Vhen he was clear off, she couIll go al)()l1 t her work with a lighter heart. t;he writes to tell John Carlyle of his brother's departure, and goes on:- Noise something terrific. III superintending all thesp men, I begin to find myself in the career open to my par- ticular talents, and am infinitely more atisfied than I was in talking' wits' in my white silk gown, with white feathers in my head, at soirées at Bath House, and all that sort of thing. It is sueh a consolation to be of !:;OlUC use, though it iH only in helping stupid carpenter and bricklayers out 94 CARL YLE'S LIFE LV LO VDO V. of their impossibilities, &c. ; especially when the ornamental no longer succeeds with one as well as it has done. The fact is, I am remarkably indifferent to 'inatc'r'ial annoyances, considering my morbid sensitiveness to moral ones; and when 1\lr. C. is not here recognising it with his overwhelm- ing eloquence, I can regard the present earthquake as some- thing almost laughable. He Ineanwhile was reporting his successful arrival in Fife. To Jane TVelsh Carlyle. Linlatben: July 23, 185 . You and Nero vanishing amid the ships of the Pool were a wac kind of sight to me in my then and subsequent condition of imagination. . . . I got on very well in the steamer, was nearly 'lttterly silent, found e\"erybody civil, and everything tolerably what it should be. The weather was of the best. That first evening, with the ships all hang- ing in it at the Thames mouth like black shadows on a ground of crimson, was a sight to make anybody give way to the picturesque for a few minutes. I passed almost all my time in reading; smoked too, and looked with infinite sorrow, yet not unblessed or angry sorrow, into the continent of chaos, as is my sad wont on such occasions. I contrived to get a berth, by good management, where I had a door to shut upon myself, and a torrent of wind running over me all night, where accordingly I managed to sleep tolerably well both nights, and am really better, rather than worse. Give Nero a crumb of sugar in my name. July 26. Thanks, many thanks, for the note I got this morning. You know not what a crowd of ugly confusions it delivered me from, or what black webs I was weaving in my chaotic thoughts while I heard nothing from you here. . . for I am terribly bilious, though it might be hard to say why; every- thing is so delightfully kind and appropriate here-weather, I)lace, people, bedroom, treatment all so much 'better than I deserve.' But one's imagination is a black smithy of the VISIT 70 LI./IlLAT1IE.:V. 95 Cyclops, where strange things are incessantly forged. The good Thomas and all the rest religiously respect my six hours, and hitherto I have always got a fair day's work done. I sit in my big high bedroom, hear nothing but the sough of woods, have a window flung clean up, go out and smoke at due intervals, as at home, &c. In fact, I am almost too well cared for and attended to. The only evil is that they will keep me in talk. Alas! how much happier I should be not talking or talked to ! I require an effort to get my victuals eaten for talk. This was too good to last. Carlyle would not have been Carlyle if he had been even partial1y con- tenteù for a week together. The Gernlan problem seelned frightful as the time drew on. Travel1ing of all kinùs was horrible to hinl. 'Frederick was no sufficient inducenlellt to lead. hÏ1n into such sufferings and expenses.' 'Shall we CO,\Ter into some nearest hole,' he said, , and leave Germany to the winds? I aln very weary of all locomotion, of all jargon talk with Iny inùifferent brethren of mankind. "She said, I am a-weary, a-weary." I am very, very ,veary, truly so could I say; and the Rankes, Varnhagens, and other gabbling creatures one win Ineet there are not very inviting.' Linlathen itself becanle tediou : he admitted that all the circunlstances were favour- able-the kindest of hOl:;ts, the best of lodging; 'but the wearisome wa:;: in permanence there.' It was only by keeping as much alone as possible that he managed to get along. 'Oh, Goody! ' he cried, , have pity on IHe and be patient with me; my heart is very lonely sometilnes in this worlù.' They would make him talk, that was the offence; yet it was his own fault. IIis talk wal:; :so intensely interesting, so in- tensely entertaining. Xo one who heard him flowing 9 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE ILV LOcVDON. On could have guessed at the sadness which wei ]1ed upon hinl when alone. Those bursts of Inunour, flashing out an1Ïdst his wild flights of rhetoríc, spoke of anything but sadness; even the servants at placC's where he dined had to run out of the l OOIn, choking down their laughter. The comic and the tragic lie close together, inseparable like light and shadow, as Socrates long ago forced Aristophanes hiInself to acknowledge. He escaped to Scotsbrig after a fort- night with the Erskines, and there he hoped his wife would join hinl. But the work at Cheyne Row lingered on, and was far from cOInpletion. He felt that he ought to go to Germany; yet he was Ull- willin9' to leave her behind hiln. She had looked forward with some eagerness to seeing a foreign country, and Carlyle knew it. 'You surely deserve this one little pleasure,' he said; , there are so few you can get froUl Ine in this world.' To hirllself it would be no pleasure at all. 'Curtainless beds, noisy, sleep- less nights' were frightful to contemplate. He, in- dividually, was 'disheartened, dyspeptical, contelnp- tible in SOIne degree;' still, for her sake, and for the little bit of duty he could get done, he was ready to encounter the thing. Especially he wished her to ('Olne to hilH at Scotsbrig. She had held aloof of late years, since things had gone awry. '1\Iy pour old nlother,' he wrote, 'CaBles in with her sincere, anx.ious old face: "Send lny love to Jane, and tell her" (this with a wae-ish tone) ,. I would like right weel to have a crack 1 wi' her ance mair.'" 11rs. Carlyle was still unable to COlne away fronl Chelsea, but she was alarrllecl at the extreIne depres- 1 C'rrlf'k, convt'rHation. TO GO TO GERlIIANY OR NOT? 97 SlOll of his letters. He reassured her as \VeIl as he could. August 12. Don't bother yourself (he said) about my health and SpIritS. That is not worse at all than usual; nay, rather it is better, especially to-day, after a capital sleep-my best for six weeks; nor is the gloom in my mind a whit increased. It is the nature of the beast; and he lives in a continual element of black, broken by lightning , and cannot help it, poor devil! lIe concluded that he nlust go to GerDlany. She, if thinD's were well, n1Ïght CODle out afterwards , anù c join hiIll in Silesia. lie found that' he did not care luuch for Frederick after all;' but' it would be dis- graceful to be beaten by mere travelling annoyances.' )Iy own private perception (he said, a few days later) is that I shall have to go-that I shall actually be shovelled out to-morrow week into a Leith steamer for Hotterdam, a result which I shudder at, but see not how to avoid with the least remnant of honour. I wait, however, for your next letter, and the candid description of your own capabilities to join me, especial1y the 'When of that; and, on the whole, am one 'coal of burning sulphur' --one heal', that is to say, of chaotic miseries, horrors, sorrows, and imbecilities, actually rather a contemptihle man. But the ass does swim, I some- times say, if you fling him fairly into the river, though he brays lamentably at being flung. Oh, my Goody! my own, or not my own, Goody! is there no help at an, then? Letter followed letter, in the saDle strain. It was not jest, it was not earnest; it was a nlere wilfulness of lnnuour. lIe told her not to 111Ïnd what he said; 'it was the nlCre gnllnbling incidental to dyspepsia and the load of life. It ,vas, on the whole, the nature of the beast, and was to he put up with, as the wind and the rain.' She had to decide, perhaps prudently, n r . H 98 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOiVDOiY. that she could not go, either with him or after him. 'The wind and the rain,' with the aggravation of travelling, woulr! probably rise to a height. He him- self was heartily disappointed. 'I do grudge,' he said, 'to go to Gern1any without you, and feel as if half the scheme ,vere gone on that account.' lIe was a little ashamed, too. It was harvest-time at Scots- brig and men and women were all busy with the shearing. These rugged Annandale shearers (he said) ought to put a f(opfhänger like me to shame. In Germany, whether I slept or not, tbe odious captivity to indolence, incompe- tence, and do-nothingism which encircles me at present would be cast off at least. Life anywhere will swallow a man, unless he rise and vigorously try to swallow it. He gathered hilTIself together for the effort. On August 25 he wrote :- Last night I slept much better, and, ind ed, except utter dispiritment and indolent confusion, there is nothing essen- tial that ails me. 'Jist plain mental awgony in myain in- side,' that is all; which I can in a great manner cure when- ever I like to rise and put my finger in the pipie 0' t. And on the 27th:- Yesternight, before sunset, I walked solitary to Stock- bridge hill top, the loneliest road in all Britain, where you go and come some three miles without meeting a human soul. Strange, earnest light lay upon the mountain-tops all round, strange clearnes ; solitude as if personified upon the near bare hills, a silence everywhere as if premonitory of the grand eternal one. I took out your letters and read them over again, but I did not get much exhilaration there either. On the whole, I was very sore of heart, and pitied my poor Jeannie heartily for all she suffers; some of it that I can mend and will; some that I cannot so well, and can only try. God bless t.hee ever dear Jeannie! that is my heart's prayer, go where I may, do or suffer what I may. SAILS FOR ROTTERDAltf. 99 All this caIne from his heart, and she knew it well. She never doubted his heart; but, in the n1Ïdst of his enlotions. he had forgotten his passport, and had to instruct her to go with the utInost haste to the proper quarters to procure one, and she .would have desired him to feel less and to consider more. It is much to be wished (she wrote to his brother) that l\lr. C. could learn not to leave everything to the last mo- ment, throwing everybody about him, as well as himself, into the most needless flurry. I am made quite ill with that passport; had to gallop about in stn et-cabs by the hour, like a madwoman, and lost two whole nights' sleep in conse- quence-the first from anxiety, the second from fatigue. All was settled at last-resolution, passport, and everything else that was required; and on Sunday, August 30, Carlyle found himself on board the greasy little wretch of a Leith steamer, laden to the water's edge with pig-iron and herrings,' hound for the country whose writers had been the guides of his lnind, and whose military hero was to be the subject of his own greatest work. He reached Rotterdalll at noon on September 1. He \vas not to encounter the journey alone. l\fr. Neuberg was to join hinl there, a Gennan admirer, a gentleman of good private fortune, resi- dent in London, who had volunteered his services to conduct Carlyle over the Fatherland, and afterwards to be his faithful assistant in the 'Frederick' bio- p-raphy. In both capacities Keuberg was invalu- able, and Carlyle never forgot his obligation to hÏIn. His letters are the diary of his adventures. They are extremely long, and selections only can be given here. lIe went first to Bonn, to study 3, few books hf'fore going farther. B .J 100 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. To Jane JVelsh Carlyle, Chelsea. Bonn: Sunday, September 6, 18:52. Thank thee very much, dear Jeannie, for the letter of yesterday, which lay waiting to refresh me in the afternoon when I returned from my dusty labours in the library hen'. It seemed to me the kindest I had got from you this long while, almost like the old ones I used to get ; and any letter at all, so anxious and impatient had I grown, would have been right welcome. l\ly journey has had nothing that was not pleasant and lucky hitherto. At Bonn here, on my arrival, there lay nothing for me except a note from Lady Ashburton, enclo ing the introduction from Lord A. to the Ambassador at Berlin-not a first- rate comfort to me. I must, or should, acknowledge it to-day; but writing of all kinds in these sad biliary circumstance , with half-blind eyes, and stooping over low rickety tables, is perfectly unpleasant to me. . . . 'Yell, but let me say I got beautifully up the Rhine; stuck by the river all day, all night, and the second afternoon found Neuberg waiting here on the beach for me. Alas! at Rotterdam I had slept simply none at all, such was the force of noisy nocturnal travellers, neighbours s'Jw1'.ing, and the most industrious cocks I ever heard. The custom- house officers, too, had spoilt the lock of my portmanteau, and, on the whole, I was in such a whirl of storm-tost flurries and confusions-God help me, wretched, thin-skinned mortal that I am! At five a.m. next morning I was in a preci0us humour to rise, and settle with unintelligible waiters and German steamboat clerks, and get myself, on any terms, on board. On board I got, however, and the place proved in- finitply better than I hoped; some approach to Christian food to be had in it, some real sleep even; indeed, the prin- cipa] sleep I have yet had since Friday gone a week was four hours, and ag;:}in four hours, deep, deep, lying on the cabin sofas, amid the genera] noises, in that respectable vessd. I spoke German too, being the one Englishman on bO:lnl, made agreeable acquaintances, &c. &c. The Rhine, of a vile reddish-drab colour, and all cut into a reticulary work AT BONN. 101 of branches, flowing through an absolutely flat country, lOLVer than itself, was far from beautiful about Hotterdam, and for a fifty miles higher, but it was highly curious, and worth seeing once in a way; a country covered with willows, bul- rushes, and rich woods, kept from drowning by windmill pumps. One looked with astonishment upon it, and with admiration at the invincible industry of man. Higher up (towards four p.m. of the first day) the river gets decidedly agreeable; and about Cologne, twenty miles below this, a beautiful mountain group, Sieben Gebirge, the Seven Hills, which are still some five or seven miles beyond us here, an- nounces that the' picturesque' is just going to enter on the scene. lUuch good may it do us! ,,-r e had beautiful weather all the way, and yet have. But surely the most picturesque of all objects was that of Neuberg, standing on the beach here to take me out of all that puddle of foreign things, and put me down, as I hoped, in some place where I might sleep and do nothing else for several days to come. K euberg's kindness nothing can exceed; but as to the rest of it, as to sleep in particular, I find the hope to have been somewhat premature. Oh heavens! I wonder if the Devil anywhere ever contrived such beds and bedrooms as these same are. And two cocks are indu::;trious day and night under the back window, &c. &c. But, upon the whole, I have slppt evpry night here more or less, and am decidedly learning to do it; and Neuberg asserts that I shall become expert by-and-by. Yesterrlay, as my first day's work, I went to the Univer- sity I..ibrary here; found very many good books unknown to me hitherto on Yater Fritz; took down the titles of what on inspection promised to be useful; brought home some twenty away with me, and the plan at present is that N. and I shall go with them to a rural place in the Sieben Gebirge, called Holand's Eck, for one week, where sleep is much more possible, and there examine my twenty books before going farther, and consider what i:i the best to be done farther. 102 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN L01VDON. September 9. A letter from my Jeannie will surely be one of the joy- fullest occurrences that can befall me in these strange, sleepless, nervous, indescribable foreign parts. Oh, my own dear little soul, would to God I were in our own little cabin again, even in sooty London, since not under the free sky anywhere! That would be such a blessing; and it seems to me I shall be rather unwilling to get upon the road again were I once fairly home. Last Sunday when I ended we were just going to Roland's Eck,a terrestrial Paradise and water-cure which N euberg and the world recommended as every way eligible. 'VeIl, the little journey took effect, though under difficulties and mismanagements. But the' place'! It was beautiful exceedingly; but it was as little like sleeping in as Cremorne Gardens might be, and I turned back from it with horror. Home again, therefore, in the cool dusk, and next day trial of a small, sequestered village called Hunef, at the foot of the Sieben Gebirge, on the other side of the river, where N. went to seek a lodging for me in which human sleep might be possible. Not entirely to distress the good N., I consented, though with shuddering reluc- tance, to try one of his eligiblest places, and accordingly I packed on the morrow and proceeded thither to take posses- sion. 'Yhat a nice long letter I proposed to write to my poor Goody out of that strange place, the heart of a real German Dürflein in the lap of the hills, when once I should have had a night's sleep! N euberg waited in the inn till next morning to see how I should do. Ach Gott! of all the places ever discovered, even in Germany, that Hundehof surely was the most intolerable for noise. A bed, as every- where in Germany, more like a butcher's tray or a big washing-tub than a bed, with pillows shaped like a wedge three feet broad, and a deep pit in the middle of the body, without vestige of curtains, the very windows curtainless, and needing to be kept wide open-for there is no fire-place or other hole at all-if you will have any air. There you will have to slepp or die, go wherp- you will in this country. .A T BONN. 10 3 Then for noise-loud gossip in the street till towards mid- night, tremendous peals of bells from the village church (which seems to have been some cathedral, such force of bells is in it), close by one's head, watchman's horn of the loudness and tone of a jackass, and a general Sanhedrim apparently of all the cats and dogs of nature. That was my Naehtlager on the night of Tuesday, when, nevertheless, I did get about three hours' sleep, did greatly admire and esteem the good-natured, faithful ways of the poor villagers, smoked two or three times out of my window, and, on the whole, was not so unhappy at all, and had thoughts of my loved ones far away which were pious rather than otherwise. Neuberg, at the meeting on the morrow, agreed that we must instantly get off towards Homburg, perhaps towards :Kassau, Ems, &c., but always ultimately through Frankfurt. At Homburg, if at no other of these places, a week's quiet reading might be possible, and he could send the books back to Bonn. So stands it, then: to-morrow at eight we sail, pass Coblentz towards Frankfurt. One can get out and stay where one likes. ome professors have come athwart me.--none that I could avoid-' miserable creatures lost in statistics.' Old Arndt, a I:'turdy old fellow of eighty-three, with open face, loud voice, and the liveliest hazel eyes, is the only one I got even momen- tary good of. 10 non cereo neSSllno, and find Gelehrten in particular less and less charming to me. The river is grand and broad, the country rather picturesque and very fertile and pleasant, though the worst-cultivated in creation, a Lothian farmer would say; the people son.sie, industrious, in their stupid way, and agreeable to look on, though tending towards ugliness. Tobacco perpetually burning everywhere. rany Jews abroad. TraveHers, if not English, are apt to be rich Jews, with their J ewesses, I th ink. K euberg is not bright, but fulJ of kindness and soHl sense. Let not my poor Goody fret herself about me. I am really wonderfully well, in spite of these outer tribulations and dog concerts, and- doubt not I shaH do my journey without damage if I take care. 104 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. Homburg: September 15. 'Ye did get out of Bonn fairly on Friday morning. At first wettish, but which dried and brightened by degrees. . . . Of the Rhine you shall hear enough by-and-by. It is verily a 'noble river,' much broader than the Thames at full tide, and rolling along many feet in depth, with banks quite trim, at a rate of four or five miles an hour, without voice, but full of boiling eddies, the most magnificent image of silent power I have seen; and, in fact, one's first idea of a world-river. This broad, swift sheet, rolling strong and calm in Rilent rage for three or four hundred miles, is itself far the grandest thing I have seen here or shall likely see. But enough of it. N euberg and I got out at Coblentz that Friday about 2 p.m., and, by N.'s suggestion, put ourselves in the coupé of all Ems omnibus-Bad Ems, ten miles off, up a side valley, east side, there to try for a quiet sleeping-place and day for excerpting German books; which really answered well. Ems is the strangest place you ever saw- Iatlock; but a far steeper set of rocks close to rear; in froni a rh-er equal to Nith; and half a mile of the brightest part of Rue de Rivoli (say Uegent's Quadrant) set into it; a l)lace as from the opera direct, and inhabited by devil's servants chiefly. Of it enough in winter evenings that are coming. "r e got the quietest lodging perhaps in Germany (not very quiet either), at the farther end of the place; and i here, in spite of cocks, I got one night's sleep and two half-ones, and did all my bits of books, and shall not undertake any similar job while here. Better buy the books in general and bring them home to read. At Ems we saw Hussians gambling every evening; heard music by the riverside among fantastic promenades and Regent's Quadrant edifices, and devil's-servant people every evening, every morning. Saw a dance; too, unforgetable by man; in fine, drove in cheap cuddy vehicle on Sunday evening up to :Xassau (Burg Nassau, the birthplace of "\\Til1iam the Silent anù other heroes). A kind of pious l)ilgrimage which I am glad to have done. At the top of the high tower, on a high, ood'y hill, one has of course a 'view' not worth much to FRANKFURT. 10 5 me. But I entered my name in their album, and plucked that one particle of flower on the tip top of all, which I now send to thee. Next morning we left Ems, joined our steam- boat at Coblentz, and away again to the sublime portions of the Rhine country: very sublime indeed, really worth a sight. Bay a hundred miles of a Loch Lomond, or half Loch Lomond, all rushing on at fiye miles an hour, and with queer old towers and ruined castles on the banks; a grand silence, too, and grey day adding to one's sadness of mood; for' a fine sorrow,' not coarse, is the utmost I can bring it to in this world usually. Beyond Coblentz our boat wa:::; too crowded; nasty people several of them, French mainly; stupid and polite, English mainly. There was a sprinkling of Irish, too, 'looking at the vine-clad hills,' as I heard them lilting and saying. N euberg guided and guides, and does for me as only a third power of courier reinforced by loyalty and friendship could. RIess him! the good and sensible but wearisome and rather heavy man! At l\Iaintz at dusk it was decidedly pleasant to get out and have done with the Hhine, which had now grown quite flat on either side, and full of islands with WillOWR, not to speak of chained (anchored) cornmills, &c. raintz and Faust of l\Iaintz we had to survey by cat's- light-good enough for us and it, I fancy. In finp, about ten the railway, twenty miles or so, brought us to Frankfurt, and the wearied Luman tabernacle, in well-waxed wainscoted upper apartments in the 'Deutscher Hof,' prepared itself to court repose; not with the best prospects, for the street or square was still rattling with vehicles, and indeed continued to do so, and we left it rattling. Of the night's sleep we had as well say nothing. I remembered Goody and the l\lalvern inn gate, and endeavoured to posseRR my soul in patipnce. In shaving next morning, with my face to the f'quare, which was very lively, and had trees in the middle, I caught, "ith the porner of my eye, sight of a face which was eviùently Goethe's. Ach Gott! merely in stone, in the mid(l1e of the Platz among the trees. I had so longed to see that face alive; anù here it was given to me at last, as if 106 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. with huge world irony, in stone, an emblem of so much that happens. This also gave me a moment's genial sorrow, or something of that sort. From Bonn I had written to l\1ephisto 1\1- at Weimar. Behold, one of the first faces the morning offered me at Frank- furt was that of i- himself, who had come in person to meet us the night before, and had been at the Post Office and all inns, the friendly ugly little man! He was quite desolate to hear I could not stop at \Yeimar or any place beyond one day for want of sleep. He went about with us everywhere, and at :first threatened to be rather a burden; but by degrees grew to be manageable and rather useful, till we dined together and parted on our own several routes. He is gone round by "\\TÜrzburg, &c., to V{ eimar, and is to expect us there about Saturday. His Grand Duke and Duchess are in Italy. Eckermann himself is at Berlin-one day may very well suffice in Bedin. At Frankfurt yesterday after breakfast we saw-weariedly I -all manner of things. Goethe's house-were in Goethe's room, a little garret not much bigger than my dressing-room -and wrote our names 'in silence.' The J udengasse, grimmest section of the IVliddle Ages and their pariahood 1 ever saw. The Römer where old Kaisers were all elected. On the whole a stirring, strange, old Teutonic town, all bright with paint and busy trade. The fair still going on under its booths of small trash in some squares. Finally we mounted to the top of the Pfarrkirche steeple-oldest church, highest steeple-318 steps, and then 1\1- called for and got a bottle of beer, being giddy, poor soul! and we aided in drinking the same (I to a cigar) and composedly surveying Frankfurt city and the interior parts of Germany as far as possible. At 5 p.m. Neuberg put me into an omnibus-vile crowded airless place-and in two hours brought me here in quest of an old lodging he had had, 'the quietest in the world,' where we were lucky enOl.lgh to find a floor unoccupied, and still are, for at least one other day. As I said, my book-excerpting, taliter q'ILulite'J', is as good as done; and the place is really f)uite rustic, out at the very end of Homburg, HO.J.1JBURG. 10 7 and that by narrow lanes. I see nothing here but fields, and hear nothing but our own internal noises. Last night accordingly I expected sleep. Alas! our upper floor lodgers took ill-Devil mend them I-and my sleep was nothing to crack of. In fact I have renounced the hope of getting any considerable sleep in Germany. I shall snatch nightly, it may be hoped, a few hours, balf a portion, out of the black dog's tbroat; and let every disturbance warn me more and more to be s'lvíft in my motions, to restrict myself to tbe indispensable, and to hurry home, there to sleep. I calculate there will but little gooà come to me from this journey. Reading of books I find to be impossible. The thing that I can do is to see certain places and to see if I can gather certain books. "ïse people also to talk with, or inquire of, I as good as despair of seeing. All Germans, one becomes convinced, are not wise! On the whole, however, one cannot but like this honest-hearted hardy population, very coarse of feature for most part, yet seldom radically hiisslich; a sonsie look rather: and very frugal, good-humouredly poor in their way of life. Of Homburg proper-which is quite out of sight and hearing, yet within five minutes' walk-No and I took survey last night. A public set of rooms-K'lwsaal they call such things, finer than some palaces, all supported by gambling, all built by one French gambling entrepreneur, and such a set of damnable faces-French, Italian, and Russian, with dull English in quantities-as were never seen out of Hell before! Augh! It is enough to make one turn cannibal. An old Russian countess yesternight sat I>laying Gowpanfuls of gold pieces every stake, a figure I shall never forget in this world. One of the first J saw risking coin at an outer table was l..ord - almost a beauty here to whom I did not speak. Afterwards in music-room-also the gambling enll'e- lJreneur's, "as indeed everything here is-the poor old Duke of Augustenburg hove in sight. On him 1 ought to call if I can find spirits. Oh, what a place for human creatures to flock to! Och! Och! The t.a.st.e of the waters is na ty, Seltzer, but stronger-as Ems is too, only hot. On the whole, 108 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. if this is the last of German Badeöl'ter I ever see, I shall console myself. The next letter is to his n10ther dated from 'Vei- Inar, Septmnber 19. She, he well knew, if she cared for nothing else, would care to hear about the Luther localities. She had a picture of Luther in her rOOD1 at Scotsbrig. He was her chief Saint in the Christian calendar. After describing briefly the early part of his journey as far as Homburg, which he calls the 'rallying-place of such a set of empty blackguards as are not to be found elsewhere in the world,' he tens how on his way to Cassel he stopped at l\larburg, 'a strange, 1110st ancient town, fanled for some of Luther's operations and for being the LanclgrafPhilip of IIesse's place of residence.' lIe continues:- The Landgrafs high old castle, where we loitered a couple of hours, is now a correction-house filled with criminals and soldiers. The chamber of conference between Luther, Zwingli, &c., is used for keeping hay. The next morning brought us from Cassel to Eisenach, with its "Tartburg, where Luther lay concealed translating the Bible; and there I spent one of the most interesting forenoons I ever got by travelling. Eisenach is about as big as Dumfries, a very old town but well whitewashed, all built of brick and oak with red tile roofs of a!nazing steepness and several grim old swag- bellied steeples and churches and palatial residences rising com;picuous over them. It stands on a perfect plain by the side of a little river, plain smaller than Langholm and surrounded by hills which are not so high, yet of a some- ,,,hat similar character, and are al1 grassy and many of them thickly wooded. Directly on the south side of it there rises one hill, somewhat as Lockerbie láll is in height and position, but clothed with trim rich woods; all the way through which wind paths with prospect houses, &c. On the top of the hill stands the old "Tartburg, which it takes you three-quarters of TIIE CASTLE AT IVARTBURG. 109 an hour to reach; an old castle- \Yatch Castle is the name of it-near 800 years old, where there is still a kind of garrison kept, perhaps twenty men; though it does not much look like a fortress; what one sees from below being mainly two monstrous old houses, so to speak, with enormous roofs to them, comparable to two gigantic peat stacks set somewhat apart. There are other lower buildings that connect these when one gets up. There is also of course a wall all round -a donjon tower, standing like Repentance '-and the Duke of \Yeimar, to whom the place belongs, is engaged in restora- tions, &c., and has many masons employed on it just now. I heeded little of all they had to show, except Junker Georg's 2 chamber, which is in the nearest of the peat stacks, the one nearest Eisenach and close by the gate when you enter on your right hand. A short stair of old worn stone conducts you up. They open a door, you enter a little apartment, less than your best room at Scotshrig, I almost think less than your smallest, a very poor low room with an old leaded lattice window; to me the most venerable of all rooms I ever entered. Luther's old oak table is thpre, about three feet squarc, and a huge fossil bone-vertebra of a mammoth-which served him for footstool. Nothing else now in the room did certainly belong to him; but these did. I kissed his old oak table, looked out of his window-making them open it for me-down the sheer ca tle wall into deep chasm , over the great ranges of silent woody mountains, and thought to myself, 'Here once lived for a time one of God's soldiers. Be honour given him!' Luther's father and mother, painted by Cranach, are here-excellent old portraits-the father's with a dash of thrift, contention, and worldly wisdom in his old judicious, peasant countenance, the mother particularly pions, kind, true, and motherly-a noble old peasant woman. There is also Luther's self by the same Cranach; a picture infinitpJy superior to what your lithograph would give a notion of; a bold effectual-looking rustic man. with brown 1 The Tower of Ilf'pentancp on TToddam Hill. CarI)lo illmÜatl'8 throughout from localities near Ecclefcchan which his mother would knuw. 2 The name under which Luther 11asscd when concealed tl:ere. 110 CARL YLE'S LIFE LV LO VDO V. eyes and skin; with a dash of peaceable self-confidence and healthy defiance in the look of him. In fact one is called to forget the engraving in looking at this; and indeed I have since found the engraving is not from this, but from another Cranach, to which also it has no tolerable resemblance. But I must say no more of the 'V art burg. We saw the place on the plaster where he threw his inkstand-the plaster is all cut out and carried off by visitors-saw the outer staircase which is close by the door where he speaks of often hearing the Devil make noises. Poor and noble Luther! I shall never forget this 'N artburg, and am right glad I saw it. That afternoon, there being no train convenient, we drove to Gotha in a kind of clatch-two-horsed-very cheap in these parts; a bright beautiful country and a bonny little town; belongs to Prince Albert's brother, more power to his elbow! There we lodged in sumptuous rooms in an old quiet inn; the very rooms where Napoleon lodged after being beaten at Leipzig. It seems I slept last night where he breakfasted, if that would do much for me. At noon we came off to Erfurt, a place of 30,000 inhabitants, and now a Prussian fortified town, all intersected with ditches of water for defence' sake. Streets very crooked, very narrow, houses with old overhanging walls, and still the very room in it where :Martin Luther lived when a monk, and, one guide- book said, the very Bibl/" he found in the Convent library and read in this cell. This of the Bible proved wrong. J...uther's particular Bible is not here, but is said to be at Berlin. Nothing really of Luther's there except the poor old latticed window glazed in lead, the main panes round, and about the size of a biggish snap, all bound together by whirligig intervals. It looks out to the west, over mere old cloistered courts and roof-tops against a church steeple, and is itself in the second storey. Except this and Luther's old inkstand, a poor old oaken boxie with ink bottle and sand- case in it now hardly sticking together, there is nothing to be seen here that actually belonged to Luther. The walls are all covered over with texts, &c., in painted letters by a later hand. The ceiling also is ornamentally painted; and PORTRAITS OF LUTHER. II I indeed the place is all altered now, and turned long ago into an orphan asylum, much of the old building gone and replaced by a new of a different figure. On one wall of the room, hqwever, is again a portrait of Luther by Cranach, and this] found on inspection was the one your engravers had been vainly aiming at. Vainly, for this too is a noble face; the eyes not turned up in hypocritical devotion, but. looking out in profound sorrow and determination, the lips too gathered in stern but affectionate firmness. He is in russet yellow boots, and the collar of his shirt is small and edged with black. So far about Luther. Though writing from vYeimar, he .was less n1Ïnute in his account of the relics of Goethe. To Jane nrels/i, Carlyle. 'Veimar: S ptem'ber 20, 1852. Last night r sat long, till everything was quiet, in this Gusthof zum E'ì'bprinz, writing to my mother all about l..uther's localities. Those of to-day belong especially to you. r write within half a gun-shot of the Goethe'sche Haus and of the Schiller'sche. Our own early days are intertwined in a kind of pathetic manner with these two. At Homburg WE" had a quieter time than could have been expected-we stayed out our two days and three nights under tolerable circumstances. r fini hed my books and saw the Schlos , where are many interesting portraits, and a whole lot of books about Frederick, to the whole of which r might have had access without difficulty had it been my cue to stay, which it was not. I also saw the Augustenburgs, and spent an interesting hour with the good Duchess and her two sons and two daughters; in a very Babylonish condition as to lan.rrnages, but otherwise quite pleasant and luminous. The old gentleman sat mostly silent, but looking genial; the Duchess, whose French seemed bad, and whose Gprman was not clear to me, is a fine broad motherly woman. The girls, with their stiff English, were beautiful, clear-eyed, fair- 112 CARLYLE'S LIFE ILV LO.LVDO.,V. skinned creatures, and happy in spite of their exile; the son!3 ditto ditto. It was here that I first heard of ".,. ellington's death, the night before we came away. Cassel is a large, dull town, and there, in the best inn, was such an arrange- ment for sleeping as-Ach Himmel! I shall not forget those cow-horns and 'Höret ihr Herren' in a hurry. It was a night productive of 'pangs which were rather exquisite,' and nevertheless, some three hours of sleep on whicþ one could proceed and say, 'It will not come back.' r bad also the pleasure to see that Hassenpflug's-the tyrannous, traitorous court minion's- windows were broken as we drove past in the morning towards Eisenach, where again we halt for Luther's and the "Yartburg's sake. Of all that you shall hear enough by-and-by-it was a real gain to me. I could not without worship look out of Luther's indubitable window, down into the sheer abysses over tbe castle wall, and far and wide out upon the woody multitude of hills; and reflect that here was authentically a kind of great man and a kind of holy place, if there were any such. In my torn-up, sick, exas- perated humour I could have cried, but didn't. . . . "Yeim:1T -a little, bright enough place, smaller than Dumfries, with three steeples and totally without smoke-stands amid duB, undulating ('ountry; flat mostly, and tending towards ugli- ness, except for trees. 'Ve were glad to get to the inn, by the worst and slowest of clatches, and there procure some chacl" of dinner. Poor 1\1- had engaged me the' quietest rooms in Germany,' ricketty, bare, crazy rooms, and with a noisy man snoring on the other side of the deal partition-yet really quiet in comparison, where I did sleep last night and hope to do this. 1\1- truly has been unwearied, would take me into Heaven if it depended on him. Good soul! I reany am a little grateful, hard as my heart is; and ought to be ashamed that I am not more. Neuberg too-veritably he is better than six couriers, and is a friend over and above. I)eople are very good to me. Goethe's house, which was opened by favour, kept us occupied in a strange mood for two hours or more. Schiller's for one ditto. Everybody knows the Goethe'sche Haus; and GOETHE'S HOUSE AT lYEIMAR. 113 poor Schiller and Goethe here are dandled about and multi- plied in miserable little bustkins and other dilettantisms, till one is sick and sad. G.'s house is quite like the picture, but one-third smallel'; on the whole his effective lodging I found was small, low-roofed, and almost mean, to what I had conceived; hardly equal-nay, not at all equal, had my little architect once done her work-to my own at Chelsea. On the book. shelves I found the last book I ever sent Goethe- Taylor's' Survey of German Poetry'; and a crumb of paper torn from some scroll of my own (Johnson, as I conjectured), still sticking in, after twenty years. Schiller's house was still more affecting; the room where he wrote, his old table, exactly like the model, the bed where he died, and a portrait of his dead face in it. A poor man's house, and a brave, who had fallen at his post thf're. Eheu! Ehe'll..' what a world! I have since dined at I-'s with two 'Yeimarese moùerns. ()ne of them i librarian here, of whom I shall get some use. But, oh Heavens! would that I were at home again. 'Yant of sleep and' raal mental awgony i' my ain imdde,' do hold me in such pickle always. Quick, quick, and let us get it done! To JflJ1P Trelsh Carlyl('. Xieder !lathen, near Dresden: Sept em ber 25, IR52. I wrote to you from 'Veimar some five days ago, and therefore there is nothing pressing me at present to write; but, having a quif't hour here by the side of the Elbe river, at the foot of wild rock mountains in the queerest region you eVf'r saw, I throw you another worf1, not knowing when J may have another chance as good. I am on the second floor in a little German country inn literally washed by the Elbe, which is lying in the moonshine as clear as a mirror and as silent. Right above us is a high peak called thf: B(u tei, a kind of thing you are obliged to do. This we have (ZOllC, and are to go to-morrow towardf Frederick's first nattlf'-fieIJ in the Seven Years' 'Yar; after which, the second day, if all go well, will bring us into Berlin. \\r e came by an Elbe fo:teamer, go on to-morrow by anothpr tf'ampr, IV. I 114 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. then by railway; and hope to see, though, alas! in quite con- fused circumstances and to little advantage, some of the actual footsteps of Father Fritz; for here too, amid these rocks, as well as farther on at Lobositz, he did feats. But let me tell in order, and take up my story where I left it. The day after I wrote we were to leave "T eimar; but 10, in the morning while we sat at breakfast, little )1-- came in, looking highly animated, with letters from the Schloss, from the' Grand Duches ,' from the, &c. In short, the said Grand Duchess-sister of the Czar Nicholas, and mother of the Duke, who was at Chelsea-had seen in the newspapers that one' Carlyle' was among the arrivlils. Could this be the berüh11de, &c., in which case naturally he and his com- panion must come to dinner; and of course there could be no travelling that day. 'Vell, we did go to dinner, saw how they ackit; a rather troublesome dramatic affair, of which you shall have full description when I return. Enough, it was very sublime, and altogether heartless, and even dull and dreary; but well worth doing for once. The Grand Duchess is towards sixty, slightly deaf, and has once been extremely prf'tty, though hard always as nails or diamonds. Her husband, a kind of imbecile man they say, looks extremely like a gentleman, and has an air of solemn serene vacuity, which is itself almost royal. I had to sit by the Duchess at dinner-three p.m. to five-and maintain with energy a singularly empty intellectual colloquy, in French chiefly, in English and in German. The lady being half-deaf withal, you may think how charming it was. She has a thin croaky voice; brow and chin recede; eyes are blue, small, and of the brightness and hardness of precious stones. Ach Gott! At last we got away, soon after five, and I for one was right charmed to think here is one thing done. But it must be owned the honour done me was to be recognised; and I was very glad to oblige poor N euberg too by a touch of Court life which he would not otherwise have seen. At Leipzig all was raging business, the fair being in hand; noisy and busy almost as Cheapside, l.ondon. Lots of dim haberdashery, leather without end, and all things LEIPZIG AND DRESDEN. 115 rolling about in noisy waggons with miniature wheels. To get any sleep at all was a kind of miracle. However, we did tolerably well, got even a book or two of the list I had formed, drank a glass of wine-one only in A uerbachs ]{eller-and at last got safe to Dresden, eighty miles off, which was a mighty deliverance, as from the tumult of Cheapside into the solitude of Bath, or the New Town of Edinburgh-a very interesting old capital where, if sleep had been attainable, I could have stayed a week with advantage. But, alas! it was not; so I had to plunge along and save, as from a conflagra- tion, what little I could of my possibilities; and at length, with gratitude to Heaven, to get away into the steamer this afternoon and bid adieu to Dresden and its Japan and other palaces. . . . For Berlin, if it be not all the noisier, I design at least a week; in ten days hence I may be far on my way homeward again. . . . A tap-room with some twenty rustic gents (they did not go till after midnight, the scamps) enjoy- ing cards, beer, and bad cigars for the last hour or two, seems to have winded itself up, and things are growing stone quiet in this establishment. I must now address myself to the task of falling asleep. "r e go to-morrúw at nine. I.Jobositz (in Bohemia), Zittau (Lusatia), Frankfurt an der O(ler-Berlin . -that is the projected route, but liable to revisal. 1\lrs. Carlyle was still in Chelsea 1vith her work- lueu all this time. It had been a trying sumn1cr to her. But she had the cOlufort of knowing that her husband was achieving the part uf the business which had fallen to his share, better than ll1Íght have been louked for. She writes to her brother-in-law, John:- .Mr. C. seems to be getting very successfully through his travels, thanks to the patience and helpfulness of N euberg. He makes in every letter frightful 'i11isereres over his sleeping accommodations; but he cannot conceal that he is really pretty well, and gets sleep enough to go on with, more or less pleasantly. I wonder what he would have made of my lecping accommodation during the last thref' months. I :! 1I6 CARL YLE'S LIFE IiV LOA'DON. Tv Jane TVelsh Carlyle. Bad Töplitz, September 27. No opportunity of posting the above; so I tear it open again and add a few words. "\\r e have had a sore pilgrimage these last two days since I ended the other page; a small space to goover, but by confused Bohemian conveyances amid the half-savage Bohemian populations, with their fleas, their dirt, and above all their noises. However, we have partly man- aged the thing, and are got into beaut.iful quarters ag-ain; a romantic mountain watering-place, with the sun still bright upon it; and everybody of Bath kind gone away. Here or nowhere I ought to find some sleep, and then Berlin is ful) before us, and after Berlin, home, home ! We have actually seen Lobositz, the first battle-field of Fritz in the Seven y ears' 'Val' ; and walked over it all this morning before break- fast, under the guidance of a Christian native, checked by my best memory of reading and maps, and found it do toler- ably well. In fact, oh Goody dear, I have seen many curious and pleasant things, I ought to say-and will say at great length when we are by our own fireside together again. Neuberg is strong; one of the friendliest, handiest, most patient of men. Berlin, October 1, 1852. [Bl'itish Hotel, Gnter den Linden.] Here you see we are at t.he s'l mmit of these wanderings, from which I hope there is for me a swift perpendic'lÛar return before long; not a slow parabolic one as the ascent has been. 'Ve came twenty-four hours ago, latish last night, from Frankfurt.-on-the-Oder, from the field of Kunersdorf (a dreadful scraggy village where Fritz received his worst de- feat), and various toils and strapazen; very weary, in a damp kind of night, and took shelter in the readiest inn, from which we have just removed to this better, at least far grander, one; where perhaps there are beds one can sleep in, and the butter is not bitter. Alas! such sorrows attend the wayfarer, and his firðt refuge is to sit down and write, if haply he have anyone to whom his writing will give a feeling of pity for HERR.LVHUT 117 him. . . . Oh, I do wish these sleepless, joyless, sad and weary wanderings were at an end, as by Heaven's help they now soon sball be. And you too, poor little weary soul! You are quite worn out with that accursed' thorough repair.' " ould to Heaven we had never thought of it; but lived in the old black house we had, where at least was no noise of carpenters to drive one mad, no stink of paint to poi:;on one. Driven out of the house again, and sleeping solitary in a little lodging! I declare it makes me quite sad to think of it; and -, if - is the fundamental cause of it, deserves to be, as you pray, 'particularly damned.' Confound him, and confound the whole confused business, this abominable, sorrowful, and shockingly expensive tour to Germany in- cluded. But no. Rather let U:5 haye patience. Xevertheless, I do grieve for thee. But let me narrate as usnal, only wifn greater brevity. From Lobositz to Töplitz tbe last letters brought yo'.!, letters written in the so-called Saxon Switzerland, amid tbe Bohemian mountains. . . . o English, scarcely any civilize,l traveller seems to have accomplished the thirty or forty English miles which lie bttween Lobositz and Zittau. \Ye had a strange and strangest day of it in slow Gennan Stell- 'u.:agens; and in fact were horribly tired before the thing in general ended by a seat in the soft-going, swift, and certain railway-carriage, and the inn at Herrnhut, where we had to wait four hours of the stille::;t life you ever saw or dreamt of. IIerrTLhut (Lord's keeping) is the primitive and still central city of the 1Ioravian brethren; a place not bigger than Annan, but beautiful, purf', anrl quiet beyonrl any town on the earth I dClre say; and indeed morf' like a saintly dream of Ideal Calvinism made real than a town of stone and lime, where London porter, not needed by me, is to be had for money. I will tell you about Her'ì'nhtLt too fo:ome day, for it is among the notable spots of the worM, and I retain a livf'ly memory of it. But not of it, nor of dreary moory l 'rankfurt and its Kunersdorf vinage and polite lieu- temmts-for a Prussian lieutenant-arljntant knew me there hy fame, and wa very polite, without knowing me-not of I [8 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. this, nor of any other phenomenon will I now speak. In fact I am dead stupid; my heart nearly choked out of me, and my head churned to pieces. . . . Berlin is loud almost as J oll(lon, but in no other way great or among the greatest. I should guess it about the size of Liverpool; and more like Glasgow in the straight openness of its streets. l\Iany grand public edifices about this eastern end of the town; but on the whole it looks in many quarters almost shabby, in spite of its noise and paint; so low are the houses for a capital city; more like warehouses or maltkins, with the very chimneys wanting, for within is nothing but stoves. This , Unter den Linden' is the one good street of the place, as if another Princes Street at 300 yards' distance, and with tree rows between them, ran parallel to the Princes Street we know. It is on the north side of this we live, grand rooms indeed, and not dearer than an Edinburgh lodging, or neady so dear as a London one-two gujneas a week, one gnin ea each. Octo"ber 2, 4 P.M. The night yielded me a handsome modicum of sleep, handsome for these parts, and the lodging promises every way to be good. Certainly the most like a human bed-room of any I have yet had in this country. After breakfast I went to the library, introduced myself, got catalogue of Frederick books. A dreary wilderness, mountains of chaff to one grain of corn; caught headache in the bad air within about an hour, and set off to the British Ambassador's, who can procure me liberty to take books home. 'V ell received by the British Ambassador so soon as he had read Lady A.'s letter. His wife too came in and was very kind. All right. Have been in the l\luseum Picture Gallery since. Endless Christs and l\Iarys, Venus's and Amors-at length an excel- lent portrait of Fritz. October 8. "r e leave Berlin to-rnorruw, Saturday the 9th. Go by Brunswick, by Hanover, Cologne, and from thence on Tnes- day evening at Ostend I find a steamer direct for London. . . . I have haù a terrible tumbling week in Berlin. Oh, what a JOURNE Y ENDED. 119 month in general I have had; month of the profoundest, ghastliest 8ol'itude in the middle of incessant talk and locomotion. But here after all I have got my things not so intolerably done, and have accomplished what was reasonably possible. Perhaps it will not look so ugly when once I am far away from it. In help from other people there has been redundancy rather than defect. One or two-especially a certain Herr Professor :l\Iagnus, the chief portrait painter here-have been quite marvellous with their civility; and on the whole it was usually rather a relief to me to get. an hour, as now, to oneself, and be left to private exertions and reflections mainly. Yesterday I saw old Tieck, beautiful old man; so serene, so calm, so md. I have also seen Cornelius, Rauch, &c., including Preuss, the historian of Frederick, all men in short for whom I had any use. Kay, they had me in their newspapers it would appear, and would gladly make a lion of me if I liked. A lion that ca.n only get half sleep is not the lion that can shine in that trade, so we decline. The Ambassador has also been very good to me, got me into the library with liberty to take books home, invited me to dinner. But l\lagnus had engaged me before, and I could only make it telL. No matter for that, for they were all English common- places where I went. You will see me on \Yednesday, but not till noon or later. So was this terrible journey got done with, which to anyone but Carlyle would have been a nlere plea- sure trip; to him terrible in prospect, terrible in the execution, terrible in the retrospect. lIis wife said he could not conceal that he 'was pretty well, and had nothing really to c0111plain of. IIere is what he himself said about it when looking back with de- liberate seriuusness :- After infinite struggles I had roused myself to go. The parting with my poor old mother, the crowning point of those unbearable days, was painful beyond endurance almost; and yet my heart in t hp im:Üle of it seemed as if it were made of 120 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDO/I/. stone, as if it would not weep any more except perhaps blood. One pays dear for any' intellect' one may have. It mean8 primarily 'sensibility,' which again means injury, pain, misery from unconscious nature, or conscious or unconscious man: in fact, a heavy burden painful to bear, however piously you take it. After recapitulating the places which he had seen, and the persons whonl he had lllet, he goes on :- All this, which is etched into me painfully as with burning acids, I once thought of writing down in detail, hut have not done, probably shall not do. It was ajourney done as in some shirt of N essus; misery and dyspeptic degradation, inflamma- tion, and insomnia tracking every step of me. Not till all these vile fire showers, fallen into viler ashes now, have once been winnowed quite away, shall I see what' additions to my spiritual picture gallery,' or other conquests from the business I have actually brought back with me. Neuberg, I ought to record here and everywhere, was the kindest, best-tempered, most assiduous of friends and helpers, 'worth ten couriers to me,' as I often defined him. THE COCK ]ÇUIS.dNCE. T2. CIIAI)TEH XXI. A.D. 18!52-8. ..ET. 57-58. The Grange-Cheyne Row-The Cock torment-Retlections-An im- proveù house-Funeral of the Duke of \V ellington-Beginnings of 'Frederick '-The Grange again-An incident-Public opinion- Mother's illness-The demon fowls-Last letter to his mother- Her death-James Carlyle. THE painters had not completed their work, and the smell was insupportable when Carlyle got home in the lniddle of October. He was in no condition to face any nlore annoyances, and he and his wife took refuge for three weeks at the Grange with the ever- hospitable Ashburtons. There, too, the sulphurous mood was still predominant, and things diù not go well with him. It was not till November that he wa fairly re-established in his own quarters, and ill a Oll- dition to so llluch as think of eriously beginuing his work. A preliulinary skirmish became necessary, to put to silence his ncighbour's cocks. 1\11'. Remington, who then lived near hilll, and was the owner of the offenders, has kinùly sent mc the correspondence which passed on the o('casion; very gracious and hunlhle 011 Carlyle's part, requesting only that the ('ocks in question Rhould be ma(h inaudible fronl midnight til] hreakfast time; 1\'1:1'. Remington, though t.hey wpre faVOlirite which he had hrought fronl 122 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. N orthu111berland, instantly consenting to suppress them altogether. This accOlllplished, Carlyle proceeded as it were to clear the stage by recovering his own mental condition, and took hÏ111self severely to task for what he found amiss. :Thlueh that he says will seem ex- aggerated, hut it will be ren1enlbered that he was not speaking to the world but to himself. It is idle to judge hÏ1n by comnlon rules. His nerv-es 'were abnor- 111ally sensitive. lIe lived habitually, unless he via lently struggled against it, in what he had described as 'an elelnent of black streaked with lightning.' Swift, when the evil humour was on hin1, 111ade a voyage to the Houyhnhmns, and discharged his bile on his hlunan brethren. Carlyle, who 'wished to purge the bile out of hÏInself that he n1Ïght use his powers to better purposes, began with a confession of his sins. Journal. Novenl,ber 9, 1852.-There has been a repair of the house here, which is not yet, after four months, quite complete. I write now in an unfurnished but greatly improved room, which is already, and still more will be, greatly superior to what it used to be . . . small thanks to it. .My poor wife has worn herself to a shadow, fretting and struggling about it. I, sent on my travels since the middle of July, and only just finally home, am totally overset in soul, in body, and I may fear in breeches pocket too; and feel that I am drifting towards strange issues in theRe y ars and days. Never in my life nearer sunk in the mud oceans that rage from without and within. l\Iy survey of the last eight or nine years of my life yields little 'comfort' in the present state of my feelings. Silent weak rage, remorse even, which is not com- mon with me; and, on the whole, a solitude of soul coupled with a helplessness, which are frightful to look upon, difficult to deal with in my present situation. For my health is RETROSPECT. 12 3 miserable too; diseased liver I privately perceive has much to do with the phenomenon; and I cannot yet learn to sleep again. During all my travels I have wanted from a third to half of my usual sleep. For the rest I guess it is a change of epoch with me, going on for good perhaps; I am growing to perceive that I have become an old man; that the flowery umbrages of summer-such as they were for me-and also the crops and fruits of autumn are near! y over for me, and stern winter only is to be looked for-a grim message-such, however, as is sent to every man. Oh ye Supreme Powers! thou great Soul of the world that art just, may I manage this but uell, all sorrow then and smothered rage and despair itself shall have been cheap and welcome. No more of it to-day. I am not yet at the bottom of it; am not here writing wisely of it, even since1'ely of it, though with an effort that way. Dundee steamer to Linlathen about the middle of July; inexpressible gloom, silence. Sickly imprisonment of one's whole soul and life; such has often before been my lot, has also become my customary lot in this world. Cowardice? Sometimes. Generally, in late years, I think it is. Unusual weights have been thrown upon me. Ach Gott! whole moun- tains of horror and choking impediment. But certain]y I have not been strong enough on my side; often, often not bold enough; but have fled and struck when I should have stood and defiantly fought. The votes of men, the respecta- bilitie , the &c. &c., have been too sacred to me. It must be owned, too, the man has had such a set of conditions as were not always easy to govern, and could not by the old law- books be treated well. Schicksal und eigen Schul(l. Aye, aye. Three weeks at Lilliathen very memorable to me just now, but sordid, unproductive, to think of. Came away, by Kirk- caldy and Edinburgh, to Scotsbrig. There beside my poor old mother for near four weeks. . . . To Germany, after infinite struggles, I had roused myself to go. . . . Leith, Hotterdam steamer, the Hhine, Honn for a week, Ems, Frankfurt, Hom- burg, Cassel, Eisenach, \Yartburg (unforgettable), \\r eimar, Leipzig, Dresden, Lobositz, Z.ittau, Herrnhut, Kuner:;tlurf, and Berlin, whence, after ten day:..:, home. 124 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. l\ly arrival here. Seas of paint still flooding everything, and my poor Jane so beaten in her hard battle-a wild hard battle many ways, and in which I cannot help thee, poor kind vehement soul for ever clear to me-this also is memorable, only too much. \Ye went to the Grange till these unclean- nesses were over here. At the Grange almost for four weeks. No right rest, no right collctpse till Tuesday last, when in the wet damp evening of a pouring day I once more got home again for a continuance. Since then, here are we fairly fronting our destiny at least, which I own is sufficiently l\Iedusa-like to these sick, solitary eyes. Courage! piety! patience! Heaven grant me wisdom to extract the meanings out of these sore lessons and to do the behests of the same. If that be granted me, oh how amply enough will that be! To begin 'Frederick' then! It \vas easier to pro- pose than to do. When a writer sets to work again after a long pause, his faculties have, as it were, to be caught in the field and brought in and harnessed. There was anxiety about his wife too, who was worn out by her SUffilller discipline, and was' never thinner for seven years.' She had gone hOllle first froul the Grange to get things ready. Jane (he wrote to his mother) had the place clear of workers at last, clean as her wont is, and shining with gas at the door, and other lights to welcome me to tea. I have had a weary struggle every day since, and am not through it yet, arranging my things in their new places, an operation rather sad than hopeful to me in my present dull humour, but I must persist till it is done, and then by-and-by there will be real improvement. The house is clearly very much bettered; this room of mine in particular, and my bed-room upstairs, are, or will be, perfect beauties of rooms in their way. Let us be patient, , canny as eggs,' and the better day will come at last. I am terribly b'l'ushed with all these tumblings about, and have not yet fairly recovered my feet., but with quiet, with pious endeavour, I shall surely do so; and then FUNERAL OF THE DUA-E OF IVELLINGTON. 125 it will be joyful to me to see the black tempest lying all behind me and the bright side of the cloud attained for me. All clouds have their bright sides too. That is also a thing which we should remember; and, on the whole, I hope to get to a little WO'ì'lc again, and that is the consolation which mrpasses all for me. He would have got under way in S0111e shape, but, before starting, any distraction is enough to check the first step, and there were distractions in plenty; m110ng the rest the Duke of Wellington's funeral. The Duke had died in SepteHl bel'. He was now to be laid in his t0111b in the midst of a 1110urning nation; and Carlyle did not like the c1i play. The body lay in state at Chelsea, 'all the elnpty fools of creation' running to look at it. One day two women were trmnpled to death in the throng at the hospital clo e by; and the whole thing,' except for that dreadful accident,' was, in his eyes, 'a big bag of wind and nothingness.' 'It is indeed,' he said, 'a sad and solenln fact for England that such a man has been called away, the last perfectly honest and perfectly brave public 111an they had; and they ought, in re- verence, to reflect on that, and sincerely testi(y that, if they could, while they comnlit hinl to his restÌng- place. But ala8 for the sincerity. It is even pro- fessedly all hypocrisy, noise, and expensive upholstery, from which a serious Inan turns away with sorrow and abhorrence.' In spite of 'abhorrence' he was tempted to witness the ceremony in the streets, which, however, only increased it. Journal. NO'L'entbe'ì o 19, 1852.- Yesterday saw the Duke of ""'el- lington's funeral procession from Bath Hon e econ's sympathies in tilt COIl- pletioll of Cologne cathedral, showing him thtJ planR, &c. ('arlyle Raid _ --- K 3 132 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOJ\TDOl\'. converted my feeling into a sarl and angry onp. I was in the 'Yartburg, however-in :l\Iartin Luther's room-and I believe I almost wept there, feeHng it to be, as far aR I could understand, the most sacred spot in all the earth at this moment. Here, tempted by the devil (always by 'devils' enough), but not subdued or subduable, stood God's Truth, embodied in the usual way: one man against all men." It was upon these hills he looked out; it was there and in that way he dealt with the devil and defied him to his face. A scene worth visiting indeed. There are excellent portraitR by Cranach of I uther and his father and mother hung on the walls. l\fartin himself has a fine German face: eyes so frank and serious, a look as if he could take a cup of ale as well as wrestle down the devil in a handsome manner. The " artburg is much visited by tourists; but I was not sorry to find they did not much hped Luther-merely took him among the rest and dwelt chiefly on the' Byzan- tine architecture' and restoration . The only other beautiful thing I Raw was Tieck, and he is since dead. On Fritz I can makp no impression whatever, and practically consider I have given him up and am not equal to uch a task on such terms. l\Iy wife is now at l\Ioffat with my brother and his housp- hold. As to me, I got so smashed to pit'ees and perceptibly hurl in every way by my journeying last autumn-all travel and noise is at all times so noxious to me-I have neVPf yet bppn able to brook the notion of travelling sincp, but havp flattered myself I should sit still here, and would on almo:-;t any terms. Certain it is, I have need pnough to stay here, if staying by myself in my own ad company be the way to ri{ldle any of the infinite dross out of me and get a little nparer what grains of metal there may be. nothing till obliged to speak Tben at last, being forced, lw said: 'It is a very fine pa oda if ye could et any sort of a God to put in it !' TIun- Ben's eyes f1a!';hed anger for a moment, but the' ridiculous' was too F.trong for him, and he bUl'Bt out laughing. I have heard the story told as if thel'e had heen a brea}\fil t party with Lisbop , &c., l)resent. Carlyle, Lmn'ver, wben I asJff'd him, said tbat he and Hun ell were (llon('. END NEAR AT SCOTSBRIG. 133 Adieu! dear l\Ir. Erskine. Give my kind and grateful remembrances to your two ladies and to everybody at Lill- lathen. I am always faithfully yours, T . CARLYLE. A real calmnity, sad but inevitable and long fore- seen, was now approaching. Signs began to show that hi old mother at Scotsbrig was drawing near the end of her pilgrilnage. She was reported to be in, and even dangerously ill. 11rs. Carlyle hurried over froln loffat to assist in nursing her, n1eeting, when she arrived there, the never-forgotten but lllllnhly offered birthday present of July 14 from her poor husband. Her n10ther-in-Iaw, while she was there, sank into the long, death-like trance which she so vividly describes. 1 Contrary to all expecta- tions, the strong resolute WOlllan rallied frOll1 it, and Carlyle, always hopeful, persuadëd himself that for the tinle the stroke had passeù over. Tu Jane TVels/t Carlyle, Scot8[J1'i:l. Chelsea: .T uly 23, 1853. Thank you very much, my dear, for your judicious and kin(} ath'ntion in writing and in not writing. You may judge with what fet'lings I read your letter last night, and again and again read it; how anxiously I expect what you will say to-night. If I had indeed known what was going on during l\Ionday, what would have becomp of me that day? I see t'verything by your description as if I looked at it with my own eyes. l\Iy poor, beloved, good old mother. Things crowd round me in my solitude, old reminiscences from the very beginnings of my life. It is very beautiful if it is so sad; and I have nothing to say. I, like all mortals, have to feel thp inexorable that thpre i:-; in lift', and to say, as piously a I can, 'God\; will, God's will!' Fpon the whole, I am 1 Letter.'! and Jlt. m01"ials. vol. ii. p. '11. 134 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. glad you went there at this time. If you could only begin to sleep I should be thankful to have you there in my own absence. 'Yrite to me; do not fail to write while you con- tinue. \Yas not that a beautiful old mother's message: , None, I am afraid, that he would like to hear'? 1 S t1lt lac'ì'ymæ rerum. You need not be apprehensive of- where you are. She really likes you, and has good insight, though capable of strong prepos!5essions. John, even if you are in his way, which I do not think at all, has nothing to do with it. The rest are loyal to you to' the bone. Surely, as you say, it was quite wrong to give such quantities of wine, &c., to an old, weak person. I hope and trust John has entirely abandoned that system. It is purchasing of momentary relief at a price which must be ruinous. I have done my task to-day again, but I had drugs in me, and am not in a very vigorous humour. l\Iy task is a mO!5t dreary one. I am too old for blazing up round this Fritz and his affairs; and I see it will be a dreadful job to rriddle his history into purity and consistency out of the endless rubbish of so many dullards as have treated of it. But I will try, too. I cannot yet afford to be beaten; and truly there is no other thing attainable to me in life except even my own poor scantling of work such as it may be. If I can 'lvo'rk no more, what is the good of me further? 'Ye shall all have a right deep sleep by-and-by, my own little Jeannie. Thou wilt lie quiet beside me there in the divine bosom of eternity, if never in the diabolic whirl of time any more. But this is too sad a saying, though to me it is blessed and indubitable as well as sad. I called on Lady A-. ; less mocking than usual; is to have a last Addiscombe party on Saturday week, and then go for the North. Adieu! Jeannie mine. God bless for ever my poor mother and thee! T. C. 1 'I asked her if she had any message for :rOll, and she said, "None, rm afraid, that he would like to hear, for he'll be sorry that I'm so frail." , - LEtters and Memorials, vol. ii. p. 225. THE DElIfON FO IVLS. 135 The alarm at Scots Lrig having passed off, n1Ïnor evils becaIne again important. The great cock question revived in formidable proportions. 1\Irs. Carlyle bad gone to her cousin's at Liverpool, but ber presence was needed urgently in Cheyne Row to deal with it. A room was to be constructed at the top of the house, where neither cockcrows nor other sound could penetrate; but until it was completed , the unprotected male,' as Carlyle called himself, was suffering dismally. I foresee in general (he wrote to her on July 27) these cocks will require to be abolished, entirely silenced, whether we build the new room or not. I would cheerfully shoot them, and pay the price if discovered, but I have no gun, should be unsafe for hitting, and indeed seldom see the wretched animals. Failing everything, I see dimly the ultima ratio, and indeed wish I had in my drawer what of mineral or vegetable extract would do the fatal deed. Truly I think often it will need to be done. A man is not a Chatham nor a 'Yallenstein; but a man has work too which the Powers would not quite wish to have suppressed by two- and-sixpence worth of bantams. O! my dear! my dear! I am a most unvictorious man surely. 1\Iorning after morning the horrid clarions blew. The cocks must either withdraw or die (he cried, two days later). That is a fixed point; and I must do it myself if no one will help. It is really too bad that a ' celebrated man,' or any man, or even a well-conditioned animal of any ize, should be submitted to such scandalou::5 paltrinesses; and it must end, and I had better make that my first bU l- ness to-day. But I will do nothing till you come. Then indeed I feel as if mercy were already wrought for me. For some cau:se there was 3 respite for a night or two, but now the owner of the cocks, one Ronca, was 13 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOl'v7JON. heard coughing at half-past eight in the n10rning, and this-but this could hardly be made a crime. , Poor devil! ' he said to himself, with a tinge of re- lllorse, 'a bad cou gh indeed; and I aIn to be annoyed at the luere noise of it. Selfi::sh luortal!' Lady .Ash burton, hearing of his forlorn condition, lnade over the now vacant AùùiscOlube to hÍln. IIis wife CaIne back. The cocks were for a time disposed of, and the new roon1 was set about. The HCW 1'OO1n was the final hope. Till it was finished there could be no surety of peace. Ål'lt Gutt!' he saiù, 'I aID wretched, and in silence nearly Inad.' JOUJ'nal. A tgust 17, ] 853.- Near the nadir, I should think, in my affairs. The wheel must turn. Let me not quite despair. All summer, which I resolved to spend here, at least without the distraction of travel for a new hindrance, I have been visibly below par in health; annoyed with in numerable paltry t.hings; and, to crown all-a true mock- crown-\\ith the cro\Ting , shriekings, and half-maddening lloÜ;e of a stock of fowls 'which my poor neighbour has het up for his profit and amusement. To great evils one must oppose great virtues; and also to small, which is the harder t.ask of the two. :l\lasons, who have already killed half a year of my life in a too sad manner, are again upon thp roof of the house, after a dreadful bout of resolution on my part, building me a so tndless rOO'fi1. The world, which can do me no good, shall at least not torment me with its street and backyard noises. It is all the small request I make of the world, says wounded vanity, wounded &c.; in fact, a wounded and humiliated mind. No more un victorious man is now living. I can do no work though I still keep trying. Try better! Alas! ala::;! my dear old mother Heems to be fading fast away from me. 1\Iy thought are dark and sad continually with that idea. Inexo'1'abile fat7.tm! The great, llIISERIES GREAT AND SllfALL. 137 t he eternal is there, and also the paltriest and smallest, to load me down. I sepm to be sinking inextricably into chaos. But I won't! These are the two extremes of my lot of burdens; and there lie enough more, and sore enough between, of which I write nothing here. J am getting taught contempt uf the world and its beneficences. :Kay, perhaps I am really learning. Let me learn with piety. Perhaps I shall one day bless these miseries too. Steady! steady! Don't give it up! . . . Panizzi, whom I do nut love, and who returns the feeling, wiU not, though solicited from various quarters-high quarters some of them -admit me to the silent rooms of the King's Library, to a l)lace where I could read and enquire. Never mind! Ko matter at all ! Perhaps it is even better so. I believe I could explode the poor monster if I took to petitioning, writing in the 'Times,' &c. But I shall take good heed of that. Intrinsically he hinders me but little. Intrinsically t he blame is not in him, but in the prurient darkness and confused pedantry and ostentatious inanity of the world which put him there, and which I must own he ycry fairly represents and symbolizes there. Lords Lansdowne and Brougham put Panizzi in; and the world with its Hansard.; and ballot-boxes and sublime apl'aratu::5 put in Lords Lans- downe and Brougham. A saddish time, l\Ir. Rigmarole. Yes! but what then? Of the two extreme trials of which Carlyle spoke, t he greate t, the one which really and truly was to hake his whole nature, was approaching its cuhllina- tion. Although his Inother had ralJied reluarkably fr01Il her attack in the SUIll1ner, and was able to read and converse as usual, there had been no esscntial recovery; there was to be and there could be none. IIi:i ulOther, WhOlll he had regarded with an affection , pas:sing the love of bOllS ,' with whom, iu spite of, or perhaps iu Cul1t1cqlleneL: of, her profound Christian piety, he had found nlOre in comnIon, as he often 138 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. saiù, than with any other mortal-was now evidently about to be taken away from him. A feeling pecu- liarly tender had united these two. . . . Carlyle, as his letters show, had been haunted from his earliest days by the terror that he must one day lose her. She had watched over the workings of his mind with passionate solicitude: proud of his genius, and alter- nately alarmed for his soul. In the long evenings when they had sate together over the fire with their pipes at Mainhill, he had half-satisfied her that he and she were one in heart and in essentials. His first earnings, when a school usher, ,vere spent in contributing to her comforts. When money came from Boston for the' French Revolution,' the' kitlin' instantly sent' the auld cat' an 'American mouse.' If she gloried in his falne and greatness, he gloried Inore in being the son of the humble 1\1:argaret Carlyle-and while she lived, she, and only she, ::;tood between him and the loneliness of which he so often and so passionately cOluplained. No one else, perhaps, ever completely understood his character; and of all his letters nOlle are luore tenderly beautiful than those which he sent to Scotsbrig. One more of these has yet to be given -the last-which it is uncertain whether she was able to read. He wrote it on his own birthday, when he was on the point of going again to the Grange, and it is endorsed by hiIn in his own latest shaking hand, , My last letter to my Inother.' Ohelsea: December 4, 1853. l\Iy dear, good Mother,-I wrote to Jean the other day and have very little news to tell you; but I cannot let this day pass without sending you some word or other, were it never so insignificant. We are going into the country .kIARGARET CARL YLE. 139 to-morrow, to the Grange, for two weeks or perhaps a little more, partly to let the painters get done with that weary , room' of which you have heard so much; partly because the Ashburtons, whose house we visited lately without their own presence, would have it so, and Jane thought we were bound. She will go therefore: and I, having once landed her there, am to have liberty to leave again when I will. :l\Ieanwhile I have bargained to be private aU day in their big house, to go on with my work just as if at home, &c. V{ e will see how it answers. I confess I get no good of any company at present; nor, except in stubbornly trying to work -alas! too often in vain-is there any sure relief to me from thoughts which are very sad. But we must not 'lose heart;'- lose faith-never, never! Dear old mother, weak and sick and dear to me, while I live in God' --creation, what a day has this been in my solitary thought; for, except a few words to Jane, I have not spoken to anyone, nor, indeed, hardly seen anyone, it being dusk and dark before I went out-a dim silent Sabbath day, the sky foggy, dark with damp, and a universal stillness the consequence, and it is this day gone fifty-eight years that I was born. And my poor mother! ""ell! we are all in God's hands. Surely God is good. Surely we ought to trust In Hi , or what trust is there for Gill the sons of men? lõh, my dear mother! Let it ever be a comfort to you, hbwever weak you are, that you did your part honourably and well while in strength, and were a noble mother to me and to us all. I am now myself grown old, have had various things to do and suffer for so many years; but there is nothing I ever had to be so much thankful for as for the mother I had. That is a truth which I know well, and perhaps this day again it may be some comfort to you. Yes, surely, for if there has been any good in the things I have uttered in the world's hearing, it was your voice essentially that was speaking through me; essen- tially what you and my brave father meant and taught me to mean, this was the purport of all I spoke and wrote. And if in the few years that may remain to me, I am to get any more written for the world, the essence of it so far as it 14 0 CARL YLE'S LIFE liV LONDON. is worthy and good, will stilI be yours. l\Iay God reward you, dearest mother, for all you have done for me! r never can. Ah no! but will think of it with gratitude and pious love so long as I have the power of thinking. \ And I will pray God's blessing on you, now and always, and will write ne more on that at present, for it is better for me to be silent. Perhaps a note from the doctor will arrive to-morrow; J am much obliged, as he knows, for his punctuality on that subject. He knows there is none so interesting to me, or can be. Alas! I know well he writes me the best view he can take; but I see too, how utterly frail my poor mother is, and how little he or any mortal can help. Nevertheless, it is a constant solace to me to think he is near you, and our good Jean. Certainly she does me a great service in assidu- ously watching over you; and it is a great blessing to us all that she is there to do such a duty. As to my own health, I am almost surprised to report it is so good. In spite of all these tumblings and agitations, I really feel almost better than I have done in late years; certainly not worse; and at this time within sight of sixty it is strange how little decay I feel; nothing but my eyesight gone a very little; and my hope, but also my fear or care at all, about this world, gone a great deal. Poor Jane is not at all strong, sleeps very ill, &c. Perhaps the fortnight of fresh air and change of scene will do bel' some good. But she is very tough, and a bit of good stuff too. I often wonder how she holds out, and braves many things with so thin a skin. She is sitting here reading. She sends her affection to you and to them all. She speaks to me about you almost daily, and answers many a que!"tion and speculation ever since she was at Scotsbrig. Give my love to Jamie, to Isabella, and them all. l\lay God's blessing be on you all! T . CARLYLE. It could not have been with any pleasure that, at a 1l10lllent when his lllother was so manifestly sink- ing, Cadyle felt hÏ1nself éàllecl on to go again to the Grange. He had been at home only a month since j}fARGARET CARLYLE. 14 1 he last left. But there was to be a grand gathering of great London people there. The Ashburtons were prcssing, anù he was under too many obligations to refuse. They went, both of them, into the n1Ïd t of London intellect and social nlagnificence. 1\lrs. Carlyle was able to stay a few days only, for the cock probleln had reacheù a crisis. In his despair, Carlyle had thought of actually buying the lease of the house ,vhere the dreaùful creatures were nourished, turning the people out and leaving it clnpty. The' denlon fowls' were a standing joke at the witty Grange. Either he or his wife was required upon the spot to make an arrangClnent. He says that she proposed to go; she indicates that the pressure was on his side, and that she thought it a 'wildgoose enterprise.' 1 At any rate, the visit which was to have ilnproved her health was cut short on this account, and she was packed off to Chph;ea. He continued on in the shining circle tin, on December 20, news CaIne frolll Scotshrig that his ]llother wa distinctly worse and could not long survive. It was not quite clear that the danger was innllediate. lIe tried to hope, but to no purpose. lIe felt that he ought to go down to her, at any rate that he ought not to continue where he was. IIis hostess consented to his going; he writes as if he had hcen obliged to apply for pern1Ïssion. Ladr Ashburton, he say" in one place, gave hinl Icave. 2 III a letter written at the tÏIne, he saJ s, 'Lady A. acln1Ïtted at once, when I told her the case, that I ought to go t hither, without doubt; at all events to get out of tltis has UCCOlllC a llccc:;sity for ]nc; this is TInt. 1 L(.ff( rs and 1 fe1ll01'Ùtls, yol. ii. p. :3!). 2 Jbid. p. :?J:!. 142 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. supportable in nlY present condition' lIe hurried to Scot brig, stopping only a night in London, and was in tinle to see his Inother once nlore alive. He has left several accounts of the end of this achnirable woman. That in his Journal is the nlost concise. Journal. January 8, 1854.-The stroke has fallen. l\iy dear old mother is gone from me, and in the winter of the year, confusedly under darkness of weather and of minà, the stern final epoch-epoch of ohl age-is beginning to unfold itself for me. I had gone to the Grange with Jane, not very wil- lingly; was sadly in worthleRs solitude for most part passing my Christmas season there. The news from Scotsbrig had long heen bad; extreme weakness, for there was no disease, threatening continually for many months past to reach its term. ""'hat to do I knew not. At length shaking aside my sick languor and wretched uncertainty I perceived plainly that I ought not to be there-but I ought to go to Scotsbrig at all risks straightway. This was on Tuesday, December 21; on 'Yednesday I came home; on Thursday evening set off northward by the express train. The night's travel, Carlisle for the three quarters of an hour I waited, Kirtle- bridge at last, and myanxietie::;; in the walk to Scotsbrig; these things I shall not forget. It is matter of perennial thankfulness to me, and beyond my desert in that matter very far, that I found my dear old mother still alive; able to recognise me with a faint joy, her former self still strangely visible there in all its lineaments, though worn to the utter- most thread. The brave old mother and the good, whom to lose had been my fear ever since intel1igence awoke in me in this world, arrived now at the final bourn. Never shall I forget her wearied eyes that morning, looking out geutly into the wintry daylight; evelY instant falling together in sleep and then opening again. She had in general the most perfect clearness of intellect, courageous composure, affec- tiOlIate patience, complete presence of minù. Dark clouds DEATII OF AIARGARET CARLYLE. 143 of physical suffering, &c., did from time to time eclipse and confuse; but the clear steady light, gone now to the size of a star, as once it had been a sun, came always out victorious again. At night on that Friday she had forgotten me- 'Knew me only since the morning.' I went into the other room; in a few minutes she sent for me to say she did now remember it all, and knew her son Tom as of old. ' Tell us how thou sleeps' she said, when I took leave about mid- night. 'Sleeps!' Alas she herself had lain in a sleep of death for sixteen hours, till that very morning at six, when I was on the road! That was the thi'rd of such sleeps or half-faints lasting for fifteen or sixteen hours. Jane saw the first of them in August. On Saturday if I recollect, her sense in general seemed clear, though her look of weakness was greater then ever. Brother Jamie and I had gone out to walk ill the afternoon. Returning about dusk we found her suffering greatly; want of breath, owing to weakness. \Vhat passed from that time till midnight will never efface itself, and need not be written here. I never saw a mind more clear and present, though worn down now to the utter- most and sinking in the dark floods. :My good veracious affectionate and brave old mother! I keep one or two incidents and all the perplexed image of that night to myself, as something very precious, singular, and sternly sacred to me; beautiful too in its valiant simple worth, and touching as what else could be to me? About eleven my brother John ventured on half a dose of laudanum, the pain of breathing growing ever worse otherwise. Heliefperceptible in consequence-we sent my sister Jean to bed-who had watched for nights and months, relieved only by John at intervals. I came into the room where John was now watch- ing. 'Here is Tom come to bid you good night, mother,' s:tid he. She Rmiled asspnt, took leave of me as usual. .As I turne(l to go she said, , I'm Illuckle obleeged t' ye.' Those wpre her last voluntary words in this world. After that :she poke no more-slept ever deel'er. Her sleep lasted about sixteen hours. She lay on her back, stirreù no mu:-:cle. The face was as that of a statue with slight changes of expression. 144 CdRLYLE'S LIFE I.LV LOl\TDO.V. , Infinite astonishment' was what one might have fancied to read on it at one time; the breathing not very hard or quick, yet evidently difficult, and not changing sensibly in character, till four p.m., when it suddenly fell lower, paused, again paused, perhaps still again: and our good and dear old mother was gone from her 5;On-OWS and from us. I did not weep much, or at all: except for moments: but the sight too, and the look backwards and forwards, was one that a far harder heart might have melted under. Farewell, farewell ! She was about 84 years of age, and could not with advantage to any side remain with us longer. Surely it was a good Power that gave us such a mother; and good though stern that took her away from amid such grief and labour by a death beautiful to one's thoughts. 'All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.' Thi:; they often heard her muttering, and many other less frequent pious texts and passages. Amen, Amen! Sunday, December 25, 1853-a day henceforth, for ever memorable to me. The funeral was on Thur day. Intense frost had come on the :\londay night. I lingered about Scotsbrig, wandering silently in t.he bright hard silent mornings and afternoon 5;, waiting till all small temporal matters were settled; which they decently were. On J\Ionday morning I went-cold as Siberia, yet a bright sun shining; had a painful journey, rapid as a comet, but with neither food nor warmth attainable till after midnight, when my sad pilgrimage ended. Since then I have been languidly sorting rubbish, very languid, sad, and useless every way. It cannot be aid that I haye yet learned this severe lesson I have got. I must try to learn it more and more, or it will not pass from me. To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone: that would be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory. Rut alas all is yet frozen within me; even as it is without me at present, and I have made little or no way. God be helpful to me! I myself am very weak, confused, fatigued, entangled in poor 'lvO'I-lcllinesses too. New paper paragraph5;, even as thi!' sacred and peculiar JAlIIES CARL YLE. 145 thing, are not indifferent to me. "Teak soul! and I am fifty- eight years old, and the tasks I have on hand, Frederick &c., are most ungainly, incongruous with my mood-and the night cometh, for me too is not distant, which for her is come. I must try, I must try. Poor brother Jack! 'ViII he do his Dante now? I For him also I am sad; and surely he has deserved gratitude in these last years from us all. James Carlyle, who was the master at Scotsbrig, was the youngest of the brothers. Carlyle told Ille that he thought his brother James had been the happiest of them all-happy chiefly in this, that he had fallen less under his own influence than Alexander and John. He was a mere child in the years when , Tom was home frmll College'; he had been educated by his father and Blother, and had believed \vhat they believed. There iR a touching mention of J anles in a letter written during this sad time from Sëotsbrig. , Jamie is kind,' Carlyle tells his wife, 'and honest as a soul can be; comes and sits with me, or walks with me when I like, goes gently away when he sees I had rather be alone.' He shuddered as he thought of his hesitation in setting out. , 01,' he said, , I am bound to be for ever thankful that I got here in time; not by own wisdom either or by any worth in my own management of the affair. Had I stayed at the Grange and received the news the}'e, it would have driven me half-distracted and left a remorse to me till the very end of my existence.' The few days of reflection before the funeral were spent in silence. He \vrote on one of thelll to Erskine. 'I got here in time to be recognised, to be cheered with the sacred beauty of a devout and valiant soul'!:; departure. 1 Translation of Dante, part of which had been admirably done by John Carlyle. He was doubtinFí wbethf'r to go on with it or leave it. IY. L 14 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOP/DON. God make me tnankful for such a mother. God enable me to live more worthily of her in the years I may still have left. I must rally myself if I can for a new and sterner final epoch which I feel has now arrived for me. The last two years have been without action, worthless to me except for the final burning away of things that needed to be burnt.' In London, when settled there again, he lived for many weeks in strictest seclusion, working at his task or trying to work, but his mind clwelling too C011-- stantly on his irreparable loss to allow him to make progress. l\fy labour (he wrote to his brother John on January 14th, 1854) is miserably languid: the heart within me i8 low and sad. I have kept quite alone, seen nobody at all. I think of our dear mother with a kind of mournful blessed- ness. Her life was true, simple, generous, brave; her end, with the last traces of these qualities still visible in it, was very beautiful if very sad to us. I would not for much want those two stern days at Scotsbrig from my memory. They lie con- secrated there as if baptised in sorrow and with the greatness of eternity in them. A fortnight later it was still the same. l\ly soul is exceeding sorrowful, all hung with black in general, thinking of what is gone and what cannot return to me. I hold my peace in general and accept the decrees of heaven, still hoping that some useful labour may be again possible for me here, which is the one consolation I can con- cei ve at present. Towards the spring, evening visitors were re- admitted into Cheyne Row; but they were not very welcome, anò were not, perhapR, very graciously received. "'-\Ye have a turn or two of talk (he reports on February 1 OtIi J, ,,-hich does 'ine little good, yet is perhaps better than J..VOTES flV.fOURNAL. I.J.l flat silence, perhaps not. The other night, H., by volunteer appointment, came to us; brought one, H., more than half- drunk, in his train, and one D., an innocent ingenuous babe, in red hair and beard, member for the - borough. H. also and more conspicuously, member for something, is a Jew of the deepest type, black hook-nosed Jew, with the mouth of a shark; coarse, savage, infidel, hungry, and with considerable strength of heart, head, and jaw. He went early away. The rest, to whom Ape L., and an unknown natural philosopher sometimes :-,een here with him, had acci- dentally joined themselves, stayed long. _Yichts zu bedeuten. It wa entertaining to watch the struggle ill Carlyle on such occasions between courtesy and vera- city. He was selùom actually ruùe, unless to a great lnan like tlH' Sardinian l\tIini ter. But he was not skilful in concealin a his dislikes and his bored oms. <:) His journal f'hows a gradual but slow, very slow recovery out of his long prostration. .I( Jlf J'unl. Feb1'U(try 28, 1854.-Not quite idle; always indeed pro- fessing to work; but making, as it were, no way at al1. Alas! alas! In truth I am weak amI forlorn to a degree; have the profound est feeling of utter lonpliness in the world; which the company, 'when it comes,' of my fcllow-creatures rather tends to aggravate and strengthen thanasRuage. I have, however, or am getting, a kind of sad peace withal, 'renuncia- tion,' more real superiority to vain wishes, worldly honours, advantages, &c., the peace that belungs to the old. l\Iy Frederick looks as if it never would take shape in me; in fact the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the 18th century with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties and innnity now fallen p'utJ'id, rotting inevitably towards annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it, and to know that it must he rejpcted for ever- more; aftt'r which the perennial portion, pretty much .Fried- T ., q8 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. rich and Voltaire, so far as I can see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated (very loosely expressed all this; does not fit my thought like a skin; but, like an Irish waistcoat, it doeR in some degree). Sunday morning last, there came into my mind a vision of the old Sunday mornings I bad seen at .l\Iainhill, &c. Poor old mother, father, and the rest of us bustling about to get dressed in time and down to the meeting-house at Eccle- fechan. Inexpressibly sad to me, and full of meaning. They are gone now, vanished all; their poor bits of thrifty clothes, more precious to me than Queen's or King's expensi\'e trap- pings, their pious struggling effort, their' little life,' it is all away. It has all melted into the still sea; it was' rounded with a sleep.' So with all things. Nature and this big universe in aU corners of it show nothing else. Time! Death! All-devouring Time! This thought, 'Exeunt omnes,' and how the generations are like crops of grass, teTt/'porary, very, and an vanishes, as it were an apparition and a ghost; these things, though half a century olrl in me, possess my mind as they never did before. On the whole I have a strange interior tomb life, and dwell in secret among scenes and contemplations which I do not speak of to anybody. l\:Iy mother! my good heavy-laden dear and brave and now lost mother! The thought that I shall never see her more with these eyes gives a strange painful flash into me many times when I look at that poor portrait I have of her. ' Like Ulysses,' as I say, I converse with the shade of my mother and sink out of all company and light common talk into that grand element of sorrow and eternal stillness. God is gn>at. I will not ask or guess (know no man ever could or can) what He has appointed for His poor creatures of the earth; a right and good and wi e appointment, it full surely is. Let me look to it with pious manfulness, without either hope or fear that were excessive. Excessive? Alas! how very s?nall it is in me ; really inconsiderable, beaten out of me by 'many stripes,' pretty continual for these fifty years, till I feel as if fairly broken and pounded in the mortar; and have oftenest no prayer except Rest, rest; let me sleep then if NOTES hV JOURNAL. 149 that must be my doom! --F..ill" as God lives I am weary, verYI weary, and the way of this world does not suit me at all. Such changes grow upon the :;pirit of a man. "Then I look back thirty years and read my feelings, it is very strange. Oh pious mother! kind, good, brave, and truthful soul as I have ever {ouuù, and more than I ha\'e ever elsewhere found in this world, your poor Tom, long out of his schooldays now, has fallen very lonely, very lame and broken in this pilgrimage of his; and you cannot help him or cheer him by a kind word any more. From your grave in Ecclefechan kirkyard yonder you bid him trust in God , and that also he will try if he can understand, and doJ The conquest of the world and of death and hell does verily yet lie in that, if one can understand and do it. 15 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE .IN L01VD01V UIIAPTER XXII. A.D. 1 5J. ...ET. 5Ð. Crimean war-Louis Napoleon-The sound-proof room-Dreams- Death of John 'Vilson-Character of 'Vilson-A journal of a day -The economies of Cheyne Row-Carlyle finances-' Budget of a Fm'it'fne Incompr'ise.' THE year 1854 'was spent almost entirely in London. N either Carlyle nor his wife was absent for lllore than a day or two: she in indifferent health, to which she ,vas stoically resigning herself; he ' in disnlal continual wrestle' with' Frederick,' 'the inexecutable book,' and rather 'in bilious condition,' which nleant what we know. The work which he had undertaken was inlmense; desperate as that of the girl in the fairy tale with the pile of tangled silks before her; and no beneficent godmother to help hinl through with it; and the gea of life, the spring and fire of earlier years, gone out of hirn. lIe aUowed what was going on in the world to distract hirn as little as possible; but the sounds of such things broke in upon hirn, and were as unwelcome as the cocks had been. The CriInean war was in prospect, and the newspapers were crowing a louù a the Demon Fowls. THE CRI.iJIEAN (YAR. ISI JOllrnal. Spring, lS54.-Russian war; soldiers marching off, &c. Never such enthusiasm seen among the population. Cold I as a very stone to all that; seems to me privately I have hardly seen a madder business. 1696 wag battle of Zeutha on Theiðs; Eugene's task in this world to break the back- bone of Turk. A lazy, ugly, sensual, dark fanatic, that Turk, whom we have now had for 400 years. I, for my own private .lJ art , would not buy the continuance of hint there at the rate of sixpence a century. Let him go whenever he can, stay no longer with all rrf/;Y heart. It will be a beautifuUer, not an uglier, that will come in his place; uglier I should not know where to look for under the sky at present. Then as to Russian increase of strength, &c. H,eally, I would wait till Hus::;Ïa meddled with me before 1 drew B'wo'J'd to stop hi!' inerease of trength. It is the idle population of editors, &c., that have done all this in England. One perceives clearly the ministers go forward in it against their will. Indeed, I have seen no rational person who i:-5 not privately very nluch inclined to be uf my own opinion; all fools and loose-spoken ine perienced persons being of the other. [t is very dis- graceful for any' ministry' or government; but !:Iuch is the ttte and cur e of all ministries here at present, inevitably. Pour souls! '''hat could the ministry do after all? To attend to their home affairs, fortify their own coasts, encourage their own fisheries (for new seamen), regulate their own population into or towards proper manliness of spirit anù po::;ition, and capability of self-defence, and so bid defiance tu all the earth, as England peculiarly might-to do this, or any portion of this, is fill' from them ; therefore they must do the other thing. Better speed to them! The 'ren('h alliance, into which we were drawn by the Cri1llean aflair, was Hot, in Carlyle's opiniou, a ('OJllpensatillg l'irCUHlstance-very Inuch the reversc. The Reyolution of 18J8, a weak repetition of 1793. had been followed by a l'orrcspondillg N apoleoni(' 152 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LONDON. Empire, a parody on the first. Carlyle had known Louis Napoleon in England. He had watched him stepping to the throne through perjury and massacre, and had been indignant and ashamed for the nation who could choose or tolerate at its head an adventurer unrecommended by a single virtue. From the first, he was certain that for such a lnan no good end was to be looked for. It was with a feeling of disgust that he found the English newspapers no-w hailing the , scandalous Copper Captain,' as he called him, as the saviour of European order, and a fit ally for England. JI- was with something nlore than disgust that he heard of this per OIl paying a visit to the Queen of England, and being welcomed by her as a friend and brother sovereign. The war and its consequences and circumstances he thrust out of his mind, to the utInost possible distance, and thought of other things. To one of these, 'the eighth wonder of the world,' ,vhich had sprung into being out of the Great Ex- hibition, the glass palace :ü S)TdenhaIn. he was less intolerant than lnight have been expected. At the end of April he spent a Saturday and Sunday with the Ashburtons at AddiscOlnbe. On Sunday (he tells his bruther) we made a pilgrim- age to the Crystal Palace: which is but some two miles off, a monstrous mountain of glass building on the top of Syden- ham Hill, very conspicuous from Cheyne "Talk here. In- numerable objects of Art in it, whole acres of Egyptian monsters, and many really good copies of classical and modern sculpture, which well deserve examination one day. The living visitors not so ve y numerous in so huge an t'difice-þrobably not above 200-were almost all Jews. Outside were as many thousands of the Christian persuasion --or rather, Christian Cockney -unable to get in. Tht' THE SOUND-PROOF ROO.J.1f. 153 whole matter seemed to me to be the very highest flight of Transcendental Cockneyism yet known among mankind. One saw 'Regardless of expense' written on e\Tery fibre of it, and written with the best Cockney judgment, yet still with an essentially Cockney one. Regardless of expense! That was the truly grand miracle of it. At Cheyne Row the great feature was the con1- pletion of the 'sound-proof' rOOIn, into which he 'was whirled aloft by the angry elements.' It was built above the highest story, the roof being, as it were, lifted over it, and was equal in size to the whole area on which the house stood. A second wall was constructed inside the outer one, with a space between to deaden external noise. There were doors in the inner wall, and windows in the outer, which could be opened for ventilation, but the room itself was lighted from above. It had no out- look except to the sky. Here Carlyle spent his work- ing hours, cut off from everyone-' whirled aloft,' as he aid ; angry at the fate which had driven him into such a refuge, and finding ill it, when :finished, tbe faults inseparable from all human contrivances. But he did adn1Ït that- 'the light was superb,' that all 'softer sounds were killed on the road to hÎ1n, and that of sharp sounds scarce the thirtieth part could penetrate.' The cocks had been finally abolished, pUJ'chased out of existence by a 5l. note and :àfrs. Carlyle's diplOlnacy. Thus they' were quiet as mice,' he working with all his 111Ïght, dining out nowhere, save once with the Procters, to meet DÜ'kens, and , finding it the n1o t hideous evening he had had for years.' Under these conditions, 'Frederick' ought to have n1cH1e progre s. if it could progre at all. Hut it :-:e('Ulcd a if it could not.. 15-1- CdRLYLE.'S LIFE LV LOi\7DO.l.Y. .Juurnal. April, 1854.-.Ko way made with my book, nor like to be made. I am in a heavy, stupefying state of health, too, and have no capacity of grasping the big chaos that lies round me, and reducing it to order. Order! Reducing! It is like compelling the grave to give up its dead, were it rightly done, and I am in no capacity for working such a miracle. Yet all things point to work-tell me sternly enough that except in work there is simply no hope for me at all, no good that can now come to me. I read old German books, dull as stupidity itself-nay, uperannuated stupidity-gain with labour the dreariest glimpses of unimportant, extinct human things in that region of the world; but when I begin operating; how to reduce that widespread black desert of Brandenburg sand to a small human garden-alas! alas! But let me not spend time here making matters wO'J'se. Surely now I a'ìn at the bottom of the wheel. I dream honibly-the fruit of incurable biliousness: waste scenes of solitary desolation, gat hered from Craigenputtock, as I now perceiYe, but ten- fold intensated; endless uplanùs of scraggy moors, with gnarls of lichened crag of a stern ugliness, for always I am quite a hermit there too-fit to go into Dante's ' Inferno' ; with other visions less speakable, of a similar type. Every vision, I find, is the express symbol and mitable representa- tive of the mood of mind then possessing me. Also, it is sometimes weells ajtel' the actual dream, as of these Dan- tesque Galloway moors, when some other analogous ùream or circumstance first brings them to my waking recollection -a thing rather curious to me. But nearly all my ùreams in this world have come from bodily conditions of the nerves, I think; and ninety-nine out of every hundred have been ugly and painful, very stupid too, and weak, and, on the whole, by no means worth having, Lould one have avoided them. } or the rest, I find nothing sublime in the act of dreaming, nor even anything very strange. J-;hut your eyes at any time, there will be a phantasmagury of thuughts and image::; DEA TH OF JOHN /VILSON. 155 hegin parading in unbroken erie through your head. To leep is hut to ::;hllt your eyes and outer senses a little better. I have an imprf's ion that one always dreams, but that only in cases where the nerves are di turbed by bad health, which produces lIght, imperfect leep, do they !:Start into such re- lief-call it agony and antagony-as to force themselves on our waking consciousness. Un the whole, the miracle of dreams was never much of a miracle to me, and now, this long while, none at all, beyond what everyt.hing is. .Advancing years have one inseparable accompalli- lucnt, painful if we like to B1ake it SO, 01' ::;oft and sad, as an ordinance of nature-a thing which has to be, and }nu t be so accepted. Each season takes away with it 1110re and Illore of the friends whOln we have known and loved, cutting one by one the trings which attach us to our present lives, and lightening the reluctance with which we recognise our own time approaching. Anyone at all that we have personally known has a friendly aspect when we hear that he is dead. Even if he has done us an ill turn, he cannot do it again. \Ve forget the injuries we have rcceivcd, bccause, after all, they did not. scriously hurt us; w renlelnher the injuries which we have inflicted, he- cause they are past renledy. 'Vith the dead, whatever they were, we only desire to be at peace. Between John vVilson and Carlyle therc had never bcen any cor- dial rclation. They had nlCt in Edinburgh in the old days; on Carlyle's part there had been no barkward- neRS, and \Vilson was not unconscious of Carlyle's ex- traonlinary power:-;. But he had been hy of Carlyle. and Carlyle had rcsented it, and nuw this April the news came that Wil::;on was gone, anJ Carlyle had to write hi epitaph. 15 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LOLVDON. Journal. April 29, 1854.-John "Tilson dead at Edinburgh about ten days ago. Apoplexy had gradually cut him out of the lists of the active, years ago, and for six months had quite broken his memory, &c., and rendered recovery hopeless. I knew his :figure well; remember well first seeing him in Princes Street on a bright April afternoon-probably 1814- exactly forty years ago. Princes Street, on bright afternoons, was then the promenade of Edinburgh, and I, as a student, had gone among the others to see the KaXa{ and the KaXo{; one Campbell, some years older than myself, "Was walking with me in the crowd. A tall ruddy figure, with plenteous blonde hair, with bright blue eyes, fixed, as if in haste towards some distant object, strode rapidly along, clearing the press to the left of us, close by the railings, near where Blackwood's shop now is. '.tVestward he in haste; we slowly eastward. Campbell whispered me, 'That is 'Yilson of the "Isle of Palms,'" which poem I had not read, being then quite mathematical, scientific, &c., for extraneous reasons, as I now see them to have been. The broad- houldered stately bulk of the man struck me; his flashing eye, copious, dis- hevelled head of hair, and rapid, unconcerned progress, like that of a plough through stubble. I really liked him, but only from the distance, and thought no more of him. It must have been fourteen years later before I once saw his figure again, and began to ha,'e some distant straggling acquaintance of a personal kind with him. Glad could T have been to be better and more familiarly acquainted; but though I liked much in him, and he somewhat in me, it would not do. He was always very kind to me, but eemed to have a feeling I should-could-not become wholly hi!:', in which he was right, and that on other terms he could not have me; so we let it so remain, and for many years-indeed, even after quitting Edinburgh I had no acquaintance with him; occasionally got symptoms of his ill-humour with me- ink-spurts in 'Blackwood,' read or heard of, which I, in a surly, silent manner, trove to DEA TH OF JOHN IVILSON 157 consider flattering rather. Poor 'Viis on ! I cannot remember ever to have at all much respected his judgmpnt, or depth of sincere insight into anything whatever; and by this time I was a broad in fields quite foreign to him, where his word was of less and less avail to me. In London, indeed, I seldom or never heard any talk of him. I never read his blustering, drunken' Koctes' after Gordon in Edinburgh ceased to bring them to me. "T e lived apart, as in different centuries; though, t.o say the truth, I always loved 'Vilson -really rather loved him, and could have fancied a most strict and very profitable friendship between us in different, happier circumstances. But it was not to be. It was not the way of this poor epoch, nor a possibility of the century we lived in. One had to bid adieu to it therefore. "Tilson had much nobleness of heart, and many traits of noble genius, but the central tie-bectm seemed always wanting; very long ago I perceived in him the most irreconcilable contradictions, Toryism with sansculottisrrn; .l\1ethodism of a sort with total incredulity; a noble, loyal, and religious nature, not stron,g enough to vanquish the perverse element it is born into. Hence a being all split into precipitous chasms and the wildest volcanic tumults; rocks ovprgrowl1, indeed, with tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower, but knit together at the bottom-that was myoId figure of speech-only by an ocean-of whisky punch. On these terms nothing can be done. "Tilson seemed to me always by far the most ,gifted of all our literary men, either then or still; and ypt intrinsically he has written nothing that can endure. The central gift was wanting. Adieu! adieu: oh, noble, ill- starred brother ! " ho shall say I am not myself fardher wrong, and in a more hopeless course and case, though on the opposite side. . . . Wilson spoke always in a curious dialect, full of humour and ingenuity, but with an uncomfortable wavering between jest and earnest, as if it were his interest and unconscious purpose to conceal his real meaning in most things. So far as I can recollect, he was once in my house (Comely Bank, with a testimonial, poor fellow!) and. I once in his. De Quincpy, &c., a littlp whilp 15 8 CARLYLE'S LIFE IJll LO-,VDON. one afternoon. One night, at Gordon's, I supped with him, or witnessed his supper-ten or twelve tumblers of whisky punch, continued till the daylight shonp in on him and us; and such a firewo'ì'k of wildly ingenious-I hould say volcani- cally vivid-hearty, humorous, and otherwise remarkable, entertaining, and not venerable talk ("T ordsworth, Dugald Stewart, many men, as well as things, came in for a lick), a I never listened to before or since. We walked homewards together through the summer sunrise, I remember well. Good Wilson! Poor "Tilson! That must be twenty-six years ago. I know not if among all his 'friends' he ha left one who feels more recognisingly what he was, and how tragical his life when seemingly most successful, than I now. Adieu to him, good, grand, ruined soul, that never could be great, or, indeed, be anything. This present i a ruinous and ruining world. In the obituary of this spring the nalne of another Scotchlnan appeared-of more national temperament -on whOln Carlyle also leaves a few words. A few days later ('Yednesday last) there died also at Edinburgh Lord Cockburn, a figure from my early ypars: Jeffrey's biographer and friend; in all respects the converse or contrast of Wilson-rustic Scotch sense, sincerity, and humour, all of the practical Scotch type, versus the ])"Teo- poetical 'Y ordsworthian, Coleridgean, extremely chaotic , Church of the Future,' if Calvary, Parnassus, and whi ky punch can ever he supposed capable of growing into any- thing but a dungheap of the future or past. Cockburn, small, solid, and genuine, was by much the wholesomer product; a bright, cheery-voiced, hazel-eyed man; a Scotch dialect. with plenty of good logic in it, and of practical sagacity. Veracious, too. A gentleman, I should say, and perfectly in the Scotch type, perhaps the very last of that peculiar specie . Carlyle's own special work at this tinIe wa con- fined ahn() t to reading hooks. The little t.hat he A JOURNAL OF A DA J': J59 cOlnposed was unsatisfactory, and the entries in his journal, which were unusually numerous in the period of forced inactivity, were at once an occupa- tion and a relief. vVhen once he was launched upon his enterprise, he had little leisure for I'elf-reflection. A long vacant interval was soon to follow in the journal; here is one more pa age from it-one n10re open window into his inner soul :- Journal. J?tne 15, 1 854.-Being to all appearance just about the nadir in my affairs at present, olitary, without any human being to whom I can with profit communicate myself, and totally unable, from illness, &c., to get any hold of the ugly chaos, wide as the world, which I am called to ubdue into the form of work done, I rushed out yesterday and took a violent, long, fatiguing walk in the Surrey precincts, Tooting, &c., that at least I might be quite alone with my unbeau- tiful self and my ditto affairs. A beautiful, soft, bright day; the sky unusuaJly clear, moist clouds floating about upon the wind far enough aloft, and the sun shining out from time to timp. Sitting silent on v.'" andsworth Common, remote amid the furze bushes, I said, 'Suppose we write a .iou'j'nal of a weel,,? the time of acti lab ores may once again come, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, and then it wiJl he pleasant to look back.' I did not much enter- tain the project, nor at this time am I clear to do it. Here, however, is yesterday:- 'Yrote some business notes invitis- sirrná JJIine'ì'vá after breakfast; had lost the little dog, &c., who, however, was found about noon. Then examined t he cribhle I had been doing about Jülich and Berg; Pre'ltt 8en, &c. Totally without worth! Decided to run out, as above said. Out at half-past one p.m.; return towards five. Asleep on the sofa before dinner at half-l'a t five; take my , Schlosser,' vol. 4; can do little at it till tea. :Kot a bad hook, thrmgh ,,"pry crahlwd and. lean. l rothpr 160 CARL YLE'S LIFE IiV LONDO V. John 1 enters at eight; gossip with him till nine; then out to escort him home, getting three-quarters of an hour of walking to myself withal. Had refused the Lowe soirée before. Jane poorly; in a low way for some days back. Read till one a.m., she soon leaving me. To bed then, baving learned little; how little! To-day I am at my desk again; intend to try Liegnitz and Silesian matters. Small hope there. l\Iy eyes are very dim; bad light (from sky direct), though abundant. Chiefly the state of liver, I suppose, which indeed in itself and its effects is beyond description. Have taken to iron pens; compelled to it by the ever-fluctuating' cheap and nasty' system which has prevailed in regard to paper and ink everywhere for twenty years past, which system, worse to me almost than the loss of an arm, not to mention money at all, may the Devil con- found, as indeed he does. Basta! Basta! Liegnitz itself will be better than that. So far Carlyle on himself and his affairs. I will no,vadd a piece of writing of hi.s wife's, which throws ligh t on the domestic economies of Ch eyne Row, and shows how life was carried on there, with what 8kill, with what thrift, under what conditions, personal and Inaterial. Her letters indirectly tell much, but this particular cOlliposition is directly addressed to that special subject. There was a discussion SOllie years ago ill the newspapers whether two people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together in London on 3001. a year. 1\1rs. Carlyle, who often laughed about it while it was going on, will answer the question. l\Iiss Jewsbury says that no one who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were poOl' or rich. There were no signs of extravagance, but also none of poverty. The drawing-roonl arrange- 1 John Carlyle had come with his wife to live in London. She died tragically two months later in her first confinement. THE ECONO.JíIES OF CHEYNE ROTV 161 I1wnts were exceptionally elegant. The furniture was simple, but solid and handsonle; everything was scrupulously dean; everything good of its kind; and there was an air of ease, as of a household living within its meal1s. Irs. Carlyle was well dressed alwa)Ts. lIeI' admirable taste would l11ake the 11l0st of inexpensive lnaterials; but the material theIrl- selves were of the very best. Carlyle hinlself generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, they were always generous and open-handed. They had their house on ea y tenns. The rent, which when they came first was 30l. a year, I think was never raised-out of respect for Carlyle's character; but it had many rOO1IlS in it, which, because they eould not Lear to have them otherwise, were lnain- tained in the best condition. There was l11uch curiosity amonp- their friends to know how their establishment was upported. :nlrs. Carlyle had 1501. a year from Craigenputtock. He hiIuself, in a late calculation, had set down his average income from his books at another 150l. For scveral years before the tilne at which we havc now arrived he had published little which materially added to this. Thcre \vas a fix cd annual demand for his works, but not a large one. The 'Cronnvell' was a large book, and had gone through three editions. I do not know precisely how much he had receivcd frOlll it; perhaps 1,300l. Thc 'Latter-day Pamphlets' had produced little be- yond paying their expenses. The' Life of Stcrling' was popular, but that too only in a limited cire1e. Carlylc was thrifty, hut never penurious; he ga\'c away profu ely in his own f:unily, and was liberal beyond his mean ebewherc. lIe had :::a\'ed, I think, IV. [ 162 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LONDON. about 2,000l. in all, which was lying at interest in Dumfries bank, and this was all. Thus his entire incoIne at this time could not have exceeded 400l., if it was as nluch. His Gennan tour had been expen- sive. The new romn had cost 1701. The cost of living w s increasing through the rise in prices, which no economy could guard against, and though they had but one servant the household books l1lounted di agreeably. 1\1rs. Carlyle, not wishing to add to her husband's troubles, had as far as possible kept her anxieties to herself. Indeed, Carlyle was like most husbands in this nlatter, and was inclined to be irritable when spoken to about it. But an explanation at last becaIne necessary, and the hUl1l0rOUS acidity of tone with which she entered on it shows that she had borne llluch before she pre- sented her statement. It is dated February 1 , 1835, and is endorsed by Carlyle 'Jane's 1YIissive on the Budget,' with a note appended. The enclosed was read with great laughter; had heen found lying on my table as I returned out of the frosty garden from smoking. Debt is already paid off. Quarterly income to be 58l. henceforth, and all is settled to poor Goody's heart's content. The piece is so clever that I cannot just yet :find in my heart to burn it, as perhaps I ought to do. T. C. B'Lldgf.t of fl Femme JucolJqJ1'ise. I don't choose to spealc again on the money question! Thé · replies' from the Noble Lord are unfair aüd unkind, and little to the purpose. 'YÌlen you tell me ' I pester your life out abuut money,' that' your soul is sick with hearing about it,' that' I haù better make the money I have serve,' 'at all rates, hang it, let you alone of it '-all that I call THE ECO.J.VOJIIES OF CIfEYNE ROTV. 16 3 perfectly unfair, the reverse of kind, and tending to nothing but disagreement. If I were greedy or extravagant or a bad manager, you would be justified in 'staving me off' with loud words; but you cannot say that of me (whatever else)- cannot tit inl.; it of me. At least, I am sure that I never' asked for more' to my elf from you or anyone, not even from my own mother, in all my life, and that through six and twenty years I have kept house for you at more or less cost according to given circumstance , but always 011 less than it costs the generality of people living in the same style. 'Vhat I should have expected you to say rather would have been: 'l\Iy dear, you '(JìUSt be dreadfully hampered in your finances, and dread- fully anxious and unhappy about it, and quite desperate of '(Jìal.-ing it do, since YOl are" asking for more." l\lake me understand the case, then. I can and will help you out of that s01'Ûicl suffering at least, either by giving you more, if that be found prudent to do, or by reducing our wants to within the present means.' That is the sort of thing you would have said had you been a perfect man; so I supposp .) ou are not a perfect man. Then, instead of crying in m) bed half the night after, I would have eXplained my budget to you in peace and confidence. But now I am driven to explain it on paper' in a state of mind;' driven, for I can- not, it is not in my nature to live' entangled in the details,' and I 'will not. I would sooner hang myself, though 'pes- tering you about money' is also more repugnant to me than you dream of. You don't understand why the allowance which sufficed in fanner years no longer suffices. That is what I would c:\.l'lain to the Noble Lord if he would but-what shall I say Î'- læep his tCllìpe'J'. The beginning of my embarrassments, it will not surprise the Koble Lord. to learn, since it has also heen 'the begin- ning of' almo t every human ill to himself, was the 1'cpaÍ1'i1ì{! of the hOl se. There was a destruction, an Í1'refJ'ldar.ity, an inces8(Uìt reC1 rrence of 811uÛl incidental e:ÆpCJlSeS, during all that period, or two Iwriods, through which I found myself in ::;eptember gone a year, tClì pounds behind, instead uf llj 16 CARL YLE'S LIFE I.J.V Lo...\ DO V. having some pounds saved up towards the winter's coals. I could have worked round' out of that,' however, in course of time, if habits of'lLnpin,ched housekeeping had not been long taken to by you as well as myself, and if new unavoidable or not to be avoided cur1'ent expenses had not followed close on those incidental ones. I will show the Noble Lord, with his permission, what the new current expenses are, and to what they amount per annum. (Hear, hear! and cries of , Be brief! ') 1. 'Ye have a servant of 'higher grade' than we ever ventured on before; more expensive in money. Anne's wages are 16 pounds a year; Fanny's were 13. 1\lost of the others had 12; and Anne never dreams of being other than 'Well fed. The others 8crarnJble(l for their living out of ours. Her regular meat dinner at one o'clock, regular allowance of butter, &c., adds at least three pounds a year to the yem"s bills. But she plagues us with no fits of illness nor of d1"unl.:enne88, no 'Ww'nings nor complainings. She does perfectly what she is paid and fed to do. I see houses not 1'0 well kept with' cook,' 'housemaid,' and' manservant' (Question!). Anne is the last item I should vote for re- trenching in. I may set her down, however, at six additional pounds. 2. "T e have now gas and water' laid on,' both producing an admirable result. But betwixt ' water laid on ' at one pound sixteen shillings per annum, with shilling to turncock, and water carried at fourpence a week there is a yearly difference of 19 shillings and four pence; and betwixt gas all the year round and a few sixpenny boxes of lights in the wintel' the difference may be computed at fifteen shillin[J8. These two excellent innovations, then, increase the yearlyexpendi- ture by one pound fourteen shillings and four pence-a trifle to speak of; but you, my Lord, born and bred in thrifty cotland, must know well the proverb, , Every little mak's a mickle.' 3. "Teare higher taxed. 'Vithin the last eighteen months there has been added to the Lighting, Pavement, and Improvement Rate ten shillings yearly, to the Poor Rate TIfE EeoJ\TO JIIES OF eHE Y.f\/E RO IV. 16 5 one pound, to the sewer rate ten shillings; and now the doubled Income Tax makes a difference of 5l. 168. 8d. yearly, which sums, added together, amount to a difference of 7l. 168. 8d. yearly, on taxes which already amounted to 17l. 128. 8el. There need be no reflections for want of taxes. 4. Proyisions of all sorts are higher priced than in former years. Four shillings a week for bread, instead of two shillings and sixpence, makes at the year's end a difference of 3l. 188. Butter has kept all the year round 2(l. a pound dearer than I ever knew it. On the quantity we use-two pounds and a half per week' quite reg'lar'- there is a difference of 218. 8el, by the year. Butcher's meat is a penny a pound dearer. At the rate of a pound and a half a day, bones included-no exorbitant allowance for three people-the difference on that at the year's end would be '2l. 58. 6el. Coals, which had been for some years at 218. per ton, cost this year 26..,.., last year 298., bought judiciously, too. If I had had to pay 50s. a ton for them, as some hom;ewives had to, God knows what would have be('ome of me. (P:u;sionate cries of' Question! question!') ". e burn, or used to burn-I am afraid they are going faster this winter-twelve tons, one year with another. Candles are 1'lZ: composites a shilling a pound, im;tead of 10d.; dips 8 pence, instead of 5d. or 6d. Of the former we burn three pounds in nine days-the greater part of the year you sit so late-and of dips two pounds a fortnight on the average of the whole year. Bacon is 2(l. a pound dearer; soap ditto; potatoes, at the cheapest, a penny a pound, instead of three pounds for 2d. We use three pounds of potatoes in two days' meals. " ho could imagine that at the year's end that makes a difference of 158. 2<.l. OIl one's mere potatoes? Compute all this, and you \\ ill find thai the difft-'rence on provisions cannot be under twelve pounds in the year. 5. ""hat I should blu:sh to state if I were not at úay, so hi speak: ever since we have been in London yu( ha\Te, in the hanò:-;ome:st mamlPr, paid the winter's butter with yulO' tI/('1l 1iìOlle!f, though it wa::-; not ill the Lond. ABel thi::; 166 CARL YLE'S LIFE flV LOA'DON. gentlemanlike proceeding on your part, till the butter became uneatable, was a good two pounds saved me. Add up these differences :- 1. Rise on servant. 2. Rise on light and water . 3. On taxes . 4. On provisions 5. Cessation of butter. Æ s. d. 600 1 14 4 7 16 8 12 0 0 200 You will find a total of .e29 11 0 l\Iy calculation will be found quite correct, though I am not strong in arithmetic. I have thochtc'I'cd all this well in my head, and indignation makes a sort of arithmetic, as ,yell as verses. Do you finally understand why the allow- ance which sufficed formerly no longer suffices, and pity my difficulties instead of being angry at them? The only thing you can reproach me with, if ym lil.:,e, is that fifteen months ago, when I found myself already in debt, and everything rising on me, I did not fall at once to pinching and m ddling, as when we didn't know where the next money was to come from, instead of 'lashing down' at the accustomed rate: nay, expanding into a 'regular servant.' But you are to recollect that when I first complained to you of the prices, you said, quite good-naturedly, 'Then you are coming to bankruptcy, are you? Not going to be able to go on, you think? 'Yell, then, we must come to your assistance, poor cr.ittur. You mustn't be made a bankrupt of.' So I kept my mind easy, and retrenched in nothing, relying on the promised 'assistance.' But when 'Oh! it was lang 0' coming, lang 0' coming,' my . arrears taking every quarter a more alarming eifel', what could I do but put you in mind? Once, twice, at the third speaking, what you were pleasantly caning' a great heap of money'-15l.-wa8 -what shall I say ?-flung to me. Far from leav.ing any- thing to meet the increased demand of another nine months, this sum did not clear me of debt, not by five pounds. But from time to time encouraging V01'(l8 fell from the THE ECONO.JIIES OF CHEY.lvE R01 16 7 Noble Lord. ' No, you cannot pay the double Income Tax ; clearly, I must pay that for you.' And again: 'I will burn as many coals as I like; if you can't pay for them somebody must!' All resulting, however, thus far in ' Don't you 'Wish you may get it?' Decidedly I should have needed to be more than mortal, or else' a born daughter of Chaos,' to have gone on without attempt made at ascertaining what cO'J11Íng to 'ìny assistance meant: whether it meant 15l. without a blessing once for all; and, if so, what retrench- ments were to be permitted. You asked me at last money row, with withering sarcasm, , had I the slightest idea what amount of money would satisfy '{ìt,e. 'Vas I wanting 5ol. more; or forty, or thirty? "Tas there any conceivable sum of money that could put an end to my eternal botheration?' I will answer the question as if it had been asked practically and kindly. Yes. I have the strongest idea what amount of money would' stttísfy' me. I have computed it often enough as I lay awake at nights, and didn't I wish I might get it? In- deed, when I can't sleep now it is my 'difficulties' I think about more than my sins, till they become 'a real mental awgony in my own inside.' The above-named sum, 29l., divided into quarterly payments, would satisfy me (\Üth a certain parsimony about little things somewhat less might do), I engaging my word of a gentlewoman to give back at the year'R end whatever portion thereof any diminution of the demand on me might enable me to save. I am not so unpractical, however, as to ask for the whole 2Dl. without thought or care where it is to come from. I have settled all that (Derisive laughter, and Hear, hear !), so that nine pounds only will have to be disbursed by you over and above your long-accustomed dÜ;bun;ements (Hear, hear !). You anticipate, perhaps, some draft on your waste-paper basket. :No, my Lord, it has never been my habit to inter- fere with your ways of making money, or the rate which you make it at; and if I never did it in eady years, most unlikely T should do it 1101.(1. .1\Iy bill of ways and means has nothing to do with making money, only \\ ith di l'osin of the money made. (Brayo! 1war!) r68 CARLJ'LE'S LIFE IlV Lo.lV DON 1. Ever since my mother's death you have allowed me for old :Mary:Mills 3l. yearly. he needs them no more. Continue these three lJounds /0 1 ]4 the house. 2. Through the same long term of years you have made me the handsomest Christmas and birthday presents; and when I had purposely disgusted you from b'L ying 'nW thin,r;s, you gave me at the New Year 5l. Oh I know the meaning of that 5l. quite well. Give 'lì1Æ 1wthing ; neither money nor money's worth. I would have it so anyhow, and continue the 5l. tor the house. 3. Ever since we came to London you have paid some 2l., I guess, for butter, now become uneatable. Continue that 2l. for the house; and we have already ten pounds which you can't miss, not having been ui'ed to them. 4. :L\Iy allowance of 25l. is a very liberal one; has enabled me to spend freely for myself; and I don't deny there is a pleasure in that when there is no household crisis; but with an appalling deficit in the house exchequer, it is not only no pleasure but an impossibility. I can keep up my dignit.y and my wardrobe on a less sum-on 15l. a year. A silk dress, 'a splendid dressing-gown,' 'a milliner's bonnet' the less; what signifies that at my age? Nothing. Besides, I have had so many' gowns' given me that they may serve for two or three years. By then God knows if I shall be needing gmvns at all. So deduct 10l. from my personal allowance; and continue that for the housf'. But why not transfer it privately from my own purse to the house one, and ask only for 19l.? It would have sounded more modest--figwred better. Just because' that sort of thing' don't please me. I have tried it and found it a bad yo: a virtue not its own reward! I am for every herring to hang by its own head, every purse to stand on its own bottom. It would worry me to be thought rolling in the wealth of 25l., when I was cleverly making 15l. do, and investing 10l. in coals and taxes. .l\Irs. --- is up to that sort of self- mcrifice thing, and to finding compensation in the sympathy of many friends, and in smouldering discontent with X. for having no intuition of her magnanimity. I am up to neither THE ECO.f\lO.l.J:IIES OF CHE YiVE EO Tt: [69 the magnanimity nor the compensation, but I am quite up to laying down 10l. of my allowance in a straightforward recognised way, without standing on my toes to it either. And what is more, I am determined upon it, vill not accept more than 15l. in the present state of affairs. There only remains to disclose the actual state of the exchequer. It is empty as a drum. (Sensation.) If I con- sider twenty-nine more pounds indispensable-things remain- ing as they are-for the coming year, beginning the 22nd of l\Iarch, it is just because I have found it so in the year that is gone; and I commenced that, as I have already stated, with 10l. of arrears. You assisted me with 15l., and I have assisted myself with 10l., five last August, which I took from the Savings Bank, and the five you g'<1Ve me at New Year, which I threw into the coal account. Don't suppose-' if thou's r the habit of supposing '-that I tell you this in tbe Lndevout imagination of being 'l'epaincf' my own thought::, ahout it. 174 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LO.1.VDON. Lonelier and lonelier! Let me get along with my work. :For me there is no other good ever to be hoped. If he needed comfort, he was not likely to find it in the things which were going un round him. It was no satisfaction to hin1 that the state of the anny in the CrÏ1nea-the dysentery and starvation, with the lnemo- rable 'take care of Dowb ' in the lnidst of it-con- finned his notions of the nature of Inoc1ern British adn1Ïnistration. In this April CaIne the still more sinister phenomenon of the visit to England of the French En1peror. On this point, if on no other, he 'vas at one with the n1ajority of his countrymen. Outside the privileged circles who wanted order preserved, and security to property, and safe enjoy- nlCnt of idle luxury, Louis Napoleon had no frienùs anlong us. Eu t the times ,vere hard, and we looked on, swallo,ving down our disgust as best we could, while the man of Decelnber was entertained at 'Vindsor. It was said in the papers that he was received in London by enthusiastic crowds. That was not Carlyle's Ï1npression frOln what he hiInself saw. To Juhn Carlyle. Ohelsea: April 20, 18,")5. Louis Napoleon has not been shot hitherto. That is the best that can be said. He gathers, they say, great crowds about him, but his reception from the hip-hip-hurrahing classes is not wann at all. On .Monday, just before they arrived, I came (in omni bus) down Piccadilly. Two thin and thinnest rows of the most abject-looking human wretches I had ever seen or dreamt of-lame, crook-backed, dwarfish, dirty-shirted, with the air of pickpockets and City jackals, not a gent hardly among them, much less any vestige of a gentle- man-were drawn up from St. James's Street to Hyde Park LOUIS .1.VAPOLEON. I75 Corner to receive the august pair. I looked at them with a shuddering thankfulness that they were not drawn up to recei ve me. Apr-il 23.-'Ve have got done with our Emperor. Thank Heaven, he took himself away before the week ended. N ever was such a blaze of enthusiastic reception, &c., says rum our, which I for my own share cannot confirm or de- cisively contradict. Royal children all weeping when the soi-(li8( nt august pair took themselves away again- à la bonne he1.w'e ! Very bitter this-too bitter as we look back, per- haps. Louis K apoleon was a symbol and creature of his tilne, 'which divided with hinl the criule of the roup d' état. lIe had his day, and paid his debt at the end of it to the retributory powers. TIut while his day lasted and he seelned to thrive, hc was an ugly' ohject in the eyes of those who believed in SOl1le sort of Providence. , Frederick' llwanwhile, in spite of Imnentatiol1s over failure, was at last 111oving. Carlyle had stood steaùil y to it for eÜ.dlteen Inonths, and wlH'll AuO'ust L 0 came he required rest and change. 1\1:any friends were eager for the honour of entertaining hiln. There was no longcr any mother to call hÏ1n down to Scots- brig. He selected mllong theln 1\11'. Edward Fitz- gerald, who had been uscful to hÏ1n in the' Crolllwell ' days, investigating N aseby field, and whose fine gifts of intellect and character he heartily loved and ad- Inireù. 1\1:1'. Fitzgerald lived at Woodbridge, near :Farlingay, in Suffolk, an old-fashioned nlan ion-house of his own, in which he occupied a few rooms, the rest being a farnI-house. The ('enc was new to hinl. \ SufIülk farnIer, · with a dialc('t ahnost equal to Xith3dale,' was a fresh l'xperience. The fann q6 CARL YLE'S LIFE LV LONDO.LY. ('ookery 'vas sinlple and wholesolne, the air perfect, the sea, with a beach where he could bathe, at no great distance; his host ready to be the pleasante t of cOlnpanions if his society was wished for, and aR willing' to efface himself' when not wanted. Under these conditions, a ' retreat' for a few cla}Ts to "\tV ooc1- bridge was altogether agreeable. The love which all persons who really knew him felt for Carlyle lnade it a delight to nlinister to his conlfort. His lllunours were part of hinlself. They took him as he was, knowing well how amply his conversation would pay for his entertainment. lIe, for his part, enjoyed hiul- self exceptionally; he complained of nothing. Place, lodging, cOlnpany were equally to his n1Índ. To Jane JVelslt Carlyle. Farlingay, August 10. As to me, all things go prosperously. I made an excellent ]eep out last night-at least, twú sleeps added together that amounted to excellent. You see I have skill in the weather too. Here are the sunny autumn days begun, and this, the first of them, has 1)een one of the beautifullest that could be desirpd; as nice a morning as I remember to have seen, and your letter waiting for me, and good Fitz sitting patient on a big block-huge stump of a tree-root, on which they have sown mignonette-at the head of the garden till I pleased to come down. I have sauntered about, reading, in the fields. \\T e drove in the gig: afterwards I walked lustily through pleasant lanes and quiet country roads, all of hard, smooth sand; in short, a day suitable to my purpose in coming here. J already seem to feel twice as strong for walking; step along at a great rate in spite of the windless heat. I design to have a try again at the sea to-morrow. A up:ust 13. Therp haye been some adventures here, or rather one adventure, but all goes right after it as much as before. VISIT TO FARLl,VGLi y: 177 It was an adventure of cows. Cows go in a field-or rather went, but do not now go-opposite this big window, sepa- rated merely by the garden and an invisible fence. The nigbt after I wrote last, these animals, about 2 a.m., took to lowing with an energy to have awakened the seven sleepers. No soul could guess why; but there they raged and lowed through the night watches, awoke the whole house here, and especially awoke me, and held me vigilant till six, when I arose for a walk through fields and lanes. No evil came of it, only endless sorrow of poor Fitz and the household, end- less apologies, &c. The cows were removed, and I have slept well ever sinee and am really growing better and better in my silent rustication here. Fitz took me down yesterday to Aldborough, a very pleasant drive-seventeen miles; off at 8 A.M., home about the same hour of evening. It is a beau- tifullittle sea town, one of the best bathing-places I h!1ve seen. Nothing can excel the sea-a mile of fine shingly beach, with patches of smooth sand every here and there; clear water shelving rapidly, deep at all hours; beach solitary beyond wont, whole town rather solitary. )ly notion is, if you have yet gone nowhere, you should think of Aldborough. If a lodging could be had there, which is probable, I could like very well to take a fortnight or so of it. N ever saw a place more promising. . . . Adien, deare t! Drown Nero, and be reasonable.-Youn ever, T. C. August 17. :N 0 news from you to-ùay, which I will take to mean that there is no bad news, all things remaining with Goody, as they do with Illy, in statu quo. I haye bathed; I have been driven about. "Teather hot and shining, without wind. Last night I slept unusually well, and to-morrow I am to go. Fitz has been the best of landlords, and has disc-harged the sacred rites really with a kind of Irish zeal anù piety; a man not to be forgotten. He has done everything except' leave me well alone;' tbat he has not quite done; and to say truth, I hall not carp to be off and lie down in my own corner ag-ain. evpn with the spnttpr of ('}'pmol'ne in t he distance. 1\. K 178 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. Restless spirit! for' in his own corner,' when' he did lie down in it,' he grew 'sleepless, disconsolate, and good for little or nothing.' The Ashburtons, knowing his condition, offered hiln Addiscombe again for the short remains of the SUlTImer, and there he and Mrs. Carlyle tried to make a brief holiday together. It did not answer. She preferred Chelsea and solitude, and left hinl to wander about the Surrey lanes alone. To Jane Welsh Carlyle. Addiscombe: September 2, 1835. Sunday midnight. l\:1y poor little Jeannie is away. You may fancy, or rather, perhaps, in your spleen you will not fancy, what a dreary wae sight it was to me this morning when I sallied out, stupid and sad, and found your door open, the one cup downstairs, tea-pot washed out. 'l\'Irs. Carlyle gone at eight, sir; don't know whither; had not slept at all.' Alas! alas! I know not even whether you had got any breakfast. It did not strike me to question my Hyæna further on that subject, and it now strikes me you probably had none. Poor little soul! tough as wire, but rather heavy-laden. Well, I hope you are now asleep in your own safe, big, curtained old bed. In all ways you can now stretch yourself out. I have had the loneliest day I can recollect in all my life, or about the very loneliest. I declined riding. My horse had need of rest, at any rate. The wind was howling and the dust flying, and on all my nerves lay dull emba.rgo, only to be lifted by hWl'd labour. I set out soon after one; walked over heaths, through thick woods, in solitary places, with a huge sough of the wind and a grey troublous sky for company, about three and a half hours; did not weary, did not much improve. Sate smoking once with a bush at my back, on a hill-side by the edge of a wood. Got home five minutes bp.fore five, and the pU-:1ctual Dragon was there with the dinner you had ordered. After dinner I read for an hour, smoked, then sate down by the fire, and, waiting to ring for candle, fell into nightmare slpep till almo:::;t nine. THREE fVEEKS AT ADDISCOllIBE. T79 I look for you on Tuesday early. Nevertheless, if you would rather not, I have no doubt of getting some feasible enough dinner, &c., for indeed that poor woman seems to understand her work well enough; and the Dragon herself is all civility and sugary smiles, if that were of much ad- vantage. For the rest, the dreariness of solitude-that, though disagreeable to bear, is understood to be of the nature of medicine to the mind at this juncture. No way of dearing muddy water but by letting it settle. However, I calculate you will come, and take the reins in hand for another stage. 1\1 y poor little ProtectresR! Good night now finally. T. C. Such letters as this throw strange lights into Carlyle's dmnestic life, sad and infinitely touching. When he cmnplains so often of the burdens that were laid upon hÜn, one begins to understand what he meant. And yet, harassed and overloaded as he was, he could find leisure for acts of kindness to strangers who would not have intruded on him had they known of his anxieties. I had not yet settled in London; but I CaIne up occasionally to read books in the Museum, &c. I called as often as I ventured in Cheyne Row, and was always made welcolne there. But I was a mere outward acquaintance, and had no right to expect such a man as Carlyle to exert hin1self for me. I had, however, frOln the time when I becmne acquainted with his writings, looked on hÜn as Iny own guide and 1naster-so absolutely that I could have said: ' .J[alim errare cum Platone quam cum aliis úene sentil'e'; or, in Goethe's worùs, which I often indeed did repeat to myself: '.Jlit deinem 111ei8te7' Z?l Ù'ren ist dein Geu.inl1.' The practice of submi ion to the authority of one wh01n one recognises as greater than one's :;;cIf N :? J80 CARLYLE'S L./FE IN LONDON. outweighs the chance of occasional Inistake. If I wrote anything, I fancied myself writing it to hiln, reflecting at each word on what he would think of it, as a check on affectations. I was busy thell on the first volume of my 'IIistory of England.' I had set the first two chapters in print that I might take counsel with friends upon them. I sent a copy to Carlyle, which 111Ust have reached hilll about the tin1e of this Addis- combe sojourn, and it caIlle back to rue with pencil criticisrns which, though not wanting in severity, con- soled me for the censures which fell so heavily on those chapters when the book was published. Autumn passed on, and winter and spring, and Carlyle was stil1 at his desk. At ChristInas there was another visit to the Grange. 'Cmnpany at first aristocratic and select: Lord Lansdowne and Robert Lowe; then miscellaneous shifting, chiefly of the scientific kind,' and Inoderately interesting. But his stay was short, and he was absorbed again at his work in the garret romn. With 1\1rs. Carlyle, unfor- tunately, it was a period of ill-health, loneliness, and dispiritlnent. At the end of 1855 she had cmll- lnenced the diary, from which her husband first learnt, after her death, how Iniserable she had been, ancllearnt also that he himself had been in part the cause. It was continued on into the next spring and sunnner, in the same sad, stoically indignant tone; the consumlnation of ten years of resentment at an intiIllacy which, under happier circulnstances, should have been equally a delight to herself, yet was ill- Inanaged by all parties concerned, and steeped in gall and bitterness her own married life. It is im- possible to suppose that Lady Ashhurton was not lIfRS. CARLYLE AND LADY ASHBURTON. ISI aware of 1\Irs. Carlyle's feelings towards her. She had a right perhaps to think theln ridiculous, but for Carlyle's own sake she ought to have been careful how she behaved to her. If nine-tenths of 1\1rs. Carlyle's injuries were imaginary, if her proud and sensitive disposition saw affronts where there had been only a great lady's negligence, there ,vas a real SOlllething of which she had a right to conlplain; only her husband's want of perception in such Illatters could have prevented hiD1 fronl seeing how unfit it was that she should haye to go and come at Lady Ashburton's bidding, undei> fear of her husband's dis- pleasure. A small incident in the sumnwr of 1856, though a mere trifle in itself, nlay serve as an illus- tration of what she had to undergo. The Carlyles were going for a holiday to Scotlanù. Lady Ash- burton was going also. She had engaged a palatial carriage, which had been lnade for the Queen and her suite, and she proposed to take the Carlyles down with her. The carriage consisted of a spacious saloon, to which, cOl1nllunicatillg with it, an ordinary compartulCnt with the usual six seats in it was attached. Lady Ashburton occupied the saloon alone. 1\lrs. Carlyle, though jn bad health and need- ing rest as llIllCh as Lady A., was placed ill the compartInent with her husband, the faInily doctor, and T.Jady A.'s lnaid,l a position perfectly proper for her if she was a dependent, but in .which no lady could have been placed whom Lady Ashburton re- garded as her own equal in rank. It Inay be that l\Trs. Carlyle chose to haye it so herself. But Lady A. ought not to have allo-wed it, and Carlyle ought 1 :--;('{' R('mini,<:ce1lc(, TOL ii. p. 4.). 132 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. not to have allowed it, for it was a thing wrong in itself. One is not surprised to find that when Lady A. offered to take her honle in the same way she refused t.o go. 'If there were any cOInpanionship in the Inatter,' she said bitterly, when Carlyle c01nmuni- cated Lady A.'s proposal, , it would be different; or if you go back ,vith the Ash burtons it will be different, as then I should be going as part of your luggage without self-responsibility.' Carlyle regarded the Ashbnrtons as 'great people,' to whom he was under obligations: who had been very good to hiln : and of whose train he in a sense formed a part. Mrs. Carlyle, with her proud, independent, Scotch re- publican spirit, imperfectly recognised these social distinctions. This it lnay be said was a trifle, and ought not to have been Blade much of. But there is no sign that Mrs. Carlyle did lnake lnnch of what was but a sUlall instance of her general lot. It happens to stand out by being lnentioned incidentally. That is all. But enough has been said of this sad matter, which was now drawing near its end. On reaching Scotland the party separated. Lady Ashburton went to the Highlands, where Carlyle was to follow in September. Mrs. Carlyle went to her cousins in Fife and he to Scotsbrig, which he had left last after his mother's funeral. All his faInily were delighted to see him once more aInongst them. IIis brother James was waiting for him at the station. His sister-in-law had provided a long new pipe of the right Glasgow lnanufacture: he would smoke nothing else. IIis mother-she, alas! was not there: only the chair in which she had sate, now vacant. AUTUMN IN SCOTLAND. 18 3 But (as he said) there is no wisdom in yielding to such thoughts. It is on death that all life has been appointed to stand for its brief season, and none of us can escape the law. There is a certain solemn consolation which reconciles me to almost everything in the thought that I am myself fairly old; that all the confusions of life, whether of this colour or that, are soon about to sink into nothing, and only the soul of one's work, if one did any that had a soul, can be expected to survive.' He had not come to Scotsbrig to be idle; he had his work with him, at which he toiled on steadily. He had expected his wife to join him there, but she showed no intention that way. lIe wrote to her regularly with his usual quiet affection. IIer answers 'he found sOIubre and distrustful perhaps beyond need,' but kind and good; he 'begged her to know that in his own way none loved her so well as he, or felt that he had better cause to do so.' Froln Scots brig he moved to his sister's at the Gill, by Annan-happy aInong his own kindred, longing to be ' out of London, never to return,' and to spend the rest of his days in a scene where health of mind and body would not be Ünpossible. To Jane TVel81 Carlyle. The Gill: August 7, 1856. I seem to be doing really excellently in regard to health. "fiat a change (mostly for the better) has been brought about since I e5caperl from that Devil's oven with its dirts and noises.-The disgusting dearth of London, the noise, unwholesomeness) dirt, and fret of one's whole existence there has often forced itself upon me when I look at this frugality and these results. If I had done with those books what more have I to do with that healthless, profitless, mad, and heavy-laden place? I will really put it to you once more to consider if it were not better we returned to poor 18 4 C RLYLE'S LIFE IlV LOlVDON. old Scotland, there to adjust ourselves a little, there to lay our bones, I care not much in what part. Annandale is very sad to me, and has no charm almost, except that Jamie would be here. It is certain we might live here in opulence, keep brougham, cow, minister's man, &c.), and give our poor selves and Nero a much wholesomer life were those printing enterprises once ended. One spot Carlyle could not fail to visit-the Ecclefechan kirkyard:- On Sunday (he said) I made a visit vhither you can gness; had a few sacred moments there, standing with bared head out of sight. Surely there is not any mystery more divine than this unspeakably sad and holy one. There they were all lying in peace, having well finished their fight. ' Very bonny; very bonny,' as poor old :l\lary l\Iil1s said in another case. I He continued well in health. Never in his life had he more the kind of chance he was always crying out for-' perfect kindness and nearly perfect solituùe, the freshest of air, wholeRoulest of food, riding horse, and every essential provided-nl-m- better than he-nl-deserved.' 2 He had got SOIne ,york done,' 'Inac1e a real iUlpression on the papers he had brought with hirn.' Why could not he stay where he was when he was well off? '''"hy need he have supposed that he nlust start away to the Ash- burtons at Loch Luichart? IIarvest, he said, was coming on in Annandale, when guests were incon- venient. Any way, it was a fresh drop of acid to his wife, who took no notice to hÏ111 of the letter in which he informed her of his purpose, but wrote to another of the family. J Ofthe grave of Mrs. \Yelsh. 2 Coleriù n"; with the humming I,ronunciatinn. IN THE HIG.fILANDS. 18 5 You say in your letters to - (he said) you wait for l\IR. C.'s plans. Alas! l\Ir. C. has no plans you do not long since know of. He means to be back at Chelsea at his work about the end of September; would be well content to pass the whole time on these present terms, here and about here; has no theory of future movements as visits, except that one to the Inverness regions, which he will avoid if he can. That is the whole truth. It appeared he could not a void it, for he .went to Loch Luichart, stayed a fortnight there, and did not enjoy hilllself, if we may judge froln this specimen of his experiences :- Kinloch Luichart: September 23. Very cold; no fire, or none but an imaginary one, can be permitted in the drawing-room. Her ladyship is in worse humour than usual; is capable of being driven to extremities by your setting up a peat from its flat posture: so I have learned altogether to abstain. Nothing earthly to be done, nothing good to be read, to be said, or thought. This is not a luxurious kind of life for a poor wayfaring individual. l\Iy commonest resource is this: to walk out from six to ten miles, ducking under bushes from the showers; return utterly tired, put on dressing-gown, cape, plaid, &c., and lie down on one's bed under all the woollen stuff one can gather, with hat laid on cheek to keep out the light. I usually get to a kind of warm half-sleep, and last till dinner time not so ill off. IIis wife waR still silent for S01l1e days, and when hc wrote it .was to ùe f:atirif'al at his situation, and to refuse, in sharper tones than he liked, to return under Lady A.'s COllVOY to Lontlon. The second part of your letter (he replied) is far less plea ant to me than tle first. It is wholly grounded on misknowledge, or in deep ignorance of the circumstancps, and rleserves for answer no further detailf:, credible or in- 186 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. credible, about these Highland matters till we meet. There is for you-but you are a good body, too! What you say about the regal vehicle to London from Edinburgh is mostly right, and I have settled it must be the way you write. Lady A., whose kind intentions and endeavours cannot be questioned, seems particularly anxious we should both profit by this Edinburgh conveyance. l\ly answer is 'No; with thanks.' What pleasure or profit they would get by it is not apparent; but any way, we have to stand by the above decision, which I see you think the best for various reasons. ' An unpleasant state of things! But there is one remedy for all evils. The occasion of the 'rifts' in Carlyle's life was to be relTIoved for ever in the en- . . sUIng sprIng. Journal. May 6, 1857.-l\londay, l\iay 4, at Paris, died Lady Ash- burton, a great and irreparable sorrow to me, yet with some beautiful consolations in it too; a thing that fills all my mind since yesterday afternoon that l\iilnes came to me with the sad news, which I had never once anticipated, though warned sometimes vaguely to do so. 'God sanctify my sorrow,' as the old pious phrase went. To her I believe it is a great gain; and the exit has in it much of noble beauty as well as pure sadness worthy of such a woman. Adieu! adieu! Her work-call it her grand and noble en- durance of want of work-is all done! He was present at the funeral, at Lord Ash- burton's particular entreaty. It seemed like taking leave of the most precious possession which had belonged to hinl in the world. A few days after, the 22nd of 1\lay, he writes to his brother John:- I got a great blow by that death you alluded to, which was totally unexpected to me; and the thought of it widen- ing ever more, as I think further of it, is likely to be a DEATH OF LADY ASHBURTON. 187 heaviness of heart to me for a long time coming. I have indeed lost such a friend as I never had, nor am again in the least likelihood to have, in this strange?' world; a magnanimous and beautiful soul which had furnished the English earth and made it homelike to me in many ways is not now here. Not since our mother's death has there been to me anything resembling it. 1\1any years later, on casually hearing some one describc Lady A. in a way that interested him, he notes :- A sketch true in every feature I perceived, as painted on the mind of l\lrs. L-; nor was that a character quite simple to read. On the contrary, since Lady Harriet died I have never heard another that did so read it. Very strange to me. A tragic Lady Harriet, deeply though she veiled herself in smiles, in light, gay humour and drawing- room wit, which she had much at command. Essentially a most veracious soul too. Noble and gifted by nature, had Fortune but granted any real career. She was the greatest lady of rank I ever saw, with the soul of a princess and cap- tainess had there been any career possible to her but that fashionable one. After this the days went on with sOlnùre uni- fonnity, 1\1rs. Carlyle still feeble and growing indeed ycarly weakcr, Carlyle toiling on in his 'nluù clcment,' driving his way through it, hardly seeing anyone, and riding for three hours every afternoon. He had called his horse Fritz. 'He was a very clever fellow,' he said of him to me, 'was much attached to me, and understood nlY ways. lIe caught sight in ralace Yard of King Richard's horse, clearly per- ('cived that it was a horse, and was greatly interested in it.' 'Ah, Fritz,' he once apostrophiscd hiln, , you don't know aU your good fortune. You wc>rp w('II brought up to know and do your duty. No- 188 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOiVDON. body ever told you any lies about some one else that had done it for you.' He wrote few letters, his lllother no longer living to claim his tinle. It was only on occasion that he gave anyone a lengthened account of hirnself. This is to his brother John :- Chelsea: June 11, 1857. Probably I am rather better in health; the industrious riding on this excellent horse sometimes seems to myself to be slowly telling on me; but I am habitually in sombre, mournful mood, conscious of great weakness, a defeated kind of creature, with a right good load of sorrow hanging on me, and no goal that looks very glorious to aim towards now within sight. All my days and hours go to that sad task of mine. At it I keep weakly grubbing and puddling, weakly but steadily; try to make daily some little way as now almost the one thing useful. I refuse all invitations whatsoever for several reasons, and may be defined as a mute solitary being at present, comparable to an owl on the housetop in several respects. The truth is, I had enough before, and I have had privately a great loss and sorrow lately as it were of the one genuine friend I had acquired in these parts, whose nobleness was more precious to me than I knew; a loss not in any measure to be repaired in the world henceforth. That of old Johnson, common to old men in this world, often comes into my head. 'Been de- layed till most of those whom I wished to please are sunk into the grave, and success and failure are empty sounds; I therefore dismiss it with frigid indifference;' but will do the best I can all the same. In fact, I do make a little way, and shall perhaps live to see the thing honestly done after all. Jane is decidedly better; gets out daily, &c., but is still as weak as possible; and though we have the perfection of weather, warm, yet never sultry, the poor mistress does not yet get even into her old strength for walking or the like. She went out to East Hampstead, :l\Iarquis of Downshire's people, beyond ""'lndsor, and got so much good of her three days there I have been desirous she PROGRESS IVITH 'FRE.DERIC[(' 189 could get to Scotland or somewhither for a couple of months, and sbe did seem to have some such intention. Sunny Bank 1 tbe place; but tbat bas misgone, I fear. l\Ieanwbile, she is very busy ornamenting tbe garden, poor little soul; has two China seats, speculates even upon an awning, or quasi-tent, aga.inst the blazes of July that are coming, wbich, you see, are good signs. Poor Douglas Jerrold, we hear incidentally this morning, is dead; an 'acrid pbilanthropist,' last of the' London wits.' I hope the last. A man not extremely valuable in my sigbt; but an honest creature withal; and he bas bade us Adieu for ever! The' Frederick' ,vork did not grow more easy. The story, as it expanded, became the history of contemporary Europe, and even of the ,vorld, while Carlyle, like a genuine crafts111an as he was, never shir ked a difficulty, never threw a false skin over hollow places, or wrote a sentence the truth of which he had not sifted. One day he described hÍ1nself as ' busy drawing water for 1nany hours fro1n the deep Brandenburg ,veIl,' and realising nothing , but a coil of wet rope.' Still progress was 11lac1e in July of this year 1837. The opening chapters were getting into print. He did not himself stir fronl London. The ,veather indoors had grown cahner after the occasion of difference was gone, and the gentle companionship of early days, never yoluntarily impaired on his part, had partially returned. But change was necessary for her health. Her friends at Sunny Bank were really eager to have her, and he was glad to send her off. lie hinlself travelled generally third class on railway journeys. She, weak though she was, insisted on going second. Carlyle saw her into the train. She had a wretched journey, 1 lTaddill t()n. 190 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOl\7flON. and his first letter, after hearing of her Inisfortunes, was as tender as a lover's:- To Jane JVelslt Carlyle, Sunny Bank. Chelsea: July 9, 1857. Oh, what a passage! l\ly poor little Goody Goody, Oh, dear! oh, dear! I was miserable all the way home to leave you in such a hole, the rather as I noticed, just when you were rolling off, one of the first-class carriages behind you with not a soul in it. You shall go no more into any wretched saving of that kind, never more while we have money at all. Remember that. I consoled myself with thinking most of your neighbours would go out in the Fen country and leave you with at least room and air. But it has been far otherwise. Good heavens ! all the windows closed! Tobacco and the other stew all night! l\ly heart is sore for my poor weak woman. Never again: should I sell my shirt to buy you a better place. Lie still and be quiet; only saunter out into the garden, into the balmy, natal air, and kind though sad old memories. We are doing well enough here. By God's favour--of which we have had much surely, though in stern forms-I will get rid of this deplorable task in a not disgraceful manner. Then for the rest of our life we will be more to one another than ever we were, if it please Heaven. I have looked at the birds daily; I all right; and daily bestowed a bunch of chickweed on the poor wretches, who sing gratefully in return. Nero ran with me through the Brompton solitudes last night, merry as a maltman. Alwayg on coming home he trips up to your room till I call him back. I wish he would give it over, for it makes me wae. I have been mainly under the awning all day, and got my sheets-three of them-corrected. God keep thee ever, dearest; whom else have I in the world? Be good, be quiet, and write. T . CARLYLE. 1 Mrs. Carlyle's canaries. SOLITUDE IN CHEYNE R01í 7 . J91 The prohibition against' presents' had not been rescinded. This is your birthday (he wrote on July 14). God grant us only many of them. I think now and then I could dispense with all other blessings. Our years have been well laden with sorrows, a quite sufficient ballast allowed us; but while we are together here there is always a world left. I am not to send you any gifts other than this scrap of paper; but I might give you California and not mean more than perhaps I do. And so may there be many years, and (as poor Irving used to say) the worst of them over. Such halcyon weather could not continue without an occasional break. The air grew hot; proof-sheets were no,v and then troubleson1e. Photographers worried hÜn to sit for their gallery of illustrious men, offering to send their artist to Chelsea for the pur- pose. The' incomparable artist' was forbidùen to con1e near the place. Sleep was irregular; solitude was trying. I do pretty well, considering (he said after a fortnight of it). All I complain of is gloom, and I do not know how I should get well rid of that at present even if I had you to throw some portion of it upon! Tea is the gloomiest of all my meals. No Goody there! I am thankful even to Nero for reminding me of you. At last there came interruption of work, froIl1 the need of revising the' Latter-day Pan1phlets' for a new edition. He was not well, and there Calne one of the old cross fits, and even Nero himself fell out of favour. Tn Jane TVelslt Carlyle. Chelsea: July 2G, 1857. To confess truth, I hàve had for about a week past a fit of villanons headache , feverishness, &c., which J at first 192 CARLYLE'S LIFE IlV LOZVDOiY. attributed to oxtail soup, but now discover to be cold caught sitting in the sweep of the wind under the awning. I have been at proofs again all day. I am getting on slow, like an old spavined horse, but never giving in. The gloom of my soul is perfect at times, for I have feverish headaches, and no human company, or absolutely none that is not ugly to me. One hope remains-that of working out of this sad element, getting my book done, and quitting London, I often think, or as good as quitting it, for the sake of fresh air and dairy produce in abundance. Nero is already grunting for a sally out. He lost me yesternight, the in- tolerable messin that he is. I was hurrying home from a long walk, full of reflections not pleasant. At the bottom of Cadogan Place eleven o'clock struck: time to hurry home for porridge. But the vermin was wanting; no whistle would bring him. I had to go back as far as "Tilton Crescent. There the miserable quadruped appeared, and I nearly bullied the life out of him. He licked my milk-dish at home with the 'same relish.' On the whole, however, he is a real nuisance and absurdity in this house. The relapse happily did not last. The cold, or whatever it was, departed, anù the gloom retired. The canaries had their chickweed, , and said "Thank you kindly" as plain as could be sung.' Friends ceased to be ugly again, and K ero ceased to be a nuisance. 'Farie,' he said, 'rode with me yester- nip-ht. Poor Farie; very honest, gentlelnanlike, friendly, Inore like a llllluan creature than anybody I see at present.' , Nero came into the garden and stationed hÏ1nself on the warm flags to inquire about dinner.' His wife's cOlnfort, he knew, woulù depenù on the accounts which he sent about hÏ1nself, and he made the best that he could of everything. She was paying visits which ,vere not all pleasant. He was eao-er for eyery detail. Q . COSTUiJfE AND ITS DIFFICULTIES. 193 I am glad,rhe said) you make your bits of complaints freely to me ; if not t me, to whom else now alive on the earth? Oh! never distru::::t me, as the devil sometimes tempts your poor heart to do. I know you for an honest soul, far too sharp-tempered, but i'J'ue to the bone; and if I ever am or was unkind to you, God knows it was very far against my purpose. Do not distrust me. Tell me every- thing, and do not mind how weak you are before me. I know your strength and your weakness pretty well by this time. Poor little Goody! Sha'n't I be glad to see you back again? Yes; for a considerable number of reasons. For more reasons than one, but for one especially. Carlyle's costuIlle was always peculiar: so peculiar, thanks to his Ecclefechan tailor, that it ,vas past being anxious about. vVho that knew Carlyle would care what clothes he chose to wear? But there ,vere degrees even in these singular articles. I perceive, he said, you will have to set earnestly about getting me some wearing apparel when you come home. I have fallen quite shameful. I shall be naked altogether if you don't mind. Think of riding most of the summer with the aristocracy of the country, whenever I went into Hyde l)ark, in a duffle jacket which literally was part of an old dressing-gown a year gone. Is the like on record? The sense that' Frederick' was actuaUy getting itself executed had tended wonderfully to soothe down the irritated hUlnours. Even a night made sleepless by the heat of the weather had its cOlllpcnsations. On August 5 he wrote :- Sunday I started broad awake at 3 a.m., went downstairs, out, smoked a cigar on a stool: have not seen so lovely, sad, and grand a summer weather scene for twenty years back. Trees stood all as if cast in bronze, not an aspen leaf stirring; sky was a silver mirror, getting yellowi:::;h to the north-east; IV. u 194 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. and only one big star, star of the morning, visible in the in- creasing light. This is a very grand place, this world, too. It did me no ill. Enough! The world was well; all was well; for his o,vn writing even was turlling out better than he ex- pected, though his opinion of it varied from day to day. The worst is, he said, there is not the heart of a jay piat in me, to use Jamie's phrase. I want, above all) a light mood of spirits to gallop through such topics; and, alas ! where is that to come from? 'Ve must just do without it. I am well aware mourning and kicking at the pricks is not the way to mend matters. The news of the Sepoy rebellion con1ing in this StU11mer of course affected Carlyle, more, however, with sorrow than surprise. 'Tongue cannot speak,' he wrote, , the horrors that were done on the English hy those nlutinous hyænas. Allow hyænas to nnItiny and strange things will follow.' But he had long thought that' l11any British interests besides India were on a baddish road.' The best that he could do was to get on with his own work, and not permit his atten- tion to be drawn from it. Mrs. Carlyle greatly ap- proved of the opening of' Frederick.' She recognised at once the superiority of it to any other work that he had done, and she told hinl so. lIe was greatly delighted; he called her remarks the only bit of human criticism which he had heard frol11 anyone. It would be worth while to write books, he said, if man- kind would read them as you do. From the first discovery of me you have predicted good in a confident manner; all the same whether the world were singing chorus, or no part of the world dreaming of such a thing, but of much the re- verse. PEACE IVITHIN AND IVITIfOUT. 195 lIe ,vas essentially peaceable the whole tinlC of her absence; a flash might come now and then, but of sununer sheet-lightning,' which nleant no harm. Even distant cocks and wandering organ-grinders got nothing but a passing anathel11a. I am better to-day,fbe wrote on September after be had been for two months alone. I hope you do ot mind transient grumbling, knowing the nature of the beast by this time. Yellow scoundrels [the organ boys], though I speak of them so often, really are not troublesome; very many clays they do not come at all, and if I were always tolerably well I should care little about them. A young lady, very tempestuous on the piano at one of those open back windows, really does me no ill almost ; nor does your friend with the accordion. He rather tickles me, like a nigger song; such an enthusiasm is in bim about nothing at all; and when he plays' Ye banks and braes,' I almost like him. Never mind me and my grumblings. A few days after this she came h0111e to hin1, and , there was joy in Nero and the canaries, and in crea- tures l110re Ï1nportant.' vV ork went on ,vithout inter- ruption. Fritz gave increasing satisfaction, taking better care of his .rider than his rider could have taken of himself, and showing fresh signs of the ex- cellence of his education. Not only was the Inoral part of him what it should be, but he had escaped the special snare of London life. 'lIe l1ad not been brought up to think that the first ùuty of a horse was to say s01llething witty.' The ridiug was late in the afternoon, and lasted long after d llsk, along the suburban roaùs, amidst the glare of the red and green railway larnps at the bridges, and the shrieks and roars of the pat; l11g trains; Fritz o 2 196 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. never stumbling or starting, or showing the least sign of alarm. The Scotch do not observe times and seasons, and Christmas in London to so true a Scot as Carlyle was a periodic nuisance. The printers suspended work, and proof-sheets hung fire. English holidays might have been beautiful things in old days, in country manors and farms; but in modern Chelsea they meant husbands staggering about the streets, and t.heir miserable wives tryin to drag them home before the last of the wages was spent on beer and gin. All mortals [Carlyle wrote on December 28) are tumbling about in a state of drunken saturnalia, delirium, or quasi- delirium, according to their several sorts; a very strange method of thanking God for sending them a Redeemer; a set singulm-Iy worth' redeeming,' too, you would say. I spent Christmas and the two days following in grim contention all day each time with the most refractory set of proof-sheets I expect in this work; the sternly sad remembrance of another Christmas [when his mother died] present to me also at all moments, which made a strange combination, peculiarly tragic when I had time to see it from the distance, like a man set to whittle cherry-stones and toy boxes in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Indoors, happily, the old affectionate days had come back-the old tone, the old confidences. It had really been as he had said in the summer, , They were more to one another than they had ever been.' But ]'1rs. Carlyle suffered more than she had yet done from the winter cold, and a shadow of another kind now darkened the prospect. He had gone for three or four days to the now solitary Grange, at Lord Ash- burton's earnest entreaty. Mrs. Carlyle was to have gone with him, but could not venture. He had been lJfRS. CARLYLE'S HEALTIJ: 197 lllost unwilling to leave her, but she insisteù that he BlUSt. To John Carlyle. Chelsea: January :?, 1858. Happily, my poor Jane is somewhat better. She had a little improved on Friday or Saturday, which made her urge the shocking unpoliteness of breaking an express promise, and despatch me at the eleventh hour. She professed to be still further improved when I came home, and, in fact, does sleep perceptibly better, though still very ill, and eats also a little better; though her cough, I perceive, is rather worse than before; and, in fact, she is weak and heavy- laden to a degree, and nothing but an invincible spirit could keep her up at all. It was the fir:::;t day of the thaw when she discovered her cold, but I doubt not it had been getting ready in the cold days before; indeed, there were some wretched operatives bere, busy upon the grate and its back and its tiles down below, with whom she had a great deal of trouble and vexation. They, I think, had mainly done it. I bad, at any Tate, a considerable notion to kick their lime-kits and them completely out of the bouse, but ab:.;tained from interfering at all, lest explosion should arise. })oor litHe soul! I have seldom seen anybody weaker, hardly ever anybody keeping on foot on weaker terms. But if she could only continue to have half sleep instead of only a fourth or even lower proportion, I should expect her to be able to get out again on good days, and so to recover soon anything she has lost lately. She has a particular pain ahout. a handbrpadt h below the heart, rather sorp to the touch-on pres::,ure not sore at all, if not stirred, nor seemingly connected with coughing otherwise than by the mere stiJ' }Jroduced. This is now some three weeks oM, and vexes her somewhat. T. yestenlay-judicious, kind lIlan!- as ured her he knew that, and it was an inflammation of the pleura just getting under way. If you can form any guess about it by this description, you may tell me. Affectionate regards to all.-Yours ever, T. CARLYLE. 198 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON> House worries, 'with servants, &c., did not in1- prove 1\11'8. Carlyle. Fritz had been left at the Grange. Carlyle, driven to his feet again, had lost his own chief comfort, and' Frederick' had to be continued in more inùifferent spirits. In the spring he writes to John agaIn :- Chelsea: March 26, 1858. I am not worth seeing, nor is anybody much worth being seen by me in my present mood and predicament. I never was so solitary intrinsically. I refuse all invitations, and, except meeting people in the street, have next to no com- munication with my external fellow-creatures. 1 walk with difficulty long snatches, nothing but Nero attending me. I begin to find I must have my horse back again one of these days. l\Iy poor inner man reminds me that such will be my duty. I am sorry to report that since yesterday my poor Jane has caught new cold, and is flung down again, worse, probably, than before. She had never sunk so weak this year, and we hoped when the singularly good weather came it was all over. But within this day or two there has been a change of temperature, and this is where we are. ' No sleep at all ' last night; nothing but the sofa and silence for my poor partner. "T e are changing our servant too; but how the new one (will answer)-a Scotch Inverness subject of promising Gemüth, but inexperienced in house-work-is somewhat of a problem. Few people that I have seen suffer their allotment in this world in a handsomer manner. I stin hope this relapse will not last long. To tlte Same. April 15. Our weather has suddenly got warm. Jane is now out, poor little soul. She would have been joyful, and on the road to well again, had it not heen for that devil's brood of house servants. Anne went away a fortnight ago-no further goùd to be had of Anne. Better that she should go. Then came the usual muster and choice for poor J\Iissus-great LOiVDON SERVANTS. 199 lash, fidget, and at last a simple-looking Scotch lass preferred, who did not know her w01'k, but whose physiognomy pleased hugely in the proper quarter. .l\luch new lash in con- sequence for the two weeks gone-patient teaching of the simpleton, animated by hope of honesty, veracity, affectionate mind, &c., &c., the whole of which fell upon poor Jane; for I had nothing to do in it except hold my peace, and rejoice in such prospects of all the virtues in a simple form. Night before last the poor Dame did not sleep, seemed sad too. On pressing into her I found the simpleton of virtues had broken into bottomless lying,' drinking of cream on the road upstairs,' &c., and that, in short, it was hopeless. And while we yet spoke of it, a poor charwoman, used to the house, knocked at the room door, and entered with the sudden news that our simpleton was off, bag and baggage, plus a sovereign that had just been advanced her. Gone, ten p.m., and had left the pa!;s key with the ::;aid charwoman. ::\Iy poor little sick partner. I declare it is heart-breaking for her sake, disg'IJsting, otherwise, to a high degree, and dirtier for the mind than even brushing of boots oneself would be for the body. But our Dame is not to be beaten quite; has already improvised a new arrangement-unhappily no leep almm;t yet, and we must help her all we can. In spite of anxieties anù 'sorùid miseries,' the two voltnnes of 'Frederick' nlCanwhile drew to cOBlplction. Carlyle (for hilU) was aUUlzingly patient, evidently for hi:::; wife's sake lIaviug laid :strong constraint on hÏ1n- elf. IIis cOlnplaillts, when he did conlplain, were of a human rea:-!unable kind. Reuberg .was Dlust a :;i- ùuous, and another young intelligent aùn1Ïrer-l\1r. Larkin,1 who lived next door to hinl-had volunteered his Rcrvices, which were 11l0st gratefully re('ogniscd. ' [y excellent helper,' he call::; 1\11'. Larkin, 'in these printing cnterprises, lllakes Inaps, indcxes, &L., &c') 1 Letters and 1JI''morials, \"01. ii. p. :m:2. 200 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. makes everything; in fact, one of the best In en I have almost ever seen, and a ery indispensable bles ing to nle.' lVluch went against hirn-or so he thought. April 15. Nothing (he said), will ever reconcile me to these miser- able iron pens. Often in writing the beautiful took now on hand I remind myself of the old Spaniard who had to do his on leather with a dagger,l and, in fact, I detest. writing more and more, and expect fairly to end it if I can ever finish this-but all friends be soft with me, for I declare myself hard bested in the present season. Ey the first oflViaythe printers had their last' copy.' By the end of l\Iay all was in type. In the second week in June the first instalment of the work on which he had been so busy toiling was cmnplete and off his hands, waiting to be published in the autumn. For six years he had been labouring over it. In 1801 he had begun seriously to think about the subject. III 1852 he nlade his tour to Berlin and the battle-fields. Ever since he had lain as in eclipse, withdrawn from all society save that of his most intimate friends. The effort had been enormous. He was sixty-three years old, and the furnace could be no longer heated to its old teInperature. Yet he had thrown into the task all the strength he had left; and now, although the final verdict has long been pronounced on this book, in Germany especially, where the merits of it can be best appreciated, I must say a very few words Inyself about it, and on Carlyle's historicallnethod generally. History is the account of the actions of men; and in 'actions' are comprehended the thoughts, opinions, lllotives, impulses of the actors and of the circulll- 1 The Al'flW'(l'flrt, by Alonzo df' Ercil1:l. CARL YLE AS A HISTORIAN. 201 stances in which their work was executed. The actions without the motives are nothing, for they lnay be interpreted in many ways, and can only be understood in their causes. If ' Harnlet' or ' Lear' was exact to outward fact-were they and their fellow-actors on the stage exactly such as Shakespeare describes them, and if they did the acts which he assigns to them, that was perfect history; and what we call history is only valuable as it approaches to that pattern. To say that the characters of reallllen cannot be thus com- pletely known, that their inner nature is beyond our reach, that the dramatic portraiture of things is only possible to poetry, is to say that history ought not to be written, for the inner nature of the persons of whom it speaks is the essential thing about thern; and, in fact, the historian assunles that he does know it, for his work without it is pointless and colourless. And yet to penetrate really into the hearts and souls of rnen, to give each his due, to represent hilll as he appeared at his best, to hinlself and not to his enen1Ïes, to syrnpathize in the collision of principles with each party in turn; to feel as they felt, to think as they thought, and to reproduce the various beliefs, the acquirements, the intellectual atmosphere of another af!e, is a task which requires gifts as great or greater than those of the greatest dralnatist::,; for all is re- quired which is required uf the drmnatist, with the obligation to truth of ascertained fact besides. It is for this reason that historical works of the highest orùer are so scanty. The faculty itself, the ilnagiua- tive and reproductive insight, is among the rarest of hunlan qualit.ie . The Inora1 determination to use it for purposes of truth only is rarer still-nay, it is but 202 CARLYLE'S LIFE flV LONDON. in particular ages of the world that such work can be produced at all. The historians of genius themselves, too, are creatures of their own tinIe, and it is only at perioùs when Inen of intellect have 'swallowed fonnulas,' when conventional and established ways of thinking have ceased to satisfy, that, if they are serious and conscientious, they are able 'to sympathize with opposite siùes.' It is said that history is not of individuals; that thc proper concern of it is with broad masses of facts, ,vith tendencies which can be analysed into law , .with the evolution of humanity in general. Be it so-but a science can make progress only when the facts are cOInpletely ascertained; and before any facts of hUlnan life are available for philosophy we HUlst have those facts exactly as they .were. You must have Hamlet before you can have a theory of Halnlet, and it is to be observed that the nlore cOlnplctely we know the truth of any in{'ident, or group of incidents, the less it lends itself to thcory. "\tVe have our re- ligious historians, our constitutional historians, our philosophical historians; and they tell their stories each in their own way, to point conclusions which they have begun by assull1Îng-but the conclusion seeIllS plausible only because they know their case iInper- fectly, or because they state thcir case inlperfectly. The writers of books are Protestant or Oatholic, re- ligious or atheistic, despotic or Liberal; but nature is ncither one nor the other, but all in turn. Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasure-house she produces chilùren in infinite variety, of which she is equally the 111other, and disowns none of thenl ; and when, as in Shakespeare, nature is represented truly, CARLYLE AS A HISTORIAN. 203 the impressions left upon the mind do not adjust theillselves to any philosophical systmll. The story of Hamlet in Saxo-Grammaticus might suggest excellent COllll110nplace lessons on the danger of superstition, or the evils of uncertainty in the la"\v of succession to the crown, or the absurdity of monarchical government when the crown can be the prize of lllurder. But reflections of this kind would suggest themselves only where the story was told ÍInperfectly, and because it was told inlperfectly. If Shakespeare's' Hanllet ' be the true version of that Denulark catastrophe, the Ininc1 passes from connnonplace llloralising to the tragedy of hunlanity itself. And it is certain that if the thing did not occur as it stands in the play, yet it did occur in ::,ome sin1Ílar way, and that the truth, if we knew it, would be equally affecting-equally unwilling to subn1Ït to any representation except the ulldol'trinal anù dramatic. What I mean is this, that whether the history of 11l11nallity can be treated philosophically or not: whether any evolutionary hnv of progress can be traced in it or not; the facts must be delineated first with the clearness and fulnes which we demand in an epic poelll or a tragedy. We 111ust have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing. "\Vhen that is given, those who like it 111ay have their philo- 80phy of history, though probably thEY win care le s about it; just as wise men do not ask for theories of IImnlet, hut are :satisfied with IIamlet hinlself. But until the real thing is given, philosophical history is but an idle pla)Tthing to entertain grown children with. And this was Carlyle's special gift-to bring deaù things and d(, Hl people actuaHy ba('k to life; to nlake 204 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. the past once more the present, and to show us men and women playing their parts on the mortal stage as real flesh-and-blood human creatures, with every feature which he ascribes to them authenticated, not the JllOst trifling incident invented, and yet as a result with figures as cOlnpletely alive as Shakespeare's own. Very few writers ha ve possessed this double gift of accuracy and representative power. I could nlen- tion only two, Thucydides and Tacitus; and Carlyle's power as an artist is greater than either of theirs. Lock- hart said, when he read' Past and Present,' that, ex- cept Scott, in this particular function no one equalled Carlyle. I would go farther, and say that no writer in any age had equalled hinl. Dranlatists, novelists have drawn characters with similar vividness, but it is the iniInitable distinction of Carlyle to have painted actual persons with as nlllCh life in theln as novelists have given to their own inventions, to which they l11Ïght ascribe what traits they pleased. lIe worked in fetters-in the fetters of fact; yet, in this life of Frederick, the king himself, his father, his sister, his generals, his friends, Voltaire, and a hundred others, all the chief figures, large and small, of the eighteenth century, pass upon the stage once more, as breathing and moving Inen and WOHlen, and yet fixed and lnade visible eternally by the genius which has sumnloned theln from their graves. A fine critic once said to me that Carlyle's Friedrich Wilhelm was as pecu- liar and original as Sterne's Walter Shandy; cer- tainly as distinct a personality as exists in English fiction. It was no less an exact copy of the original Friedricl.l Wilhehn-his real self, discerned and reproduced by the insight of a nature which had CARLYLE AS A HISTORIAN. 20 5 llluch in common with hinl. Those bursts of passion, with wild words flying about, and sonletimes worse than words, and the agonised revulsion, with the , Oh, my Feekin! oh, my Feekin! whOln have I in the worlù but thee? ' must have sadly ren1Ínùed ]'Irs. Carlyle of occasional episodes in Cheyne Row. 206 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOND01V. CIIA.PTER XXIV. A.D. 1838. ÆT. 6 . Night in a railway train-Annandale-l\leditations-A new wardrobe -Visit to Craigenputtock-Seconù tour in Germany-The Isle of Rügen - Putbus - Berlin-Silesia- Prag-"\V eimar -Aix- Frede- rick's battlefields and Carlyle's description of them-Return to England-Second marriage of Lord Ashburton. No further progress could be made with 'Frede- rick' till there had been a second tour in Gennany, which .was to be effected, if possible, in the lunmer or autumn of this year, 1858. The ilnnlediate ne- cessity, after the cOInpletion of the present vohunes, waR for rest. vVhen the strain was taken off, Carlyle fell into a collapsed condition. K otwithstanding his good resolutions, he became slightly fretful and troublesollle, having nothing illllnediate to do. lIe was somewhat out of health, and fancied himself worse than he was. l'rlrs. Carlyle had grown better with the wanner weather; he could venture to leave her, and he went off in the nÚdùle of June to his sister in Annandale. To Jane Welsh Carlyle. The Gill, Annan, June 24, 18.38. "r ell, my dear little Jeannie, here I am safe, with less suffering than I anticipated. Nothing went awry of all the A JOURNEY TO SCOTLAND. 20 7 arrangements; not the smallest ill accident befell. Iy chief suffering was from dust. Foul air I overcame by ad- dressing, at the very first pulling up of the opposite "in- dow, a forcible bit of familiar eloquence to the gentleman active; 'how would he like to have his neighbour's dirty shirt offered him to wear, which was a clean transaction in comparison?' so that they at least let me keep down my own window, and even kept down theirs, poor souls! in whole or in part, almost the whole night. 'Ve were five- mostly fat; but these arrangements secured air, though with a painful admixture of dust and engine smoke. Ex- cept myself, the poor souls (Glasgow bodies mostly) fell sound asleep in an hour or two, and word of speech to me there was none, though perfect good nature, mixed with apprehension, as I judged. About midnight I changed my waistcoat, and took out the supper provided me by my own poor considerate little Goody. It was an excellent de- vice. Some winks of sleep I had, too, though the stoppage always woke me again. In fine, Carlisle, through a beauti- ful, hright, breezy morning, a little before six. Cigar there; hardly finished when we started again; and at seven the face of Austin, with a gig, met me at Cummertrees, and within half an hour more I was busy washing here, and about to fall upon breakfast in myoid quarters. . . . I have had coffee of prime quality, been out strolling to smoke a pipe, and returned with my feet wet. This is all I have yet done, and I propose next to put on my dressing-go"n, and fairly lie down in quest of a sleep. This will probably be gone before I awake again; but, indeed, what news can there well be in the interim from a man in his sleep. Oh, my dear, one Friendkin! (what other have I leftreaUy?) I was truly wae to leave thee yesternight; you did not go away either. I saw you, and held up my finger to you almost at the very last. Don't bother yourself in writing me a very long letter; a very short one, if it only tell me you begin to profit by being left alone, will be abundantly welcome. Adieu, deare:5t. I even think of ero, the wretch! Ever yours, T. CAHLYLE. 2c8 CARLYLE'S LiFE IN LONDON. The next lllorning he gathered and sent her a sprig of heather. I am perfectly alone, he said, nothing round me but the grey winds and the abyss of Time, Past, Present, and Future. A whole Sanhedrim, or loudly debating parliament, so to speak, of reminiscences and ghosts is assembled round me-sad, very sad of tone in the mind's ear, but not un- profitable either. A little live note to Goody will be a com- fort to myself, and no displeasure to Nero and her over the tea to-morrow morn.' He bethought himself that before he left London he had been more cross than he ought to have been, indeed both cross and perverse. It was 'the nature of the beast,' as he often said, and had to be put up with, like the wind and the rain. l\Irs. Carlyle had illlagined that she Blust have been in some fault her- self, or that he thought so. The one thing that I objected to in your note, he answered, was that of my being discontented with you, or having ever for an instant been. Depend upon it that is a mistake, once for all. I was indeed discontented with myself, with hot, fetid London, generally with all persons and things--and my stomach had struck work witbal; but not discontented with poor you ever at all. Nay, to tell you the truth, your anger at me (grounded on that false basis) was itself sometimes a kind of comfort to me. I thought, '''''ell, she has strength enough to be cross and ill- natured at me; she is not all softness and affection and weakness.' At the Gill he could indulge his moods, bright or sombre, as he liked. Here, he said, all goes without jolt; well enough we may define everything to be. I find the air decidedly whole- some to me. I do my sleeping, my eating, my walking, am IN DUlIIFRIESSHIRE. 20 9 out all day, in the open air; regard myself as put in hos- pital, decidedly on favourable termH, and am certain to im- prove daily. One of my worst wants is clothes; my thin London dress does not suit this temperature, and positively I am too shabby for showing face on the roads at all. Gloom, as usual, clung to him like a shado,v. I go on well, he continued; am very sad and solitary, ill in want of a horse. The evening walks in the grey howl of the winds, by the loneliest places I can find, are like walks in Hades. Yet there is something wholesome in them ; something stern and grand, as if one had the Eternities for company, in defect of suitabler. The Eternities, however fond he was of their company, left hÜn time to think of other thing. . IIi wife's cousin, John vVelsh, was ill. He at once in- sisted that the boy should go to :ßladeira, and should go at his own and his wife's expense. If thoughtful charity reconnnends men to the IIigher Powers, none ever better deserved of theln than Carlyle. But he thought nothing of such things. He wa soon finding hÏInself happy, in clear air and silence, with his sister, , feeling only a wearied lnan, not a ghastly phantasln, haunted by den10ns, as he usually was in London.' lEs cosÌlllne was his co bief anxiety. Oh you lucky Goody, to be out of all that, he said. Never did I see so despicably troublesome a problem-in- soluble, too; the endless varieties being all of quack nature, and simply no good stuff for raiment to be had. I have come to discover that here, too, I mnst pay my tribute to the general insanity, take such clothes as are to be had, and deliver poor Jean and myself from further bother on the subject. Oh, my Goody! T am very wae and lonely here. Take care, take care of thy poor little self, for truly enough I have no other_ lYe p 210 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDOl\T. The next letters are very touching: ahnost tragic. To Jane TVelsh Carlyle. The Gill: July 5, 18!)8. J reckon myself improving in bodily health. As for the spiritual part, there is no improving of me. I live in a death's head, as Jean Paul says some woodpeckers do, finding it handier than otherwise, and there I think I shalllnostly continue. I sleep tolerably well always. They are all as kind and attentive here as they can be. FractuB bello, feSS'lLB a,rnniB. I ought. to think mys,elf lucky in such a niche, and try to gather my wayward wanderings of thought, and compose myself a little, which I have not yet in the least done since I came hither. J\1:y best time is usually the evening; never saw such evenings for freshness, brightness-the west one champaign of polished silver, or silver gilt, as the sun goes down, and I get upon the wastes of the Priest-side, with no sound aurlible but that of tired geese extensively get.ting home to their quarters, and here and there a contemplative cuddy, giving utterance to the obscure feeling he has about this universe. I go five or six miles, striding along under the western twilight, and return home only because porridge ought not to be belated over much. I read. considerably here, sit all day sometimes under the shelter of a comfortable hedge, pipe not far distant, anrl rf'ad Arrian. Oh, if I sent you all the thoughts-sad ex- tremely some of them-which I have about you, they would fin much paper, and perhaps you would not believe in some of them. It grieves my heart to think of you weltering along in that unblessed London element, while there is a bright., wholesome summer rolling by. July 8. 1 am a prey to doleful considerations, and my solitary imagination has free field with me in the summer silence Dere. l\ly poor little Jeannie! my poor, ever-true life- partner, hold up thy little heart. \\1' e have had a sore life i)ilgrirnage together, much had road, poor lodging, and bad \\(-'ather, little like what I could have 'wished or dreamt for PEiVITENCE. 211 my little woman. But we tood to it, too; and, if it please God, there are yet good years ahead of us, better and quieter much than the past have heen now and then. There is no use in going on with such reflections and anticipations. No amount of paper would hold them all at this time, nor could any words, spoken or written, give credible account of them to thee. I am wae exceedingly, but not half so miserable as I have often been. July 9. I lay awake all last night, and never had I such a serieM of hours filled altogether with you. . . I was asleep for some moments, but woke again; was out, was in the bathing tub. It was not till about five that I got into' comatose oblivion,' rather than sleep, which ended again towards eight. l\Iy poor suffering Jeannie was the theme of my thoughts. Nay, if I had not had that J should have found something else; but, in very truth, my soul was black with misery about you. Past, present, future, yielded no light point anywhere. Alas! and I had to say to myself, This is something like what she has suffered 700 times within the last two years. l\ly poor, heavy-laden, brave, uncomplaining Jeannie! Oh, forgive me, forgive me for the much I have thoughtlessly done and omitted, far, far, at all times, from the poor purpose of my mind. And God help us! thee, poor suffering soul, and also me. God be with thee! what beneficent power we can call God in this world who is exorahle to human prayer. One of l\lrs. Carlyle's letters had been delayed in the post. It arrived a day late. He writes :- July 11. If nothing had come that day too, I think I must have got into the rail myself to come up and see. It was a great relief from the blackest side of my imaginings, but also a sad fall from the brighter ide I had been endeavouring to cherish for the day preceding. Oh me, oh me! I know not what has taken me; but ever since that sleepless night, though I am sleeping, &c., tolerably well again, there is n(lthing hut wail and bmf'nb.tion in the neart of all my r 2 212 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. thoughts-a voice as of Rachel weeping for her children; and I cannot divest myself of the most pusillanimous strain of humour. All yesterday I remarked, in speaking to -, if any tragic topic came in sight, I had a difficulty to keep from breaking down in my speech, and becoming inart.iculate with emotion over it. It is as if the scales were falling from my eyes, and I ,\ ere beginning to see in this, my solitude, things that touch me to the very quick. Oh, my little woman! what a suffering thou hast had, and how nobly bon1e! with a simplicity, a silence, courage, and patient heroism which are only now too evident. to me. Three waer days I can hardly remember in my life; but they were not without worth either; very blessed some of the feelings, though many so sore and miserable. It is very good to be ieft alone with the truth sometimes, to hear with all its sternness what it will say to one. All this was extrelnely 1110rbid; but it was not an unnatural consequence of habitual want of self- restraint, coupled with tenderness of conscience when con cience 'was awn ke and could speak. It was likely enough that in those night-"\vatches, u"/len tlte scales fell o.tl, accusing reInc1l1branccs must have risen before hin1 which were not agreeable to look into. 'Vith all his splendid gifts, Inoral and intellectual alike, Carlyle was like a wayward child-a ehild in wilfulness, a child in the intensity of remorse. His brother J mnes provided hÜn with a horse-a ' drolne- dary,' he called it, 'loyal, but extrelnely stupid '-to ride or drive about among the scenes of his early years. One day he went past Hoddam Hill, Repen- tance Tower, Ecclefechan churchyard, &c., beautiful, quiet, all of it, in the soft summer air, and yet he said, 'The valley of Jehoshaphat could not have been more stern and terribly ÍInpre8siye to him. He could .i.JIISCELLANEOUS SORRO VS. 21 3 never forget that afternoon and evening, the old churchyard tree at Ecclcfechan, the 'white hcadstones of which he caught a steady look. The deepest de lJrofwulis was poor to the feeling in his heart.' The thought of his wife, ill and solitary in London, tor- tured hiIn. 'V ould she C01ne to the Gill to be nursed? Noone in the world loved her more dearly than his sister Iary. The daughters would wait on her, and be her servants. He would himself go away, that he nÜght be no trouble to her. AllÜdst his sorrows the ridiculous lay close at hand. If he was to go to Gcnnany, his clothes had to be ::,een to. An entire , new wardrobe' was provided, , dressing-gown, coats, trou ers lying round him like a hay coil;' rather well-made too, after all, though' the whole operation had been scandalous and di gustillg, owing to the anarchy of things and shopkeepers in those parts.' lIe had been recoInnlended to wear a lcather belt for the future when he rode. IIis sisters did their best, but 'the problenl became abstruse;' a saddler had to be called in fro111 Dumfl'ies, and there was adj ust- ing and readjusting. Carlyle, sad anù nlouruful, , in- expl'c::,siLly wearied,' impatient, irritateù, declared himself dif(gustcd with the 'prohlcm,' and III ore ùisgustcd with himsclf, 'whcn hc 'witnessed his sister's industrious hclpfulncss, and his OW11 unhclp. able nature.' Pardon me, he cried-pardon me, ye good souls! Oh, it is not that I am cruel or unthankful; hut I am weary, weary, and it is difficult to get the galling harne::;::; from me, awl the heavy burden oft. the back of an old waywurn animal, at this advanced :.-;tage. You never aw :.-;uch :;ewing of ùtdt.<) thrice over each of the two that wen:' realized (anù, in fact, they do ::;eem to fit perfectly); not tn peak of my unju t 214 CARLYLE'S LiFE IN LONDON. impatience-most unjust-of my sulky despair. Poor, good sister ! No wonder I was wae in walking into the cold, bright sunset after seeing her off. The silence before I returned in again-the wind having gone down-was in- tense; only one poor collie heard expressing his astonish- ment at it miles away. The clothes and belt question being disposed of, he grew better-slept better. The demons callIe less often. A GefIllan Life of Charles XII. was a useful distraction. Such a man! would not for the whole world have spoken or done any lie; valiant as a son of Adam ever was-strange to see upon a throne in this earth; the grand life blown out of him at last by a canaille of' Nobility,' so called. A visit to Craigenputtock had beCOlne necessary. There was business to be attended to, the tenant to he Reen and spoken with, &c. lIe rather dreaded this adventure, but it was not to be avoided. His brother James went with hÏ1n. To Jane JVelsh Carlyle. The Gill, August 6, 185ö. Yesterday the Craigenputtock expedition was achieved. Battering showers attended us from Iron Grey kirkyard to Sunday well, but no other misadventure at all; for as to famine, neither Jamie nor I could have eaten had the chance been offered us, as, indeed, it was by our loyal tenant and his wife. On the whole, the business was not at all so un- comfortable as I had anticipated, or, indeed, to be called miserable, at all, except for the memories it could not fail to awaken. From Rtroquhan upwards there are slight im- provements noticeable in ODP or two places, but essentially no marked change. The bleak moor road lay in plashes of recent }"ain from Carstammon onwards. Stumpy [some field] was in crop-yery poor promise the oatmeal coming there; VISIT TO CRAIGENPUTTOCK. 21 5 and after two other gates by the side of the ragged woods grown sensibly bigger, and through our once' pleasaunce,' which is grown a thicket of straggling trees, we got to the front door, where the poor old knocker, tolerably scoured still, gave me a pungent salutation. The house, trim and tight in all essential particulars, is now quite buried in wooùs; and even from the upper back windows you can see no moor, only distant mountain-tops, and, near by, leafy heads of trees. The tenant, who was in "Waiting by appoint- ment, is a fine, tall, strapping fellow, six feet two or so, with cheerful sense, honesty, prompt mastery of his business look- ing out of every feature of him; wife, too, a good busy young mother. Our old dining-room is now the state apartment, bearing her likeness, as it once did quite another dame's, and grand truly for those parts: new-papered, in a flaming pattern, carpetted do., with tiny sideboard, &c. I recognised only the old grate and quasi-marble mantelpiece, little changed, and surely an achievement dear to me now. YOU?' old paper is on the other two rooms, dim, like the fading memories. I looked with emotion upon myoId librm'y closet, and wished I could get thither again, to finish my , Frederick' under fair chances. Except some small injuries about the window-sashes, &c., which are now on the road to repair, everything was tight and right there. A considerable young elm (natural son of the old high tree at the N.E. corner of the house, under which I have read 'Vaverley Novels in summer holidays) has planted it8elf near the bare wall-our screen from the old peat-house, you recollect- and has got to be ten or twelve feet high under flourishing auspices. This I ordered to be respected and cherished towards a long future, &c. Craigenputtock looks all very respectably; much wood to cut and clear away, the tenant evidently doing rather well in it. The poor woods have struggled up in spite of weather, tempest, and misfortune. Even ]\Iacadam's burnt planta- tion begins to come away, a11(l the olù trees left of it are tall all/I \ cnerable beings. 'Nothing like Craigellputtock laICh for toughness in all this country.' For mOHt part, there are 216 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON dgain far too many trees. '300l. worth 0' wud to cut away, and mair, and there is a market,' said a man skilled in such matters, whom I found mowing there and consulted. . . Is not this enough of Craigenputtock-Crag of the Gleds, a its name means? Enough, and to spare. Germany was to come next, and to come im- mediately, before the days drew in. He shuddered at the recollection of the Zwei .ruhige Zimmer, &c., in which he had suffered so much torture. But he felt that he 111ust go, cost what it 111ight. SOl11e friend had proposed to take him in a yacht to the 1\Iediter- rallean and land hiIn at Trieste. Lord Ashburton n10re reasonably had offered hill1 a cast in another yacht to the Baltic. But Carlyle chose to stand by the ordinary 1nodes of conveyance. He sent for his passport, nailed a n1ap of Germany to his wall, daily perused it, and sketched an outline of his route. 1\L Neuberg, who was at Leipzig, was written to, but it "\vas doubtful whether he was attainable. A 1\11'. Fox- ton, a slight acquaintance, offered his companionship, and was conditionally accepted; and after one or two' preJin1Ïllary shivers' and 'shuddering recoils,' Carlyle screwed his courage to the sticking-point and, in spite of nerves and the rest of it. got through with the operation. The plan was to go hy steau1 to Halnburg; whither next was not quite decided when all invitation CaIne fr0111 Baron von U sed 0111 and his Eut!lish wife to visit thel11 in the Isle of Hiigen. It was out of the way; but Stralsund, Hiigen, the Baltic, were theillseives interesting. The USCdOlnf1' letter was most warm, and Carlyle, who rather tioubted 1\11'. Foxton's capabilitie-; as courier, thought that this excur ion Inight ' put him on his trial.' He SECOND TOUR IN GER./vIANY. 217 could be disn1Ïssed afterwards if found unsuitable. 1\iuch anxiety was givcn to poor 1\Ir. Foxton. Keuberg held out hopes of joining, and Foxton in that case would not be wanted. But John Carlyle suggested that N euberg and he would perhaps neutralize each other, like alkali and acid. On August 21 Carlyle went oft. to Edinburgh, whither poor l\Ir. Foxton had conlè, at great inconvenience to hinlself. He found his friend' very talky, scratch 0' plastery but service- able, assiùuous, and good cOlnpared with nothing.' The evcning of the same day they sailed fi'OlD Leith. To Jane TVelsh Carlyle. Hamburg: August 24, 11 p.m. Here I am safe enough since eight hours, after such a voyage for tumult and discomfort (now forgotten) as I have selùom made. The Leith people, innocent but ineffectual soul::;, forgot every promise they had made except that of sailing fi ve hours after their time and landing us at last fifteen hours after ditto. \Ye had baddish weatlwr all Sun- day, mediocre till this morning, and such a scrambling dog- kennel of a sickly life. However, the sail up the Elúe all this day wa::; bright, sunny, and beautiful, and our hi::;tory since-a fair ]!ro::;pect even of sleep being superadded-has been favourable in all points; so that thanks to Heaven are alone due from me in that matter. And thy little heart, pour woman, wherever thi8 may find thee, may set itself at rest on my score. \f e have the finest airy hotel, cheap too, they ay. ly room is five ::;tairs up, looking over mere roofs. \\T e dined wholesomely. .x euherg had a mun in wait-poor good soul after all !-to say that he was ready at any hour, l.\.c. In short, except a storm of fine wind mu:-;ic spreaùing over the city and not yet concluded, there is a right fair share of comfort anù good omens round me here on fair earth again. The mu::-:ic is excellently l:iweet; pathetic withal to the worn oul towardH midnight; and I write to 218 C RLYLE'S LiFE IN LO VDO.J.V. my own little partner far away for to-morrow's post, till it cease. Again let us thank Heaven. Foxton, poor fellow, is very good; stands snubbing into silence; annihilates him- self whenever I like, and is verily a gentleman in air and heart. Good for almost nothing in the way of help, l though prompt as possible. But along with Neuberg he will do extremely well. A ugust ,5, D a.ill. \\T e go off at noon towards U sedom and RÜgen, Foxton stopping at Strahmnd near by. There will we wait. Neuberg's advance in safety, and can take a fine sea-bathe if we like, for RÜgen is the German Isle of "Tight. Carzitz, Insel nügen: August 27. How glad I am to write to thee from here. Since yester- day my prospects and situation have miraculously mended, and at present I call myself a lucky kind of man. I am rid of Foxton quite ad libitum, free of scratching on the plaster. Have had again a sound good sleep, and am lodged in the prettiest strange place you ever saw, among people kind to 'me as possible. Am going to get my enterprise deliberately made feasible, and as a preliminary mean to have a bathe in the Baltic Sea as soon as this note and one to Neuberg is done. Yesterday, about 11 a.m., after two rather sleepless and miserable nights on land, which with the three preceding at ea had reduced me to a bad }>itch, I had, with poor, helpless but assiduous Foxton stepped out of the railway train at Ros- tock, biggish sea capital of l\1ecklenburg, and was hUlTying along to get a place in the Stralsund diligence, with no prospect but eight hours of suffocation and a night to follow without sleep, when a lady, attended by her maid, addressed me with sunny voice and look, "Yas not I l\1r.Carlyle?' 'I am the Frau yon U sedom,' rejoined she on my answer, 'here to seek you, ::;ixty- four miles from home, and you must go with me hence- forth.' Hardly in my life had such a'manU8 e nubibus been extended to me. I need not say how thrice gladly I accepted. I I may as well say that both l\Ir. Foxtf'n aud l\Ir. Neuberg have lll'cn dead for several :years. ISLE OF RÜGEl\ 21 9 T had, in fact, done with all my labour then, and wa carried on henceforth like a mere child in arms, not.hing to do or care for, but all conceivable accommodation gracefully pro- vided me up hither to this pleasant Isle of the 8ea, where I now am a considerably rested man. \\T e posted forty-five miles, I sitting mainly on the box, smoking and gazing abroad. Foxton, whom after a while I put inside to do the talking, we dropped at 8tralsund, 6 p.m., other side of the little strip of sea, and he is off to Berlin or whither he likes, and I net:d not recall him again except as SO'lf.,r to t.he fat of Neuberg, who is worth a million of him for helping me on and making no noise about it. Happy journey to poor F oxton ! After Stralsund and one little bit of sea steaming in one of the brightest autumn evenings, we had still almost twenty miles into the strange interior of the Rügen, a flat, bare, but cultivated place, with endless paths but no roads. Strange brick-red beehives of cottages, very exotic-looking; a very exotic scene altogether in the moonlight, and a voluble, incessantly explosive, demonstrative, but thoroughly good :J\1adame von U sedom beside me. l\Iost strange, almost as in a l\lährchen. But we had four swift horses, a new, light carriage, and went spanking along roadless, and in fine I am here and have slept. The place is like nothing you ever saw, mediæval, semi-patriarchal, half a farmhouse, half a palace. The Herr, who is at Berlin, returns this night. Has made arrangements, &c. Oh, what arrangements! and even' spoken of it to the Prince of Prussia.' "That is also for practice definitely lucky, Xeuberg's letter finds me this morning, and he will himself be in Berlin to-'(ìWr1'O'W night, there to wait. N. thinks in about two weeks after our meeting the thing might be got completerl. "V ould it were so, and I home again out of these foreign elements good and bad. In a word, be at ea:5e about Tne, and thank Heaven I have human room to sleep in again, am seeing strange things not quite worthless to me, and, in fact, am in a fair way. If I knew you were but well I think I could be almo t happy here to-day in the ilent t::unshine on these remote 220 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LONDOJ.Y. Scandina vian shores. Tbe wind is singing and the sun sporting in the lindens, and I hear doves cooing. 'Yindows up ! Two rooms all to myself. Coo! coo! Berlin: September 5. Above a week since you heard of me! and I, unhappy that I am, have not heard from you one word. l Oh! may the like never happen between us again. l\Iay this be the last journey I take into foreign tumults and horrors, far away from all that I love and all that is really helpful to me. Rut to my narrative :--The Usedoms in Rügen were the kindest of hosts to me, and the place and circle had its interests and advantages; but alas! I fell unwell the day after writing to you. :Bathed in the Baltic on the back of all my Hamburg and other adventures; caught cold; ha{l already caught it, but developed it by the vile 'hathe.' }'elt as if I were getting into a fever outright, and had to take decisive measures, though in a foreign house. That did prove effectual, but you can fancy what two or three a'ys I had, the rather as they made me do the' picturesque' all the time; and there was no end to the talk I had to carryon. Tbe Herr von U sedom is a fiDf , substantial, intelligent, and good man. "r e really had a great deal of nice speech together, and did beautifully together; only that I was so weak and sickly, and except keeping me to the picturesque, he would not take almost any wise charge of my ulterior affairs. At length-Friday afternoon last- he did set out with me towards Berlin and practicalities. 'To stay over night at Putbus, the Richmond of Rügen, and then catch the steamer to Stettin, and thence by rail to Rerlin next day.' "re got to Put bus, doing picturesque by the way. A beautiful Putbus indeed! where 1 had such a night as should be long memorable to me: big loud hotel, sea-bathing, lodgers with their noises, including plenteom; coach-horses nnder my window, follo\\"ed by noiRes of cat:;, item of brood sows, and at tWG a.m. by the simultaneous explosion of two Cochin China cocks, who continued to play thenceforth, and left me what sleep you can fancy in such I Her letters had F'one to Dresden. BERLIN. 22[ quarters. Never till the end of things may I visit Putbus again. However, next day's-yesterday't;-steam voyage nnd rail was pleasantly successful, and at 10.30 p.m. I found the useful Neuberg, who had secured me myoId apartment in the British Hotel, and here, thank God, I have got some sleep again and have washed my skin clean, and mean to be on the road towards Liegnitz and Breslau to-morrow. . . . Neuberg looks very ugly-is, in fact, ill in health. Foxton is here too; scratchy, though in a repentant condition. Enough! let us on, and let them do ! Berlin is loud under my windows. A grey, close, hottish Sunday; but I will take care not to concern myself with it beyond the needful. To-morrow we are off: Liegnitz, Breslan, Prag, then Dre!'den ; after which only two battlefields remain, and London i within a week. Neuberg is also going straight to I.Jondon. Yon may compute that all the travelling cZeta ils- wa htub , railways, money settlements, &c -are fairly off my bands from this point. I have strength enough in me too. 'Vith the !matches of sleep fairly expectable, I concluòe myself road worthy for fourteen days. Then adieu! ]{eil Kissen, sloppy, greasy victual, all cold too, including especially the coffee and the tea. Adieu, Teutschland! Adieu, travelling altogether, and I will never leave my Goody any more. Oh! what a Schctiz even I, poor I, possess in that quarter, the poorest, but also the richest in some respects, of all the son of men. I saw some prettyish antient RÜgen gent lemen, item ladies, who regarded with curiosity the forpign monster Small thanks to them. N.B.-The Baltic Sea is not rightly salt at all-not so salt as Solway at half-tide, anò one even- ing we rode across an arm of it. Insignificant sea! Brieg, Lower Silesia: September 10, 18;JA. 'Ye quitted Rerlin under fair auspices J\Ionday morning last, fortified with a general letter from the Prince's aide- de-camp to all Prussian officers whatsoever. Rut hitherto, owing to an immense review, which occupies everybody, it 1mB dOl1P us l('!' good than we pxpecterl. . \ t Ciistrin a 222 CARL YLE'S LIFE I.Lr LO.J.VDO.J.v' benevolent major did attend us to the field of Zorndorf, and showed UR everything. But in other places the review at Liegnitz has been fatal to help from such quarters. We have done pretty well without; have seen three other fields, and had ádventures of a confused, not wholly unpleasant, character. Our second place was Liegnitz itself, full of soldiers, oak garlands, coloured larnplets, and expectation of the Prince. We were on the battlefield, and could use our natural eyes, but for the rest had no other guidance worth other than contempt. Did well enough nevertheless, and got fairly out of Liegnitz to Breslau, which has been our head-quarters ever since. A dreadfully noisy place at night, out of which were excursions. Yesterday to Leuthen, the grandest of all the battles; to- day hither about fifty miles away to l\'lolwitz, the first of Fritz's fights, from which we have just now returned. Sleep is the great difficult.y here, but one does contrive some way. Occasionally, as at Cüstrin, one has a night' which is rather exquisite.' But I lie down in the daytime-in fine, struggle through one way or the other. I do not think it is doing me much hurt, and it lasts only some ten days now. As to profit-well, there is a kind of comfort in doing what one intended. The people are a good, honest, modest set of beings; poorer classes, especially in the country, much happier than with us. Every kind of industry is on the improving hand; the land, mainly sandy, is far better tilled than I expected. And oh! the church steeples I have mounted up into, and the barbarous jargoning I have had, questioning ignorant mankind. Leuthen yesterday and )Iolwitz to-day, with their respective steeples, I shall never forget. Breslau: September 11. This is a queer old city as you ever heard of. High as Edinburgh, or more so. Streets very strait and winding; roof::; thirty feet or so in h eight, and of proportionate steep- ness, ending in chimney-heads like the half of a butter firkin set on its sidp. The people are not beautiful, but they ::;eem il1nocpnt find obliging, brown-skinned, scruhhy THE BA TTLEFIELDS 223 bodies, a good many of them of Polack or Slavic breed. .More power to their elbow ! You never saw such churches, Rath-houses, &c., old as the hills, and of huge proportions. An island in the Oder here is completely covered with cathedrals and appendages. Brown women with cock noses, snubby in character, have all got straw hats, -umbrellas, crinolines, &c., as fashion orders, and are no doubt charming to the brown man. N euberg is a perfect Issachar for taking labour on him; needs to be held with a strongish curb. Scratchy Foxton and he are much more tolerable together. Greasp plus vinegar, that is the rule. Prag: September 14, 183 . From Breslau, where I wrote last, our adventures have b en miscdlaneous, our course painful but successful. At. Landshut, edge of the Riesen Gebirge, where we arrivpd near eleven the first night, in a crazy vehicle of one horse, you never saw such a scene of squalid desolation. I had pleased myself with the thoughts of a cup of hot milk, such as is generally procurable in German inns. U'litsonst! no milk in the house! no nothing! only a rlthiges Zimmer not opened for weeks past, by the smell of it. I mostly missed sleep. Our drive ne"'\:t day through the Riesen Gebi1'ge into Bohemian territory was as beautiful as any I ever had. It ended in confusion, getting into railways full of dirty, smoking, Sunday gents, fully as ugly on the Elbe there as on the Thames nearer you. \Ye had passed tlw sources of the Elbe early in the day; then crossed it at. night. ,,-r e have not far quitted it since, nor shall till we pass Dresden. Tbe gents that night led us to a place called Pct1'dubitz, terribly familiar tv me from those dull' Frederick' books, where one of the detestablest nights of all this expe- dition was provided me. Big, noisy inn, full of evil smells; contemptible little wicked village, where a worse than jerry- ::-;hop close over the way raged like Bedlam or Erebus, to cheer one, in a bed, i.e., trough, eighteen inches too short, and a mattress forced into it which cocked up at both ends a if you llad hE-PH in the trough of fI :lrl(llp. ...Ielt llim'lilel.' 224 CARLYLE'S LIFE IiV LOiVDOiV. 'Ve left it at 4 a.m. to do the hardest day's work of any. Chotusitz, Kolin-such a day, in a wicked vehicle with a spavined horse, amid clouds of dust, under a blazing sun. I was half-mad on getting hit her at 8.30 p.m., again by the railway carriage, among incidental groups of the nastiest kind of gents. The Bohemians are a different people from the Germans proper. Yesterday not one in a hundred of them could understand a word of German. They are liars, thieves, slatterns, a kind of miserable subter-lrish people-Irish with the addition of ill-nature and a disposition decidedly dis- obliging. V\T e called yesterday at an inn on the battlefield of Kolin, where Frederick had gone aloft to take a survey of the ground. ' The Golden Sun' is stiU its title; but it has sunk to be the dirtiest house probably in Europe, and with the nastiest-looking, ill-thriving spectre of a landlady, who had not even a glass of beer, if Foxton could have sum- moned courage to drink it in honour of the occasion. This is a grand picturesque town, this Prag. To-day we had our own difficulties in getting masters of the Ziscaberg, Sterbehohe, and other localities of the battle which young ladies play on the piano-but on the whole it was light com- pared with the throes of yesterday. Here is an authentic wild pink plucked from the battlefield. Give it to some young lady who practises the' Battle of Prague' on her piano to your satisfaction. There are now but three battlefields to do, one double, day after to-morrow by a return ticket to be had in Dresden, the two next-Torgau, Rossbach-in two days following. Poor N euberg has fairly broken down by excess of yesterday's labour, and various misery. He gave up the Hradschin (Rctdsheen they pronounce it) to Foxton and me, though one of the chief curiosities of Prag, and has gone to bed- a noisy bed-with little nursing, poor man; but hopes to be roadworthy to-morrow again. He is the mainstay of eyery enterprise-I could not do without him-and Foxton is good for absolutely nothing, except to neutralize him, which he pretty much does. SECO VD TOUR I}\T GERJfA.LVY 225 Ðl'esùen, St::ptl:'lllL r I>>, 18.) . I have got your second letter here-a delightful little lptter, which I read sitting on the Elbe hridge in the un- shine after T had got my face washed, with such a struggle, and could gpt leave to feel like Jonah after being vomited from the whale.s Ldly. Our journey from Prag has excel1e(l. in confusion, an I ever witnessed in the world; the beauti fune t country ever seen too, and the beautifulle t weather -hut, Ach Gott! However, we are now near the enù of it. . . I am not hurt; I really do not think my elf much hurt- but, oh what a need of sleep, of silence, of ::). right good washing with soap and water all over! On Septenlber 22 he was safe at hOlne again at {;helsea-having finished his work in exactly a nlonth. Nero was there to 'expre'3s a decent joy' at seeing him again-Nero, but not his 111istress. She was away in Scotlanù 'with her friends, Dr. and 1\lrs. Russell. lIe had eharged her not to return on his account as long- as she was getting good fronl the change of air and scene. On the twenty-third he sent her the history of. the rest of his adventures. ()ur journf'y after Dresden continued, with the usual velocity and tribulation, over Hochkirch-beautiful outlook from the steeple there, and beautiful epitaph on .1\Ial':ihal Keith, one of the seven hundred that perislwd on that slJot, the church door still holeù with the musketry there-over J.eipzig, where FOÀton rejoined us after our thrice-toih;ome d \'()lume of' Frederick' were givcn to the world. .Ko Q 2 228 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. 'work of his had as yet obtained so instrrnt and wide a welcolne. The literary success was immediate and exceptionally great. 2,000 copies had been printed -they were sold at the first issue. A second 2,000 were disposed of almost as rapidly, and by Decelnber there was a deDland for nlore. He had hÍ1nself been singularly indifferent on this part of the business. In his Slunmer correspondence there is not a single word of expecta60n or anxiety. As little was there sign of exultation when the world's verdict was pro- nounced. The child that is born with greatest diffi- culty is generally a favourite, but it was not so in this instance. In his journal he speaks of the book as 'by far the most heartrending enterprise he had ever had' as ' worth nothing,' though' faithfully done on his part.' In Scotland he describes hiulself as having been' perfectly dormant,' 'in a sluggish, sad way, till the end of August.' In Gernlany he had seen the battlefields-' a quite frightful ni.onth of physical discOlnfort,' 'with no result that he could he sure of, , except a great mischief to health.' lIe had returned, he said, 'utterly broken and degraded.' This state of féeling, exaggerated as it was, survived the appearance of the two volumes. He had conl- plained little while the journey was in progress- when he was at hOlne again there was little else but sadness and dispiritment. Jm17'nal. December 28th, 1858.-Bcok was publiRbed soon after my return; has been considerably more read than usual \vith hooks of mine; much babhled of in newspapers. No better to me than the huking of dogs. Vn'achtum,r;, ja Kicht SALE OF lVORl(S flV ENGLAND. 2::9 achtun,g my sad feeling about it. Officious people three or four times put' reviews' into my hands, and in an idle hour I glanced partly into these; but it would have been better not, so sordidly ignorant and impertinent were they, though generally laudatory. Ach Gott, allein, allein auf dieser Erde! However, the fifth thousand is printed, paid for I think- ome 2,800l. in all-and will be sold by-and-by with a money profit, and perhaps others not useless to me. One has to believe that there are rational beings in England who read one's poor books anù are silent about them. Edition of wO'ì'lc8 1 is done too. Larkin, a providential blessing to me in that and in the' Frederick.' I am fairly richer at this time than I ever was, in the money sense-rich enough for all practical purposes-otherwise no luck for me till I have done the final two volumes. Began that many weeks ago, but cannot get rightly into it yet, struggle as I may. Health un- favourable, horse exercise defective, villanous ostlers found to be starving my horse. :Much i8 'defective,' much is against me; especially my own fidelity of perseverance in endeavour. Ah me, would I were through it! I feel then as if sleep would fall upon me, perhaps the last and perfect sleep. I haggle and struggle here all day, ride then in the t.wilight like a hunted ghost; speak to nobody; have nobody whom it gladdens me to speak to. Truce to complaining. A few words follow which I will quote also, LÌ they tell of sOll1ething which proved of inlnleasuraLle consequence, Loth to Carlyle and to his wife. Lord Ashburton has wedded again-a )[iss Stuart )[ac- kenzie-and they are off to Egypt about a fortnight ago. , The changes of this age,' as minstrel Burns has it, , which fleeting Time procureth !' Ah me! ah me ! Carlyle sighed; but the second Lady shburton became the guardian genius of the Cheyne Row house- I Collected edition of Carlyle's worKs. 23 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN L01VDON. hold; to Mrs. Carlyle the tenderest of sisters, to Carl)'le, especially after his own bereavement, sister, daughter, mother, all that can be conveyed in the naInes of the warmest hUlnan ties. .. But the ac- quaintance had yet to begin. :Miss Stuart 'Iackenzie haù hitherto been seen by neither of theIne TEllfPTrl TJONS OF .d LITERAR Y LlFE. 23 1 ClIAPTEH XXV. A.D, 185Û-Ü2. ..ET. ü4-ü7, Effects of a Literary Life upon the Character- Eyenings in CheJ'ne Row-Summers in Fife-Visit to Sir George Sinclair, Thurso Castle- Irs. Carlyle's Health-Death of Arthur Clough-Intimacy \"ith Mr. Ruskin-Party at the Grange-Description of John KeLle-' Unto this Last.' Noone who has read the letters of Carlyle in the pre- ceùin(f cha [ >ters can entertain a doubt of the tenùerness i"1 uf his heart, or of his real gratitude to those relations and friends who were exerting thernselve:-1 to be of use to him. ..c\.s little can anyone have failed to notice the ,'..aywanlness of his hUInour, the gUoSts of' unjust ÍInpatience' and 'sulky ùespair' with which he re- ceived sometimes their best endeavours to serve hÏ111, or, again, the reluor e with which he afterwards re- flected on his unreasunable outbursi::s. 'The nature of the beast' was the main explanation. lEs tempera- ment was so constituted. It could not be altered, and had to be put up with,. like chalJges of wpat her, But nature and circulllRtallces worked together; and Lord JefI'l'ey had judged rightly when he said that literature was not the employmcllt 1>est uiteù to a per ull of Carlyle's dispo itioll. In active life a man wurks at the side of othcrs. Ire ha::; tu \'oll ider thelll a:' well as him:-:df. lIe ha'i to \'heck hi::; impatience, 23 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE fAT LONDON. he has to listen to objections even when he knows that he is right. He nlust be content to give and take, to be indifferent to trifles, to know and feel at all tÏ1nes that he is but one mnong Illany, who have all their hUlllours. Every day, every hour teaches ---""' him the necessity of self-restraint. The nlan of le tters has no such wholesOllle check upon himself. He li-;és alone, thinks alone, ,yorks alone. He must listen to his own n1Íud; for no other Inind can help hin}. He requires correction as others do; but he nlust be his own school-luaster. IIis peculiarities are part of his originality, and Inay not be eradicated. The friends among .WhOlH he lives are not the partners of his employment; they share in it, if they share at all, only as instnnnents or dependants. Th us he is an autocrat in his o-wn circle, and exposed to all the teluptations which beset autocracy. lIe is subject to no will, no law, no authority outside himself: and the finest natures uffer sOll1Cthing frOl11 such Ull- bounded independence. .. Carlyle had been nlade hy nature ufficiently despotic, and needed no inlpul e ill that direction from the character of his occupations, -while his very virtues helpeù to blind hiBl when it would have been better if he could have been Blore on his gnard. He knew that hi general aim in life was noble anù unselfish, md that ill the use of hi tinle anù talents he had nothing to fear from the sternest examination of his stewardship. IIis conRcience was clear. His life from hi earliest years had been pure and silnple, without taint of selfish am hition. He lwd stood upri ht always in Inany trials. lIe had become at last an undisputed intellectual Bovereif!n over a large section of hi contemporaries, who looked PECULIARITIES OF TEAIPER. 23.' to him nc;; disciples to a lnaster whose word was a law r to their belief. And thus habit, tenlperanlent, success J 'S: itself had combined to deprive him of the salutary 1\. a(lmonitions with which the wisest and best of lnortals cannot entirely dispense. From first to last he was surrounùed by people who allowed hirn his own way, Lecause they felt his superiority-who found it a privilege to n1Ïnister to him a s they becmne Dlore and more conscious of his greatness-who, when their eyes were open to his Jefects, were content to put up with them, as the nlere accident::, of a nervously sensitive orf!'allization. This was enough for friends who could be annu::ed by peculiarities frOlll which they did not personally suffer. nut for those who actually lived with hiul- for his wife cspecially, on WhOlll the fire-sparks fell first and always, and who could not escape from thclll-the trial wa hard. The ccntral grievance was gone, but was not entirely forgotten. His lct- tel'S had failed to assure her of his afIection, for she thOllf!ht at timcs that they Blust be written for his biographer. She could not doubt his sincerity when, now after his circunlstances became nlOre ea y, he ave her free conullanù of money; when, as she coulll BO longer walk, he insisted that she should have a hrou haIu t,vice a week to drive in, and afterwards p-ave her a carriage of her own. But affection did not prevent outhursts of bilious luunour, under which, for a whole furtnight, she felt as if she was' keepcr iu a luad-house.' 1 'Yhcn he was at a ùistmH'c from her he wa-- passionatcly anxious about hcr health. 'Vhen hc was at home, his own discomforts, real ur ÏInaginary, 1 L( ttl'l"8 ami Jlc/lwl'iaI8, vol. iii. p. 4. 234 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOJ.VDON left no roonl for thought of others. 'If Carlyle wakes once in a night,' she said to me, 'he will cOInplain of it for a week. I wake thirty times every night, but that is nothing.' Notwithstanding all his resolutions, notwithstanding the fall of ' the scales froln his eyes' and the intended aInendInent for the future, things relapsed in Cheyne Row after Carlyle returned from Gennany., and settled again to his work, Inuch into their old condition. Generally the life was slnooth and uneventful, but the atnlosphere was always dubious, and a disturbed sleep or an indigestion would bring on a thunder- stOrIll. 1\lrs. Carlyle grew continually Inore feeble, continual nervous anxiety allowing her no chance to rally; but her indoInitable spirit held her up; she went out little in the evenings, but she had her own sIllall tea parties, and the talk was as brilliant as ever. Carlyle worked all day, rode late in the afternoon, came home, slept a little, then dined and went out afterwards to walk in the dark. If any of us were to spend the evening there, we generally found her alone; then he would COIne in, take posses:,ion of the conversation and deliver hiInself in a stremn of splendid nlonologue, wise, tender, scornful, hu- lllorous, as the inclination took hiIll-but never bitter, never Iualignant, always genial, the fiercest denun- ciations ending in a burst of laughter at his uwn exaggerations. Though I knew things were not alto- gether well, anù her ùrawn, suffering face haunted llle afterwarù like a sort of ghost, I felt for myself that in him there could be nothing really wrong, and that he was as good as he was great. So pa :-::ed the next two or three yea r ; he toiling AIRS. CARLYLE'S HEALTH 235 on unweariedly, dining nowhere, and refusing to he di turLed-contenting hiulself with now and then sending his brother ,vord of his general state. To John Carlyle. Chelsea, :March 14, 1859. 'Ve go along here in the common way, or a little below it, neither of us specially definable as ill, but suffering (possibly from the muddy torpid weather), under unusual feebleness, and wishing we were a little stronger. Jane keeps afoot; takes her due drives, tries walking when the weather permits, and is surely a good deal better than she has been wont to be in the last two years. But her weakness is very great; her power of eating runs very low, poor soul. To day she seems to be trying total abstinence, or something near it, by way of remedy to a constant nausea she complains of. 'We must do the best we can for a living, boy!' As to me, the worst is a fatal inability to get forward with my work in this state of nerves and stomach. I am dark, inert, and stupid to a painful degree, when progress depend:; almost altogether on vivacity of nerves. The remedy is . . . there is no remedy but boring along mole-like or mule-like, and re- fusing to lie down altogether. In June after 'months of uselessness and wretched- ness,' he was' tumbled' into what he called' active chaos,' i.e. he took a house for the sunlnler at IIunlbie, near Aberdour in Fife. The change was not very u('cessful. lIe had his horse with him, and' rode fiercely about, haunted by the ghosts of the past.' ],11'8. Carlyle followed hirn down. John Carlyle wa charged to nwet her at Edinburgh, and see her safe for the rest of her journey. 'Be gooù and soft with her,' he said, 'you have no notion what ill any flurry or fuss tloes her, awl I know always huw kind your thoughts .,rc. and also hpl"s. in spite uf allY flaws that may 236 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. arise.' vVas it that he could not' reck his own rede ! ' or was :lVII's. Carlyle her elf exaggerating, when she described the next furtnight with hÍIll at Hunlbie, as like being in a 'lnaclhuuse'? They .went afterwards to the cousins at Auchtertool, and fr01n Auchtertool she wrote the sad letter to a young friend in London who had asked to be congratulated on her llmrriage. 1 They relllained in Scotland till the end of SeptClllber. At Chelsea again, on the 3rd of October, he wrote a few wonls in hi journal, the la t entered there for everal years. 'RE'turnE'd Saturday night from a long miscellaneous sojourn in Scotland which has lasted very idly and not too comfortably since the last dClYs of June. Bathing, solitary riding, walking, one or two fits of catarrhal illness of a kind I did not like; this and much solitary musing, reminiscence, and anticipation of a painful kind filled that fallow period. Perhaps both of us are a little better; one cannot hope much. A terrible task now ahead again. Steady! steady! To it then! Isabella, my good sister-in-law at Scotsbrig, was gone. Poor brother Jamie! \\7 e looked at the place of graves Tuesday last. There at l ast is peace; there is rest. Foolish tears almost !;urprised me.' There was a short visit to the Grange in January (18GO), another in _\.pril to Lurd Sandwich at lIin- chil1brook-fl'o111 which he was frighteneù away pre- lllaturely by the arrival of Hepworth Dixon. He had evidently been troublesmne at hOlne, for from Hin- chinbrook he wrote tu hi wife begging her 'to be patient with hÍIn.' 'He was the unhappy anÍ1nal, but did not Inean ill.' With these exceptions, and a week at Brighton in July, he stayed fixeù at his de:,k, I Letln's and lIJemm"iab;, vol. iii. p. 1. VISIT TO THURSO CASTLE. 237 and in August, leaving his wife in Londou, where nervousness had reduced her to the brink of a bilious fever, he went off, taking his work with him, to stay at Thurso Castle with Sir George Sinclair. There he remained several week , in seclusion as cOlnplete as he couJd wish. His letters were full and regular, though they did not give entire satisfaction. ,I To Jone Trelslt Carlyle. Off Aberdeen Harbour: August 3, 18üü. Arrived here after what thE'Y call an excellE'nt voyage, wl1Ïch indeed has had good weather and all other fine qua1i- tips except that finest, tbe possibility of reasonable sleeping. J bavp seldom seen such an overcrowded piggeryof a place as we had to try that lattE'r operation in. I did manage a little, bowever, each night. I feel wonder- fully tolerable after all is done; the s01.Ænd in my ears either gone or else lost amid other innumerable clankings, snorings, and clangours. Thank God we are got so far with success. Could I only hear that my poor Jeannie is a little come round again, now that the noises and disturbances from my side of the house are done. Thurso Ca!'tle: August 6, 1860. Saturday-wet, dreary, gaunt, and strange-was a little dispiriting, in srite of the cordial and eager welcome of all these good people. But that night I had a capital slE'ep. Next morning I contrived to shirk church (which I shrill always do) and walked along the many-sounding shore with a book, a cape, and a little tobacco, some mile or two among the cliffs and crags. Not a human being visihle; only thp grand ever-murmuring sea; Pentland Frith clear as crystal, with Orkney,Hoy hland,a fine precipitom; sea-girt mountain, to our left, and Dunnet HE'ad some six or seven miles ahead. There I sate and sauntered in the devoutest, quiE'test, and llandsome t mood I have been in for many mont hs. ThE'n I read, bathed carefully, ami set out vigoroll ly walking to arrive 'WU'ì'm and also punctual. In short, d('ar, T did wl'll 238 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN L01\,TDON. yesterday and have had again a tolerable sleep. Nay, have got my affairs settled, so to speak; breakfast an hour before t.he family (who don't get into their worship, &c., till ten), am not to show face at. all till three p.m. and mean actuaUy to try ome work. If I can it will be very fine for me. Tbe little butler here seems one of tbe cleverest, willing- est creatures I have seen for a long time, and iR zealously anxious (as hitherto all and sundry are) to oblige the mon- ster come among tbem. Thurso, visible, about two gunshots off, from one of my windows, is a poor grey town, treeless, with one or two steam- engines in it, and a dozen or two of fishing-boats. Nor is Thnrso Castle much of a mansion, at least till you examine it attentively. But it is really an extensive, well-furnished, human dwelling-place; and its situation with its northern parapet, looking down upon the actual waves which never go a stone's throw off, is altogether charming; a place built at three different times, from 1664 downwards (quite modern this my northern side of it), with four or five poor candle- e...::tinguisher-like towers in different partR, very bare, but trim, with walkR and sheltering offices and walls. No saddle horse; not even a saddle sheIty; but there is a carriage and pair for the womankind, with whom I have not yet gone, though I mean to. August. 14. -;\ly dear little Goorly,-I could have been somewhat. fretted yesterday morning. First at your long delay in writing, and your perverse notion of my neglect in that particular, also of your scornful condemnation of my descrip- tive performance (which I can assure you was not done for the sake of future biographers, nor done at all except with consideranle pain and inconvenience and at the very first 130ment possible in my gloom and sickliness, if you bad known of it). But all feelings were swallowed up in one- grief nd alarm at the sleepless, f'xcited, and altogether painful state my poor little Jeannie had evidE'utly got into. A long letter was to have been written yestf'rday afternoon after work and 1,athing and dinner were well ovpr. Rut, alas! THURSO CASTLE. 239 at dinner (which had been unexpectedly crowdf'd forward to two p.m. instead of three, and had sent me into the sea and hack again at full gallop, not to miss the essential daily hath )-at dinner, which I found them denominating luncheon, I was informed that three miles off, at some Highland laird's named l\Iajor -, there stood an engagement for me of a f'trict nature, and that there I was to dine. }.....im'T11Æ'ì. und lYimmermehr. The major had not even asked me. I want no acquaintance with any laird or major. I positively can- not go. It was in vuin that I insisted and reiterated in this key. Poor Sir George offered to dine now and go walking with me on the sands while the major's dinner went on. In short I found I should give offence and seem a very surly, unthankful fellow by persisting, so I was obliged to go. The laird, an old Peninsula soldier, was not a bad fellow; quite the reverse indeed; had a wife and wife's sister and a son just from India and the Crimea; finally a very pretty Highland place, and a smart douce little daughter who made the Caithness dialect beautiful. Of myself I will f'ay only t hat I have cunningly arljusted my hours; am called at eight, bathe as at home, run out from heat: breakfast priyatf'ly, and by this means shirk' prayers '-am at work by ten, hathe at two, and do not show face till three. After which comes walking, comes probably driving. Country equal to Craigen- puttock for picturesque effects,lJlns the sea, which is always one's friend. I have got some work done every day; have slept every night, never quite ill, once or twice splen- didly. Carlyle abhorred the 'picturesque,' when songht after of set purpose. He was exquisitely sensitive of natural heauty, when he CaBle a('ro s it llaturally and f:U rrounded hy its own a s()('iations. IIere i a fiIli hed pi(.ture whieh he cnt to his hrother. 240 CARL VLE'S LIFE IN L01VDON. .. '\ To John Carlyle. Thurso: Aug-ust :24, 18üO. I sit boring on'r my work, not idle quite, but wit h little vi:áble re::mlt., and that has con:5iderably weakened the strength of my position here. I dimly intended to hold on fur' about a month;' and this is not unlikely to be the limit. Sir G. has always professed to be clear for two months as the minimum, but will perhaps be at bottom not so averse to the shorter term, there being such a cackle of grandchildren here, with go\"ernesses &c., whom he sees to be a mere bore to me, though to him such a joy. Yesterday we went to John 0' Groat8 actually. It is about Ì\\enty miles from U:5 to the little sea ide inn. There you dismoullt, walk to Groats, i.e. to the mythic site of Groats-a short mile-thence two rathf'r long ones to the top of Duncanshy Head. n is one of the prettiest shores I ever saw: trim grass or fine corn, even to the very brow of the sea. Sand (where there is sand) as white as meal, and between sand and farm- field a glacil:} or steep slope, which is also covered with grass, in some places thick with meadow-t:!weet, 'Queen of the .j\{eadow ,' and quiÌf odoriferou8 as well as trim. The island of 8troma flanks it, across a sound of perhaps two miles broad. Three ships were passing westward in our time. The old wreck of a fourth was still traceahle in fragments, sticking in the sand, or leant on harrow higher up by way of fence. The site of Groats has a barn short way behind it, and a cottage short way to its left looking seaward. The waves are about a pistol shot off at high water. It stands- i.e. a house would stand-very beautifully, a8 at the bottom of a kind of scoop rising slowly behind into highi h country, ditto to weE t, though not into great. heights at all, and the bi Dnncansby quite grandly screening it both from E. and N .E.; and all was so admirably till and solitary: extensive Cheviot sheep nibbling all about, and u.o other living thing, like a dream. The Orkneys, Honald Shay, Skerries, &c., lay dim, dreamlike, with a beauty as f sorrow in the dim grey day. Gro:1ts' site appeared to me terribly like some () THURSO CASTLE. 2.p e tinct farmer's lime-kiln. Rain hroke out on coming home, and I lost a good portion of my sleep last w night by the adventure. This is all I have to Ray of Groats or myself. An1Ïd these scenes, and heartily conscious of his host's kind consideration for him, he stayed out his holiday. lIe had wished his wife to have a taste of Scotch air too before the winter, and had arranged that she should go to his sister at the Gill. She had started, and was staying on the way .with her friends the Stanleys at Alderley, when her husband dis- covered that he could do no more at Thurso, and nlust get hOlne again. The period of his visit had been indefinite. She had supposed that he would remain longer than he proposed to do. The delay of posts and a misconstruction of meanings led 1\1rs. Carlyle to suppose that he was about to return to Chelsea imnwdiately, and that her own presence there would be indispensable; and, with a resellt- luent, which she did not care to conceal, at his imagined want of consideration for her, she gave up her expedition and went back. It was a n1Ïstake throughout, for he had intended hinlself to take Annandale on his way home froIn Thurso; but he had not been explicit enough, and she did not spare him. He was very n1Ïserable and very hUlnblc. lIe pr01uiscd faithfully that when at hOllle again he would worry her no lnore till she was strong enough to be ' kept onasy.' I will be quiet as a dream (he said). Surely I ought to be rather a l)rotection to your poor sick fancy than a new disturbance. Be ..;till; be quiet. I swear to do thee no mischief at all. Alas! he lllÌght SWC H'; but with the cxcllclJtest IV. R 242 CARLYLE'S LiFE IN LONDON. intentions, he was an awkward cOInpanion for a nervous, suffering WOlnan. He had meant no mischief. It was Ìlnpossible that he could have Ineant it. IIis Inisfortune was that he had no perception. He never understood that a delicate lady was not like his own robuster kindred, and Inight be shivered into fiddle- strings while they would only have laughed. This was his last visit to Scotland before the COIn- pletion of' Frederick.' A few words to ]\fr. Erskine, who had written to inquire about his wife, give a lllore accurate account of his own condition than it ga ve of hers. To Thomas Erskine, Esq. Chelsea: October 12, 1800. I got home nearly three weeks ago. Jane was not weaker than I expected; her house, poor soul, all set in order on an improved footing as to servants, almost pathetic as well as beautiful to me. I am happy to report that she has grown stronger ever since, and is now once more in her usual posture. I have got my smithy fire kindled again, and there is sound of the hammer once more audible. I haTle sunk silent, humiliated, endpavouring to be quietly, wisely, not foolishly, diligent with all the strength left to me. 'Frederick' is not the most pious of my heroes; but the work awakens in me either piety or else despair. ""'hy have I not a more pious labour to end with? perhaps not to be able to end. But one must not quarrel with one's kind of labour. To do it is the thing requisite. My horse is potent for riding, and one of the 10yallest quadrupeds. That perhaps i the finest item in the horoscope. The'ilnproved footing' as to servantR had been Carlyle' own arrangement. In his wife's weakened condi tion he thought it no longer right that she t-:hould he left to struggle on with a Ringle maid-of- IiJfPROVED DO.LJíEST1C ARRA \TGILJ1E VTS. 243 all-work. He had insisted that she should have a superior class of WOlllall as cook and housekeeper, with a p-irl to assist. He hÏInself was fixed to hiR garret room again, rarely stirring out except to ride, and dining nowhere save now and then with Forster, to meet only Dickens, who loved him with all hi heart. The new year brought the Grange again, where l\Irs. Oarlyle was now as glad to go as before she had been reluctant. Everybody (he wrote) as kind as possible, especially the lady. This party small and insignificant; nobody but our- selves and Venables, an honest old dish, and Kingsley, a new, of higher pretensions, but inferior flavour. The months went by. On l\iarch 27 a bulletin to his brother says :-' I have no news; nothing but the old silent struggle continually going on; for my very dreams, when I have any, are apt to be filled with it. A daily ride nearly always in perfect soli- tude, a daily and nightly escort of confused babble- ments, and thoughts not cheerful to speak of, yet with hope more legible at tinlCs than formerly, and on the whole with health better rather than worse. In this year he lost a friend whom he valued beyond anyone of the younger 111en whom he had learnt to know. Arthur Olough died at Florence, leaving behind him, of work accomplished, a transla- tion of Plutarch, a volume of poem (which hy-and- by, when the sincere writing of this alnbitious age of ours is sifted from the insincere, luay survive as an evi- dence of what he 1l1ight have been had fulness uf years heen granted to him), and, besi(lt,s the.:::e, a beautiful &2 244 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LO.LVDOiV. lnemory in the minds of those who had known hiln. I knew what Carlyle felt about hiIl1, and I tried to induce him to write sonle few words which n1Ïcrht o give that Inclnory an enduring fOrIn. I quite agree in what you say of poor Clough (he replied). A man more vivid, ingenious, veracious, mildly radiant, I have seldom met with, and in a character so honest, modest, kindly. I expected very considerable things of him. As for the' two pages' you propose, there could, had my hands been loose, have been no valid objection, but, as it is, my hands are tied. Every available Inoment had been guaranteed to , Frederick.' Clough was gone; but another friend- ship had been formed which was even lnore precious to Carlyle. He had long been acquainted with Ruskin, but hitherto there had been no close intiInacy between theIn, art not being a subject especially interesting to him. But Ruskin was now writing his 'Letters on Political Economy' in the 'Cornhill 1\Iagazine.' The world's scornful anger witnessed to the effect of his strokeR, and Carlyle was delighted. Political Economy had been a creed while it pretended to be a science. Science rests OIl reason and experÜnent, and can meet an opponent with caln1ness. A creed is always sensitive. To express a doubt of it shakes its authority, and is therefore treated as a moral offence. One looks back with aInused interest on that indignant outcry now, when the pretentious science has ceased to answer a political purpose and has been hanished by its chief professor to the exterior planets. But Carlyle had hitherto been preaching alone in the wilderIles , and rejoiceJ in this new ally. lIe JOHN RUSKIN. 245 eXaInineù Ruskin nlore carefully. lIe aw, as who that looked coulù help eeing, that here was a true 'Blan of genius,' peculiar, uneven, passionate, but wieldinIT in his hand real levin bolts, not flashes I:) of light merely -but fiery arrows which pierced, where they struck, to the quick. He was tempted one night to go to hear Ruskin lecture, not on the 'Dislllal Science,' but on some natural phenolnena, which Ruskin, while the minutest observer, could ('onvert into a poem. 'Sermons in Stones' had been already Carlyle's name for 'The Stones of 'T eni('e.' Such a preacher he was willing to listen to on any subject. To Jula Cw'lyle. Chelsea: April 23, 1801. Friday last I was persuaded-in fact had unwarily com- pplled myself, as it were-to a lecture of Ruskin's at the Institution, Albemarle-street. Lecture on Tree Leaves as physiological, pictorial, moral, symbolical objects. A crammed house, but tolerable to me even in the gallery. The lecture was thought to 'break down,' and indeed it quite did ' as a leet.ure ;' but only did from eTnbarras des 'j';ehe8SeS-ft rare case. Huskin did blow asunder as by gun- powder explo ions his leaf notions, which were manifold, curious, genial; and, in fact, I do not recollect to have heard in that place any neatest thing I liked so well as this chaotic one. This \Vas a mere episode, however, in a life which was as it were chained down to 'an undoable task.' J\IollthR went by; at last the Blatter became ::;0 com- plicatC(1. and the notes and currections :50 nlany, that the printers were calleel in to help. The rough fragments of manuscript were set in type that 1\(\ mi[!ht sec hi way throuuh thcIn. < r 246 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. You never saw such a jumble of horrors as the first proofs are (he said in reporting the result). In my bewilder- ing, indexless state, and with such books and blockheadism, I cannot single-handed deal with the thing except stage after stage in this tentative way. Often enough I am doing the very last revise when, after such screwing and torturing, the really vital point of the matter-rule of all the articula- tion it must have-will disclose itself to me, overlooked by t.he fifty Dryasdusts I have been consulting. Alas! (he cries at another time) my poor old limbs are nothing like so equal to this work as they once were; a fact that, but an irremediable one. Seldom was a poor man's heart RO npar broken by utter weariness, disgust, and long- continued despair over an undoable job. The onïy point is, said heart must not break altogether, but finish if it can. No leisure-leisure even for thought-could be spared to other subjects. Even the great phenomenon of the century, the civil war in America, passed by him at its opening without comnlanding his serious attention. To hiIn that treInendous struggle for the salvation of the AInerican nationality was merely the efflorescence of the 'Nigger Emancipation' agitation, which he had always despised. 'No war ever raging in Iny tinle,' he said, when the first news of the fighting CaIne over, , was to me nlore profounclly foolish-looking. Neutral I ::un to a degree: I for one.' He spoke of it scornfully as 'a sllloky chiInney which had taken fire.' When provoked to say sOInething about it publicly, it was to write his brief llias Ame7'icana in n'llre. Peter of the North (to Paul of the South): Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year as I do. You are going traight to Hell, you ---, PdRTY AT THE GRANGE. 247 Paul: Good word:::;, Peter. The risk is my own. I am willing to take the risk. Hire you your servants by the month or the day, and get straight to Heaven; leave me to my own method. Peter: .No, I won't. I will beat your brains out first! [And is trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot yet IDtl,nage it. l ] T. C. At the Grange where he had gone in Janu- ary 1862, the subject was of course luuch talked of. The Argyles were there, the Sartoris's, the Kingsleys, the Bishop of Oxford, l\iilnes, Venables, and others. The Duke and Duchess were strong for the North, and there was much arguing, not to Carlyle's satisfaction. The Bishop and he were always pleased to meet each other, but he was not e(lUally tolerant of the .Bishop's friends. Of one of these there is a curious luention in a letter written fro III the Granf!e during this visit. Intellect was to him a quality which only showed itself in the di l.;overy of truth. In science no lnan is allowed to be a Ulan of intellect who uses his fac:ulties to go ingeniously wrong. Still less could Carlyle acknow- ledge the presence of such high quality in those who went wrong in Illore important subjects. Cardinal Newman, he once said to TIle, had not the intellec.t of a 1110derate-sizcd rabbit. lIe was yet more un- cOlnplin1entary to another fan10us person wholn the English Church has canonized. 1 }facmill({n'8 ftlagazine, August l O:3.- Carlyle admitted to mt3 after the war ended tlu.t perhaps he had not seen into the Luttom of tht3 matter. Nt'\'erthebs::;, he rcpuLlil5hed the llias ill his Collected \\T orks. 248 CdRLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON To Jane JVel8h Carlyle. The Grange: January 18ü2. 'Ve are a brisk part,y here, full of locomotion, specula- tion, and really are in some sort agreeable to one another. The Bear, the Duke, with the womankind wholly, are off some twenty miles, mostly .ill an open carriage. The Bishop is gone with them, to see some little ape callen. Keble, of ' The Christian Year.' He (the Bishop) is very perceptibly older in the face, but no change in the shifty, cunning, thorough-going ways of him. He took me riding yesterday, galloping as if for the King's Hundred to see something which he called the Beacon Hill, which we never saw, day- light failing us, though we had a gallop of some sixteen miles. You may figure whether it suited me in my feverish feeble mood. The most agreeable man among us is the Duke; really a good solid, Scotch product. Takes, I think, considerably to me, as does his Duchess, though I do not f'peak much to her. Fiud the Nigger question much a topic with her, and by no means a safe one. 'Frederick,' n1eanwhile, ,vas Inaking progress, though but slo\vly. The Ger111an authorities he found to be ra,y Inetallic matter, unwrought, unorganised, the ore nowhere smelted out of it. It is curÌuus that on the human side of things the Gernlall genius should be so deficient, but so it is. We go to theln for poetry, philosophy, critieisIn, theology. They have to COllle to us for a biography of their greatest poet and the history of their greatest king. The standard Life of Goethe in Germany is Lewes's; the standard IIistory of Frederick is Carlyle's. .But the labour was desperate, and told heavily both on hÏIn and on llis wife. vVhen the SlLnnner CaIne she went for change to Folkestone. He in her absenee was like a forsakpn <-,hild. 11/ENTAL DIALOGUE. 249 Xothing ig "Wrong about the house here (he "Wrote to her), nor have I Í;tiled in sleep or had other misfortune; never- theless, I am dreadfully low-spirited, and feel like a child 'wish in .rl.Jlwmmy back [italics his o"Wn J. Perhaps, too, she is as well away for the moment. The truth is, I am under medical apl'liances, which renders me for this day the wretchedest nearly of all the sons of Adam not Jet con- demned, in fact, to the gallo"Ws. I have not spoken one word to anybody since yun went away. Oh! for God's sake, take care of yourself! In the earth I have no other. Again, a few days later :- July 2, 1862. Silence, even of the saddest, sadder than death, is often preferable to shake the nonsense out of one. Last night, in getting to bed, I saiù to myself at last, 'Impo!:'sible, sir, that you have no friend in the big Eternities and Im- men::;ities, or none but Death, as you whimper to younielf. You have had friends who, before the birth of you even, were good to you, and did give yon several things. Know that you have friends unspeakably important, it appears, and Jet not their aweful looks or doings quite terrify you. Yon require to have a heart like theirs in some sort. ,,"'ho knows? Anù fall asleep upon that honourable pillow of whinstone.' This was a singular dialogue for a man to hold with him:-ielf. '.A. spc('tre 1l10Vjl1g in a world of :speetrcs '-' one l11a i of Lurning sulphur '-the::;e :ll o were images ill which he now and thcn dC::icrihcd his condition. .At ::,uch times, if his little finger achcd he imagined that no lllortal had ever I.-'uflcred so heforc. If his liver was mniss he was a chained Promctheus with thc vulture at his breast, and earth, ether, sea, and ::;ky were illroked to witne his injuries. 'Vhcn tl1(' fit was on him he could Hot, would not., re:-;train lli1H elf, and now whell :ßlr . 250 CARLYLE'S LIFE IlV LOJVDO.J.V. Carlyle's condition was so delicate, her friends, Dledical and others, had to insist that they must be kept apart as Dluch as possible. He hÜnself, lost as he was without her, felt the necessity, and when she returned frOln Folkestone he sent her off to her friend lVII's. Russell in Nithsdale. SOlne one, I know not who, wrote to entreat her to stay away as long as possible. The let.ter runs :- I hope you do not think of returning home. Should .l\lr. Carlyle become rampageous I will set J\lrs. - on to pray for him. Should you, during your abspnce, require any transaction in London to be carried out with more than usual intelligence and finesse, remember 1\11. But no one was IHore anxious than Carlyle hÜn- self now was that she should be saved froln worries. As soon as he had clearlyrecognised how in she was, his own grievances disappeared. There was no 'rmnpag- ing.' He was all that was thoughtful and generous. He called himself a 'desultory widow,' but he tried his Lest to be happy in his desertion, or at least to make her believe him so. .. She was afraid of costing hinl IHoney. 'I positively order,' he wrote to her, 'that there be no pinching about I1l0ney at all. Fie, fie ! Here is a draft, which Dr. Russell, as banker, will pay when you ask.' Not a cOlnplaint. escaped hinl in his daily letters. All was represented as going well; 'Frederick' was going well; the sleep was well ; the servants were doing well. Fruit, flowers, creatH, &c., CaIne regularly in from AddiscoIllbe-gaIne boxes CaIne with the grouse season. There was a certain botheration from visitors-' dirty wretches,' would call and be troublcs0nle. It was the year of t.he PROGRESS OF 'FREDERICK.' 251 second Exhibition, which I believe Carlyle never entered, but which brought crowds to London-a party froln Edinburgh among the rest who were well anathmnatized: but SOlne one came now and then who 1\ T as not' dirty,' and on the whole the book went forward, and he hiulself worked, and rode, and grumbled at nothing, save the Scotch Sunday Post arrangelnents, which interrupted his correspondence. , Truly,' he said, , that Phariseean Sabbath and mode of disarming Ahnighty wrath by sOlnething better than the secret pOllr liti plail'e is getting quite odious to Ine, or inconvenient rather, for it has long been oùious enough.' The third volulne of ' Frederick' was finished and published this SUlnmer. The fourth volume was getting into type, and the fifth and last was partly written. The difficulties did not dinlÏnish; 'one only consola- tion there was in it, that 'Frederick' was better worth doing than other foul tasks he had had. At times (he said) I am quite downcast on my lonesome, long, interminable journey through the not l\Iount Horeb wilderness, but the beggarly 'Creea 1\loss' one. Then at other times I think with myself, , Creca,' and the Infinite of barren, brambly moor is under Heaven too. "That if thou could'st show the blockhead populations that withal, and get honourably out of this heart-breaking affair, pitied by the Eternal Powers! If I can hold out another year. Surely before this time twelvemonth we shall have done. lIe rarely looked at reviews. lIe hardly ever read a new paper of any kind. I do not relneInber that I ever :;aw one in his rOOIn. For once, however, he made an exception in favour of a nutice of hi la t \OlUllle in the' Saturùay.' 252 C.dRL YLE'S LIFE .I.J.V LOiVDON. It was by Venables (he said), not a bad thing at all- f'xcellent in comparison to much that I suppose to be going, though I have only read this and one other. They l'eally do me no ill, the adverse ones, or inconceivably little, and hardly any good, the most flattering of the friendly. In my bitter solitary struggle, continued almost to the death, I have got to such a contempt for the babble of idle, ignorant mankind about me as is sometimes almost appalling to myself. 'Yhat am I to them in the prf'sence of very fate and fact? He had one other great pleasure this snmlner. Ru kin's ' Unto this Last,' a volume of essays on poli- tical econOlny, was now collected and re-published. Carlyle sent a copy to Mr. Erskine, with the following letter :- To T. Erskine, Lin'atlten. Chelsen. : August 4, 18J2. Dear l\Ir. Erskine,-Here is a very bright little book of Ru.;,kin's, which, if you have not already made acquaintance with it, is extremely well worth reading. Two years ago, when the Essays came out in the fashionable magazines, there loose a shriek of anathema from all newspaper and publishing persons. But I am happy to say that the subject is to be taken up again and heartily gone into by the valiant Ruskin, who, I hope, will reduce it to a dog's likeness-its real phy- siognomy for a long time paRt to the unenchanted eye, and peremptorily bid it prepare to quit this afflicted earth, as R. has done to several thiugs before now. He seems to me to have the best talent for p'J'eachiny of all men now alive. He has entirely blown up the world that used to call itself of , Art,' and left it in an impossible posture, uncertain wbether on its feet at all or on its head, and conscious that there will be no continuing on the bygone terms. If he could do as much for PolItical Economy (as I hOlJe), it would be the greatest benefit achieved by preaching for generations past; the chasing off of one of the brutallest nightmares that ever sate on the bosom of slUlllbrou:-: mankind, kf'pt t he ,, o'lll of 'U-,-VTO THIS LAST.' 253 them squeezed down into an invisible state, as if they had no soul, but only a belly and a beaver faculty in these last sad ages, and were about a'ì'riL'in,g we know where in consequence. I have read nothing that ple sed me better for many a year than these new Rusl'iniana,. I am sitting here in the open air under an awning with documentary materials by me in a butler's tray, desk, &c. for writing, being burnt out of my garret at last by the heat of the sun. I hope by this time twelvemonth I may be at Linlathen again; at least I do greatly wish it, if the hope be too presumptuous. There is a long stiff hill to get over first, but this is now really the last; fifth and final volume actually in hand, and surely, with such health as I stil1 have, it may be possible. I mu t stanel to it or rlo worse. . . London has not been so noisy and ugly for ten yean;;, but this too is ending. .. Adieu dear friend! Yours ever, T. ('AHLYLE 254 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON CHAPTER XXVI. A.D. 18ß4. ÆT. 69. Personal intercourse-Daily habits-Charities-Conversation- :Modern science find its tendencies-Faith without sight-Bishop Colenso- rrhe Broad Church School-Literature-Misfortunes of Fritz- Serious accident to Mrs. Carlyle-Her strange illness-Folkestone -Death of Lord Ashburton-Mrs. Carlyle in Scotland-Her slow recovery-' Frederick' finished. So far 111Y account of Carlyle has been taken from written 111elnorials, letters, diaries, and autobiographic fragments. For the future the story will fonn itself roundlny own personal intercourse with him. Up to 1860 I had lived in the country. I had paid frequent visits to London, and while there had seen as nlllCh of Cheyne Row anù its inhabitants as 1\1rs. Carlyle woulù encourage. I had exchanged letters occasion- ally with her and her husband, but purely on exter- nal subjects, and close personal intimacy between us there had as yet been none. In the autumn of that year, however, London became my home. Late one afternoon, in the middle of the winter, Carlyle called on 111e, and said that he wished to see more of me- wished Ine in fact to be his cOlnpanion, so far as I coulù, in his daily rides or walks. Ride with hÏ1n I could not, having no horse; but the walks were most welcome -and frOln that date, for twenty years, up to his o"wn death, cxC'cpt when either or hot.h of us were out of PERSONAL INTERCOURSE. 255 town, I never ceased to see him twice or three tÏ1nes a week, and to have two or three hours of conversa- tion with him. The first of these 'walks I well re- nlelnber, from an incident which happened in the course of it. It was after nightfall. At Hyde Park Corner, we found a blind beggar anxious to cross over froln Knightsbridge to Piccadilly, but afraid to trust his dog to lead him through the carts and carriages. Carlyle took the beggar's arm, led him gently over, and offered to help him further on his way. He declined gratefully; we gave him some trifle, and followed hiul to see what he would do. His dog led hÍ1n straight to a public-house in Park Lane. We both laughed, and I suppose I Blade SOlne ill-natured re- mark. 'Poor fellow,' was all that Carlyle said; 'he perhaps needs wannth and shelter.' This was the first instance that I observed of what I found to be a universal habit with him. Though still far frOln rich, he never met any poor creature, whose distres:) was evident, without speaking kindly to hin1 and helping hÍ1n lllore or les:::; in one \vay or another. .A_rch bishop vVhately said that to relieve street beggars was a public criIne. Carlyle thought only of thcir n1Ísery. ' lodern life,' he said, , doing its 2.harity by in titutions,' is a sad hardener of our hearts. - \"'Ç" e shou Iëf-give for our own sakes. It is very low water with the wretched bC'ings, one can easily see that.' Even the imps of the gutters he would not treat a reprobates. lIe would drop a ICðson in their way, snlllC'time with a sixpence to recomnlCuc1 it. . . A small vap-abond was at ROHlf' indecency. CarlyJ(' touchcd him gently Oll t Ilc har'k wit II hi tiel{, · Du 25 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LO.LVDO V. you not know that you are a little lnan,' he said, 'and not a whelp, that JOu behave in this way? ' There was no sixpence this tilHe. Afterwarùs a lad of four- teen or so stopped us and beggeù. Carlyle lectured hiln for beginning so early at such a trade, told hitn how, if he worked, he nÜght have a ;vorthy and re- spectable life before hirn, and gave hiIn sixpence. The boy shot off down the next alley. 'There is a sennon fallen on stony ground,' Carlyle said, 'but we lTIUst do what we can.' The crowds of children growing up in London affected hÏ1n with real pain; these slnall plants, each with its head just out of the ground, with a whole life ahead, and such a training! I noticed another trait too-Scotch thrift showing itself in hatred of waste. If he saw a crust of bread on the roadway he would stop to pick it up ana put it on a step or a railing. SOlne poor devillnight be glad of it, or at worst a dog or a sparrow. To de- stroy wholesOlue food was a sin. lIe was very tender about anilnals, especially dogs, who, like horses, if well treated, were types of loyalty and 1ìdelity. I horrified hÍIn with a story of lIlY Oxford days. The hounds had nlCt at VV oodstock. They had drawn the covers without 1ìndillg a fox, and, not caring to have a blank day, one of the whips had caught a passin sheep dog, rubbed its feet with aniseed, and set it to run. It Inade for Oxford in its terror, the hounds in full cry behir..d. They caught the wretched creature in a field outside the town, and tore it to pieces. I never saw Carlyle nlore affected. He said it was like a lllunan soul flying for salvation before a legion of iiends. Occupied as he had always seemed to be with high- oaring speculations, ;,l'ornful as he had appean d, CARLYLE AS A CO.iJfPANIO.1.Y. 257 in the' Latter-day PaIllphlet ,' of benevolence, phi- lanthropy, and small palliations of enonnous evils, I had not expected so 1ì1uch detailed compa8 io n in little things. I found that personal sYlllpathy .with sufIering lay at the root of all his thoughts; anù that attention to little things was as characteristic of his conduct as it was of his intelìect. His conversation when we were alone together was even nlore surprising to nle. I had been accuston1ed to hear hinl impatient of contradiction, extravagantly exaggerative, overbearing opposition with bursts of scornful hurnour. In private I found hiIll ÍInpatient of nothing but of being bored; gentle, quiet, tolerant; srully-llllllloured, but never ill-humoured; ironical, but 'without the savageness, and when speaking of perbons always scrupulously just. He saw through the 'clothes' of a man into what he actually was. But the sharpest censure was always qualifieù. lIe would say, 'If we knew how he callle to be what he is, poor fellow, we should not be hard with hinl.' But he talked more of things than of per ons, and on every variety of subject. He had read 1110re lllÍ - cellaneously than any lllan I have ever known. IEH Illeulory was extraordinary, and a universal curiosity had led him to illfonu himself minutely about n1atters which I nÜght have supposed that he had never heard of. vVith English literature he was as fan1Ïliar as l\Iacaula.y was. French awl German and Italian he knew illfillitely better t])an l\Iacaulay, and there was this peculiarity about him, that if he reaù a hook which ::;truck hilll he never rested till he had learnt all that ('ould be ascertained about the writer of it. 1\' . s '), 25 8 CA R LYLE'S LIFE fLV LO-,-VDOLY. Thus his knowledge was not in points or lines, but COl11plcte and solid. Even in his laughter he was always serious. I never heard a trivial word f1'0111 hil11, nor one which he had better have left unuttered. He cared nothin cr t"- for 111Oney, nothing for promotion in the world. If his friends gained a step anywhere he was pleased with it-but only as worldly advancen t might give thel11 a chance of wider usefulness. :Thien should think of their ùuty, he said ;-let theI11 do that, and the rest, as much as was essential, , would be adùed to then1.' I was with him one beautiful spring day under the trees in IIyde Park, the grass recovering its green, the elnl bÙds swelling, the scattered crocuses and snowdrops shining in the sun. The spring, the annual resurrection from death to life, was especially affecting to hitn. 'Behold the lilies of the field! ' he said to n1C; , they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. What a worù ,vas that? and the application was quite true too. Take no thought for the Illorrow-care only for what you know to be right. That is the rule.' lIe had a poor opinion of what is called science; of political eCOnOll1Y; of utility as the basis of lllOrab; and such-like, when tbey dealt with hlunan life. lIe stood on Kant's Catcgorical I.!.!lp erat ive. Hight wa right, and wrong -;-as ,,;rang, because God. had so ordered; and duty and conduct eould be brought under analysis olll) when Inen had disowncd their noblcr uature, anù were governed hy sclf-interest. Interested Il10tives n1ight be computed, and a science ll1Ïght grow ont of a c-alculation of thcir forces. TIut love of Truth. love of Rif!hteuusness-thesc were not DISTRUST OF .JI0DER.LV SCIEl'{CE 259 calculable, ncither thcsc nor the actions proceeding out of them. Sciences of natural things he always respected. Fads of all kinds were sacred to hÏIn. A fact, what- ever it might be, was part of the constitution of the universe, and so was related to the Author of it. Of alllucn that haye ever lived he honoured few lllore than Kepler. Kepler's' [au's ' he looked on as the grandest ph ysical discoyery ever lnade by nlan; and a long as philosophers were content, like Kepler, to find out facts without building theories on then1 to dispense with God, he had only good to say of thel1l. Science, however, in these lattcr days, was stepping beyond its proper province, like the young Titans trying to take heaven by stonn. lIe liked ill men like IIunl- bohlt, Laplace, or the author of the' Vestigcs.' lIe ç refused Darwin's translnutation of species as un- proved; he fought against it, though I could see hc dreaùed that it might turn out true. If Ulan, as ex- plained by Science, was no Inore than a dere10ped animal, and conscicnce and intellect but develop- nlellts of the f'lnctions of anin1als, then God and re- ligion were no Ulore than inferences, and inferences which lllight be lawfully disputed. That the grandest achievemcnts of llllluan nature had sprung out of beliefs which lnight be luere illusions, Carlyle could not admit. That intellect and moral scnse should have been put into hÏ1n by a Being which haù nOlle of its own was distinctly not conccivable to him. It Inight perhaps be that these high gifts lay s01ncwhere in the original genn, out of which organi life had been develuped; that they had been inten- t jnnally awl ('()l1 ('i()w..]y p]a('l.(l t))(.1'l' h,\O till' .\utllor of 2 260 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. nature, whom religious instincts had been diml}T able to discern. It might so turn out, but for the present the tendency of science was not in any such direction. The tendency of e was to Lucretian Atheism; to a belief that no 'intention' or intending nlÍnd was discoverable in the universe at all. If the life of man was no more than the life of an aninlal-if he had no relation, or none which he could discern, with any being higher than himself, God w'ould become an un- meaning word to hiln. Carlyle often spoke of this, and with evident uneasiness. I Earlier in his life, whil;l he was young and confident, and the effects of his religious trainiHg were fresh in hÌln, he could fling ff the w ll s per-s-'of the- -Sf'ientific spirit with angry .; the existence, the omnipresence, the omni- p otence o f God, were then the strongest of his - victions. The faith remained unshaken in hiIu to the end; he never hÏlnself doubted; yet he was per- plexed by the indifference 'with which the Suprenle Power was allowing its existence to be obscured. I once said to hiIn, not long before his death, that I could only believe in a which did sOluething. vVith a cry of pain, which I shall never forget, he said, 'He ); \\ hl'n 270 CARL YLE'S lIFE I V LOl\ÐO.lY. looking over his shoulder I saw the Llood Rtreaming over his hoof, drew briòle, dismounted, found the knees quite I'mashed, and except slowly home have ridden no more since. .Jane will not hear of my ever riding him again, nor in ren I truth is it proper. Finis therefore in that department. I have been extremely sorry for my poor old fourfooted friend. Ganz t1'e1J, he constantly and wonderfully was; and now, what to do with myself! or t.ow to dispose of poor Fritz. Of course I can sell him; have him knocked down at Tatter- f'all's for a 10l. or an old song; and then (as he goes delirious under violent usage and is frightenerl for running swift. in harness) get the poor creature scourged to death in a hor- rible way, after all the 20,000 faithful miles he has carried me, and the wild puddles anò lonely clark times we have had together. I cannot bear to think of that. He is a Htrong healthy horRe, loyal and peaceable and 'lvise as horse ever was. Fritz was solù, it Ina)'" be hoped. to SOB1e one who was kind to hiu1. What becaIne of hiln further 1 never heard. Lady Ashburton supplied his place with another, eqnally g00d and almost with Fritz's intellect. Life went on as before after this interruption, and leaves little to record. On April 29 he writes :- I had to go yesterday t.o Dickens's Reading, 8 p.m., Hanover Rooms, to the complete upsetting of my evening habitudes and spiritual composure. Dickens does do it capi- tally, such as it is; acts better than any l\lacready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic theatre yisible, perfurm- ing under one hat, and keeping us laughing-in a sorry way, some of us thought-the whole night. He is a good crea- ture, too, and makes fifty or sixty pounds by each of these readings.' FrOln dinner parties he had ahnost wholly with. drawn, but in the SaIne letter he mentions one to which llC' ha(1 heen tempted hy a new a('quaintan('C'. who grC'w ACCIDENT TO JIRS. CARLYLE. 27 1 afterwards into a dear and justly valned friend, Iis I>avenport Bronlley. He adnlÏred Miss Bromley froIn the first, for her light, airy ways, and c0I11pared her to a 'flight of larks.' Summer carne, and hot weather; he descended from his garret to the awning in the garden again. By l\.ugu t he was tired, 'Frederick' spinning out heyond expectation, and he and 1\1rs. Carlyle went for a fortnight to the Grange. Lord A.shburton fo1eemed to have recovered, but was very delicate. There was 110 party, only Yenables, the guest uf all others wholn Carlyle Lest liked to lneet. The visit was a happy one, a glean1 of pure sunshine before the terrible calaInity which was now Ï1npcmling. ()ne evening, after their return, 1\lrs. Carlylc hml gone to call on a cousin at the post office in St. 1\Iartin's Lane. She had COlne away, and was trying to reach an omnibus, whcn she was thrown by a cab on the kerbstol1e. lIeI' right ann being disabled by neuralgia, he was unable to break her falL The :-:illews of one thigh were sprained and lacerated, and he was brought home in a fly in dreadful pain. She knew that Carlyle would be expecting her. lIeI' chief anxiety, she told me, was to get into the house with- on t his knowledge, to spare hinl agitation. For her- splf, Hhe could not 1l10ve. She stopped at the door of Ir. Larkin, who lived in the adjoining hOllse in Cheyne Row, amI asked him to help her. The sound of the wheels and the noise of voices reached Carlyle in the drawing-rooIn. He rushed down, and he and 1r. Larkin togcther hore her up the stairs, and laid her on ]wr bed. There she remained, in an agony whieh, ('xpcripnced in pain as l1P was, ('xcec(lf'cl the 272 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LO VDO.N" worst that she had known. Carlyle was not allowed to know how seriously she had been injured. The doctor and she both agreed to conceal it frOlIl him, and d ur- ing those first days a small incident happened, which she herself described to Ine, showing the distracting want of perception which sometimes characterised hiul-a want of perception, not a want of feeling, for no one could have felt Inore tenderly. The nerves and Inuscles were completely disa1:>led on the side on which she had fallen, and one eflect was that the under jaw had dropped, and that she could not close it. Carlyle always disliked an open n10uth; he thought it a sign of foolishness. One morning, when the pain was at its worst, he can1e into her rOOln, anti stood looking at her, leaning on the Inantel-piece. , Jane,' he said presently, ye had better shut your lllouth.' She tried to tell him that she could not. , Jane,' he began again,' , ye'll find yourself in a lllore compact and pious fraIl1e of Inind, if ye shut your 111outh.' In old-fashioned and, in hiln, perfectly sin- cere phraseology he told her that she ought to be thankful that the accident was no worse. 1\11's. Ca1'- I J h ated cant as heartily as he, and to her, in her sore state of mind and body, such words had a íiavour of cant in theIne True herself as steel, she would not bear it. ' Th nkful !' she saiù to him; , thankful for what? for having been thrown down in the street when I had gon on an erranù of charity? for being disabled, crushed, made to suffer in this way? I alll not thankful, and I willllot say that I mn.' He left her, saying he was sorry to see her so rebellious 'Ve can hardly wonder after this that he had to re- port 8 Hll y to his brother: 'She speaks 1i ttle to me, ILLJ.VESS OF .J1RS. CARLYLE. 273 and does not accept 111e as a sick nurse, which, truly, I had never any talent to he.' Of course he did not know at first her real con- dition. She had such indOlnitable couraf!e that she persuaded him that she 'was actually better off since she had becOlIle helpless than 'when she had been struggling to go out daily and returned done up, with her joints like to fall in pieces.' For a month she could not move-at the end of it she \vas able to struggle to her feet and crawl occasionally into tllb adjoining roon1. Carlyle was blind. Seven weeks after the accident he could write: ' She actually sleeps better, eats better, and is cheerfuller than fonllerly. For perhaps three weeks past she has been hitching about with a stick. She can walk too, but slowly without tick. In short she is doing well enough- as indeed aIll I, and have need to be.' lIe had need to be, for he had just discovered that he could not end with' Frederick' like a rocket-stick, but that there must be a new volume; and for his sake, and knowing how the truth, if he was a\vare of it, would agitate hiD1, with 8plendid heroisln she had forced herself preluaturely to her feet again, the Inen- tal resolution conquering the weakness of the body. She even received visitors af!ain, and in the middle of November, I and my own wife once more spent an evening there.1 But it wa,; the last exertion which she was able to make. The same night there CaIne on neuralgic pain-rather torture than pain-of which the doctor could give no explanation. 'A mere cold,' he said, 'no cause for alanll;' but the weeks went on and there was no aLatclncnt, tin pain in e,'cry 1 Lf'ile1's llnd JJlem()rial. , vol. iii. p. I Î'M. IL T 274 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. muscle, misery in every nerve, no sleep, no rest frOln suffering night or day-save in faint lnisleading intervals-and Carlyle knew at last how it was with her, and had to go on with his work as he could. , We are in great trouble,' he wrote on the 29th of December, in one óf those intervals, 'trouble, anxiety, and confusion. Poor Jane's state is such as to fill us with the saddest thoughts. She does not gather strength-how can she! She is quieter in regard to pain. The neuralgia and other torments have sensibly abated, not ceased. She also eats daily a little-that is one clearly good symptom. But her state is one of weakness, utter restlessness, depression, and misery, such a scene as I never was in before. If she could only get a little sleep, but she cannot hitherto. To- night, by Barne!:!'s advice and her own reluctant consent, she is to try morphine again. God of His mercy grant that it may prosper! There has been for ten days a complete cessa- tion of all druggings and opiate abominations. They did her a great deal of mischief instead of any good. . . I still try to hope and believe that my poor little woman is a little thought better, but it is miserable to see how low and wretched she is, and under wbat wearing pain she passes ber sleepless nights and days. In health I am myself as well as usual, which surely is a blessing. I keep busy too in all available moments. Work done is the one consolation left me.' Other remedies failing, the last chance was in chanf!e and sea air. Dr. Blakiston, an accomplished physician at St. IÆonards, whose wife was an old friend of 1\1:rs. Carlyle, offered to receive her as a guest. She was taken thither in a ' sick carriage,' in construction and appearance sOlnething like a hearse, in the begin- ning of Mareh. Carlyle attended her down, left her, with her cousin Maggie Welsh, in the J3lakistons' affec- tionate hands, and hill1self returned to his solitary ALONE IiV eHE YJ\ RO IF. 275 hOlne and task. There, in Hades as he called it, he sate toiling on, watching for the daily bulletins, now worse, now a little Letter, his own letters full of passionate grief and inIpatience with intruders, who caIne with the kindest purpose to enquire, but j LIst then could better have been spared. 'I was left well alone last night,' he wrote on the 15th of ::\larch, 'and sate at least silent in my gloom. On Sunday came G. to enquire for l\lrs. C. His enquiry an offence to me. I instantly walked him out, but had to go talking with him, mere fire and brirr 8tone upon suet dumpling, progress of the species, &c. &c., all the way to Hyde Park. "That does the foolish ball of tallow want with me?' Sorrows did 110t come single. Ten days l:1ter caBle news that Lord Ashburton was dead, the dearest friend that had been left to hinl. As an evidcnce uf reganl Lord A. had left him 2,0001., or rather had not left it, but had desired that it should be given to hin1, that there Inight be no deduction for legacy duty. It was a small matter at such a Inoment that there appenred in the 'Saturday Review' 'an ex- tremely contemptible notice, hostile if the dirty puppy dared,' on the last published volumes of 'Frederick.' This did not even vex him, 'was not worth a snuff of tobacco; only he thought it was a pity that Venables just then should have allowed the book to fall into unworthy hands. He wrote to his wife daily-a few words to satisfy her that he was well. At length the absence from her becanle unbearable. He took a h 0use at St. Leonards, to which she could be removed; and, leaving Cheyne Row to the care of lr. Larkin, he went down, with his work, to join her. Iost thinf!s ill this world have thcir Hunny side-the planet '1' 2 276 CARL YLE'S LIFE IiV L01\lDON. itself first, and then the fortunes of its occupants. His grief and anxiety had convinced 1\1rs. Carlyle of her husband's real love for her, whiC'h she had 10nO' " doubted. But that was all, for her sufferings were of a kind which few human fraIues could bear without sinking under them. Carlyle was patient and tender; all was done for her which care and love could provide; she had not wholly lost her strength or energy; but the pain and sleeplessness rontinued week after week without sign of abating. They reInained at St. Leonards till the middle of July, when despe- rate, after twelve lli hts absolutely without sleep of any kind, she rallied her force, rose, and went off, under John Carlyle's charge, through London to Annandale, there to shake off the horrible enchant- Inent or else to die. It was on the eve of her birthday that she made her flight. No one was 1110re absolutely free than she was frOln superstition, but times and seasons were as ociated with human feelings; she n1ight either end her life altogether or receive a fresh lease of it. Carlyle remained at St. Leonards, to gather his books and papers together. She was to go first to his sister, Mrs. Austin, at the Gill. 'Oh what a birthday is this for thee!' he cried after her, 'flyingfr0m the tormentor, panting like the hunted doe with all the hounds of the pit in chase. Poor Mary will do her very best and sisterliest for you; a kinder soul is not on earth.' The violent revulsion, strange to say, for a time succeeded. The journey did not hurt her. She recovereù sleep a little, strength a little. Slowly, very slowly and with Inany relapses, she rallied into a nlore natural state, first at the Gill and afterwanls with the ALOJllE IN CIfE YJllE RO l 277 Russells in Kithsc1ale. 1 Carlyle could not follow exeept with his heart, but the thoughts which he could pare from his work .were given to what he would do for her if she was ever restored to hinl alive. There was to be no nlore hiring of carriages, no more omnibu es. She ,vas henceforth to have a brougham uf her own. Her rOOln in Cheyne Row in which she had so suffered, was re-papered,re-arranged, with the kind help of l\1iss BrOl1l1ey, that she n1Íght be surrounded with objects unassociated with the past. Here are a series of extracts from the letters which 11(; wrote to her :- Chelsea: July 29, 1864. People do not help me much. Oh darling, when will you come back and protect me? God above will have arranged that for both of us, and it will be His will not ours that can rule it. )Iy thoughts are a prayer for my poor little life-partner who has fallen lame beside me after travelling so many steep and thorny ways. I will stop this, lest I fall to crying altogether. August 1. "Torked too late yesterday. 'Yalked out for exercise a seven p.m. ""'ild, windy sky. Streets-thank God !-nearly empty; rain threatening. 3Iy walk was gloomy, sad as death, but not provoking, not so miserable as many. Gloom, sorrow; but instead of rage-' nobody, wish to see nobody. August 2. I am out of sorts; no work hardly; "-:l.nd run about as mi:-:eraLle as my worst enemy could wish; and my poor little fricIHI of friends, she has fallen wounded to the ground and 1 For the Hus ell and all thev òi,l for Ir . C'arlvlp. :,-ee Lettcrs und Jlcm.,rtn[ð, yoI. iii. r. O. ef . c,j. -- 278 L-..ARL YLE'S LIFE IiV LONDO.t.Y. I am alone-alone! ::\ly spirits are quite sunk; my hand is quite out. Postman Bullock wants me to get his son pro- moted. Can't I? Somebody else wants 50l. till he prove the Bible out of square. Another requests me to induct him Ìnto literature. Another to say how he can save mankind, which is much his wish, &c. August 3. Your poor nervous system ruined, not by those late months only, but by long years of more or less the like! Oh, you have had a hard life! I, too, not a soft one: but yours beside me ! Alas! alas! . . . . I am better than yes- terday, still not quite up to par. The have consider- ably increased about me, but I care much less about them in general. Night always brings her coolness, her silence, which is an infinite solace to us, body and soul. Nothing of blockhead mankind's procedure St ms madder and even more condemnable to me than this of their brutish bed- ]amitish creation of needless noises. August 4. 'Yhat a blessed course of religious industry is that of Scotland, to gnard against letters coming or going so many days every month. The seventh day, fourth part of a lunation; that is the real fact it all ref'ts on; and such a hubbub made of it by the vile flunkey souls who call them- selves special worshippers of the 1\lost High. l\lumbo J umbo on the coast of Guinea almost seems a 8hade more respectable. I was absent frOln London during the snnnner. I had heard that the Carlyles had left St. Leonards and that she was in Scotland, and I wrote to hinl under the impression that she Inust be recovering. He answereù that I had been far too hopeful. Chelsea: August G. The accounts have mostly been bad; but for two days past seem (to myself) to indicate something of real improve- ment. I am always very sanguine in the matter; but get the saddest rebukes. a you see. God only knows what is to ALONE IJ.V CHE Y.LVE EO IF. 279 become of it all. But I keep as busy as the Fate will allow, and in that find the summary of any consolation tbat remains to me. :\Iy progress is, as it has always been, frightfully slow; but, if I live a few months, I always think I shall get the accursed millstone honourably sawed from my neck, and once more revisit the daylight and the dry land, and :::; e better what steps are to be taken. I have no company here but my horse. Indeed I bave mainly consorted with my horse for eight years back-and he, the staff of my life otherwise, is better company than any I could get at present in these latitudes-an honest creature that is always candid with me and rationally useful in a small way, which so few are. "Tish me well and return, the sooner the better. How well I remember the last night you and )Irs. Froude were here! It was the last sight I had of my poor little life- companion still afoot by my side, cheerily footing the rough ways along with me, not overwhelmed in wild deluges of misery a now. At spes infracta! This is the I>lace úf Hope.- Your:;, ever, T. C. To her his letters continued constant, his spirits yarying with her acrounts of herself, but, as he had aid to me, always tryin to he sanguine. To Jane JVel.,h Carlyle. f'helsea: August 11. Oh, what a deliverance to the loaded heart of me-one ought not to be 1:;0 desperate, but I was too early awakt\ again, and flesh is weak. Oh, I am so sad, sad, sad, but have often been more miserable far. The sorrow has fO'J'!Jiveneð8 in it, reconciliation to all men and things, especially to all men, not secret rage and vain struggle, as too often. Ob, do hut get better, my own :-;chatz. \Y e hall ha\"e good days yet, please God. .August 1 G-lt<. l\[ay I really think the vengeful Furies are abating, {-{oing grcHlually to their homes--and that my poor little Eurydice w ill come back again and make me rich. God of His mercy 280 C.rlRL YLE'S LIFE IN LOl'lDO.LV. grant it to me and you. Amen!.... "That a humiliated, broken-down, poor cheepy wretch I am! Condemned to dwell among the pots and live upon unclean blockheadism, and hug foul creatures to my bosom, coaxing them to tell me what they know, these long years past, till I feel myself 10 havp. become foul and blockheadish. On, on, to get it pitched away from me into the bottomless Pool! August 2.3, The girls are raging and scrubbing; the curtains all on the ropes in the garden. Cat, with miniature black likeness of herself, contemplatively wandering among the skirts of tlwm. Not a mouse stirring! Oh dear! I wish my Goody was hack, but I won't be impatient. Oh, no, no; as long as I lwar of her getting inch by inch into her old self again. The heavens truly are merciful and gracious to me, though t hey load my back rather sore. August 29-30. The blessed silence of Sabbath. Nobody loves his Sab- hath as I do. There is something quite divine to me in that cessation of banel organs, pianos, tumults, and jumblings. I ea::;ily do a better day's work thau on any other day of the seven; and, if left alone, bave a solemn kind of sadness, a gloom of mind which, though heavy to bear, is not unallied with sacredness and blessedness. . . . Poor little soul ! You are the helm, intellect of the house. Nohody else has the IPëtst skill in steering. l\ly poor scissors, for example, you would find them in perhaps five minutes. Nobody else I think will in five months. ' Nowhere to be found, sir.' 'Can't find them,' say they, as so many rabbits or blue-bottle flies might. August 31. 1 It is the waest and forlornest-Iooking thing, like to make me cry outright. Indeed, I often feel, if I could sit down and {lreet for a whole day it would be an infinite relief to me, hut one's eyes grow dry. \\That a quantity of greeting, too, one used to do in the beginning of life. . .. I am hut low- ] Dl'scribin the re-arrangement of her berlrooUl. .ri.LONE IN CHEYNE ROlv. 281 spirited, you see. ,rant of potatoes, I am ashamcd to say, i the source of everything, and I will give up. September 8-D. Oh, how I wish I had you here again, ill or not ill. V\T e will try to bear the yoke together, and the sight of your face will do my sick heart good. . .. Your account would have made me quite glad again, had not my spirits been otherwise below par. " ant of potatoes, want of regular bodily health, nay-it must be admitted-I am myself too irregular with no Goody near me. If I were but regular! There will be not hing for it but that you come home and regulate. September O. You are evidently suffering much. I cannot help you at all. The only thing I can do is to wish for you here again, f:uch as you are; quiet at your own chimney-nook where it would be new life to me to see you sitting, never so lame if not quite too miserable and not in pain unendurable. Endur- ahle or not, we two, and not any other body, are the natural bearer;:; of it. . . . Of myself there is nothing to record, but a gallop of excellence yesterday, an evening to myself alto- gether, almost incapable, not. quite, and a walk under t.he f:hining skies between twelve and one a.m. The weather is as beautiful as it can be. Silent strangely when the infenml cockneyisrns sink away-so silent, brilliant, sad, tbat I was like to greet looking at it. September :!::!. I had the pain of exclluli11g poor Farie last night. I knew his rap and indeed was peremptory before that. ' No- body!' But Farie really wishes well to both of us. In my 100lPiiness here it often seems to me as if there \'laS nothing but nasty organ-grinding, rni::;guided, hostile, savage, or indifferent people round me from shore to hore; and Farie's \\Ïthdrawing footstep had a kind. of sadness. September 27. It is no wonder, as Jean say!', that you are' blackbasecl ' I at uch a journcy lying ahead, hut the rcal likelihood is it I . \ 1JilS('fl. - It wa.o a phrase ()f 111,\ m('\ther' .-T. c. 282 CARLYLE'S LiFE I1V LO.LVDON. will pass without essential damage to you. You will get to me on Saturday morning, and find me at least, and what home we have on this vexed earth, true to one another while we stay here. The house is quite ready. I shall not be long with my book now. . . . On Sunday in Belgrave Square I met the Dean of 'Vestminster; innocent heterodox soul, blasé on toast and water, coming on with his neat black-eyed little Scotch wife. Oh, what inquiries! RealI)' very innocent people, and really interested in you. September 20. Oh, my suffering little Jeannie ! Not a wink of real sleep again for you. I read (your letter) with that kind of heart you may suppose in the bright beautiful morning; even l\Iargaretta Terrace looking wholesome and kind, while for poor us there is nothing but restless pain and chagrin. And yet, dearest, there is something in your note 1 which is welcomer to me than anything I have yet had-a sound of piety, of devout humiliation and gentle hope and submission to the Highest, which affects me much and has been a great comfort to me. Yes, poor darling! This was wanted. Proud toicism you never failed in, nor do I want you to abate of it. But there is something beyond of which I believe you to have had too little. It softens the angry heart and is far from weakening it-nay, is the final strength of it, the fountain and nourishment of all real strength. Come home to your own poor nest again. That is a good change, and clearly the best of all. Gird your soul heroically together, and let me see you on Saturda.y by my side again, for weal or woe. "r e have had a great deal of hard travelling together, we will not break down yet, please God. How to thank Dr. and 1\lr8. Russell for what they bave done for you, much more how to repay them, beats all my ingenuity. And so l\lrs. Carlyle canle back to Cheyne Row, ii'OlD which she had been carried six rnonths before as in a hearse, expecting to see it no more. She re- appeared in her old circle, weak, shattered, her body 1 Letters and Jle7llol'ials, yo1. iii. p. 211. J1IRS. CARL YLE'S RECO VER y: 28 3 worn to a shadow, but with her spirit bright as ever- brighter perhaps; for Carlyle's tenderness in her illness had convinced her that he really cared for her, and the sunset of her 111arried life recovered something of the colours of its 1110rning. He, too sanguine always, persuaded hÏ1nself that her disorder was now worn out, and that t;he was on the way to a perfect restoration. She, I think, was under no such illusion. There wa::5 a gentle sInile in her face, if one ever spoke of it, which showed her incredulity. But fr0111 London she took no hurt. She seemed rather to gain strength titan to lose it. To her friends she ,vas a:::l risen from the dead, and it was a pleasure to her to see how dear she was to them and with what eagerness they pres::;ed forward to be of use. No one could care a little for Mrs. Carlyle, and the singular nature of her illness added to the interest which was felt for her. She required new n1Ïlk in the Illorning. A supply was sent in daily, fresh frun1 the Rector's cow. The Lroughanl was bought, and she had a childlike pride in it, as her husband's present. 'Strange and precious to look back upon,' he says, 'those last eighteen 1110nths as of a second youth-almost a second ehild- hood, with the wisd01l1 and graces of old age, which by IIeaven's great nlCrcy were conceded to her and Inc.' , Frederick' was finished in January, the last of Carlyle's great works, the last and grandest of theIne , The dreary task, and the sorrows and obstructions attending it,' 'a Inagazine of despairs, inlpossibilities, and ghastly difficulties never known but to hilnself, and by himself never to be forgotten,' all was over, , locked away and the key turned on it.' , It nearly killed TIle' [he says in his journal], , it, and IllY poor 28 4 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. J aile's drcadful illness, now happily over. K 0 sYJnpathy could be found on earth for those horrid struggles of twelve years, nor happily was any needed. On Sun- day evening in the cnd of January (1865) I walked out, with the multiplex feeling-joy not very pronlÎn- eut in it, but a kind of soleInn thankfulness traceable, that I had written the last sentence of that ullutter- able book, and, contrary to nlany forebodings in bad hours, had actually got done with it for ever.' , Frederick' was translated instantly into Gernlan, and in Germany, where the conditions were better known in which Carlyle had found his Inaterials, there was the warnlest appreciation of what he had done. The sharpest scrutiny only served to show how accu- rate was the worknlanship. Few people anywhere in Europe dremut twenty years ago of the position which Gennany, and Prussia at the head of it, \vere so soon to occupy. Yet Carlyle's book seenled to have been composed in conscious anticipation of what was cOIning. He had given a voice to the national fecling. He had brought up as it were from the dead the creator of the Prussian monarchy, and had re- placed hilll aJnong his people as a living and breath- ing lllan. He had cleared the air for the impending revolution, and Europe, when it canle, could see how the seed had grown which had expanded into the Gcrman Enl pire. In Enf!land it was at once admitted that a splendid ac1dition had bcen 111ac1e to the national litcrature. The book contained, if nothing else, a gallery of historical figures executed with a skill which placed Carlyle at the head of literary portrait paintcrs. The English mind remains insular and is hard to intcre t RECEPTIOI;r OF 'FREDERICK' 285 supreJnely in any hi tory but its own. The tone of ", Frederick' nowhere harmonized with popular senti- ment among us, and every page ('ontained sOlnething to offend. Yet even in England it was hetter receiyed on its first appearance than any of Carlyle's other ,vorks had been, and it gave solidity and massiveness to his already brilliant faIne. No critic, after the completion of Frederick,' challenged Carlyle's right to a place beside the greatest of English authors, past or present. lIe had sorely tried _\.merica; but Alnerica for- gave his sarcasms-forgot the' sJnoky chiJnney,' for- got the' Iliad in a X utshell,' and was cordially and enthusiastically admiring. Enlerson 8('nt out a para- graph, which went the round of the Union, that , "Frederick" was the wittiest book that ,vas ever written; a book that one would think the English people would rise up in Jnass and thank the author for by cordial a('c1amation, and signify, hy crowning him with oak leaves, their joy that such a head ex- isted aJnong thelll;' 'while synlpathisinp- and llluch- reading .America would nlake a new treaty, or :send a :M:inister Extraordinary to offer congratulations of honourinf! delight to England in acknowledgment of this donation.' A rather sanguine e"'(pectation on Emer- son's part! England has ('eased to stone or burn her prophets, but she does not yet 111ake them the subject of international treaties. She crowns with oak leaves her actors and her prinla-donnas, her politicians, who are to-day her idols, and to-lnorrow will find none so poor to do thelll reverence; to wi e }nen she is ('on- tented to pay more moderate homage, and leaves the final decorating work to time and future geJleratiolJ . 286 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. CHAPTEU XXVII. A.D. 186E)-ß. .rET. 70-71. · Frederick t completed-Summer in Annandale-Mrs. Carlyle in Nithsdale- Visit to Linlathen-Thomas Erskine-The Edinlmrgh Rectorship-Feelings in Cheyne Row about it-Ruskin's 'Ethic::! of the Dust.' THE last proofs of 'Frederick' being corrected and dismissed, the Carlyles went down, in the spring of 1865, to stay with Lady Ashburton at a seaside cot- tage at Seaton, in Devonshire. They spent a few quiet weeks there, and then went home again-Car- lyle, o he says, to 'sink and sink into ever new depths of stupefaction and dark Inisery of body and mind.' He was a restless spirit. vYhen busy, he complained that his work was killing hÎ1n; ,vhen he was idle, his lllind preyed upon itself. Perhaps, as was p-enerally the case, he exaggerated his own dis- cOlnforts. Long: before he had told his family, when he had terrified them with his accounts of himself, that they ought to know that when he cried Iurder he was not always being killed. \Vhen his soul seelned all black, the darkness only broken by lightnings, he was aware that sOlnetÌInes it was only a want of pota- toes. Still, in the exhaustion which followed on long exertion he was always wildly 11lnnoured About [ay he found that he wanted fre h ('hangc. Somf'- ANNANDALE ONCE AfORE. 28 7 thing was amiss with 1rs. Carlyle's right arm, so that she had lost the use of it for writing. She seelned ,veIl otherwise, however; she had no objection to being left alone, and he set off for Annandale, where he had not been for three years, 'Poor old Scot- land!' he said. 'It almost lnade Ine greet when I saw it again, and the first sound of a Scotch guard, and his broad accent, was strange and affecting to Ine.' His wife and he had grown but' a feckless pair of bodies,' 'a pair of lniserable creatures,' but they would not ' tine heart' ; and at the house of his sister, Mrs. Austin, he found the most careful preparations for his conlfort-' new pipes,' 'new towels,' 'new, excellent potatoes,' 'a new sofa to lie down upon after his rides,' everything that his heart could wish for. K ot a sound all night at the Gill, he wrote, after his arrival, except, at stated times, the grinding, brief clash of the railway, which, if I hear it at all, is a lash or loud crack of the JJ[ammon whip, going on at present over all the earth, on the enslaved backs of men; I alone enfranchised from it, nothing to do but hear it savagely clashing, breaking God Almighty's silence in that fatal or tragic manner, saying -not to me-' Y p accursed slaves! ' 1\1rs. Carlyle made shift to write t.o him with the hand which waR left to her; livel}T as ever, careful, for his sake, to take her Inisfortunes lightly. lIe, 011 his part, \V.as :ulmirinp-Iy grateful. To Jane TVelsh Ca1'lyle. The (;ill, June !). Thanks for the struggle you have made to get me a word of authentic tidiI1g ent. I enn read pprfeetly your poor 288 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LO VDO.lv. lit.tle left-hand lessons, and wonder at the progress you have made. Don't be impious, however. Your poor right hand will be restored to you, please God; and we may depend upon it, neither the coming nor the going in such cases goes by the rule of caprice. Alas! what a time we have all got into! I finished last night the dullest thick book, long- winded, though intelligent, of Lyell; and the tendency of it, very impotent, was, upon the whole, to prove that we are much the same as the apes; that Adam was probably no other than a fortunate ourang-outang who succeeded in rising in the world. 1\'Iay the Lord confound all such dreary in- solences of locpIacious hlockheadism, entitling itself Rcience. Science, as the unrlerstallrling of things worth knowing, was once a far different matter from this melancholy maundering and idle looking into the unknowable, and apparently the not worth knowing. He had his horse with hiIn-Fritz's successor, Lady Ashburton's present, WhOIl1 he called Noggs. On Noggs's back he wandered round the olel neigh- bourhooel, which he had first known as a schoolboy anù then as usher. Poor old Annan! he wrote. There the old houses stood, a bleared evening suñ shining as if in anger on them; but the disagreeable, mostly paltry living creatures who used to vex me in those days WEre all gone. The old Academy House! what a considerable stride to the New Academy I have been in for some time, and am thinking soon to quit. Good night, ye of the paltry type-ye of the lovely, too. Good, and good only, be with you all! Noggs and I, after these reHections, started at a mighty pace for Cummertrees, wind howling direct in our faces, and were there just as a luggage train was passing, amid tempests of muddy smoke, with a shrieking storm of discord, which Noggs could not but pause to watch the passage of, with a mixture of wonder and abhorrence. The waving of the woods about Kelhead, granrlly soughing in the windy sunset, soon hushed the mind of both of us to a hetter tone, if not a much gladder. REFREAT IN A.LV.f\lANDALE. 28 9 Aaain :- o June-July, 1865. :;\1 y rides are very strange, in the mood so foreign as mine. Last night, 6 to 8 p.m., was a perfect whirlwind, as the day had been, though otherwise fresh and genial. I went for t.he first time by the Priest-side Sands. Noggs had some reluctance to put forth his speed in the new element: strong tempests on the right eye; on the left the TItr-off floods of Sol way ; Criffel and the mountains, with the foreground of flat sand, in parts white with salt, right ahead. But I made the dog go, and had really a very interesting gallop, as different from that of Rotten Row as could well be. , Oh, rugged and all-supporting mother!' says Orestes, ad- dressing the earth. One has now no other sermon in the world, not a mockery and a sham, but that of these telluric and celestial silences, broken by such winds as there may be. So went Carlyle's summer at the Gill. She nlean- while, dispirited by her lmned hand, and doubtful of the future, resolved that she, too, would see Scot- land once more before she died. Not guessing how ill all \vas with her about the heart, he wished her to join hiln at his sister's. I am doing myself good in respect of health, he said, though still in a tremulous state of nerves, and altogether sombre and sad and vacant. l\Iy hand is given to shake. Alas! what is shaking to other states we know of? I am solitary as I wished to be, and do not object to the gloom and dispiritment, going down to the utterly dark. If they like to rest there, let them. The world has become in many parts hideou!5 to me. Its highest high no longer looks very high to me; only my poor heart, strange to say, is not very much blunted by all it has got. In the depths of silent sad- l1eSR, I feel as if there were still as much love in me--all gon to potential tears-as there was in my earliest day. Irs. Carlyle was proud of her h ushancl; Rhe honoured his character, she gloried in his fame and, 1\'. IT 29 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. she was sure of his affection. But in her sick state she needed rest, and rest, when the dark spirit was on hill1, she could not find at his side. He had his sister with hÏ1n; he had his brother Jmnes close at hand. To these kind kindred she might safely leave hÏ1n ; and she went on past Annan to the good Russells in Niths- dale, who had nursed her in the past year. Carlyle wished her only to do "what would give her n10st pleasure. He went to see her at Thornhill, met her at Dumfries, was satisfied to know that she was in safe hands, and was blind to the rest. There was in you [he wrote, after one of these meetings] such a geniality and light play of spirit, when you got into talk, as was quite surprising to me, and had a fine beauty in it, though very sorrowful. Courage! By-and-by we shall see the end of this long lane, as we have done of others, and all will be better than it now i . IIis own life 'was the nearest approach to zero that any son of Adam could make.' He read' his Boileau' lying on the grass, , sauntered a Ininimum,' 'rode a maxin1um,' s01netimes even began to think of wórk again, as if such idleness were disgraceful. For her, evidently, he was in no alarn1 at all. After her birthday, he paid a visit to his old friend, 1\11'. Spedding, at ]'Iirehouse, near Keswick. Spedding hilnself (elder brother of James, the editor of ' Ba- con ') he thought one of the best men he had ever known. There were three' beautiful young ladies,' Mr. Sped ding's daughters. Mirehouse was beautiful, and so were the ways of it; , everything nice and neat, dairy, cookery, lodging 1'001118. Simplex munditii8 the real title of it. not to speak of Skiddaw and the finest mountains of the earth.' lIe Inust have cnjoyed RETREAT IN AlvNA VDALE. 291 himself indeed, when he could praise so heartily. , 1\Iy three days at Keswick,' he said when they were over, 'are as a slnall polished flagstone, which I am not sorry to have intercalated in the rough floor of boulders which my sojourn otherwise has he en in these parts.' To 1'rIrs. Carlyle Nithsdale this time had been a failure. The sleeplessness came on again, and she fled back to Cheyne Row. 'Poor witch-hunted Goody,' he said; 'was there ever such a chase of the fiends?' :ThIiss Bro111ley took charge of her at Folke- stone, fronl which she was able to send a brighter account of herself. He, meanwhile, lingered on at his brother's at Scotsbrig. I am the idlest and most contented of men, he said, would things but let me alone, and time stay still. The clearness of the air here, the old hill-tops and grassy silences -it iR with a strange acquiescence that I fancy myself as bidding probably farewell to them for the last time. Annan- dale is gone out of me, lies all !'tark and dead, as I shall soon do, too. 'Vhy not? The peaceable torpor did not last long. He was roused first into a burst of indignation by reading an 'insolent and vulgar' review upon Ruskin's 'Sesanle and Lilies.' It was written by a man who professed attaehment to 1\lrs. Carlyle. I need not name him; he is dead now, and cannot be hurt by reading Car- lyle's description of him to her: A dirtyiRh little pug, irredeemahly imbedded in com- monplace, and grown fat upon it, and prosperous to an un- wholesome degree. Don"t you return his love. Nasty creature! with no eye for the beautiful, md awefully interest- ing to himself. u 2 29 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LONDON. In August Carlyle started on a round of visits- to 1\fr. Erskine at Linlathen, to Sir Willialn Stirling at Keir, to Edinburgh, to Lord and Lady Lothian at Newbattle, and then again to Scotsbrig. At Linlathen as wherever he went, he was a lnost welcolne guest; but he was slightly out of hlunour there. The good old St. Thomas, he wrote, eemed to mp some- times to have grown more secular in "'these his last years; eats better, drinks ditto, and is more at ease in the world: very wearisome, and inclined to feel distressed and to be disputatious on his new theories about God when Sinner Thomas will have nothing to do with them. Erskine. 'was not conscious of a fall in favour, either for himself or his theories, and his own aIlu- sion to Carlyle's visit shows that the differences had not been llluch accentuated. He had hoped that Irs. Carlyle \Vould have come with her husband. As she could not, he wrote her an affectionate letter, in which SOHle of the offending theories will perhaps be found. To Jane TYel8h Carlyle. Linll1then: August 18, 186;). Beloved J\irs. Carlyle,-I suppose you could not have come here, and yet it is with some sorrow that I accept this arrangement., as I scarcely expect to have another sight of your dear face on tbis eartb. One might ask what good would come of it if I had. I can only answer that ever since I have known that face it has been a cordial to me to see it. I am happy to think that you are getting better, and re- covering a little strength after that long suffering. I have a paternal feeling towards you, a tender feeling, as for a ehild, though you may think I have no right to have such a feeling; and yet your last letter, which was most sweet to my heart, f;eemed to say that you almoE-t expecteh as any man living did. Tyndall n1ac1e himself responsible to :ThIrs. Carlyle that her husband should be duly attended to on the road and at the scene of action; and to Tyndall's care she was content to leave hin1. The journey was to be broken at Fryston, where he would be received by J\Iilnes, now Lord Houghton. There he was to stay two nights, and then go on to Scotland. THE RECTORSHIP. 3 01 .r\ccordingly, on Thursday, the 2Ðth of :March, at nir.e a.m., Tyndall appeared with a cab in Cheyne Uow, he hilnself radiant-confident-or if he felt n1Ïs- givings (I believe he felt none), resolute not to show theln. Carlyle submitted passively to his directions, and did not seenl outwardly disturbed, 'in the saddest sickly mood, full of gloom and ll1Ïsery; but striving to hide it.' She, it wag observed, looked pale and ill, but in those days she seldolll looked otherwise. She had been busy providing little con1forts for his journey. RClnelnbering the lecture days she gave hilll her own small travelling flask, with a single glass of brandy in it, that he lllight n1Îx and drink it in the Hall, and think of her and be inspired. 'The last I saw of her (he says) was as she stood ,vith her back to the parlour door to bid nle good- bye. She kissed nle twice, she nle once, I her a second tÏIne.' The cab drove away. They were never to 11leet again in this world. 'Tyndall,' he says in his journal, 'was kind, cheery, inventiye, helpful. The loyallest son could not have III ore faithfully striven to support his father under every difficulty that rose, and they were Inany.' In a letter he says, , Tyndall'::: conduct to THe has been loyalty's own self: no adoring son could have lnore faithfully watched a decrepit father.' Frystoll was reached without misadventure. 'Lord and Lady IIoughton's kindnes was unbounded.' Tyndall wrote to lrs. Carlyle daily reporting every- thing on its brightest side. though the onlens did not open propitiously. ')ly first night,' he wrote hiln- self, , owing to railway and other noises, not to peak of excitations, talkings, dillnerings, wa totally sleeple 5 ; a night of wandering, starting to ,ain toh:1(,('o and 302 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. utter misery, thought of flying off next morning to Auchtertool for quiet.' l\Iorning light and reflection restored some degree of composure. He was alio.wed to breakfast alone-Tyndall took hÏ1n out for a long, brisk ride. He dined again alone, threw himself on a sofa, 'and by Heaven's blessing, had an hour and a half of real sleep.' In his bed he slept again for seven or eight hours, and on the Saturday on which he was to proceed found himself ' a ne,v man.' Huxley had joined the party at Fryston. Lord Houghton went with them as far as York. The travelling was disagreeable. Carlyle reacheù Edin- burgh in the evening, 'the forlornest of all physical wretches.' There too the first night was' hideous,' with 'dreadful feelings that speaking would be im- possible,' 'that he would utterly break down;' to which he in his Inind said, , well then,' , and was preparing to treat it with the best conte111pt he could.' On Sunday, however, he found him8elf surrounùed with friendly faces. Mr. Erskine had come frOln Linlathen. His two brothers were there froln Scots brig ; all Edinburgh was combining to do him honour, and was hearty and warm and enthusiastic. His dispiritnlent was not proof against a goodwill which could not but be agreeable. He collected hiInself, slept well the Sun- ùay night (as felons sleep, he would himself probably have said, the night before execution), and on the 1\londay was ready for action. The installation of a Rector is a ceremonious affair. Ponderous robes have to be laid on, and there is a marching in procession of officials and dignitaries in crimson and ermine through the centre of the crowùed Ilan. The RcC'tor is lea to a conspicuous THE RECTORSHIP. 3 0 3 chair; an oath is adlninistered to him, and the business begins. When Carlyle rose in his seat he was received with an enthusiasm at least as loud as had been shown for lr. Gladstone-and perhaps the feeling of the students, as he had been one of thelnselves-was more com- pletely genuine. I believe-for I was not present- that he threw off the heavy academical gown. He had not been accustOll1ed to robes of honour. He had been only a man all his life; he chose to be a man still: about to address a younger generation who had come together to hear sOlnething that might be of use to theIne He says of himself, , 1\Iy speech was delivered as in a mood of defiant despair, and under the pre:ssure of nightn1are. Some feeling that I was not speaking lies alone sustained me. The applause, &c., I took for empty noise, which it really was not altogether.' This is InercIy his own wa)T of expressing that he ,vas doing what he did not like; that, having undertaken it, he becaIne interested in what he was about, grew po sesseù with his subject, and fell into the automatic state in which alone either speaking or any other valuable work can be done as it ought to be. lIis voic>e was weak. There were no more volleys of the old Annandale grape-shot; otherwise he was easy, fluent, and like hinlself in his calmest Blood. He began with a pretty allusion to the time when he had first come up (fifty-six years before) to Edin- burgh to attend the University classes. Two entire generations had passed away since that time. A third, in choosing him as Rector, was expressing its opinion of the use which hc had made of his life, and was dcclaring that 'hl ' ha<1 nut been an unworthy 304 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOP/DON. labourer in the vineyard.' At his age, and residing as he did, far away in London, he could be of little service to the University, but he lnight say a few words to the students which might perhaps be of Smile value to thenl. In soft, earnest language, with the plainest C01nnlon-sense, nlade picturesque by the fonn in which it was expressed, he proceeded to impress on thenl the elementary duties of diligence, fidelity, anù honest exertion, in their present work, as a preparation for their coming life. Their line of study was, in the nlain, luarked out for thenl. So far as they could choose (after a half-reverent, half-Inunorous allusion to theology, exactly in the right tone for a modern audience) he advised thenl to read history-especially Greek and Rmnan history-and to observe especially how, among these nations, piety and awe of the gods lay at the bottom of their greatness; that without such qualities no lnan or nation ever CaIne to good. Thence he passed to British history, to Oliver Cr0111- well, to their own Knox (one of the select of the earth), to the Covenanters, to the resolute and noble effort of the Scotch people to wake Christ's gospel the rule of their daily lives. Religion was the thing essential. Theology was not so essential. He was giving in brief a popular epit01ne of his own opinions and the growth of them. In early life he had hÜnself been a Radical. lIe was a Radical still in substance, though no longer after the popular type. He was addressing students who were as ardent in that matter as he had hÜnself once been, and he was going on dangerous ground as he advanced. But he chose to speak as he felt. lIe touched upon demo<:racy. lIe showed how dC111o- SPEECH AT EDLVBURGH. 3 0 5 cracies, frmn the nature of thin ", never had hcen, inll never could be of long ontinuance; how essential it was, in such a world as ours, that the noblest and wisest hould lead and that the rest should obey and follow. It was thus that England and Scotland had grown to he what they were. It was thus only that they could keep the place which they had won. We were apt to think that through the spread of reading and kIlO\" ledge the conditions of Innnan nature were ('hanged, and that inequalities no longer existed. He thought slig-htly of the spread of knowledge as it was called, 'Inaid-servants getting instructed in the 'ologies,' anù 'knowing lcss of brewing:, and boiling, and baking, of obedience, modesty, humility, and 1110ral conduct.' Knowledge, WiSÙOlll, true superiority wa as hard to come at now as ever, and there were just as few that arrived at it. lIe then touched OIl another branch of the same suhject, one on which he wa., often thinking, the belicf in oratory and orators which was now so widely pre,-ailing. Dmllos- thene; n1Ï ht be the greatest of orators, but Phocion proved right in the facts. And then after a word from Goethe on education, he came to speak of this present age, in which our own lot was cast. Ill" spoke of it then as he always did-as an era of anarchy awl disintegration, in which all thin s, not made of asbestos, w re on the way to being cOIl- :--lllned. lIe did not c01llplaill of this. lIe only bade his hearers observe it and nlake the best of it. lie told thelll to be true awl f Üthful in their own lives; to encleavour td do right, not caring wh('ther they SlIC- ceeded, as it was ('aIled, in life; to play their own part a quietly and Hilllply as they could, and to leave the IV. x 3 06 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN L01VDON. rest to Providence. 'Don't suppose,' he Raid, , that people are hostile to you, or bear you ill-will in the world. You Inay often feel as if the whole world was ohstructing you, setting itself against you; but you will find that to mean that the world is travellin a in a Q different way, and, rushing on its o,vn paths, heedlessly treads on you. That is mostly all. To you there is no specific ill-will.' He bade them walk straight forward; not expecting that life would be strewed with roses; and knowing that they must meet their share of evil as w ll as good. But he told them, too, that they would find friends if they deserved them, and in fact would meet the degree of success which they had on the whole deserved. He wound up with Goethe's hymn, which he had called, to Sterling, , The marching musit3 of the Teutonic nations;' and he finished with the words to which to the end he so often returned: , Wir heissen euch hoifen.' (We bid you to hope.) lIe was long puzzled at the effect upon the world's estimate of him which this speech produced. There was not a word in it which he had not already said, and said far more forcioly a hundred tÏ1nes. But suddenly and thenceforward, till his death set them off again, hostile tongues ceased to speak af!a:inst him, and hostile pens to write. The speech was printed in full in half the newspapers in the island. It was received with universal acclan1ation. A low price edition of his works became in demand, and they flew into a strange temporary popularity with the reading multitude. Sartor,' poor beast,' had struggled into life with difficulty, and its readers since had been few, if select; 20,000 eopies of the THE RECTORSH1P. 3 0 7 shilling edition of it were now sold instantly on its publication. It was adn1Ïtted universally that Carlyle was a 'great man.' Yet he saw no inclination, not the slightest, to attend to his teaching. He himself could not Inake it out, but the explanation is not far to seek. The Edinburgh adùress containeù his doctrines with the fire which had provoked the ani- nlosity taken out of them. They were reùuced to the level of church sermons; thrown into general pro- positions which it is pretty and right and becon1Ïng to confess with our lips, while no one is ::supposed to act on theIne We adInire and praise the beautiful language, and we reward the performance with a bishopric, if the speaker be a clergynlan. Carlyle, people felt with a sense of relief, Incant only what the preachers meant, and was a fine fel10w after all. The address had been listened to with delight by the studcnts, and had ended alnidst rounds of ap- plause. Tyndall telegraphed to Irs. Carlyle his 1 hrief but sufficient message, 'A perfect triulnph.' The lnaids in Chcyne How clapped thcir hands when it arrived. Maggie vVelsh danced for delight. 1\1rs. Carlyle drove off to Forster's, where she was to dine. Dickens and Wilkie Collins were there, and they drank Carlyle's health, and it was, as she ::said, 'a goo l joy.' He meanwhile had escaped at his best speed from the scene of his exploit; making for his brother's lodging::s in George Street, where he could smoke a pipe and collect himself. IIundreds of lads followeù him, crowding and hurrahing. I waved my hand prohibitively at the door (he wrote), perha}J lifted my hat, and they gave but one cheer more- I Leffel's and Jlenwl'ials, vol. iii. p. 318. "\': 2 3 08 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. something in the tone of it which did for the first time go into my heart. Poor young men, so well afff'cted to the poor old brother or grandfather here, and in such a black whirlpool of a world, all of us. He dispatched a few words home. All is finished, and rather well, infinitely bet.ter than I often expected. You never saw such a tempest of enthu- siastic excitation as that among the student people. Never in the world was I in such a scene. I took your drop of brandy with me-mixed it in a tumbler for cùoling of the tongue. I had privately a kind of th1"eap that the brandy should be yours. The note sent off, he had a quiet \valk in the twilight with Er kine and his brother Jarnes. Soule fragments of ornamental work had still to be gone through; invitations to this and that, and congratulations to reply to; 'Spedding's letter wel- COIner than any other.' lIe slept tolerably in spite of excitement, hut was' like a man killed with kinù- ness, all the worltl cOining tUlnbling on him. Do me this, ee me that! above all, dine, cline!' He staye(1 four days in the lllidùle of all this. On the Thursday he was worn out. 'Oh!' he cried, , there neyer was such an element-cornparable to that of the three children in the fire before N ebuchadnezzar. . Ilis original plan had heen to go straight home, but he W:1S tempted by the thought of a few peaceful (lay in ....\nnandale, before plungillg into London again. On the Friday he made for quict Scotsurig, there, with no company but his brother and his sister :Mary, to 'cool down and recover his \yit,,: The newspapers, Ineanwhile, were oullùillg his pI'ai eR. 'Punch; always affèctionate, even in the THE NE trSPdPERS. 3 0 9 Pamphlct timcs, had a cartoon in which Carlyle wa seen spcaking on one side, like a gcntly wi.,e old patriarch, and Bright on the other, with due contrast of face and sentiment. At the end of a \"eek hc was in his old condition again. ' Seldum,' he said, , have I been better in the last six month , so ble::5 cd is the country stillness to lne, thc purity of sky and earth, and the absence of all babble and annoyance.' IIc would then have ha:;teued back, but he u1et with an accident, a slight sprain in one of his ankles, sent, he supposed,' to kcep hin1 in the leyel of COIllHlOl1 humanity, and take any undue conceit out of him.' TInts he lingercd on, not sorry, perhaps, for the excuse. 'Punch' caulC to ;3cotsbrig, and' gave every- body hearty entertainment.' 'The thing,' he said, 'is really capital, and has bcen done by SOlne thoroughly well wishing man. The portrait, too, is not bad, though con1Ícal a little, and thc slap dirccted on Bright is perfcctly suitable.' :ßIill wrote as warmly a::5 he eould auout an address which UUtst have beell wholly unpalatahle, ll's. Carlylc scnding the lctter down tu him, and expccting he 'would scrcmIl at sueh a fro ty nothiugnc::5'-:.' lIe did not eI'eam, hc answered, bccau c hc had ceasf.'d to eare what :\lill llligh t do or f()l'ucar to do. l\lill e:-- entially was madc of aw- dust, he aud his ' great thinking of thc Age," a III I was to be left lying, with good-bye and peaee to him for C\TCI'Illure.' Thc anklc was long in mending, and the return wao;; still delayed. On the l th of \.pril he wrotc- uthiT1g from Goody tu-day-\wll, you havt' been halld- :-lImdy dilig('llt of laU', allJ ha\t' gi\t'll me at It'a t one :-11Il1I'y hlillJ.. amollg the great c.1rL'o:,t. In 3 12 CARLYLE'S LIFE flV LOiVDO.i.v' the afternoon he went out in her bronghanl for the' usual drive round Hyde Park, taking her little dog with her. Nero lay under a stone in the garden at Cheyne now, but she loved all kinds of anilllals, dogs especia]]y, and had found anuther to S1H'('f'('d hin1. Near Victoria Gate she had put the ùog out to run. A passing carriage went over its foot, and, more frightened than hurt, it lay on the road on its ba(.k crying. Dhe sprang (jut, caught the ùog in her arms, took it with her into the bnJugham, anù was neVf>r more ::,een alive. The coachman went twice round the drive, by 1\larble Arch down to Stanhope Gat.e, along the Serpentine and round again. COIning a see'ond tlIlle near to the Achilles statue, and surprised to receive no directions, he turned round, saw in- c.1istinctly that sOluething \ya wrong, and a:sked a gentleman near to look into the carriage. The g-entlclllan told hinl briefly to take the laùy to St. George' _Hospital, which was nut OO yards distant. She was sitting with her hands folded on her lap dead. I bad stayed at horne that day, bus ' with some- thing, before going out in the evening. A 8ervant ('ame to the door, sent by the housekeeper at Cheyne Ho\y, to ay that an accident had happened to l\Irs. Carlyle, and to beg Iue to go at once to St. George's. Instinct told ll1C what it must be. I went on the way to Geraldine; she was getting ready for the party, anù supposed that I had called to take her there. I told her the nlL'Ss:tge which I had received. She flung a cloak about her, and we drove to the ho pital together. There, on a bed in a small room, we fOlLnd lr . Carlyle. h('autifully drc8secl, dre eù DEA TH OF AIRS. CARL YLE. 3 1 3 as she always was, in quietly perfect taste. Nothing had been touched. lIeI' bonuet had not been taken off. It was as if she had sate upon the bed after leaving the brougham, and had fallen back upon it asleC'p. But there was an expression on her face which was not sleep, and which, long as I had known her, resenlbled nothing which I had ever seen there. The forehead, which had been contracted in life by continued pain, had spread out to its natural ureadth, and I saw for the first time how lllagnifieent it was. The brilliant ulOckery. the saù suftnesb with which the 1ll0C kery alternated, both were alike gone. The features lay cOlnpo ell in a stern majestic calnl. I haxe seen lllany faces autifu l in death, but never allY so grand as hers. I can write no more of it. I did not then know all her history. I knew only how she had suffered, and how heroically she had borne it. Gerallline knew c\'erything. 1\lrs. Carlyle, in her own journal, call Geraldine her Cow;uelo, her chosen c:omforter. She could not speak. I took her home. 1 hurried down to Cheyne nuw, where I found Forster llalf-distracteù, yet, with his vigorous sense, alive to what must innnediatcly be done. 1\11'. Blunt, the Hector of Chelsea, was alHo there; he, too, dreadful1y shaken, but collected aud C'onsiderate. Two points hall immediately to be con8idered: how to COlll111Unicate the news to Carlyle; and how to prevent an inque t and an eXaIuinatioll of the boùy, which Forster saill ,\ ould kill hilll. Forster undertook the last. lIe was a lunacy commissioner, and had weight with official persolls. Dr. Quain had attended 1\lrs. Carlyle in her inlle , and frOlll him I helieye For:,ter obtained a ('crtificate of the probahle ('aUH' of 1 be (leath, 314 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. which was received as sufficient. As to Carlyle, we did not know precisely where he was, whether at Dumfries or Scotsbrig. In the uncertainty a tele- graIn was sent to John Carlyle at Edinburgh, another to Dr. John Brown, should John Carlyle be absent. By them the news was forwarded the same night to Dlnnfrics, to his brother-in-law, 1\1.:1'. Aitken, with whOln he wa staying, to be COllnllunicateù according to :nIl'. itken's discretion. And now I go on with Carlyle's own narrative written a fortnight after. Saturday night, about 9 p.m., I was sitting in sister Jean's at Dumfries, thinking of my railway journey to Chelsea on .1\Ionday, and perhaps of a sprained ankle I had got at Scotsbrig two weeks or so before, when the fatal telegrams, two of them in succession, came. It had a kind of stun- ning effect upon me. Not for above two days could I e timate the immeasurable depths of it, or the infinite sorrow which had peeled my life all bare, and in a moment shattered my poor world to universal ruin. They took me out next day to wander, as was medically needful, in the green sunny sabbath fields, and ever and anon there rose fro III my sick heart the ejaculation, , l\Iy poor little woman!' but no full gust of tears came to my relief, nor has yet come. "Till it ever? A stony "T oe's me, woe's me! some- times with infinite tenderness and pity, not for myself, is my habitual mood hitherto. I had been hitching lamely about, my company the green solitudes and fresh spring breezes, quietly but far from happily, about the hour she died. Sixteen hours after the telegram, Sunday, about 2 p.m., there came to me a letter from her, written on Saturday, before going out, the cheeriest and merriest of all her several prior ones. A note for her, written at Scotsbrig Friday morning, and which should have been a pleasure to ht:'r at breakfa t that morning, was not put in till after 6 a.m. DEATH OF AIRS. CARLYLE. 3 1 5 at EccJefechan, negligence excusable but unforgetable; had not left Ecclefechan till 10 p.m., nor arrived till 2 p.m., and lay 'ltnopened. :1\Ionday morning, John set off with me for I..ondon. Never, for 1,000 years, should I forget that arrival here of ours, my first unwelcomed by her. She lay in her coffin, lovely in death. Pale death, and things not mine or ours, had possession of our poor darling. Very kind, very helpful to me, if to no other, everybody was; for I learnt ultimately, had it not been for John Forster and Dr. Quain, and every- body's mercy to me, there must have been, by rule, a coroner's inquest held, which would have been a blotch upon my memory, intolerable then, and discordantly ugly for all time coming. It is to Forster's unwearied and invincible efÌorts that I am indebted for escape from this sad defile- ment of my feelings. Indeed, his kindness then and all through, in every particular and detail, was 'ltnexmnpled, of a cordiality and assiduity almost painful to me. Thanks to him, and perpetual recollection. Next day ",ander over the fatal localities in Hyde Park, Forster and brother John settling, apart from me, everything for the morrow. l\Iorrm\, ".,. ednesday morning, we were under way with our sacred burden. John and F. kindly did not speak to me. Good Twistleton was in the train without consulting me. I looked out upon the spring fields, the everlasting skies in silence, and had for most part a more endurable day till Haddington, where friends were waiting with hospitalities, which almost drove me openly wild. I went out to walk in the moonlit silent streets, not suffered to go alone. I looked up at the windows of the old room, where I had first seen her, on a summer evening after sunset, six and forty years ago. Ed- ward Irving had brought me out walking to Hadrlington, 8he the first thing I had to see then; the beautiful1est young creature I had ever beheld, sparkling with grace and talent, though sunk in sorrow 1 and speaking litt Ie. I noticed her once looking at me. Oh heavens, to think of that now! I ::;he Lad lately lost her futher. 3 16 CARLYLE'S LIÞE IN LONDON. The Dods, I excellent people, in their hünest, homely way, had great pity for me, patience with me. I retired to IllY room, slept none all night, little sleep to me since that telegram night, but lay silent in the great silence. Thur day, April 26, wandered out into the churchyard, &c., at ] p.m. came the funeral, silent, small, only twelve old friends and two volunteers besides us there. Yery beautiful and noble to me, and I laid her in the grave of her father, according to covenant of 40 years back, and all was ended. In the nave of the old Abbey Kirk, long a ruin, now being saved from further decay, with the skies looking down on her, there sleeps my little Jeannie, and the light of her face will never shine on me more. "T e withd.rew that afternoon; posted up by Edinburgh, with its many confusions, towards London all night; and about 10 or 11 a.m. were shovelled out here, where I am hitching and wandering about; best. off in strict solitude- were it only possible-my own solace and employment that of d'Jillg all which I could imagine she would have liked me to do. . . . The first awakening in the morning. the reality of aU, stripped so ban before me, is the ghastliest half-hour of the day. A kind of leaden weight of sorrow has come over all my univer$e, with sharp ignancy mory every Il'JW and then. I cannot weep; no relief yet, or almost Hone-of tears. God enable me to live out my poor rem- llallt of day in a manner she would have applauded. Hers -as known to me only-were all very noble, a life of hidden l;eauty, an given to me as part of my own. How had I deserved it? I, unworthy! Beautiful, exceedingly! Oh, how mournfully beautiful now! I called her and thought her my Schätzen; but my word was shallow as compared to the fact, and I never thought of losing her. Vaguely, al ways, I reckoned that I as the elder should be the first, such a vivacity and brightness of life I noticed in her, in pite of her perpetual burden (,f infirmities and sufferings day by day. T,\ice, perhaps thrice, during her horrible illness 1 Old fl'iellds of thl' \Yel:o;hes, at who e hOIl e Ill' "as rt'cl'iwd at lladùingtull. DEATII OF lIfRS. CARLYLE. 317 of 1864, the thought rose in me, ghastly and terrible, that I was about to lose her; but always my hope soon revive'} into a strange kind of confidence; and very rarely was my work interrupted, but went on tpadil'y up in the garret, as the one thin1! alvatory to hoth of us. And oh, her looks as he sate in the balcony at St.. Leonards! Npver, never shall I forget that tenderness of love, and that depth as of misery and despair. In these days, with lnournflll pleasure, Carlyle composed the beautiful epitaph which is printed in the 'Letters and l\felnorials \' 'a word,' he said, 'true at least, and con1in f1'0111 his heart, which felt a In01nentar)T solace frm11 it.' A few letterR, too, he wrote on the subject, two especially to l\'Ír. Er:,kine, one while the wound was freshly bleeding, another a few months after, which I give together :- To Tho1Jln8 Erskine, Esq. Chelsea, )Iay 1, 186G. near :\Ir. Erskine,-Your little word of sympathy wput to my heart, as few of the many others ('oulel do. Thanks for it. Thanks al o, and many of them, for your vi it to poor Betty,2 to whom I have yet written nothing, though well aware that of aU living hearts but one, hprs is the !o;adde$t on this occasion. Pray go out to her again after a time, and say that so long as I live in the world, I wish and propose to keep sight of her, and in any distress that may f tll on her, to ask myself what I can do tl) be of heIp to t hat good so ul. Hitherto I write to nobody, see nobody but my brotlH-'r amI .Maggie 'Yelsh, of Auchtertool. Indeed, I find it is be t when I do not even speak to anybody. The troke that has tit Hen on me is immeasurable, and has shattered in pieces 1 V 01. iii. p. :341. .l 1\rr1'l. Cêtrl 'le'R old TTaddington nnr p, often meuti0l1l'd in her h.ttl'l'R. 3[8 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOIVDON. my whole existence, which now :mdden]y lies all in ruins round me. In her name, whom I have lost, I must try to repair it, rebuild it into something of order for the few years or days that may remain to me, try not to waste them further, but to do something useful with them, under the stern monition I have had. If I but can, that should be my way of honouring her, whose history on earth now lies before me, aU bathed in sorrow, but beautifu] exceedingly, nay, of a kind of epIC grandeur and heroic nobleness, known only to one IlPart now. God bless you, dear 1\lr. Erskine. You will not forget me, 1\lrs. Stirling and you; nor will I either of you. Yours sincerely, T . CARLYLE. Chelsea: Octobf'r 27, lRGß. Dear 1\11'. Erskine,- Your word of remembrance was very welcome to me, and has gone ringing through my solitude here with a gentle, pleasant, and friendly sound ever since. J have had many thoughts since I last saw you, silent near]y all, and mostly heyond the domain of words. A calamity which was most sudden, which was infinite to me, and for which there is no remedy conceivable, my poor little home in this world, as if struck by lightning, 'when I least ex- pected it, and shattered all into ruin !- I have had enough to think of, to mourn over, and earnestly consider; taking counsel of the Eternities mainly, and of such still voices as dwell there. I have been and am very sad, sad as death 1 may well say; but not miserable either; not.hing of the mean wretchedness which has defaced other long por- tions of my life. This is all noble, tender, solemn to me. . I might define it as a time of divine worship rather, per- hal's the only period of real vor8hip I have known for a great while past. I have tried considerably to be busy, too, and am still trying. 1\Iuch has to be set in order, and rest is not permitted till I follow whither she has gone before me. :May my death, which stands calmly consolatory in my sight at all moments, be beautiful as hers, and God's will be done now and for ever. DEATH OF lIIRS. CARLYLE. 3 1 9 For several weeks there was absolutely no speech or company. Now there is occasionally an hour of rational dis- course, which is worth something. Vain, idle talk, which is always rife enough, I find much sadder than any form of silence. J\Iy bodily health is not worse, perhaps even a shade better than what you last saw of it. :L\Iyarrangements for the winter are not yet fixed; but I try to keep myself in what I fondly call work, of a weak kind, fitted to my weakness. That is my anchor, if it will hold. Adieu, dear l\1r. Erskine! Here has F. come in upon me, who is my nearest neighbour and a good man. I must say fc.1rewell. Yours ever, T . CARLYLE. 3 20 CARL YlE'S LIFE IV L01VDON. CIIAPTER XXIX A.D. 18!1G. LET. í 1. l\Iessage of sympathy from the Queen-.Tohn Carlyle-Retrospects- A future life-Attempts at occupation-1\Iiss Davenport Bromley -The Eyre COIl1lllittee-:V[emnrips -119ntone-Stay there with Laùy ARhlmrton-Entries in Journal. TIlE installation at Edinburcrh had drawn the worlel's I:) eyes on Carlyle. His address had been in everyone's han<1s, had been adn1Ïred by the wise, and had been the fashion of the lTIOment with the l1nÜtituùe. The death of his wife following imn}ediately, in so sudden and startling a Ulanner, had given hilll the genuine synlpathy of the entlre nation. His enenlies, if ene- n1Ïes remaincd, had been respectfully silent. The Queen represented her whole subjects aud the whole English-speaking race when she conveyed to Cheyne Row, through Lady Augusta Stanley, a message deli- cate, graceful, and even affectionate. John Carlyle had rClnained there after the return f1'0111 lladdington to London. To hinl Lady Augusta wrote, at bel' l\íajesty's desire, and I will not injure the effect of her words by compressing thenl. To Dr. Carlyle. Osborne: April 30, 1 k(jC>. Dear Dr. Carlyle,-I was here when the neWR of the terrible calamity with whch your brother has been vi:.;itcù DEATH OF fifRS. CARLYLE. 3 21 reached Her )Iajesty, and was received by her with feelings of sympathy and regret, all the more keen from the lively int.erest with which the Queen had so recently followed the proceedings in Edinburgh. Her .Majesty expressed a wish that, as soon as I could do so, I should convey to .Mr. Carlyle the expression of these feelings, and the assurance of her sorrowful understanding of a grief which she herself, alaR! knows too well. It was with heartfelt interest that the Queen heard yester- day that l\lr. Carlyle had. been able to make the effort to return to his desolate home, and that you are with him. Per onally Carlyle was unknown to the Queen. lIe had never been presented, had never sought adnlÏssion within the channeù circle which sur- rounds the constitutional crown. Perhaps, in read- ing Lady \.ugusta's words, he thought more of the sYlnpathy of the' bereaved widow' than of the notice of his sovereign. He replied :- Chelsea: !\lay 1, 1866. Dear Lady Augusta,-The gracious ma.rk of Her l\lajestY'8 sympathy touches me with many feelings, sad and yet beau- tiful and high. 'Vill you in the proper manner, with my humblest respects, express to Her 'IajeRty my profound sense of her great goodness to me, in this the day of my calamity. I can write to nobody. It is best for me at pre- sent when I do not even speak to anybody. Believe me yours, with many grateful regards, T. CARLYLE. What he was to do next, how he was to live for the future, who was to live with hÏIn and take care of hÌ1n, were questions which his friends were anxiously asking among themselves. Circunlstancc , nature, everything seemed to point to his brother John as the fittest companion for him. FrOln early IV. y 3 22 CARL YLE'S LIFE / V LOiVDOlV. years John had been the nearest to his heart of an his brothers. Jobn was the correspondent to whom he wrote with the Inost absolute undisguise; fr0111 whom alone-and this was the highest proof of affec- tion which he could give-he had once been prepared to accept help in Inoney, if extremity had overtaken hiIl1. After a good In any years of experience as a family physician, after smne fitful independent prac- tice, John Carlyle had retired fr0111 his profession with an aInple fortune. lIe had nlarried, but had been left a childless widower, and was using his Ineans in adding to the c01nforts of his sisters' fami- lies. lIe had a sound intellect, which he had dili- gently culti Tated. He was a fine Italian scholar. lIis translation of Dante "was of adn1Îtted excellel1<'c. In face, in yoice, in mind. he was like his brother. Though with less fire and capacity, he was his equal in singlene s of character, essentially true, genuine, and good-"with occasional roughness of DIanneI', occasional heedlessness of other people's feeling-s- hut with an honest affectionatelless, with an admira- tion and even adoration of his brother"s grander qualities. lIe, of an others, was the one who was best qualified to relieve, by residing there, , the gaunt solitude of ChejTne RO"\\T.' Sonle thoughts of the kind, as will he seen, had heen in the l1lÎnds of hoth of then1. )\ieanwhile, ,...- smnewhere about. in the fir t week in l\lay, Carlyle, who had hitherto desired to he left alone, sent me a mess:tcre that he would like to see me. He CaIne 7:' down to Ine into the library in his dressing gown, haggard and as if turned to stone. IIp had scarcely -:ìept, he said, ince the funeral. lIe could 110t DEATH OF .LJI"RS. CdRL YLE. 3 2 3 'cry.' He was stunned and stupefied. He had never realised the possibility of losing her. lie had settled that he would die first, and now she was gone. FrOlll this time and onward , as long as he was in town. I saw him almost daily. He was looking through her papers, her notebooks and jouTnal ; and old scenes ('alne mercilessly back to him in \'istas of Inournful Inelnory. In his long sleepless nights, he recognised too late what she had felt and suffered under his childish irritabilities. His faults rose up in ren10rseless judgn1cnt, and as he had '1 thought too little of theln before, so now he ex- aggerated them to hill1self in his helpless repentance. For such faults an atonelnent was due, and to hcr no atonelnent could now he Inade. He remenlbered, however, Johnson's penance at Uttoxeter; not once, but nlany times, he told lile that sOlnething like that was required from hinl, if he could see his way to it. , Oh !' he cried, again and again, 'if I could but see her once more, were it but for five minutes, to let her know that I always loved her through all that. She never did know it, never.' 'If he could but see her I again! ' His heart seelned breaking as he said it, and through these ,veeks and 1110nth:-; he was often mourn- fully reverting to the subject, and speculating whether such future meeting Inight be looked for or not. He would not let himself he deluded by emotion. His intellect was vigorous as ever, as ill uch as ever on its guard against superstition. The truth about the matter was, he admitted, absolutely hidden froIn us ; we could not know, we were not Incant to know. It would be a God willed. 'In IllY Father's house are mall)' man i()l1 !' , Yes,' he said, 'if you arc God, y 2 3 2 4 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON: you nlay have a right to say so; if you are man, what do you know lnore than I or any of us ( , Yet then and afterwards when he grew calm, and was in full possession of hinlself, he spoke always of a life to come, and the lneeting of friends in it as a t hing t Ï1np ossible. IIi spite of science he had a clear conviction that everything in this universe, to the slnallest detail, was ordered with a conscious F p . Nothing happened to any lnan which was not or- dained to happen. No accident, no bullet on battle- field, or sickness at hOllle, could kill a 111an till the work for which he was appointed was done, and if this was so, we were free to hope that there was a E,!!,r pos e in our individual existence which was 110t exhausted in our earthly condition. The spirit, the soul of man, was not an accident or lnere result of the organisation of protoplasm. Intellect and 1110ral sense were not pllt into man by a being which had none of its own. At no time of Carlyle's life had such a conclusion as this been credible to him. Again it was unlike nature so to waste its energies as to spend seventy years in training and disciplining a character, and to fling it away when complete, as a child flings away a plaything. It is possible that his present and anguished longing lent nlore weight to these argu- ments than he would otherwise have been able to allow theIne At any rate it was round this hope and round his own recollections and remorse that our conver ations chiefly turned when we took up our walks again; the walks thC'lllselves tending usually to the spot where irs. Carlyle was last seen alive; where, in rain or sunshine, he reverently bared his head. By degrees he roused hinlself, as he said in his ATTE.AIPTS AT OCCUPATION. 325 letters to Erskine, to think of trying some work again. He could still do sOlnething. Politics, philo- sophy, literature, were rushing on faster than ever in the direction which he most disliked. He sketched a schelne for a journal in which there was to be a running fire of opposition to all that. I and Ruskin were to contribute, and it Inight have COllIe to sonle- thing if all three of us had been wining, which it appears we were not. In a note of the 2nd of August, this year, he says to TIle :- Has Ruskin yet written to you on that periodical we, or at least I, were talking of? I did not find him bite very ardently on my first or on this second mention of the pro- ject; nor do I know what you can well answer him; nor am I to be much or perhaps at all considered in it. I! alas! alas! but the thing will have to be done one day, I am well of opinion; though oy whom or how, which of us can say? John Carlyle stayed on in Cheyne How, with no fixed arrangement, but as an experiment to ::;ee how it would answer. \Ve all hoped it might continue; but struck down as Carlyle had been he was still himself, and his self-knowledge made hÜn amusingly cautious. John, good natured though he might be, had his own ways and lllullours, and his o\Yn plain- ness of speech; and to live easily with Carlyle re- quired that one must be prepared to take stormy weather when it CaIne, in silence. He would be penitent aftel'ward ; he knew his brother's TIlerÍts and his own faults. ' Your readine s,' he ::;aid, , and eagerness at all times to be of help to me, you may depend upon it is a thing I mil always well aware of, at the bottOlll of all my impatÏences and discontents.' But t.he illlpatien(' s and (li ('ontents were there, and 3 26 CARLYLE'S LIFE iN LOND01Y. lIad to be calculated upon. John was willing to go on, and Carlyle diù not absolutely refuse, but both, after some Inollths' trial, doubted if the plan would answer. I felt (Carlyle wrote to him, during a short separation) that in the practical substance of the thing you are probably }"ight. Noises are not the rock it need split on. Everything might be peaceably deafened, if that were all; but it is cer- tain you and I have given one another considerable annoy- ance, and have never yet been able to do together. That is t he nature of the two beasts. They cannot change that, (md ought to consider it well in t beir eagerness to be near one another, and get the benefit of mutual affection, now that t'ach of them, one of them above all, needs it more and more. I must see, I must see; and you too, if you are still upon this project, you will consider all things, weigh them wit h the utmost clearness you have, and gradually come to ome decision which the facts will corre::,pond to. The facts will be very rigid when we try them. The wish to live together wa evidently more on John's part than on Carlyle's. Carlyle was perhaps right. The' two beasts' were both too old to change their natures, anù they would agree best if they did not see each other too often. John went back to Sentland; Carlyle was left alone: and other friend 110W claimed the privilege of bein of u e to him, especially J\iiss Davenport BrOlnleJr, the 'flight of ky larks.' and Lady Ashburton. They had been hoth her friclld al n, and wcre, thereforc, in his prescnt mood, especially dcaI' to him. l\fiss BrOlnley was then living at Ripple Court, ncar 'Vahner. She invited Carlyle to tay with her. lIe went in the lIlid<11c of \ll u t, and relate hið visit in his journal JIISS Dr/. VE1\TPORT BROAILE 1: 3 2 7 Journal. Ripple Court, AUrJ1 st 15, 1866.-Arrived here the day before ye:;terday-beautiful sunny day in the midst. of wet and windy ones. Solitude and green country, spotted with autumn colours and labours, mournfully wel- come to me after the dreary sadness and unwelcome in- tenuptions to my poor labours at Chelsea which, alas were nothing more than the sorting, labelling, and tying up in bunàles all that i now left me of her that is gone. '\T as in this country once, now 42 years ago, and re- member a ðunday of wandering between Dover and here with Edward Irving and 1r. tmchey. ' nlat a flight of tinle! l\1y project here was 14 days of solitude and sea- bathing. Hitherto, except a very long sleep, not of the healthiest, last night, almost all has gone rather awry with me. August lB.-Had a beautiful ride yesterday, a tolerable bathe, plenty of walking, driving, &c., and imagined I wa:; considerably improving myself; but, alas! in the vening came the G .'s, and a dinner amounting to total wn::ck of sleep to me. Got up at 3 a.m., sate reading till 6, and except a ride, good enough in itself, but far from ' pleasant' in my state of nerves and heart, hm'e had a day of desolate misery, the harder to bear as it is useless too, and results from a \'ibit which I could have avoided had I been skilful. Oh, my lo t one! oh, my lost one! irrecoverable tu Ill} lunely heart for ever. , l\Ii s Bl'Olllley':::; hospitality and genuine heauti- fully inlple politenc s awl kindncss wcre beyond all praisc,' hc aid WhCll his visit was ovcr. But the t illlC at Hip pIc Court had bccn spent, , as in IIade ,' the gcncral complcxion of his thought , aw] hc was lad to get back to his 'gIOOlUY dwclling.' Thc llade , in fa(.t, wa ill himself, anl1 was thcreforc cvcrywhere. The hopganlclls and woods had given hill1 a f lillt plea-.:ure on hi way up through Kcnt 011 328 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. the railway. 'After Sydenhanl it became unspeakable, abominable, a place fitter for demons and enchanted swine than for human creatures of an ordinary type.' On reaching home he wrote a grateful letter to his hostess, 'whose goodness to him he would never forget.' 'My hOlne,' he said, 'is very gaunt and lonesome; but such is my allotment henceforth in this world. I have taken loyally to my vacant cir- cumstances, and will try to do my best with them.' Another invitation was awaiting him. IJady Ash- burton had taken a house at 1Ientone, and pressed him to spend the ,vinter 1110nths with her there. She asked !Iiss Welsh to accOlnpany hinl, 'to screen hinI, and pad everything into softness in the ne,v 8cene.' She was so warm, so eager in her offers, showed so clearly that his consent would be rather for her pleasure than his own, that he resisted his natural Ï1npuIse to refuse on the spot. lIe let his decision wait till he had disposed of a rnatter which had become immediately pressing. The affair of Governor Eyre had blown into white heat. In subn1Ïssion to general clanlour Eyre had bcen recalled in disgrace. He had applied for other employnlCnt and had been refused. lIe had several children, and was irretrievably ruined. It was, Carlyle said to Ine, as if a ship had been on fire; the cap- tain, by inllnediate and bold exertion, had put the fire out, and had been ('aIled to account for having flung a bucket or two of water into the hold beyond w hat was necessary. lIe had damaged sonle of the cargo, perhaps, but he had saved the ship. The action of the Govennllcnt, in Carlyle's opinion, was base and ungencrous, and when the recall was not THE EYRE COllLJIITTEE. 3 2 9 sufficient, but Eyre wa threatened with prosecution, beaten as he himself was to the ground, he took weapon in hand again, and stood forward, with such feeble support as he could find for an unpopular cause, in defence of a gro:s:sly injured I1Uln. To Jlis8 lJaL'enport Bromley. Chelsea: August 30, 1866. Yesterday, in spite of the rain, I got up to the Eyre Committee, and even let myself be voted into the chair, such being the post of danger on the occasion, and truly something of a forlorn hope, and place for enfams percl1 s. "\\T e seemed, so far as I can measure, to be a most feeble committee; a military captain, a naval ditto, a young city merchant, Henry Kingsley, Charles still hanging back afraid, old S. C. Hall of the Art Union, a well-meaning man; only t lwse, with a secretary who had hright s"Wift eyes, but showed little knowledge of his element. . . . In short, con- trary to all hope, I had to set my own shoulders to the wheel, and if it made any progress at all, "Which I hope it did, especially in that of trying for an infinitely better com- mittee, the probable chief cause was that myoId coat is not afraid of a little mud on the sleeve of it, as superfiner ones might be. Poor Eyre! I am heartily sorry for him, and for the English nation, which makes such a dismal fool of itself. Eyre, it seems, has fallen suddenly from 6,000l. a year into almost zero, and has a l:irge family and needy kindred de- pf'ndent on him. Sueh his reward for saving thp "rest Indies, and hanging one incendiary mulatto, well worth the gallows, if I can judge. I was lnyself one of the cowards. [pleaded that I did not understand the matter, that I waR editor of' Fraser,' and should disturb the proprietors; Inere paltry excuse's to escape doing what I knew to be right. Huskin was braver far, and spoke out like a 330 CdRL YLE'S LIFE hY LO VDOlv. Blan. Carlyle sent J\Iiss Bl'oluley a copy of what hc had said. ., The Eyre Committee, he wrote on eptember 15, is going on better, indeed is now getting fairly on its feet. Ruskin's speech-now don't fruwn upon it, but read it again till you unden;tand it-is a right gallant thrust I can a sure you. \Yhile all the world stands tremulou , shilly-shallying from the gutter, impetuous Ruskin plunges his rapier up to the very hilt in the abominable belly of the vast block- headism, and leaves it staring very considerably. The I110nster, alas! was an enchanted nlonster, and 'a the air iln-ulnerable.' Its hour had not COIne, and. has not yet, in spite of Ruskin' rapier. Carlyle gave his llloney anù his name, but he was in no eondition for rough struggling with the' blatant beast.' lIe soon saw that he could. lnake no iInpres- :::ion upon the Government, and that Eyre was in no pcrsonal d.anger frOll1 the prosecution. lIe wrote a few word.s to OBC of the newspapcrs, expressing briefly his own feeling about the Blatter, and so left it. J Oil'/' lit d. Septermve1' 26, 186G.-Eyre Defence Cotnmittee--slllall letter of mine-has been raging through all the new papt'rs of the empire, I am told; for I have carefully avoidl'd everything pJ'u or contra that the fonlish populace of scrib- hIen; in any form put forth uI:..on it or me. hu.Izfferent iu very deed. \Yhat is or can be the value to any rational lIlan of what these empty insincere fools say or think on the subject of Eyre'::; Jamaica measures, or of me that approve them. \Yeather very wet. \,7 ettest harvest I have spen ::since 1816. Country very base and mad, so far as I survey it.s proceeding::.;. Bright, :Beale , Gla(h;tone, .Mill, and Co., hring on the uffrage que::;tion, kin, filS it Lad ::;pecia1 refcrence to hilll:::,elf, 1c:,:ides being curious in itself, I preserve in a note. JrJlu'nnl. , S('pfembel' tJ.-Ghyouw-a name my rnother had for any big iIl- b!mped awkward ubject-would sometiwí's call me, not in ill-hurnolll'. half in good, "Thou Ghyouw:' Some months ago I found, with greal inter(''':!, that in old Icelandic the E'ame word-sound the f:ower of the Air. Tragic to me rather, and far from enviahle; from whom one felt oneself divided by abysmal chasms an(l immeasurabilitieR. He went next morning; but it RCPII1:-';, hy the .1onrnal8, will find hi 1\1. Foulcl, &c., sudden ly thrown out by some jerk of their inscrutahle Copl'('r Captain, and unahlt> to do t he honour:;: of Paris in the way thpy wi:..:lwd. 336 CARL Y LE'S LIFE flY LO.LVDO.t.V. His chief pleasure at 1:entone was in long walks about the neighbourhood. lIe was the best of lite- rary landscape painters, and his journal, with his letters to lnyself and others, are full of exquisite little sketches, like the pictures of the old masters, where you have not Inel'ely a natural scene before you, but the soul of the Ulan who looks upon it. Journal. J.tfentone, January 21.-1 went out yesterday, walked two or three miles up the silent valley; trifling wet of mist, which hung in shifting scarfs and caps all about among the peaks of the ravine; beautiful green of orange woods and olive woods; here and there a silent olive mill, far down ill some nook at the bottom, llothing but its idle mill-race and the voice of the torrent audible; here and there a melancholy ill-kept little chapel, locked, I suppose, but its two windows open with iron stanchions, inviting the faithful to take view of the bits of idols inside, and try if prayer \yas possible. Oh ye bewildered and bewildering sons of men! There was a twitch of strange pity and misery that shot through me at the thought of man's lot on earth, and the comparison of our dumb Eternities and Immensities with this poor joss-house and bambino. I might have had reflection enough, for there reigned everywhere the most perfect Sabbath stillness; and Nature and her facts lay round me, silently going their long road. But my heart was heavy, my bodily case all warped awry; and except my general canopy of sadness and regret, very vain except for the love that is in it, regret for the inevitable and in- exorable, there was nothing of thought present to me. To .111iss Davenport Bromley. l\'Ientone : January 23. You heard of my safe arrival in these parts, that the promises they made me sepmed to be good. I am lucky to i1fE.LVTO.LVE. 337 add that the promise has been kept so far that, outwardly and that in respect of sleep, &c., I feel as if rather better than in Chelsea ; certainly not worse. Sometimes for mo- ments it almost seems as if I might perhaps recognise some actual vestige of better health in these favoured lati- tudes, and be again a little more ali,.e than of late. But that is only for moments. In what is called' spirits' I dùn't seem to improve much, or, if improvement means increase of buoyancy or levity, to improve at all. How should I? In these wild silent ravines one's thoughts gravitate to- wards death and eternity with more proclivity than ever, and in the absence of serious h1lman discourse, go back to the vanished past as the one prufitable or dignified company. There has been no glimpses of what one would call bad weather; for the most pan brilliant sunshine, mixed with a tingling briskness of air. In beauty of situation, of a:;pect and prospect by sea and land, nothing can exceed us in the world. l\Ientone, old town and new, latter perhaps a hundred years old, former several thO'Ltsands, is built principally as a single street by the sea-shore, along the diameter of two beautiful semicircular little hollows, or half-amphitheatres, formed by the mountains which are the airiest wings of rocky peaks and cliffs, all terraced and olive-clad, with some- times an old castle and village. Castle visible like a bird- cage from the shore here, six miles off. I never saw so strangely beautiful a ring of peaks, especially this western one, which i still new to me every morning on stepping out. \r estern ring and ea tern form in the middle, es- pecially form at each enll, their bits of capes and promon- tories and projections into the sea, so that Wé sit in the hollow of an alcove, and no wind from the north can reach us at aU; maritime Alps intercepting all frost and snow. :\Ielltone proper, as diameter or i'treet along the sea, is per- haps three-quarters of a mile long; a fair strept of solid high hou es, but part of it pavpd all through with big smooth whinstones, on which at evening all the popuh-Jtton beem to gather; many assps, &c., pa sing hLlle with tbeir IV. Z 338 CARL YLE'S LIFE hV LONDON. burdens from the mountains, and many women, young and old with them, and thriftier, quieter, more cheerfully serious and innocent-looking set of poor people JOu never saw. Old l\Ientone, thousands of years old (for there are caves of the troglodytes still extant near by), sprawls up like a huge he'}qring-bone of lanes, steep against the cliff-by way of defence against the Saracens, it i!; thought; at some distance from the sea, and on1_y hangs by New l\Ientone as a f;houlder or fin would. l\Iost of the poor people live there. There also in her fine church, the De-ipara ?n,isericO'i'clim'um .J. fater, so called. And finally the ruins of an old castle, now mostly made into a churchyard. English travellers went and CaIne, all eager to have a talk with Carlyle. Lady lVlarian Alford and her faJnily were a real acquisition to hinl; shaded over, however, unfortunately, by the death of Lord Brownlow, which occurred while he was at l\Ientone. Carlyle often spoke to HIe of this young nobleman, and of the fine proInise which he had observed in !liln. Iris own spirits varied; declining slightly as the novelty of the scene wore off. To liss Jewsbury he crave a tolerable account of himself. /:) I seem to be doing rather well here [he wrote], seem to have escaped a most hideous winter for one thing, if other griefs were but as easy to leave behind. The weather, ever since I awoke at larseilles, has been supe'ì'b; not only bright, sunny, and not wintry, but to my feeling more agreeable than any summer, so elastic, dry, and brisk is the air, an atmosphere in which you can take exercise, so pure and beautiful are all the elements. Sun, moon, sky and stars have not yet ceased to surprise me by their incredible bril- liancy, about ten times as npmerou!;, these stars, as yours. '1 he sceneries a II around, too, these wild and tenible Alpine peaks, all gathered to rear of us like a Sanhedrim of witches of Enrlor. and looking blasted, naked rock to the waiðt, AfE.LVTOiVE. 339 thpll all in greemsn and ample petticoats of terraced olivp "oods, orange grovps, lemon groyes; very strange to me. Shadows of the great sorrow, however, clung to him. Even the beauty was weird and ominou::;, and his Journal gives the picture of what was passing in hÜn. Journal. Meldone, Feb1'ual'!J 13, 1867. - l\Iy thoughts brood gloomily, Hometimes with unspeakable tenderness, too, over the paRt, and what it gave me and took from me. I am best off when I get into the brown olivp. woods, and wander along by the rugged paths, thinking of the one, or of the many who are now there, afe from all sorrow, and as if beckoning to me: 'Hither friend, hithpr! thou art still dear to us if we have still an existence. "T e bid thee hope.' The company of nearly all my fellow-creatures here, and indeed elsewhere, is apt to be rather a burden and deRecra- tion to me. Their miserable jargoning about Ephemera and in significances, their Reform Bills, American Nigger questions, unexampled prosperities, admired great men, &c., are unspeakably wearisome to me, and if I am bound to make any remark in answer, I feel that I was too impatient and partly unreasonable, and that the remark had better not have been made. All of this that is possible I sedu- lously avoid, but too much of it comes in spite of mp, though fairly less here than in Chelsea. Let me be JURt and thankful. Surely the kindness everybody shows me deserves gratitude, too. Especially the perfect hospitality and honestly-affectionate good treatment I experience in this houRe, and from the wildly-generous mistress of it, is worthy of the heroic ages. That I do not quite forget, let us hopp, nor shall. Oh, there have been noble exceptions among the vulgar dim-eyed greedy millions of this age; and I may say I have been well loved by my contemporaries -taken as a body corporate-thank l:Tod! Anrl thpse px- ceptions I llo perceive and ;ulmit-, to havp bt'('11 tht' Vf;-\rr z 2 34 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. flower of their generation, to be silently proud of and loyal to while I live. }'larch 8, 1867.-Health very bad, cough, et cetera, but principally indigestion-can have no real improvement till I see Chelsea again. Courage! get through the journey taliter qnaliter, and don't travel any more. I am very sad and weak, but not discontented or indignant as sometimes. I live mostly alone with vanished shadows of the Past. :l\.1any of them rise for a moment inexpressibly tender. One is never long absent from me. Gone, gone, but very beau- tiful and dear. Eternity, which cannot be far off, is my one strong city. I look into it fixedly now and then. All terrors about it seem to me superfluous; all knowledge about it, any the least glimmer of certain knowledge, im- possible to living mortal. The universe is full of love, but also of inexorable sternness and severity, and it remains for ever true that God reigns. Patience! Silence! Hope! RETURN TO ENGLAND. 34 1 CHAPTER XXX. A.D. 1867. Á-ET. 72. Return to England-Intruders in Cheyne Row-'Vant of employment -Settlement of the Craigenputtock estate-Charities-Public affairs -Tory Reform Bill-' Shooting Niagara '-A new horse-Visits in cOUlltry houses-Meditations in Journal-A beautiful recollection. THE party at 1\Ientone broke up in the second week in MarcIl. Lady Ashburton went to Rome and Naples, having tried in vain to induce Carlyle to accompany her. He prepared for home again, and, shrinkinf! from the solitude waiting him in Cheyne Row, he wrote, before leaving, to ask his brother to meet him there, with SOlne consciousness that he had not received, as graciously as he Inight have done, his brother's attempts to live with him. I am often truly grieved [he said] to think how un- reasonable and unmanageable I was with you last time. Surely your sympathy was all I could have expected; and your readiness to help me was and continues far beyond what I could have expected. But perhaps with a definite period, 'one calendar month,' and each doing his wisest, we shall be able to do much better. I intend to make an effort at regulating my Chelsea affairs a little; e pecially sweeping my premises clean of the intolerable intrusions that torment me there. I fancy, too, 1 should not try again the gaunt, entirely solitary life I led latterly; but am not .--- 342 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOJVD01\T. certain as to getting back :l\1aggie 'Velsh. or whom I should get. On these points I do not know that you could give me much advice. I only feel that it would be a kind of light amid the gloom of my arrival if, on stepping out, I found your face instead of a dead blank. Tyndal]'s escort was not needed a second time. lIe found his way back to Chelsea without lnisad- venture. John Carlyle was waiting as he desired, and he settled in 1"ith more COlllpOSUre than he had felt since his bereavement. The' intrusions' had to be dealt with, but were not easily disposed of. Mrs. Carlyle once said she had the faculty of attract- i!2g all mi::;erable people that wanted consõlãtìon. Carlyle seelned to attract everyone who wanted help for body or soul, or advice on the conduct of life. The nUlllber of people who worried hiln on such matters, most of them without a forTI1 of introduc- tion, is hardly to be believed. Each post brought its pile of letters. One adlllirer wanted a situation uuder Governlllent, another sent a 1nanuscript to be read and recOln1nenc1ec1 to a pu blisher, another COlll- plained that Nature had given hin1 a hideous face; he had cursed his life, and cursed his n10ther for bearing him; what was he to do? All asked for interviews. Let them but see him, and they would convince him of their deserts. lIe was Inarvcllously patient. lIe answered 1nost of the letters, he saw most of the applicants. He gave advice. Hf' gave llloney, infinitely too much. SOlnetimes, "\-vhen it was beyond endurance, he would order the servant to admit no strange face at all. In such cases 11len would watch in the street, and pounce upon him when he CaIne out for his walk. I have been with LVTR UDERS IiV eHE EVE RO TV. 3-B hinl on such occasions, and have been astonished at. the efforts which he woul(1 Blake to be kind. Once I recollect a girl, an entire stranger, wrote to hiln to say that in order to get books she had pawned some plate of her grandmother's. She was in danger of dis- covery and ruin. 'V ould Carlyle help her to redeenl it? He con:5ulted Ine. A relation of mine, who lived in the neighbourhood, Inade inquiry, saw the girl, and found that the story was true. He replied to her letter as the kinùest of fathers n1Ïght have done, paid the nloney, and saved her frOln shanle. SOlne- time:5 the hOIllage was more disinterested. I had just left his door one day, when a bright eager lass of seventeen or eighteen stopped nle in the How, and asked TIle if ThOlnas Carlyle lived there. I showed her the house, and her large eJ es glowed as if she was looking upon a saint's shrine. This pleased him when I lllClltioned it. The feeling was good and honest and deserved recognition. But altogether he was terribly worried. Intruders worried him. Public affairs worried him. Disraeli was bringing in his scandalous Reform Bill' to dish the Whigs.' VV orse than all, there was no work cut out for hiln, and he could nlake no e for hinlself. Journal. Chelsea, April 4, 1867.-Idle! Idle! Myemplovments mere trifles of bm;Ìness, and that of dwelling on the days that culminated on the 2ht of last year. How l.mùùen was that bereavement to me! how pathetic, touchingly anù grandly fateful; in extent of importance to me 110\\ iufiuite ! Perhaps my health is slightly mending; don't certainly know, but my spirits don't mend apparently at all. Interest, properly, I hayf' in no li\ ing per ()n, in TIn prf' ent thing. 344 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON Their 'Reform Bill,' their &c., &c. Ach Gatt! I am dis- gusted if by chance I look into my newspaper, or catch a tone of the insane jargon which seems to be occupying everybody. .A pril 20.- "That a day to look back upon! . .. To- morrow by the day of the month, this day by the day of the week, about 3 p.m. How shall I ever learn to deal with that immense fact? I am incompetent hitherto. It overwhelms me still. I feel oftenest crushed down into contemptibility as well as sorrow. All of sunshine that remained in my life went out in that sudden moment. All of strength too often seems to have gone. Except some soft breathings of affection, of childlike grief, and once- only once that I remember, of pio (,s, childlike hope in the eternity before us-my last fortnight has been the sadde t, dreariest, sordidly idle, without dignit.y, satisfaction, or worth. I have tried too twice over, for something of work, but all in vain. ""ill it be for ever in vain then? Better be silent than continue thus. . . . 'Yere it permitted, I could pray-but to whom? I can well understand the Invocation of Saints. One's prayer now has to be voiceless, done with the heart still, but also with the hands still more. April 21.-Abundantly downcast, dreary, sorrowful; no- thing in me but sad thoughts and recollections; ennobled in part by a tenderness, a love, a pity, steeped as if in tears. Regrets also rÜ,e in me; bits of se which are very pungent. How death the inexorable, unalterable, stern Bepand01', alters everything! . . . But words are of no value, and, alas! of acts I have none, or as good as none. The question, ""by am I left behind thee? as yet nearly altogether unanswered. Can I ever answer it? God help me to answer it. That is earnestly my )Jrayer, and I will try and again try. Be that the annual sacrifice or act of Temple worship, on this the holiest of my now days of the year. Apr;'il 24.-Idle, sick, companionless; my heart is very heavy, as if full and no outlet appointed. Trial for employ- IDf'nt continues, and shall continue; but as yet in ,'ain. 'Yritin is the one thing I ean do; and at rre ent what to SETTLEMENT OF CRAIGE.l.VPUTTOCK. 345 write of to such a set of' readers' full of Reform Bills, Paris Exhibition, Question of Luxemburg, &c.? Sometimes poor old moorland Craigenputtock shines out on me; and our poor life there has traits of beauty in it, almost like a romance. I wish I could rise with sO'llething into the limitless Ideal, and disburden myself in rounded harmony and what poets call song-a fond wish indeed! But this crabbed Earth with its thunder rods and dog [J'l'ottoes, is become homeless to me, and too mean and contradictory. May 26.- To die is landing on some silent shore, \Vhere billows never break nor tempests roar; Ere well you feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er. Such a life as I now lead is painful and even di::-ìgraceful ; the life of a vanquished slave, who at best, and that not always, is silent under his penalties and sores. In this trap-ic state Carlyle found one little thing to do which gave him a certain consolation. By his wife's death he had become the absolute owner of the old estate of the vVelshes at Craigenputtock. An unrelenting fatality had carried off one by one all her relations on the father's side, and there was not a single person left of the old line to whonl it could be bequeathed. He thought that it ought not to lapse tu his own family; and he determined to leave it to his country, not in his own nalne, but as far as possible in hers. 'Vith this intention he had a deed drawn, by which Craigenputtock, after his death, was. to becOlne the property of the University of Edinburgh, the rellts of it to be laid out in supporting poor anù lllcritorious :;tudcnts there, under the title of 'the .J ohn W clsh Bursaries.' ITer nmne he could not give, because he had takcn his O"Wll. Thercfore he gavc hcr father's. 3-1- 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE f.iV L01VDON. JOllrnal. Jwne 22, 1867.-Finished off on Thursday last, at three p.m., 2Uth of June, my poor bequest of Craigenputtock to Edinburgh University for bursaries. All quite ready there, Forster and :Froude as witnesses; the good ProfesRor :;\Iasson, who had taken endless pains, alike friendly and wise, being at the very last objected to in the character of ' witness,' as 'a party interested,' said the Edinburgh lawyer. I a little regretted this circumstance; so I think did l\lasson secretly. He read us the deed with sonorous emphasis, bringing every word and note of it home to us. Then I signed; then they two-::\Iasson witnessing only with his eyes and mind. I was deeply moved, as I well might be but held my peace and shed no tears. Tears I think I ha,e done with; never, ex- cept for moments together, have I wept for that catastrophe of April 21, to which whole days of weeping would have been in other times a blessed relief. . . . This is my poor' Sweetheart Abbey,' 'Cor Dulce,' or New Abbey, a sacred casket and torab for the sweetest' heart' which, in this bad, bitter world, was all my own. Darling, darling! and in a little while we shall both be at rest, and the Great God will have done with us what was His will. This is very beautiful, and so is an entry which follows :- July 14.-Her birthday. She not here-1 cannot keep it for her now-send a poor gift to poor old Betty, who, next to myself, remembers her in lifelong love and sacred sorrow. That is all I can do. To a poor old beggar here of no value otherwise, or even of less, to whom she used to give a shilling if they met, I have smuggled a small anonymous dole- most poor, most ineffectual, sorrowful, are all our resources against the gate that is for ever shut. This is anuther in::;tance of parly l 's arit ics. He relucmbered his wife's pensioncr : but he had as long or a longer list úf his own. No donation uf his ever appeared in printed lists; what he gave he gave CII.ARITIES. 3.n in secret, anonyn10usly as here, or else with his own hand as one hUl113n bein a to another; and of him it c n1ay be truly said that the left hand did not know what the right was doing. The undeserving were seldom wholly refused. The deserving were never forgotten. I recollect an old lnan, past eighty, in Chelsea, who had refused parish help, and as long as he could lnove earned his living by wheeling cheap crockery about the streets. Carlyle had a genuine respect for him, anù never missed a chance of showing it. Money was plentiful enough now, as he would 1110urnfully observe. Edition followed edition of the cOll1pleted works. He had more thousands now than he had hundreds when he published' Croillwell' -but he neyer altered his thrifty habits, never, even in extreme age, allowed hÌIl1 elf any fresh indulgence. Hi one expensive luxury was charity. The sad note continues to sound through the Journal. The shadow of his lost wife seen1ed to rise between hiln and every other object on which he tried to fix hi thoughts. If anything like duty callcd to him, however, he could still respond-and the political :;tate of England did at this tinle dcmand a few worùs fronl hilll. Throughout his life he had been studying the social and political problems of modern Europe. For all disorders l11oc1ern Europe had but one remedy, to abolish the subordination of man to 111an, to set every individual free, and give hilll a voice in the goverulllent, that he nÚght look after his own interests. This once secured, with free rUOll1 and no favour, all would C'olnpete on equal terms, aud might be expected tù fall into the placcs which naturally bclouf!cd to thcm. None at any ratc coulll then 34 3 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. cOInplain of ihjustice; and peace, prosperity, and universal content would follow. Such was and is the theory; and if the human race, or the English race, 'vere all wise and all good, and had unbounded ter- IitorialroOln over which to spread, something might be said for it. As the European world actually is, the actual 11l0ral and Inaterial condition of European Inankind being what it is, with no spiritual convic- tions, no sincere care for anything save money and what money can buy, this notion of universal liberty in Carlyle's opinion could end in nothing save universal wreck. If the English nation had needed governing when t.hey had a real religious belief, now, when their belief had become conventional, they needed it, he thought, infinitely lliore. They could bear the degree of freedoln which they had already, only in virtue of ancient habits, contracted under wiser arrange- luents. They would need the very best nIen they had among theln if they were to escape the cataracts of which he heard the approaching thunder. Yet it was quite certain to hÜn that, with each extension of the franchise, those whOln they would elect as their rulers would not be fitter men, but steadily inferior and 1l1Ore unfit. Under any conceivable franchise the persons chosen would represent the level of character and intelligence in those who chose them, neither Inore nor less, and therefore the lower the general avera.ge the worse the governlnent would be. It had long been evident to him how things were going; but every descent has a bottom, and he had hoped up to this time that the lowest point had been reached. lIe knew how many fine qualities the Enp-liBh still possessed. lIe did not believe that the majority were PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 349 bent of thel11selves on these destructive courses. If the wisest and ablest would come forward with a clear and honourable profession of their true convictions, he had considered it at least possible that the best part of the nation would respond before it was too late. The Tories had just COIne into office. lIe had slnall confidence in them, but they at least repudiated the new creed, and represented the old national traditions. They had an opportunity, if they would use it, of insisting that the poor should no longer be robbed by false weights and Ineasures and adulterated oods, that the eternal war hould CEase between enlployers anù en1ployed, and the profits of labour should be apportioned by S0l11e rule of equity; that the splendid colonial inheritance which their forefathers had won should be opened to the millions who were suffocating in the fætid alleys of our towns; that these poor people should be enabled to go where they could lead human lives again. Here, and not by ballot-boxes and anarchic liberty, lay the road to salvation. States- n1en who dared to try it would have Nature and her laws fighting for them. They might be thrown out, but they would COll1e back again-cOlne in stronger and stronger, for the good sense of England would be on their side. 'Vith a languId contempt, for he half-felt that he had been indulf!ing in a cIreanl, Carlyle in this year found the Tories preparing to outbid their rivals, in their own arts or their own folly, ourtinf! the votes of the n10b by the longest plunge yet ventured into the rovidence truly is skilful to prepare its instrumental men. Indeed, all England, heavily though languidly ave1'se to this embarking on the Niagara rapids, is strangely indifferent to whatever may follow it. ' Niagara, or what you like, we will at least have a villa on the :\Iediterranean (such an improve- ment of climate to this), when Church and State have gone,' said a certain shining countess to me, yesterday. News- paper editors, in private, I am told, and di cerning people of every rank, as is partly apparent to myself, talk of ap- proaching 'revolution,' 'Common wealth,' 'Common illth,' or whatever it may be, with a singular composure. Disraeli had given the word, and his party had submitted to be educated. Political emancipation was tu be the road for theIn-not practical administra- tion and war against lies and roguery. Carlyle saw that w"e were in the rapids, and could not any Blore get out of them; but he wished to relieve his own soul, and he put together the pamphlet which he called 'Shooting Niagara, and After?' vVhen Frederick l\Iaurice rublished his heresies about Tartarus, inti- lnating that it was not a place, but a condition, and that the wicked are in Tartarus already, JaInes Sped- dino- observed to llle that' one was relieved to know /:) that it was no worse.' Carlyle's Niagara, now that we are in the nlÌddle of it, seems to Uf: for the present nothing very dreadful, anù we are preparing with Illuch 'SHOOTING NIAGARA.' 35 1 equanimity, at this moment, to go down the second cataract. The broken water, so far, lies on the other ide of St. George's Channel. The first and inl1llediate effect of the Reform Bill of 1807 was the overthrow of Protestant ascendency in lrelanll. After five cen- turies of failure in that country, the Enf!lish Pro- testants succeeded in planting an adequate number of loyal colonists in the 11lidst of an incurably hostile population, and thus did contrive to exercise son1e peaceful influence there, and make constitutional go- vernnlent in that island not wholly in1possible. The English Delnoeracy, as soon as they were in possession of power, set at work to destroy that influence. The result we have partly seen, and ,, e shall see more fully hereafter. Carlyle, however, did not anticipate, as the con equence of the Niagara shooting, any immediate catastrophe; not even this in Ireland. He meant by it merely the complete development of the present tendency to regarù nloneY-lnaking as the business of life, and the more rapid degradation of the popular lnoral character-at the enù of which perhaps, but still a long way off, would be found SOllle ' scandalous Copper Captaincy.' The believers in progress on these lines, therefore, may breathe freely, and, like peddillg, be ' glad that it is no wor e.' The curious feature in the pamphlet i:-i that Carlyle visibly und('r- rated the disturbance to be looked for in our actual arrangeInents. He thought that, after the complete triulnph of deIllocracy, the aristocracy would be left in possession of their estates, and be still able to do as tlipy pleased with them; to hunt and shoot their grouse; or, if the moors anù covert failed then1, at lcm;t to subside into rat-eakhillg. In hi:, 35 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. Journal, Septenlber 17, 1867, there is a quotation from the ' MeIlloirs of St. Palaye' :-' Louis XI airna la chasse jusqu'à sa mort, qui arriva en 1483. Durant sa 11laladie à Plessis-Iès-Tours, comme il ne pouvait plus prendre ce divertiselllent, on attrapait les plus gros rats qu'on pouvait, et on les faisait chasseI' par les chats dans ses apparteluents, pour l'amuser.' 'Had a transient thought,' he says, 'of putting that as elnblelllatic Finis to the hunting epoch of our vulgar noble lords.' He even considered that, if the stuff was in them, they might find a more honourable occupation. Supposing theln to retain the necessary power over their properties, they might form their own domains into circles of order and cosmos, banishing the refractory, and thus, by drill and disci- pline and wise adn1inistration, introduce new eleInents into the general chaos. 'A devout imagination' on Carlyle's part; but an irllagination merely. If it were conceivable, as it is not, that the aristocracy would prefer such an occupation to rat-catching, their success would depend on that very power of , banishing the refractory,' of which it is certain that they would be deprived if they showed a disposition to create, in using it, an influence antagonistic to a ruling del1l0Cracy. The Irish experirnent does not indicate that the rights of landowners would be treated with much forbearance when the exercise of those rights was threatening a danger to ' liberty.' , Shooting Niagara' appeared first in 'Macmillan's Magazine' for August 1867. It was corrected and republished as a palllphlet in September, and was Carlyle's last public utterance on English politics. He thought but little of it, and was aware how nse- DAILY lVORRIES. 353 less it would prove. In his Journal, August 3, he says :- An article for l\lasson and ' Iacmillan's :i\Iagazine' took up a good deal of time. It came out mostly from accident, little by volition, and is very fierce, exaggerative, ragged, unkempt, and defective. Nevertheless I am secretly rather glad than otherwise that it is out, that the howling doggeries (dead ditto and other) should have my last word on their affairs and them, since it was to be had. A stereotyped edition of the' Collected VV orks' was now to be issued, and, conscientious as ever, Carlyle set hilnself to revise and correct the whole series. lIe took to riding again. l\iiss Bronlley pro- vided him with a horse called Comet, between whOln and him elf there was soon established a personal attachnlent, and on Cmnet's back, as before, he saun- tered about the London environs. lIe described himself to Miss Bromley as very solitary, the Illost silent man not locked into the solitary sYfo\tem, to be found in all her :Jlajesty's dOlninions. 'Incipient authors, beggars, blockheads, and canaille of various kinds,' continued their daily worries. 'Every day there was a certain loss of time in brushing off such provoking botherations;' on the whole, however, th trouble was not much. I find that solitude [he said] and one's own sad and serious thoughts (though sometimes in bad days it is all too gloomy) is almost as good as anything I get. The most social of mankind I could define myself, but grown old, sor- rowful, and terribly difficult to please in regard to his society. I rode out on Comet to Addiscombe, stayed two hours for dinner, and rode home again by moonlight and lamplight. There are now three railways on that poor road since I was last there, and apparently 3,000 l1PW diggings, lumber heap n' . A A 354 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. and new villas rising, dirty shops 'ì'Ísen, and costermonger:;' carts, &c.-a road, once the prettiest I knew for riding, and now more like Tophet and the City of Dis than any I have tried lately. Tophet now reaches strictly to the boundary lodge of Lady A., and has much spoiled Addis- combe Farm for a tenant. of my humour. 'Niagara,' I heard yesterday, is in its fourth thousand, stirring up many a dull head one hopes, and ' sweeping off the froth from the Pro- gress Pot,' as one conespondent phrased it. He worked hard on the 'revising' business, but felt no enthusiasIll about the interest which 'his works' were exciting; 'nothing hut languor, con- tempt, and indifference for said works-or at least for their readers and them.' 'The works had indeed cost hilll his life, and were in ome 1l1eaf'Ure fronl the heart, and all he could ùo. But the readers of thelll were and had been--what should he say?' and in fact' no lnan's work in this world could demand for itf'clf the smallest doit of wages, or was intrinsically hetter than zero. That was the fact, when one had arrived where he had arrived.' The rnnney which was now cOIning in was actually painful. Yanished, vanished, they that should have taken plea- sure from it. Ah me! ah me! The more I look back on that thirteen years of work [over' Frederick'], the more appall- ing, huge, unexampled it appears to me. Sad pieties arise to t bink that it did not kill me, t.hat in spite of the world I got it done, and that my noble uncomplaining Darling lived to see It done. As to the English world's stupidity upon it, that is a small matter to me-or none at all for the last year and a half. That I believe is partly silence and preoccupancy; and werp it 1.vholl?! stupidity, didn't I already know how ' tl1pid ' the poor English now are. Book is not quite zero I perceive, but. will he good for something- by-and-by. . . . .:\ly state of health i very ll1i erahle, though II"EARI.NESS OF LIFE. 355 I still sometimes think it fundamentally improving. Such a total wreck had that' Frederick' reduced me to, followed hy what had lain next in store for me. Oh, complain not of Heaven! now does my poor sinful heart almost even fall into that bad stupid sin. Oceans of unspoken thoughts-or things not yet thought or thinkable-sombre, solemn, cloudy- moonlit, infinitely sad, but full of tenderness withal, and of a love that can now he noble,-this, thank God, is the element I dwell in. Journal. Chelsea., September 30, 1867.-Nothing to mark here that is not sad and mean. Trouble with extraneous fools from all quarters; penny post a huge inlet to that class who, by hypothesis, have no respect of persons, but think them- selves entitled to intrude with any or without any cause, upon the busiest, saddest, sacredest, or most important of their fellow-mortals. Fin' mo tly delivers us from the common run of these. . . . There is nothing of joyful in my life, nor ever likely to be; no truly loved or lm'íng soul-or practically as good as none-left to me in the earth any more. The one object that is wholly beautiful and noblf', and in any :o;ort helpful to my poor heart, is she whom I do not name. The thought of her is drowned in sorrow to me, but also in tenderness, in love inexpressible, and veritably acts as a kind of high and sacred con olation to me amidst the intrusive base- nesses and empty botherations that otherwise each day brings. I feel now and then, bui repreRs the impatient wish, 'Let me rejoin her there in the Land of Silence, whatever it be.' Truly, if my work is done why should not I plainly wish to be there? This is very ungrateful to some of my friends I still have, some of whom are b01(;ndlessly kind to me; and indeed all the world, known and unknown, seems abundantly eager to do for me whatever it can, for which I have a kind of thankfulness transiently good, and ought to lmve more. But, alas! I cannot be helped-that is the melancholy fact. Chelsea" Octobe'þ" I.-Inconceivablc are the mean miseries I am in just nnw, ahout getting new clothes--almost a A A 35 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDOJ.Y. surgical question with me latterly-about fitting this, con- triving that; about paltry botherations with which I am unacquainted, which were once all kept aloof from me by a bright one now hidden from my eyes. . . . In fact my skin is naturally far too thin, for this' age of progress' especially. Chelsea, Octobe'J' B.-Solitary since Thursday last alto- gether. )Iaggie went away that day, and no human voice, not even a light giggling one, sounds in this vacant house of mine. No matter that in general; but as yet I am unused to it. Sad enough I silently am. Infirmities of age crowd upon me. I am grown and growing very weak, as is natural at these years. Natural, but not joyful-life without the power of living-what a misery! Chelsea, October 30.-Am of a sadness, and occasionally of a tenderness which surprises even myself in these late weeks-seems as if the spirit of my loved one were, in a poor metaphorical sense, always near me; all other friends gone, and solitude with her alone left me henceforth. Utterly weak health I suppose has much to do with it. Strength quite a stranger to me; digestion, &c., totally ruined, though nothing specific to coml'lam of as dangerous or the like- and probably am too old ever to recover. Life is verily a weariness on these terms. Oftenest I feel willing to go, were m.y time corne. Sweet to rejoin, were it only in Eternal Sleep, those that are away. That, even that, is now and then the whisper of my worn-out heart, and a kind of solace to me. 'But why annihilation or eternal sleep?' I ask tùo. They and I are alike in the will of the Highest. Amen. 'Niagara,' seventh thousand printed, For ter told me- well, well! Though what good is in it either? Chelsea, lt o'Vember 15.- Went to Belton 1 Saturday, gone a week. Returned Saturday last, and have been slowly recovering myself ever since from that' week of country air' and other salubrity. Nothing could excel the kindness of my recel'tion, the noblenes.3 of my treatment throughout. People were amiable too, and clever, some of them almost interesting, but it would not do. I, in brief, could not sleep, 1 Lady .Marian Alfi)}'d's, near Grantham. IVOOLSTHORPE. 357 and oftenest was in secret supremely sad and miserable among the bright things going. Conclude I am not fit any longer for visiting in great houses. The futile valetting- intrusive and hindersome, nine-tenths of it, rather than helpfuL-the dressing, stripping and again dressing, the 'witty talk '-Ach Gott I-especially as crown and summary of all, the dining at 8-9 p.m., all this is fairly unmanageable by me. Discej'nstitia?n, monite. Don't go back if you be wise, except it be fairly unavoidable. . . . Oh, the thoughts I had in those silent, solitary days, and how, in the wakeful French bed there, the image of another bed far away in the Abbey Kirk of Haddington, in the still infinitude of Eternity, came shooting like a javelin through my heart. Don't, don't again! All day my thoughts were of her, and there was far less of religion in them than while here. .A_ more interesting expedition than this to Belton was with Lord Stratford de Rec1cliffe to see \V ools- thorpe, the birthplace of Sir Isaac Ì\ewton. X pwton (he says), who was once my grandest of mortals, has sunk to a small bulk and character with me now; how sunk and dwindled since in 1815, fifty years ago, when I sate nightly at Annan, invincibly tearing my way through that old P'J'incipia, often up till three a.m., without outlook or wish almo:-:t, except to master it, the loneliest and among the most triumphant of all young mpn. Newton is quite dead to me since that; and I recognise hundreds and thousands of 'greater men.' Nevertheless, he remains great in his kind, and has always this of supremely notable that he made the grandpst discovery in science which mankind ever has achieved or can again achieve. ""'herefore even I could not grudge the little pilgrimage to him. The lonelinel:'s in Cheyne Row was not entirely unbroken thi autumn. He had a visit fronl his brother James, 'whose honest, affectionate face en- livened the gloon1Y solitude for hinI.' Jmnes Carlyle had been rarely in London, and had' the ip:hts' to 35 8 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. ::5ee, had he cared about them. It seemed that he cared nothing for any of theIn, but very much for his forlorn and solitary brother, showing signs of true affection and sympathy, which were very welcOlne. Carlyle spoke of hiIll as ' an excellent old Annandale specimen; my father's pupil, fonned by my father's fashions, as none of the rest of us were.' A certain attention, though growing yearly fainter, was given to the world and its affairs. The Refonll Bill was producing its fruits, changes of n1Ïnistry, Clerkenwell explosions, &c. &c., which brought the Irish question' within the range of practical politics.' Carlyle observed it all \-'lith his old contempt, no longer at white heat, but wanning occasionally into red. No Fenian has yet blown us up (he wrote to :l\Iiss Brom- ley). I sit in speechless admiration of our English treatment of these Fenians first and last. It is as if the rats of a houLe had decided to expel and exterminate the human in- habitants, which latter seemed to have neither rat-catchers, traps, nor arsenic, and are trying to prevail by the 'method of love.' Better speed to them a great deal! If Walpole were to weep to the head-centres a little, perhaps it might help. lIe had an old interest in Ireland. He had stuùied it once, with a view to writing on the subject, and was roused into disgust and scorn with this new fruit of LiberalisIn. But he was haunted by ghosts, and neither Ireland nor English politics could drive his Horrow out of his u1Ïnd. Jvw'/uÚ. ....Yu'vf/mÛeJ' 30, 1867.-Have been remembering vividly ùI morning, with illexpre ible emotion, how my loved one at RETROSPECTS. 359 Craigenputtock, six or seven-and-thirty years ago, on summer mornings after breakfast used very often to come up to the little dressing-room where I was shaving and seat herself on a chair behind me, for the privilege of a little further talk while this went on. Instantly on finishing I took to my work, and probably we did not meet much again till dinner. How loving this of her, the dear one! I never saw fully till now what a trust, a kindness, love, and perfect unity of heart this indicated in her. The figure of her bright, cheery, bpautiful face mirrored in the glass beside my own rugged, ::;oapy one anRwering curtly to keep up her cheerful, pretty talk, is lively before me as if I saw it with eyes. Ah! and where is it now? Forever hidden from me. Forever? The answer is with God alone, and one's poor hopes seem fond and too blessed to be true. Ah me! ah me! Not quite till t his morning did I ever see what a perfect love, and under snch cûnditions too, this little bit of simple spontanpity be- tokened on my dear Jeannie's part. :Kever till her death did I see how much she loved me. . . . Nor, I fear, did she ever know (could she have seen across the :;tormy clouds and eclipsing miseries) what a love I hore he?', and shall alwa,ys, how vainly now, in my inmost heart. These things are beautiful, but they are unutterably sad, and have in them something considerable of remorse as well as bOrrow. Alas! why does one first see fully what worth the soul's jewel had when it is gone without return? Iost weak creatures are we; weak, perverse, wayward, especially weak. . .. Some- tinles I call myself weak, morbid, wrong, in regard to all this. ::;ometimes again I feel it sordid, base, ungrateful, when all this gets smothered up in vulgar interruption, and I F'ee it as if frozen away from me in dull thick vapour for (lays together. So it alternates. I pretend to no regulation of it; honestly enùeavour to let it follow its own law. That i::; my rule in the matter. Of late, in my total lameness aud impotency for work (which is a chief evil for me), I have sometiulf's thought, 'One thing you could do- \\rite ::;ome recorù of hpl'-lllake borne selpdion of her letters which you think ju::;tly among the clevere:;t e\'er written, and which 3 60 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. none but yourself can quite understand. But no! but no ! How speak of her to such an audience? 'Vhat can it do for her or for me ? This is the first sign of the intention which Car- lyle afterwards executed. How it ripened will be seen presently. 1\leanwhile the Journal continues:- December;' 6.-1 am in my seventy-third year} . . . Length of days under such conditions as mine are is not a thing to be coveted, but to be humbly deprecated rather. . . . ::\ly outlook continually is all to the great change now inevitably near. The sure hope to be at rest and to be where my loved ones are (the Almighty God alone knows where or how that is, but 1 take it always to be a place of rest) is the only prospect of being fairly better than 1 have been. l\Iy work being all done, as I more and more fear it is, why should 1 wish to linger here? l\fy lost bright one, all my bright ones are away-away. Society, of which I might still have plenty, - does me no good whatever; frets, disgusts, and provokes me; leaves the poor disturbed heart dark and void; an un- fathomable lake of sorrow lying silent under that poor foam of what is called talk, and in perhaps three cases out of four is fairly worse than solitude. ' There is no serious talk, sir,' said old Samuel; 'nobody now talks seriously'-a frightful saying, but a truer now than ever. . . . In general the talk of people suggests to me what a paltry dog-kennel of a worId- now rushing fast to total anarchy and self-government by the basf'st-this must be; and that 1 am a poor old man, liable to be borerl, provoked, and distressed, rather than helped any way, by his fellow-creatures. In every condition under God's sky is there not a right wa.y of behaving under it? And i there any other item important except simply that one? Courage, hope, love to the death, and be silent in defect of speech that were good. December;' 22.-' Youth,' says somebody, 'is a garland of roses.' I did not find it such. ' Age is a crown of thorns.' N eit her is this altogether true for me. If sadness and sorrow 1 His birthday was December 4. JOURNAL. 3 61 tend to loosen us from life, they make the place of rest desirable. If incurable grief be love all steeped in tears, and - lead us to pious though fS"ã""n d longings, is not grief an earnest blessing to us? Alas! that one is not pious always: that it is anger, bitterness, impatience, and discontent tbat occu- pies one's poor weak beart so mucb oftener. Some mornings ago I said to myself, 'Is tbere no book of piety you could still write? Forget tbe basenesses, miseries, and abomi- nations of this fast sinking world-its punishment come or at hand; and dwell among tbe poor straggling elements of pity, of love, of awe and worship you can still discern in it! Better so. Right, surely, far better. I wisb, I wish I could. "? as my great grief sent to me perhaps for tbat end? In rare better moments I sometimes strive to entertain an imagination of tbat kind; but as to doing anything in consequence, alas! alas!' , All England has taken to stealing,' says a certaiu new:;- paper for tbe last two weeks. Y pry serious, means railway swindling, official jobbery, &c. Hemedy, he thinks, will be tbat we shall all grow as poor as Hindoos, and then be as tiercely \igilant. \Y ould it not be reClsoilÆ(,ùle1' to find nu'W your small remainder of honest people, and arm them with authority over your multitudinous knaves! Here and tbere we are beginning to see into tbe meaning of self-government by the hungry rabble. r: The last stage of life's journey is necessarily dark, sad, and carried on under steadily increasing difficulties. \\. e are alone; all our loved ones and cheering fellow-pilgrims gone. Our strength is failing, wa ting more and more; day is sinking on us; night coming, not metapborically ouly. The road, to our growing weakness, dimness, injurability of every kind, becomes more and more obstructed, intricate, (lifficult to feet and eyes; a road among brake and bramble , swamps and stumbling places; no welcome shine of a h'unHlI cottage with its LOfoopitable candle now aligbt for us in these waste solitudes. Our eyes, if we have any light, rpst only on the eternal stars. Thus we stagger on, impediments in- ('reasing, force dimini hing, till at length there is equality 362 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LOiVD01V. l between the terms, and we do all infallibly ARRIVE. SO it has been from the beginning; so it will be to tbe end-for- ever a mystery and miracle before which human intellect falls d'wmb. Do we reach those stars then? Do we sink in those swamps amid the dance of dying dreams? Is the threshold we step over but the brink in that instance, and our home thenceforth an infinite Inane? God, our Eternal J1aker, alone knows, and it shall be as He wills, not as we would. His mercy be upon us! 'Yhat a natural human aspiration! Decembe1' 30.-Ah me! Am I good for nothing then? Has my right hand-bead rather-altogether lost its cunning? It is my beart that has fallen heavy, wrapt in endless sadnesl:! and a mist of stagnant mm;Ïngs upon death and the grave. Nothing now, no person now is beautiful to me. Nobleness in this world is as a tbing of the past. I have given up England to the deaf stupidities, and to the fatalities that follow, like- wise deaf. Her struggles, I perceive, under these night- mares, will reach through long sordid centuries. Her actual administerings, sufferings, performings, and attemptings fill me unpleasantly with abhorrence and contempt, both at once, for which reason I avoid thinking of them. 'Fenianism,' , Abyssinian wars,' 'trades-unions,' 'philanthropic movement' -let the dead bury their dead. One evening, I tbink in the spring of 1866, we two had come up from dinner and were sitting in this room, very weak and weary creatures, perhaps even I the wearier, though she far the weaker; I at least far the more inclined to sleep, which directly after dinner was not good for me. 'Lie on the sofa tbere,' said she-the ever kind and graceful, herself refusing to do so-' there, but don't sleep,' and I, after :-;ome superficial objecting, did. In old years I used to lie that way, and she would play the piano to me: a long series of Scotch tunes which set my mÏlld finely wandering tbrough the realms of memory and romance, and effectually prevented :-;leep. That evening I had lain but a few minutes when she turned round to her piano, got out the Thom on Burn book, JOURNAL. 3 6 3 and, to my surprise and joy, broke out again into her bright little stream of harmony and poesy, silent for at least ten years before, and gave me, in soft tinkling beauty, pathos, and melody, all myoId favourites: 'Banks and Braes,' 'Flowers of the Forest,' , Gilderoy,' not forgetting' Duncan Gray,' 'Cauld Kail,' 'Irish Coolen,' or any of my favourites tragic or comic; all which she did with a modest neatness and completeness-I might say with an honest geniality and unobtru:;;ively beautiful perfection of heart and hand-which I have never seen equalled by the most brilliant players, alllong ,,,,hich sort she was always humbly far from ranking herself; for except to me, or some quiet friend and me, she would never play at any time. I was greatly pleased and thankful for this unexpected breaking of the silence again, and got really a fine and almost blessed kind of pleasure out of it, a soothing and assuagement such as for long I had not known. Indeed I think it is yet the actually best little hour I can recollect ::;illce, very likely the pleasantest I shall ever have. Foolish soul! I fancied this was to be the new beginning of old days, that her health was now so much improved, and her spirits e::.pecially, that she would often do me this favour, and part of my thanks and glad speech to her went in that sense, to which I remember she merely finished shutting her piano and answered nothing. That piano has never again sounded, nor in my time will or shall. In late month it has grown clearer to me than ever that she had said to hers lf that night, , I will play him his tunes all yet once,' and had thought it would be but once. . . . This is now a thing infinitely touching to me. o like her; so like her. ...\.la , alas! I was very blind, and might have known better how near its etting my bright sun was. 364 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. CHAPTER XXXI. A.D. 1868. ÆT. 73. The Eyre Committee-Disestablishment of the Irish Church-A lec- ture by Tyndall-Visit to Stratton-So G. O.-Last sight of the Grange-' Letters and Memorials of Mrs. Carlyle '-Meditations in Journal-Modern Atheism-Democracy and poplùar orators- Scotland-Interview with the Queen-Portraits-Modern Atheism -Strange applications-Loss of use of the right hand-Uses of anarchy. THE persecution of General Eyre had been protracted with singular virulence. He had been recalled froln J mnaica. His pension was withheld, and he was financially a ruined lnan. The Eyre Committee con- tinued, doing what it could for hÏIn. Carlyle was anxious as ever. I never knew hiln more an..xious about anything. It had been resolved to present a petition in Eyre's behalf to the Government. Carlyle dre"w a sketch of one 'tolerably to his own mind,' and sent it to the Conlmittee. It ap- peared, however, not to be to their minds. They thanked him, found ,vhat he said 'fine and true;' but, in short, they did not like it, and he acquiesced. His interest was not altered. I have done my bit of duty or seeming duty (he said), and there will be no further noise from it. Eyre's self down here, visibly a brave, gentle, chivalrous, and clear man, whom I would make dictator of Jamaica for the next twenty-five years were I now king of it-has withal something of the Grandison in him, mildly perceptible. That is his limiting condition. DISESTABLISHfifENT OF THE IRISIf CHURCH. 365 Occasionally and at lon 'ish intervals he allowed himself to be tell1pted into London society. lIe made acquaintance with Lord and Lady Salisbury (the father of the present lord, who died soon after), both of WhOlll he much liked. He 'went one eveniner o to the Dean of vVestminster's. Lion entertainment to Princess Helena and her Prince Christian. Innocent little Princess, has a kind of beauty, &c. One little flash of pretty pride, only one, when she rose to go out from dinner, shook bel' bit of tntÍn right, raised her pretty head (fillet of diamonds sole ornament round her hair), and sailed out. ' A princess born, you know! ' looked really well, the exotic little soul. Dinner, evening generally, was miserable, futile, and cost me silent insomnia the whole night through. Deserved it, did I? It was not of my choosing-not quite. The Irish Church fell soon after, as the first branch of the famous upas tree the hewing down of which has proved so benefirent. Carlyle had lonp: known that the Irish Church was an anOll1aly) but he did not rejoice in its overthrow, each step which 'weakened English authority in Ireland bring- in er nearer the inevitable fresh conflict for the c sovereignty of the island. Irish Church Uesolution passed by a great majority. Non flocci facio. In my life I have seen few more anarchic, factious, unpatriotic achievements than this of Gladstone and his Parliament in regard to such an Ireland as now is. })oor Gladstone! Poor old decayed Church and ditto State! But once more, non flocci fac'io, him or it. If they could abolish l)arliamentary eloquence it would be worth a hundred a,bolitions of the Irish Church, poor old creature! Time hung heavily at Chelsea, and thc evcnings were dreary. Tym1all wa to lc ture at the Royal 366 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. Institution on Faraday. Carlyle was not enthusiastic about science and the blessings to be expected from it; yet he wa:; gratefully attached to Tyndall, and ,vas persuaded to attend. JrJ1l1'71fll. Jctn'lLæry 27, 1868.-Attended Tyndal]'s lecture (on Fara- day, his genius and merits), which Tyndall treated as quit.e heroic. A full and somewhat distinguished audience, re- spectful, noiseless, attentive, but not fully Rympathetic, I should say; such, at least, was my own case, feeling rather that the eulogy was perhaps overdone. As to myse If, 'the grandeur of Faraday's discoveries,' &c., excited in me no real enthusiasm, nor was either his faculty or his history a matter I could reckon heroic in that high degree. In sad fact, I cared but little for these discoveries-reckoned them uncertain-to my dark mind, and not by a.ny means the kind of ' discoveries' I wanted to be made at present. 'Can you really turn a ray of light on its axis by magnetism? and if you could, what should I care?' This is my feeling towards most of the scientific triumphs and unheard of progresses and miracles so trumpeted abroad in these days, and I sadly keep it secret, a sorrowful private possession of my own. Saw a good many people there, ancient frienrls of mine, to whom I wished right well, but found it painful to speak beyond mere salutations. Bishop Thirlwall, Sir Henry Holland, Dean Stanley and his wife. I..ecture done, I hurried away, joined by Conway, American nigger friend, innocent and patient. Feb1''1utry 6.-Nothing yet done, as usual. Nothing. Oh, me miserum! Day, and days past, unusually fine. Health in spite of sleeplessness, by no means very bad. Stand to thyself, wretched, moùrning, heavy-laden creature. f'lor others there is no want of work cut out for me. Yesterday, by our beautiful six posts, I had the following (If'm mds made upon me: To write about Sir 'Villiam LAST SIGHT OF THE GRANGE. 36; Hamilton; item about Stirling, candidate for Edinburgh Professorship; item to write about poor Clough. Have as good as nothing to say either about Clough or Hamilton, though I love them both. Just before bedtime, news from a young man, son of a l\Ir. C-, who used to call on me, and thought well of me, that he is fallen utterly ruined into very famine, and requests that I should lend him ten pounds. Nine- tenths of the letters I get are of that tenour, not to speak of requests for autographs, exhortations to convert myself or else be -; which latter sort, especially which last, [ burn after reading the first line. So profitable have my epistolary fellow-creatures grown to me in these years, 80 that when the postman leaves nothing it may be well felt as an escape. I will now send young C- 5l. from a 50l. I am steward to. In April Lord North brook wrote to invite Carlyle to spend a few days with hiIn at Stratton. lIe had known Lord Northbrook in the old Grange time. Stratton was not far fron1 the Grange, and there wa:-: a sort of pleasure in the thou:zht of seeing it again, though now in new hands. He was unwell, suffering froBl sorrow 'at once poignant and impotent.' In agreeing to go he forgot the approaching anniver- sary, the fatal \.pril 21. It strikes me now, with a shadow of remorse (he wrotE"), that Tuesday will be the 21st, and that I shall be far away from the place in Hyde Park to which J would have walked that day. I did not recollect in consenting, or perhaps [ hould have refused-certainly should have paused fir t. Hut alas! that is very weak too. TI1(> place, which no stranger knows of, is already quite changed: drink foun- tains, &c. I was there yesterday, but - was in company. I could only linger one little instant. Ah mt>! how weak Wf' are! Yesternight I read in the newspapers of an old man who had died of gripf in two or thrpe month:; fur the loss of 3 68 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. his wife. They had been wedded fifty-five years. And of another in Pimlico somewhere, who, on like ground, had stabbed himself dead, finding life now unendurable. He went to Stratton, and, except that as usual he slept badly, he enjoyed himself and' had cause to be grateful to the kind people round him and the kind scenes he was arTIong.' The anniversary came and went. 'All passes;' 'time and the hour wear out the gloon1iest day.' Journal. April 27, 1868.-1 was at the Grange twice over; all vacant, silent, strange like a dream; like reality become a dream. I sate in the church (Northington) with my two companions, Lords Northbrook and Sidney G. Osborne, our horses waiting the while. Church is all decorated, new- paved in encaustic, painted, glazed in coloured figures, in scribed, &c.; most clean, bright, ornate; on every pew a sprig of rosemary, &c., wholly as a Temple of the Dead. Such the piety and munificent affection of the now Dowager l.ady Ashburton. I sat in silence, looking and remembering. The ride thither and back was peacefully soothing to me. Another day the two boys (North brook's sons) and I rode that way again; pretty galloping for most part, thither and from, by the woods, over the down, &c. Strange, strange to ride as through a dream that once was so real; pensive, serious, sombre, not painfully sorrowful to me. It is again something as if solemnly soothing to have seen all this for probably the last time. l\1y principal or almost sole fellow-guest at Stratton was 'the strange Rev. Lord Sidney,' namerl above, the famous S. G. O. of the newspapers, and one of the strangest brother mortals [ ever met; a most lean, tall, and perpendicular man, face palpably aristocrat, but full of plebeian mobilitif's, free and easy rapidities, nice laughing little dark grey eyes, careless, honest, full of native ingenuity, sincerity, innocent vanit.y, LETTERS OF .l [RS. CLlRLYLE. 3 6 9 incessant talk, anecdotic, personal, distractedly speculative, oftenest purposely di:::;tracted, never altogether boring. To me his talk had one great property, it saved all task of talking on my part. He was very intrinsically polite too, and we did very well together.I Proof-sheets of the new edition of his works were waiting for hÏ1n on his return honle. He' found him elf willing to read those books and follow the printer through tllcn1 as ahnost the one thing he wa good for in his down pressed and desolate Yf'ars.' The deInanù for theIn 'was Inainly indifferent' to hinl. 'Vhat were his bits of works? 'Vhat was anybudy':; work? ' Thosc whom he wished to plea c werc sunk into the f!rave. The works anù their praiscs and successcs had bccome more and nlore " reminiscenccs "mcrely.' On the other hand, , the thought of a sclertion frOlu Iter letters had not yct (luitted hiln, nor should. Could he but execute it \\'cll, and lcave it legible behind hÏ1n, to be printed aftcr twenty years.' 2 The elc< tion and the copying wa takcn in hand. lEs pas ing meditations cUlltinllctocl'atic man. \\ e i'lmoked a reat deal of tobacco to ethN.' 2 In hi!:> will of 1t373 Carlyle says ten orscven Yl'ars,>>nd filially lea\es the time of publieution to me. Vide illji'a, p. 41:!. IV. U ß 37 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. a visibly growing contempt for titles, aristocratic and other. 1 I answered him yes, indeed; and a visible decay of respect or reverence for whatever is above one's own paltry self, up and up to the top of the universe eyen, up to Almighty God Himself even, if you will look well, which is a more frightful kind of ' progre s ' for you. Seriously the speed with which matters are going on in this supreme province of our affairs is something notable, and sadly undeniable in late years. The name-old N'L men withal-has become as if obsolete to the most devout of us ; and it iR, to the huge idly impious million of writing, preaching, and talking people as if the fact too had quite eased to be certain. ' The Eternities,' 'the Silences,' &c. I myself have tried various shiftR to avoid mentioning the , Name' to such an audience-audience which merely Rneers in rptnm-and is more convinced of its delusion than ever. 'No more humbug!' 'Let us go ahead!' 'All de- Rcenderl from gorillaR, seemingly.' 'Sun made by collision of huge masses of planets, asteroidI', &c., in the infinite of spa.ce.' Very possibly say I! ' Then where is the place for a Creator?' The fool hath sairl in his heart there is no God. From the beginning it has been so, is now, and to the end will be 80. The fool hath said it-he and nC'body else; and with dismal results in our days-as in all days; which often makes me sad to think of, coming nearer myself and the end of my own life than I ever expected they would do. 2 That of the sun, and his possibly being made in that manner, seemed to me a real triumph of science, indefinitely widening the horizon of our theological ideas withal, and awakened a good many thoughts in me when I first heard of it, and gradually perceived that there was actual scÏPl1- tific basis for it-I suppose the finest stroke that' Science,' J The Parliament.ary .Whips on both sides are, perhaps, of a different. opinion as t.o this snpposed conteD1 t. 2 Carlyle did not deny his own responsibilities in the matter. In his dPRire to extricate the kel'llel from t.he shpll in which it was rotting', he had sbaken exiRting lJPliefs as much as any man, and, he admitted to me, , had give a cOllsiderable shove to all that: .f}:fEDITATIONS LV JOURNAL. 37 1 poor creature, has or may have su<:ceeded in making during my time-welcome to me if it be a truth-honourably wel- come! But wbat has it to do with the existence of the Eternal Unnameable? Fools! fools! It widens the horizon of my imagination, fills me with deeper and deeper wonder and devout awe. Ko prayer, I find, can be more appropriate still to ex- press one's feelings, ideas and wishes in the highest direction than that universal one of Pope:- Father of all in every age In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, .T phovah, Jove, or Lord. Thou great. First Cause, least understood, 'Yho all my sense confined, To know but this, that Thou art good, And that. myself am blind. Not a word of that requires change for me at this time if words are to be used at all. The first devout or nobly thinking soul that found himself in this unfathomable universe-I still fancy with a strange sympathy the first insight his awe-struck meditation gave him in this matter. , The Author of all this is not omnipotent only, but infinite in wisdom, in rectitude, in all noble qualities. The name of him is God (the good).' How else is the matter construable to this hour? All that is good, generous, wise, right-what- ever I deliberately and for ever love in others and myself, who or what could by any possibility have given it to me but One who first had it to give! This is not logic. This is axiom. Logic to-and-fro heats ag inst this, like idle winrl on an adamantine rock. The antique first-thinker naturally gave a human pprsonality and type to this supreme object, yet admitted too that in the deepest depths of his anthropo- morphism, it remained 'inconceivable,' 'past finding out.' Let us cease to attp'ìT/'pt shaping it, but at no moment forget that it veritahly is-in thi" day as in the first of tlH" days. It was as a ray of everlasting light and insight this, that had shot itself zenitkwa1'd from the soul of a man, ß ß '> 37 2 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. first of all truly' thinking' men, struggling to interpret for himself the mystery of his as yet utterly dark and unfathom- able world; the beginning of all true interpretation, a piece of insight that could never die out of the world thenceforth. Strange, high, and true to me as I consider it and figure it to myself in those strange newest days-first real aperture made through the utter darkness, revealing far aloft strange skies and infinitudes. 'Inspired by the Almighty,' men might well think. 'Yhat else is it in all times that' giveth men understanding'! This' ape'ì'ture zenithward,' as I like to express it, has gone on slowly widening itself, with troublings and confusings of itself sad to witness, at in- tervals in the process all along-very witnessable even now. But it has steadily gone on, and is essentially, under condi- tions ever widening, our faith, capable of being believed by oneself alone against the whole world, this day and to the end of days. Poor 'Comtism,' ghastliest of algebraic spectralities- origin of evil, &c.-these are things which, much as I have struggled with the mysteries surrounding me, never broke a momeJlt of my rest. 1\lysterious! be it so if you will. But is not the fact clear and cerÌ<'Lin! Is it a' mystery' yOU have the least chance of ever getting to the bottom of! Canst thou by searching find out God? I am not surprised thou canst not, vain fool. These things are getting to be very rife again in these late years. 'Why am 1, the miraculously meritorious" 1," not perfectly happy then? It would have been so easy: and see.' That I perceive is the key-note of all these vehement screechings and unmelodious, impious, serannel pipings of poor men, verging towards apehood by the Dead Sea if they don't stop short. JUfW 29.-The other morning a pamphlet came to me from some orthodox cultivated scholar and gentleman- strictly anonymous. Paml'hl9t even is not published, only printed. The many excerpts, for I read little of the rest, bave struck me much. An immense development of Atheisrn is dearly proceeding, and at a rapid rate, and i.n joyful ./WODERN A THEISJI. 373 exultant humour, both here and in France. Some book or l)amphlet called' The Pilgrim and the Shrine' was copiously quoted from. Pilgrim getting delivered out of his Hebrew old clothes seemingly into a Hottentot costume of put'i'Ùl t'i'ipes hugely to his satisfaction, as appeared. French medical prize essay of young gentleman, in similar costume or worse, declaring 'we come from monkeys.' Virtue, vice are a product, like vitriol, like vinpgar; this, and in general that human nature is rotten, and all our high beliefs and aspirations 'rnud! See it, believe it, ye fools, and pro- ceed to make yourselves happy upon it! I had no idea there was so much of this going on! The Logic of Death (English pamphlet) had already sold to 50,000 copies. Another English thing was a parody on the Lord's Prayer :-' Instead of praying to the Lord for daily bread, ask your fellow-work- men why wages are so low,' &c., &c. This is a very serious ompn, and might give rise to end- Ipss meditation. If they do abolish' God' from their own poor bewildered hearts, all or most of them, there will be seen for some length of time (perhaps for several genera- tions) such a world as few are dreaming of. But I never dread their' abolition' of what is the Eternal Fact of Facts, and can prophesy that mankind generally will either return to that with new clearness and sacred purity of zeal, or else perish utterly in unimaginable depths of anarchic misery and baseness, i.e. sink to hell and death eternal, as onr fathers said. For the rest I can rather welcome one symptom clearly traceable in the phenomenon, viz., that all people have arwol.'ß ami are determined to have done with cants and idolatries, and have decided to die rather than live longer under that hatefullest and brutallest of sleepy Dpas trees. El ge! euye! to begin with. And there is another thing I notice, that the chosen few who do continue to believe in the' etprnal nature of duty,' and are in aU times and all places the God-appointed rulers of this world, will know at once who the sla'L'e kind are; who, if good is ever to begin, must be exch ded totally from ruling, and in fact, be tru:-:terl only with some k.ind of collar:-; round their neck.s. 374 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. Courage! courage always! But how deep are we to go? Through how many centuries, how many abject generations will it probably last? September 8.-1 wish Stirling 1 would turn the whole strength of his faculty upon that sad question, '''That is the origin of morals?' Saddest of all questions to the people who have started it again, and are evidently going to all lengths with it, to the foot of the very gallmvs, I believe, if not stopt sooner. Had I a little better health, I could almost think of writing something on it myself. Stirling probably never will, nor in fact can ?netaphysics ever settle it, though one would like to hear, as times go, what of clearest and truest poor :Metaphysics had to say on it, for the multitude that put their trust in :Metaphysics. If people are only driven upon virtuous conduct, duty, &c., by association of ideas, and there is no 'Infinite Nature of Duty,' the world, I should say, had better' count its spoons' to begin with, and look out for hurricanes and earthquakes to end with. This of morality by' association of ideas ' seems to me the grand question of this dismal epoch for all thinking souls left. That of stump oratory-' oh, what a glorious speech!' &c., and the inference to be at last and now drawn from this: the {nrÓ"ptGu -actio of Demosthenes 2-ter opti'fì um-is the second ques- tion intimately connected with the former, and it seems to me there are no two questions so pressing upon us here and now as these two. I wish sometimes I had. a little strength of body left-for the other strength is perhaps still there, as the wish, for certain, occasionally is. "Tish indeed! 'Yish- ing is very cheap, and at bottom neither of these two ques- tions is what I am most like trying at present. This Inatter of the power of 'oratory' was 111uch in Carlyle's n1ind at this time; for since ' Niagara' his 1 Edinburgh Stirling, author of the' Secret of Hegel.' 2 Demosthenes, when asked what was the first qualification of orators, is said by Oicpro to have answered Actio. '\ hat the second? Actio. "hat the third? Actio. It is usually translated action, gesture. But it means all the fUllctions of an actor, gesture included. Oicero, De Ora tore, passim. ORATORJ 375 chief anxiety centred there. As democracy gro\\rs intensified, the eloquent speaker who can best please the ears of the nlultitude on provincial platforms will Illore and more be the man whom they will Ill0St admire and wi!] choose to represent theIne The rnost eloquent will inevitably, for S01ue tÏIne to COlne, be the 1110St powerful 111illister in this country. It hec0111es of suprmne importance therefore to under- stand what oratory is, and how far the presence of those other faculties of intellect and character which can be trusted with the achninistration of the Empire Inay be inferred fr01n the possession of it. It was t he sad conviction of Carlyle that at no tÏ1ue in the world's history had fmuons orators deserved th name of statesInen. Facts had never borne then- out. They had been always on the losing side. Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni. Nor had they been theulselves true l1lCn, but men who had liveù in the show and outsides ùf things, not in the heart and e sence of things. The art of speech lies in bringing the emotions to influence the judgment-to influence it by 'a sulning a feeling if yon have it not,' by personation, by vrrÓKpLULf), the art of the stage-player. I do not suppose that Carlyle had ever read either Plato's' Gorgia,,' or \ristotle's , rolitics.' But, on his own grounùs, he had come to the smne conclusion as they. Plato, Aristotle, had seen in the Greek rcpuhlicH the same ascendellcy of popular orators with which England was now Illcnaced. It was only rarely and by accident that the power in purely delIlocratic cmllmullitics fell illtl) the hands of men fit to hold it. The Blobs of the cities chuso 376 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOl\TflON. ahnost invariably Inen of two kinds, and neither a good one; either knaves who played upon them and led theI11 by the nose for personal or party objects, or 111en who were themselves the victinls of the pas- sions to which they appealed, who lived intoxicated with their own verbosity, who had no judgInent, and no criterion of truth, save that it must be sonlething which they could persuade others to believe, and had therefore no power of recof,'l1i1'ing truth when it \vas put before theln. Fr0111 this cause nlore than fr0111 any other the Greek constitutions went to ruin, as the R0111an did after them. The ascendency of the' orator' was the unerring sign of the approach- ing catastrophe. Plato compared oratory to the art of the fashionable cook who flavoured his poisonous Iuesses to tempt the palate. Aristotle says that all forms of governnlent have their special parasites, which are bred by them, and destroy theI11. Kings and emperors are n1Ïsled by favourites who flatter theln. The orator is the parasite of the mob; he thrives on its favour, and therefore never speaks un- pleasant truths to it. A king Il1ay be wise and nlay choose prudent councillors. A deIllocracy fronl its nature never can. This was the opinion 'of the great Greeks, and Cicero, though he fought against the conviction, felt the truth of it. The orator was like a soldier trained in the use of anus, and able to use theIn, either for good purposes or for bad. Antonius, the first master of the art in HOllIe, discusses the qualifications for Rucce:s:s in Cicero's 'Dialogue' with delicate hUlnour. lIe supposes a case where he has to persuade an audience of SOlne- thing which he knows to be false. Fire, he says, can ORA TOR y: 377 only be kindled by fire. The skilfullest acting cannot equal the fire of real conviction. But so happily, Antonius says, is the orator's nature constituted that when he has taken up a cause with eagerness he cannot help believing in it. He envelopes it in an atmosphere of moral sentiments and conl III 011- places, anù, being once possessed with the e sublime emotions, he pours theln out in the triunlphant con- fidence of a conviction, for the moment sincere. l Such a man, or such a species of man, is certain to be found, and certain to be in front place, omnipotent for mischief under all denlocratic constitutions. lIe leads the majority along with him, and rules by superior numbers; while to Inen of understanding, who are not blinded by his glowing periods, he ap- pears, as he really is, a transparent charlatan. De- nlosthene hiulself admitted that if he was speaking only to Plato hi tongue would fail hinl; and it is a bad augury for any country when Inatters of weight and consequence are detennined by argulllents to which only the unintelligent can listen. The ominous a cendency of this quality, illustrated as it wa,; in the per ons of the two rival chief.") of the political parties in England, was a conllIlOn topic of Carlyle's talk in his late years, and appears again and again in his diary. :Meantime his life fell back into sOlnething like its old routine. vVhile his strenoth lasted he went Q 1 ':\1 agna vis est earum sententiarum atq ue eorum locorum, quos agas tractesque dicendo, nihil ut opus sit 8imulatione et fallaciil:!. Ip a enim natura orationis ejU8, quæ sU8cipitur ad aliorum animos pel'IUovendus, oratorem ip um magis etiam, quam queruquam eOl'urn qui audiunt, l)er- UlO\et.' hl' Oratore, lib. ii. cap. 4û. 37 8 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. annually to Scotland; never so happy as among his own kindred. Yet even among them he was less happy than sadly peaceful. ' Pity lne,' he writes to 1\Iiss BroInley, September 8, 1868, frOln DUInfries :_ Nay, I don't see how you are quite to avoid despising me as well. I was never so idle in my life before; but the region here is very beautiful, in the beautiful weather we again have; and to me it is not beautiful only, but almost supernatural, like the Valley of l\1:irza with its river and bridge. The charm of sauntering about here like a dis- embodied ghost, peacefully mournful, peacefully meditative, is considerable in comparison, and I repugn against quitting it. On getting back to London he worked in earnest in sorting and annotating his wife's letters. IIis feel- ing and purpose about them, as it stood then, is thus expressed in his journal :- To be kept unprinted for ten to twenty years after my death, if, indeed, printed at all, should there be any babbling of memory still afloat about me or her. That is at present my notion. At any rate, they sooll be left leg'ible to such as t.hey do concern, and shall be if I live. To her, alas! it is no service, absolutely none, though my poor imagina- tion represents it as one, and I go on with it as something pious and indubitably right; that some memory and image of one so beautiful and noble should not fail to survive by ?ny blame, unworthy as I was of her, yet loving her far more than I could ever show, or even than I myself knew till it was too late-too late. Occasional rides on Miss Bromley's Comet formed his chief afternoon occupation; but age was telling on his seat and hand, and COlllet and Carlylc's riding were both near their end. RIDING ACCIDEiVT. 379 To John Carlyle. Chelsea: October 9, 1868. Riding is now fairly over. Above a week ago I had the once gallant little Comet brought down to me here; delighted to see me the poor creature seemed. But alas! idleness, darkness, and abundant oats had undermined and hebetated and, in fact, ruined the once glorious Comet; so that in about half-an-hour, roads good, riding gentlest and care- fullest, the glorious Comet splashed utterly down-cut eye, brow, and both knees-horse and rider fairly tracing out their united profile on the soil of :l\Iiddlesex in the Holland House region. Silent, elegant new street, hardly anyone seeing the phenomenon. As I stuck by the horse through his sprawlings, I had come down quite gradually, right stirrup rather advanced; so that I got no injury whatever, scarcely even a little dirt. I silently perceived this must be my last ride on Comet. The marvel ,,,,as that he had been able to con- tinue riding to so advanced an age, and had not Inet long before with a more serious accident. He rode loosely always. His mind was always abstracted. lIe had been fortunate in his different horses. They had been 'very clever creatures.' Thi was his only explanation. Another incident befell him in the beginning of 18GÐ, of a more pleasing kind. He received an in- timation fr01n Dean Stanley that her !Iajesty would like to become personally acquainted with a 11lan of whom she had heard so 11lliCh, and in whose late sorrows she had been so interested. lIe wa not a courtier; no one could suspect hÏ1n of seeking the favour of the great of this world, royal or noble. Rut for the Queen throughout his life he had entcr- 3 80 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. tained always a loyal respect and pity, wishing only that she could be less enslaved by , the talking appa- ratus ' at Westminster. He had felt for her in her be- reaveUlent, as she had relnembered him in his own. The n1eeting was at the Westminster Deanery :- The Queen [he says of it] was really very gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The interview was quietly very mournful to me; the one point of real interest, a sombre thought: 'Alas! how would it have cheered her, bright soul, for my sake, had she been there ! ' A less flattering distinction was vVatts's portrait of hÏIn, lately :finished for John Forster, and the en- graving of it, which was now being proceeded with. Of the picture itself his opinion, as conveyeù to his brother, was not flattering. The failure may have been due to the subject, for no painter, not even Millais, ever succeeùed with Carlyle. This particular performance he calls Decidedly the most insufferable picture that has yet been made of me, I a delirious-looking mountebank full of violence, awkwardness, atrocity, and stupidity, without recognisable likeness to anything I have ever known in any feature of me. Fuit in tatis. ''''hat care I, after all? Forster is much content. The fault of 'Yatts is a passionate pursuit of strength. Never mind, never mind! In the spring he was troubled by want of sleep again; the restlessness being no doubt aggravated by the' Letters,' and by the recollections which they caned up. Public opinion, politics, the tone of the press, of literature generally, the cant of progress, 1 Kot except.ing the fl::.tyed horse! JJfRS. CARLYLE'S LETTERS. 381 daily growing louder, all tended too to irritate hÍIn. Smne scientific article, I think in the 'Fortnightly,' was "disgusting and painful' to him; , tells me nothing uew either,' he noted, 'however logical and clear, that I did not know before, viz. that to the eye of clay spirit is for ever invisible. Pah! nasty! necdless too. " A little lower than the angels," said Psalmist David; "A little higher than the tadpoles," says Evan- p-elist -." , , These people,' he said to me, 'bring you what appears the whitest beautifullest flour to bake your bread with, but when you examine it you find it is powderfd glas.r.:, and deadly poison.' The 'Letters,' however, and his own occupation with thelu, were the absorbing intcre:-;t, although to IHC at this time he never Inentioned the subject. Journal. April 29, 1869.-Perhaps this mournful, but pious, and ever interesting task, escorted by such miseries, night after night, and month after month-perhaps all this may be wholesome punÜ:hment, purification, and monition, and again (t blessing in lÜsg1Ûse. I have had many such in my life. Some strange belief in an actual particular Providence rises always in me at intervals, faint but indestructible belief in spite of logic and arithmetic, which does me good. If it be true and a fact, as Kant and the clearest scientific people keep as::;erting, that there IS no Time and no Space, I say to myself sometimes all minor 'Logic' and counting by the fingers becomes in such provinces an incompetent thing. Bclipve what thou must, that is a rule that needs no enforcing. Ju.ly 24, 1869.-In spite of impediments we are now getting done with that sacred t(ts/ . In a month more, if per- mitted still, [ can hope to see the" hole of tho e dear letters I) iug legiblt-.. to gooù eye , with the nel'ùful commentaries, 382 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDOl\T. for which ought not I to be thankful as for a chosen mercy. . . . J\ly impediments, however, have been almost desperate; ignorance, unl)unctuality, sluggish torpor on the part of assistants, all hanging about my weak neck, depending on me to push it through or to leave it sticking. In fact, this has been to me a heavy-laden miserable time, impeded to me as none ever was by myself and others-others ever since October last. But I will speak of it no more. Thank God if this thing be got done. Addisconlbe seems to have been again offered to hin1, as an escape this sumIner fron1 London, if he cared to go thither. September 28, 1869.-The old story. Addiscombe and Chelsea alternating, without any result at all but idle misery and want of sleep, risen lately to almost the intolerable l)itch. Dreary boring beings in the lady's time used to infest the place and scare me home again. Place empty, lady gone to the Highlands, and, still bountifully pressing, we tried it lately by removing bodily thither. 1 Try it for three weeks, said we, and did. Nothing but insomnia there, alas! Yesterday morning gone a week, we struck flag again and removed all home. Enterprise to me a total failure. . . . The task in a sort done, J\fary finishing my notes of 1866 this very day; I shrinking for weeks past from any revi al or interference there as a thing evidently hurtful, evidently antisomnial even, in my present state of nerve!:;. Essen- tially, however, her 'Letters and l\Iemorials' are saved, thank God! and I hope to settle the details calmly, too. This is the last mention of these' Letters,' &c., in the Journal. I, as I said, had heard nothing about them; and though I was aware that he was engaged in SOlne way with his autobiography, I had no con- jecture as to what it was. Finished in a sort the I , 1Ve' means himself, his brothel', and his niece, Iiss :\Jary Aitkpß, who was now with him. OPINION OF RUSKIl\T. 3 8 3 collection was, but it needed close revision, and there was an introductory narrative still to be written. Carlyle, however, could then touch it no further, nor did a time ever conle when he felt himself equal to taking it up again. It was tied together and laid aside for the present, and no resolution ,vas then formed as to what was to be done with it. This subject being off his mind, he was able to think n10re calmly of ordinary things. Ruskin was becon1Ïng lnore and lnore interesting to him. Ruskin seemed to be catching the fiery cross fronl his hand, as his ov{n strength was failing. 'Vriting this autumn to Inyself, he said, 'One day, by express desire on both sides, I had Ruskin for sonle hours, really in- teresting and entertaining. He is full of projects, of generous prospective activities, SOllIe of which I opined to hinl would prove chimerical. There is, in singular environment, a ray of real IIeavell in R. Passages of that last book "Queen of the Air" went into I1IY heart like arrows.' The Journal during the saIne I110nth becomes soft and Iuelodious, as if the sense of a duty heroically perfonned had cOlnposed and consoled hiln. Octoba 6.-For a week past I am sleeping better, which is a special mercy of Heaven. I dare not yet believe that slef'p is regularly coming back to me; but only tremulously hope so now and then. If it does, I might still w1'ite ::;ome- thing. .l\Iy poor intellect seems all here, only crushed down under a general avalanche of things forpign to it. l\Ièn have at one time felt that they had an immortal soul, have they not? Physical obstruction, torture of nerves, &c., calTif'ò to a certain pitch is insuperable. All the rest I could take some charge of, but this fairly beats me ; and the utmost I can do -could I ah\ays achic\"e even that, which [ 384 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LONDON. can't almost ever--is to be silent, to be inert and patient under it. The soul's sorrow that I have, too, is notable, perhaps singular. At no moment can I forget my loss, nor wish to do it if I could. Singular how the death of one has smitten all the Universe dead to me. :l\1orbid? I sometimes ask, and possibly it is. But in that sadness -for my loved one -to whom now sometimes join themselves my mother, father, &c.-there is a piety and silent patient tenderness which does hold of the divine. How dumb are all these things grown in the now beaverish and merely gluttonous life of man! A very sordid world, my masters! Yes. But what hast thou to do with it? Nothing. Pass on. Still save thy poor self from it if possible. . . . . Am reading Verstigan's 'Decayed Intelligence' night after night, with wonder at the curious bits of correct etymology and real sense and insight, floating about among masses of mere darkness and quasi-imbecility. It is certain we have in these two centuries greatly improved in our geologies, in our notions of the early history of man. Have got rid of l\losEs, in fact, which surely was no very sublime achieve- ment either. I often think, however, it is pretty much all that science in this age has done, or is doing. Octobe'J' 14.-Three nights ago, stepping out after mid- night, with my fined pipe, and looking up into the stars, ,.,.- which were clear and numerous, it struck me with a s trang e new kind of feeling. Hah! in a little while I shall have seen you abo for the last time. God Almighty's own Theatre of Immensity, the Infinite made palpable and visible to me, that also will be closed, flung to in my face, and I shaH never behold that either any more. And I knew so little of it, real as was my effort and desire to know. The thoughts of this eternal deprivation-even of this, though this is such a nothing in comparison-was sad and painful to me. And thelJ. a second feeling rose on me, '\Vhat if Omnipotence, which has ùeveloped in me these pieties, these reverences and infinite affections, should actually have said, Yes, poor mortals.' Such of you as have gone so far hall be permitted to go farther. Hope. Despair not! I have ORATORY. 3 8 5 not had such a feeling for many year back as at that moment, and so mark it here. 'Vith his thoughts thus travelling into the far In- fin.ities, CarJyle could scarcely care long, if he could care at all, for the details of the progress of English political disintegration. Yet he did observe with contemptuous indignation the developn1ent of the Irish policy by the PrÏIl1e 1\Iinister, and speculated on the construction of a n1Ïnd which could persuade itself and others that such a policy wa right. It was the fatal oratorical faculty. Journal. ]{ovember 11th, 1869.-If ú7T"ó"pun , 'hypocrisy' I be the first, second, and third thing in eloquence, as I think it is, then why have it at all? \\7hy not insi t, as a first and inexorable condition, that all speech be a reality; that every speaker be verily what he pretends or play-acts to be ? I can see no outlet from this. Grant the Demosthenic (lictu/nL, this inference, this, were there nothing el::;e urging it, in- exorably follows as the yery next. Experience, too-e.g., Oliver Cromwell's speeches. So soon as by long scanning you can read them clearly, nowhere in the world did I find such persuasion, such power8 of compeHing belief, there and then, if you did really hear with open ear and heart. Duke of ".,. ellington ! I heard him just once for a quarter of an hour. The whole House of Lord::; had spoken in .:\Iplibæan strains for two or three hours; might have spoken so for two or tllree cent uries without the least result to me. ú7TÓ"pUny not good {-'nough. ""'{-'llington ha.wking, haing, humming- t he worst speaker I had ever heard-etched and scratch{-'d me out gradually a recognisahle }JO'i.tJ'(ât of the fact, and was the only noble lord who had 8polæn at all. These are 1 V7rOKptT is the Greel{ word for' actor.' 2 This is precisely what Plato means. Truth, however plainly spoken, convince:,j the intelli!lt.nt. Thû orator spealís III Toí OÙK flðci m lliong the 11ut intelligent, and rCl{uil'es something el e thal1 truth. IV C C 3 86 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN L01\TDON: accurate facts familiar to my thoughts for many years back, and might be pointed out far more vividly than here in the actual features they have. Can so many doctors, solemn pedants, and professors for some 2,000 years p st-can Longinus, Demosthenes, Cicero, and all tbe universities, parliaments, stump oratories, and spouting places in this lower world be unanimously wearing, instead of anreoles round their head , long ears on each side of it? Unani- mou ly sinning against Nature's fact, and stultifying and confiscating themselves and their sublime classical labours. I privately have not the least doubt of it, but possess no means of s3,ying so with advantage. Time, I believe, will say so in t he course of certain centuries or decades emphati- cally enough. NO'L'e'mber 13th.-A second thing I will mark. The quantities of potpntial and even con ciously in- creasing Atheism, sprouting out everywhere in these days, is enormou ;;:-- In every scientific or quasi-scientific ppriodical one meets it. By the last American mail I had two eloqupnt, determined, and calmly zealous declarations of it. In fact, there is clear prophecy to me that in another fifty years it will be the new religion to the whole tribe of hard-hearted and hard-headed men in thi::; world, who, for thpir time, bear practical rule in the world's affairs. Not only aU Christian churches but all Christian religion are nodding towards speedy downfall in this Europe that now is. Figure thp residuum: man made chemically out of l'rschleÍ?n, or a certain blubber called protoplasm. l\1an descended from the apes, or the shell-fish. Virtue, duty, or utility an association of ideas, and the corollaries from all that. France is amazingly advanced in that career. England, America, are making still more passionate speed to come up with her, to pas her, and be the vanguarù of progre::;::;. "'hat I had to note is this only: that nobody lleed arì'gue with these ppoplp, or C3,n with the least effect. Logic never will decide the matter, or will decide it-seem to decide it-their way. He who traces nothing of God in his own soul, will never find Cod in t he world of matter-mere circling of fO'l'ce there, 1110DERl\T ATHEISiJI. of iron regulation, of universal death and merciless In- differency. Nothing but a dead steam-engine thert . It is in the soul of man, when reverence, love, intelligence, mag- nanimity have been dtveloped there, that the Highpst can disclose itself face to face in sun-splendour, independent of all cavils and jargonings. There, of a surety, and nowhere else. And is not that the real court for such a cause? .Matter itself-the outer world of matter-is either Nothing or else a product due to man's mind. To l\Iind, all ques- tions, ef:pecially this question, come for ultimate decision, as in the universal highest and final Court of Appeal. I wish all this could be de'veloped, universally set forth, and put on its true basis. Alas! I myself can do nothing with it, but per- haps others will. December 4th, 1869.-This is my seventy-fourth birth- day. For seventy-four years have I now lived in this world. That is a fact awakening cause enough for reflection in the dullest man. . . . If this be my last birthday, as is oft.en not improbable to me, may the Eternal Father grant that I be ready for it, frail worm that I am. Nightly I look at a certain photograph-at a certain tomb I-the last thing I do. .l\Iost times it is with a mere feeling of dull woe, of endless love, as if choked under the inexorable. In late weeks I occasionally feel able to wish with my whole softened heart -it is my only form of prayer-' Great Father, oh, if Thou canst, have pity on her and on me, and on all such.' In this at least there Ü; no harm. The fast-increasing flood of Atheism on me takes no hold-does not even wet the soles of my fe et. I totally dishelieve it; de pise as wen as abhor it; nor dread that it ever can prevail as a doom of the f:ons of men. Kay, are there not perhaps temporary necessities for it, inestimable future uses in it? Patif>uce! patience! and hope! The new diaholic school of the French is reany curious to me. Beaudelaire for example. Ode of his in , Fraser' the other night. ""'as there ever anything so bright infernal? Flc10'S du .i'[nl indeed! I Photograph of the interior of IhIrlinp'ton C!l11rcb and )11'8. Cal'- lyll"" rE. ting--place there. c c : 3 8 7 ---..-:t. 388 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LOl\TDON. Januwry 21st, 1870.-It is notable how Atheism spreads among us in these days. -'s protoplasm (unpleasant doctrine that we are all, soul and body, made of a kind of blubber, found in nettles among other organisms) appears to be delightful to many; and is raising a great crop of atheistic speech on the shallower side of English spiritualism at present. One -, an army surgeon, has continued writing to me on these subjects from all quarters of tbe world a set of letters, of which, after the first two or three, which indicated an insane vanity, as of a stupid cracked man, and a dull impiety as of a brute, I have never read beyond the opening word or two, and then the signature, as pro- logue to immediate fire; everyone of which nevertheless gives me a moment of pain, of ghastly disgust, and loathing pity, if it be not anger, too, at this poor - and his life. Yesterday there came a pamphlet, published at Lewes, by some moral philosopher, there called Julian, which, on look- ing into it, I find to be a hallelujah on the advent and dis- covery of atheism; and in particular, a crowning-with cabbage or I know not what-of this very -. The real joy of Julhn was what surprised me-sincere joy you would have said-like the shout of a hyæna on finding that the whole univer e was actually carrion. In about seven minutes my great Julian w],s torn in two and lying in the place fit for him. The' Diabolic' sometimes visited Carlyle in actual form. One day in NoveInber this year, an appal'- ently well-conditioned gentlelnan waited upon hiln with a request for help in SOllle local Chelsea charity. A sovereign was at once forth cOIning. The man went, and ten minutes aft.er he discovered that the plausible strangf'r wat; a ticket-of-leave man, and that he himself had been a 'nose of wax.' Too late he remembered an air of 'varnished devilry' in the felluw. ' Well! well!' he reflected, 'you Blust just take your just wages whatever lllortification there is. STRA.LVGE APPLICATIONS. 3 8 9 The handsome scandalous face Calne back to him at night in a half-waking drealn. ' Hah !' he thougbt, I had a personal visit of the DEYIL too, as poor St. ellhn had 111any ; and slept off with soruething of real pity for this miserable Dcvil of 111ine.' The fraud was itself a tribute to his known good-nature. But he had better evidences of the light in which the world now looked on him. ' The nlarks of respect,' he said, , of loving regard and praise in all forms of it, that corne to nle here, are a surprise, an ahnost daily astonish- nlent and even an elnbarrassment to nle, though I answer uniforn1ly nothing; so undeserved they seeln, so excessive, so wildly overdone.' One letter I insert here fron1 a person who sought him as a ghostly father under singular circumstances; an endorsement shows that he did answer it, though what he said can only be conjectured. To Thol/las Carlyle. 1869. Rir,-AR I learned from the note that Irs. - received from you that you were not unwilling to pay some attention to what I might have to say, I have ventured to trouble you with the following account of my wretched state. It is not without horrible misgivings that [ do it. But you must know the nature of my complaint to enable you to prescribe a remedy, if remedy there be for it. Know then the secret of all my sorrows and my hardships. I am ugly-I had almost said hideous-to beholrl. Oh what a devilish mis- fortune to be sent into the world ugly. How often do I curse the da.y of my birth. How often do I curse the mother that brought me into this world out of nothingness into hellish misery-aye, and often do more than curse her. I have no friends or companions; all shun and df'spise me. As I cannut Hhare the pJeasul"P::; ami pnjoyments of 390 CARLYLE'S LIFE flV LOND01Y. those around me, I have sought to beguile away my time with books. l\fy mental capacities are near zero, so I read them to little purpose; yet they have aroused in me dim ideas of something I cannot express-something that almost makes me glad I am in the world. I do not like to go and seek work (necessity compels me sometimes) for I cannot bear the taunts and jibes of those I work with, so I am always poor. Oh what a devilish life is mine ! You call this a God's worM; if it is, I must say I am a God-forgotten mortal. You talk of big coming Eternitif's; you call man a Son of Earth and Heaven. I often ponder over such phrases as these, thinking to find some meaning in them that would bid me look into brighter prospects in the dark future. I, who have such a wretched life here, often try to make myself believe that there is a better life awaiting me elsewhere. I am about twpnty-five years of age. I am heartily sick of life, and I live here only because I have not the courage to die. I flatter myself that I shall yet get courage. I have become misanthropical. I hate all things. How I wish that this solid globe was shattered into fragments, and I left alone to gaze upon the ruins. Now if you could show me that I have anything to live for, that there is anything better waiting me in the 'big coming eternities,' anything that would make me bear' the whips and scorns of time,' I will ever remember your kindness with gratitude. I know no such hopes can be aught to me. It would have been much better that I had never been born. It is hard for me to confess all this to you - hard for me to confess it to myself. I will conclude, fearing that I have trespassed too far on your attention already. Alnong the infirmities of age, a trell1ulollS Hlotion began to show itself in his right hand, which made writing difficult and threatened to lnake it impossible. It was a twitching of the nluscles, an involuntary lateral jerk of the anll when he tricd to use it. RIGHT H.dND DiSABLED. 39 1 And no lllÎsfortune Blore serious could have befallen him, for' it Call1C,' he said, , as a sentence not to do any more work while thou livest' -a very hard onc, for he had felt a return of his energy. 'In brighter hours he saw lllany things which he mig-ht write, were the n1echanical llleans still there.' He could expand the thoughts which lay scattered in his Journal. He could occupy hiIllsclf at any rate, in itself so necessary to so restless a spirit. He tried 'dictation,' but it resulted only in 'diluted n100n- shine.' Letters he could dictate, but nothing else, and the case was eruel. Tn John Cll1'ZyZe. Ohelsea: l\Iay O, ] 870. Gloomy, mournful, mu:-;ing, silent, looking back on the unalterable, and forward on the inevitable and inexorable. That, I know, is not a good employment, but it is too w'nerally mine, e pecially since I lost the power of pen- maw"hip, I and have properly no means of working at my own traùe, the only one I ever learned to work at. A great 10::)::) this of my right hand. Dictation I try sometimes, but never with any success, and doubt now I shall never learn it. Courage nevertheless; at h.>a!'t, silence in regard to that! .lulOther sorrow, aggra;vating the rest, was the death, l\Iarch 20,1870, of his dear friend JUl'. Erskine of Linlathen. Erskine,' one of the Blost religious men' left in Scotland, had been among the first of his countrymen to recogni::;c Carlyle, and to see in him, aerus his heterudoxies, the intense 'belief' which is the essence of genuine piety. En.;kine's orthodoxy, on the othcr hand, had becn no impedi- mcnt tu Carlyle\, aflcetioll for him. I lie 'Holl' llUW, and .:" IOJlg" U:, lw cuuld \\ rite at all, "itL a pellciJ. 392 CARLYLE'S LIFE EN LOl'iDON. On Sunday (he writes), Thomas Erskine, nearly my last Scotch friend, f'xcept. my own kindred, died, weary and heavy- laden, but patient, true, and reverently peaceable to the very last. Another of my few last links severed, about which and whom the flutter to me has not yet ceased without or within. Night before last, just as I was falling asleep, vision of him in Princes Street, as if face to face; clear discernment of what a pure and beautiful and brotherly soul he had been, and that he too was away for ever, which at once awoke me again, usefully for some minutes. . . . Four years all but thirteen clays I have stood contemplating my (own) calamity. Time was to bring relief, said everybody; but Time has not to any extel,t, nor in truth did I much wish him. No. At all hours and at all moments her transfigured spirit accom- panies me, beautiful and sad; lies behind all thoughts that I have and even all tctUe that I carryon, little as my collocutors suspect. Sometimes I reflect, Is not this morbid, weak, improper? but cannot bring myself to regret it at any time, much less to try altering it, even if I could. The truth is, I am unable to work. Work is done. Self am done. 1\1 y life now has nothing in it but the shadow, sad, grand, un- fathomable, of what is coming-coming. Time and sorrow had softened the an ry tones of Carlyle's earlier days. The Geyser spring rarely shot up the hot stones and steam, and his talk generally was as cah11 as the en tries in his Journal. He would still boil up under provoration, but he was sorry for it afterwards. ' vValk with Speùding last week,' he notes on the 1st of l\Iay. 'lVly style of talk to hiln so fierce, exaggerative, scornful of surrounding n1en and things, as is painful to me to think of now.' Far more often he was trying to see the silver lining of the cloud, and discover, even in what he 11108t detested, the action of something good. Tlnls- USES OF ANARCHY. 393 Journal. Apl'il16, 1870.-American Anarchy. Yes; it is huge, loud, ugly to soul and sense, raging wildly in that manner from shore to shore. But I ask myself sometimes, 'Could your Frederic .W"ilhelm, your wisest Frederic, by the strictest government, by any conceivable skill in the art of charioteer- ing, guide America forward in what is its real task at present -task of turning a savage immensity into arability, utility, and readiness for becoming hurnctn, as fast and well as America itself, '\\rith its very anarchies, gasconadingR, vulgari- ties, stupidities, is now doing ? No; not by any means. That withal is perfectly clear to me this good while past. Anarchies, too, have their uses, and are appointed with cause. Our own anarchy here, ugliest of created things to me, do I not discern, as its centre and vital heart even now, the visibly increasing hatred of 'mendacities, the gradually and now rapidly spreading conviction that there can be no good got of formulas aud shams; that these are good only to abolish, the sooner the better, toss into the fire anrl have done with them. True-most true! This also I see. Fronl this point of view even the speculative anarchy was 110t without its uses. JOllrnal. June 23, 1870.-Rook (posthumous) by a Professor Grote, sent to me. .Anxious remonstrance against J. S. :Mill and the Utilitarian Theory of :Morals. Have looked through it seriously intent, this Grote meaning evidently well, but can't read it, nor get any good of it, except. see again and ever again what the infinite bevtildprment of men's minds on that subject is; lost in vortexes of Logic, bottomless and boundless, for ever incapable of settling or even elucidating such a question. He that still doubts whether his senRe {\f right. anù wrong is a revelation from the .l\lo t High, r would reeoInml'IHI him to ktep silellcP, ---- 394 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. rather to do silently, with more and more of pious earnestness, what said sense dictates to him as right. Day by day in this manner will he do better, and also see more clearly where the sanction of his doing is, and whence derived. By pious heroic climbing of your own, not by arguing with your poor neighbours, wandering to right and left, do you at length reach the sanctuary--the victorious summit-and see with your own eyes. The prize of heroic labour, suffer- ing, and performance this, and not a feat of dialectics or of tongue argument with yourself or wit.h another, 1 more and more perceive it to be. To cease that miserable problem of the accounting for the' moral sense' is becoming highly desirable in our epoch. Can you account for the' sense of hunger,' for example? Don't; it is too idle; if you even could; which you never can or will, except by merely telling me in new words that it is hunger; and if, in accounting for 'hunger,' you more and more gave up eating, what would become of your philosophy and you? Cease, cease, my poor empty-minded, loud-headed, much-bewildered friends. , Religion ,' this, too, God be thanked, 1 perceive to be again l)ossible, to be again here, for whoever will piously struggle upwards, and sacredly, sOlTowfull y refuse to speak lies, which indeed will mostly mean refuse to speak at all on that topic. No words for it in our base time. . In no time or epoch can the Highest be spoken of in words-not in many words, 1 think, ever;'. But it can even now be silently beheld, and even adored by whoever has eyes and adoration, i.e. reverenc e in him. . Nor, if he must be for the present 10n eÎ y and ! . . . in such act, will that always be the case? No, probably no, 1 begin to perceive; not always, nor altogether. But in the meanwhile Silence. "Thy am 1 writing this even here? The beginning of all is to have done with Falsity; to eschew Falsity as Death Eternal. December 28. -I wish 1 had strength to elucidate and write ùown intelligibly to my fellow-creatures what my outline 1 This passage, writtt'll in pencil, has been bO corrected and altered a8 to be ill parts illegible. ATHEISlI1: 395 of belief about God essentially is. It might be useful to a poor protoplasm generation, all seemingly determined on those poor terms to try Atheism for a while. They will have to return from that, I can tell them, or go down altogether into the abyss. I find lying deep in me withal some confused but ineradicable flicker of belief that there is a 'particular pro- vidence.' Sincerely I <10, as it were, believe this, to my own surprise, and could perhaps reconcile it with a higher logic than the common draughtboard kind. There may further be a ches8board logic, says Novalis. That is his distinction. 396 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. CHAPTER XXXII. A.D. 1870. lET. 75. Anne Boleyn-' Ginx's Baby '-The Franco-German war-English sympathy with France-Letter to the' Times '-Effect of it-In- ability to write-' Letters and Memorials of Mrs. Carlyle '-Dis- position made of them. I BEGIN this chapter with an opinion of Carlyle on an intricate historical problelll. In stud)Ting the history of Henry ,rIlL, I had been uncertain what to think about the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn. The story of her offences was on the face of it lllonstrous, and the King's lllarriage, following instantly on her execution, was at least strange and suspicious. On the other hand, it was hard to believe that COl1nnis- sions of Enquiry, Judges, juries, the Privy Council, and finally, Parlialnent, which was specially sum- llloned on the occasion, could have been the accom- plices of a wanton crÎIne; and the King in ordinary pruùence would have avoided insulting the comlllon sense and conscience of the realm, if he knew that she had been falsel}' accused, and would have at least waiteù a decent period before taking a new wife. I did not know till I had fil}ished my book, that the despatches of Eustace Chapuys, the Illlperial Anl- bassador resident at the tillle in London, had been preserved at Vienna. I went thither to cxaminc theln ANNE BOLE YN: 397 in the spring of 1870, and I publishcd extracts fro111 them afterwards in 'Fraser's l\Iagazine.' Chapuys's account, though it leaves the question of Anne's guilt still uncertain, yet reveals a mass of intrigue, political and personal, in IIenry's court, which n1ade it seem pos ible, for the first tinle to me, that the poor Queen lnight have been innocent, yet that the King and Parlian1cI1t lnight have honestly believed her guilty. During violent revolutions, men can believe anything that falls in with their prevailing passions. I talked the subjcct over with Carlyle after my return. In the sunnner he went to Scotland, where the maga- zine, with the lettcrs in it, reached him; and he wrote thus to lne :- The Hill, Dumfries: August 14, 1870. As to Anne Boleyn, I find still a considerable want of perfect clearness, and, without that, the nearest approach I made to clearness about her was in the dialogue we had onp day before Chapuys came out. Chapuys rather sent me to sea again, and dimmed the matter. I did not quite gather from him what I did from you-the frantic, fanatical, rabid, and preternatural state of 'public opinion: This I had found to be quite the illuminative lamp of the transaction, both as to her conduct and to everyone's . . . and such in fact it still continues, on the faith of what you said, and inclines me to believe, on all the probabilities I have, that those adulterous abominations, even the caitiff lute-player's part, I are most likely altogether lies upon the poor lady. This was Carlyle's judglTICnt, forn1cd on such data as I could give hiln on this ùifficult Inattcr. I added what more I had to say upon it in an appendix to the next cùition of lllY work. Carlyle cujoyed Scotland this year. IIe describcd 1 lIark Smeton, who confessed to the adu1tery. 39 8 CARL YLE'S LIFE IJ.V LONDON. his life to me as 'encircled in cotton, such the un- wearied kindness and loving patience of his sister's household with him.' To 1\1iss BrOlnley he wrote: , The incOlnparable freshness, the air on the hillside, and the luxurious beauty of these old hills and dales all round, so silent, yet so full of voices, strange and sacred, nlournfully audible to one's poor old heart, are evidently doing 111e day by day smne little good; though I have sad fighting with the quasi-infernal in- gredient-the railway whistle, nan1ely-and have lilY difficulties and dodgings to obtain enough of sleep.' Miss Bromley had sent hin1 a book which pleased him. To J.J1iSð Bromley. The Hill: July 11. , Ginx's Raby' is capital in its way, and haR given grpat satisfaction here. The writing man is rather of penny-a-liner habits and kind, hut he slashes along swift and fearless, sketching at arm's length, as with a burnt stick on a cottage wall, and sketches anrt paints for us some real likeness of the sickening and indeed horrible anarchy and godless negligence and stupor that pervades British society, espe- cially the lowest, largest, and most neglected cla::;s; no legislator, people's "'illiam or official person, ever casting an eye in that direction, but preferring to beat the wind instead. God mend it! I perceive it will have to try mending itself in altogether terrible and unexpected ways before long, if everybody takes the course of the people's \Villiam upon it. This poor penny-a-liner is evidently sincere in his denunciation and delineation, and, one hopeR, may awaken here and there some torpid soul, dilettante :\I.P. or the like, to serious reflection on what is the one thing needful at this day, in Parliament and out of it, if he were wise to discern. Alas! it is above thirty years since I started the Con- THE FRANCO-GERlt-fAN lVAR. 399 dition of England question as well worthy of considering, but was met with nothing but angry howls and Radical Ha, ha's! And here the said question still is, untouched and ten times more unmanageable than then. 'Yell, well! I return you Ginx, and shut up my lamentations. To Ine he wrote something in the same strain, à propo8 of some paper of mine on the colonies :_ People's 'Yilliam and all the parties to so unspeakable a plan of ' management' and state of things, to me are unen- durable to think of. Torpid, gluttonous, sooty, swollen, and squalid England is grown a phenomenon which fills me with disgust and apprehension, almost desperate, so far as it is concerned. "'hat a base, pot-bellied blockhead this our heroic nation has become; sunk in its own dirty fat and offal, and of a ::-.tupidity defying the very gods. Do not grow desperate of it, you who have still a hoping heart, and a right hand that does not shake. The finer forces of nature were not sleeping everywhere, and Europe witnessed this SUlnlner, in the French and German war, an exhibition of Divine jud711lCut which was after Carlyle's own heart. o f'udùenly too it carne; the whole sky growing black with stonn, and the air ablaze with lightning, , in an hour when no lnan looked for it.' France he had long known was travelling on a Lad road, as bad as England's, or worse. The literature there was' a new kind of Phallus-worship, with Sue, Balzac, anll Co. for prophets, and l\Iadalue Sand for a virgin.' The Churrh gctting on its fect again, with its Pupe's infallibility, &c., ,vas the re-estaLlislullcnt of explodeù lie:-,. As the people werc, such was their govermnent. Thc , Cupper Captain,' in hi eyes, was the ahomination of (lc5olation, a mean and pCl'jnrøl advcnturer. lIe had known him per:--ollally ill hi old London day . 4 00 CARLYLE'S LIFE I.Lv LOl\TDON. and had measured his nature. Prince Napoleon had once spent an evening in Cheyne Row. Carlyle had spoken his mind freely, as he always did, and the Prince had gone away inquiring 'if that man was mad.' Carlyle's madness wat; clearer-sighted than Ilnperial cunning. He regarded the Emperor's pre- sence on a throne which he had won by so evillneans as a moral indignity, and had never doubted that in the end Providence would in some way set its mark upon hin1. When war was declared, he felt that the end was coming. He had prophesied, in the' Life of Frederick,' that Prussia would become the leading State of Germany, perhaps of Europe. Half that pro- phecy had been fulfilled already through the 'var of 1866. The issue of the war with France was never for a InOlnent doubtful to him, though neither he nor anyone could foresee how cOlnplete the German victory would be. He was still in Scotland when the news came of Gravelotte and Sedan, and I had this letter from him:- September 1870.-0f outward events the war doE'S in- terest me, as it does the whole world. No war so wonderful did I ever read of, and the results of it I reckon to be salutary, grand, and hopeful, beyond any which have occurred in my time. Paris city must be a wonderful place to-day. I believe the Prussians will certainly keep for Germany what of Elsass and Lorraine is still German, or can be expected to re-become such, and withal that the whole world cannot forbid them to do it, and that Heaven will not (nor I). Alone of nations, Prussia seems still to understand something of the art of gover ing, and of fighting enemies to said art. Germany, from of old, has been the peaceablest, most pious, and in the end most valiant and terriblest of nations. GBrmany ought to be President of Europe, anù PROSPECTS FOR FR LVCE. 4 01 will again, it seem , be tried with that office for anot her five centuries or so. In September Carlyle CaUle back to Chebea, till eagerly watching the eventR of the war. J01fJ'nrtl. Octover 3.- State of France, lying helpless, headle:,s pven, but tilJ braggart in its ignominy under the heel of Prus!"ia. is full of interest even to me. "That will he('ome of the ma(l country next? Paris, hut up on every side, can spnd no news except by balloon and carrier-pigeons. Thp country is without any visible government. A country with its hpad ClI,t off; Paris undertaking to 'stand siege;' the voice of France a confu ed babblement from the gutters, carcely human at all, you would say, so dark, ignorant, mad do they seem. This is her first lesson poor France i getting. It is probahle she will require many such. For the la t twenty years I have been predicting to myself that thpre might lie ahead for a nation so ful] of mad and loud ohli\"ion of the laws of this univer e, a destiny no better than that of Poland. fis strongest hond, I often guess, is pro- bably the fine and graceful latl,g1J,(f.'je it ha got to speak, and to have so many neighbours learn; one gn-'at advan- tage over Poland, but not :m all-availing one. Pf'ace with I)ru sia, by coming in Prussia's' wi1l,' as the Hcotch say, is the first result to be looked for; aftf'r which Duc ù"AlLInal(' or d'OrlealHi for a while? Hepuhlic for a while? None knows, except that it can only be for a while; that' anar('hiCB' are not permitted to e'{ist in thÜ.; univer E', and that nothing not anarchic is pos ible in such a France as now is. .J.Y'im- pm.te; n'imjJorle. Poor France! Nay, the state of Eng- land is almost still more hideous to me; ba:;;e exceedingJy, to all but the flunkey and the penny editors, and given up to a :-:tupidity which theologians might call judicial! It will he remembered that Hu ia took ad vantagp of the :->tate of Europe and tore the arti('le in t h<, IL HD 4 02 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON Treaty of Paris which lin1Ïted her Black Sea fleet. vVhen the article was drawn, the essentially tempo- rary character of it was well understood; but Eng- land bristled up when the trophies of her CrÜllean glorieR were shattered and flung in her face so cavalierly for a week or two there was talk of war again between us and Russia. Quarrel (Carlyle said) mad as a -:\iarch hare, if it don't confine itself to the able editors, which who can be sure of? N ever thou mind. England seems to he all pretty mad. Perhaps God ",ill be mf'rciful to her: perhaps not, too; for her impious stupidities are and have been ill::lny. . . . Ten days ago read Gladstone's article in the' Edinburgh Review' with amazement. Empty as a blown goose-egg. Seldom have I read such a ridiculous solemn addle-pated Joseph Surface of a thing. Nothingness or near it con- scious to itself (If being greatness almost unexampled. Thanks to 'pal'liamentary eloquence' mainly, and its value to oneself and others. According to the People's "\\Tilliam, England, with him::;elf atop, is evidently even now at the top of the 'world. Against bottomless anarchy in all fibres of her, spiritual and practical, she has now a completed ballot-box, can vote and count noses, free as air. Nothing else wanted, clearly thinks the People's 'Yilliam. He would ask you, with unfeignf'd astonishment, "Yhat else?' , The sovereign'st thing in nature is pWì"fn(tceti' (read ballut)' for an inward bruise.' That is evidently his belief, what he finds believable about this universe, in England A.D. 1870. Parmaéeti! Parmaceti! Enough of him and of it. FranC'e had so clearly been the ag:.rressor in the war with Gennal1Y that the feeling in Enf!land at the outset had been on the German side. The general helief, too, had been that France would win. S)Tln- pathy, however, grew with her defeats. The Engli h are always restive whf'n other nations arc fig:hting, , LETTER TO TIfE 'Tf.11IES.' 4 0 3 and fancy that they ought to have a voice in the settlemcnt of every quarrel. There is a generous disposition in us, too, to take the weaker side; to aSSUlne that the stronger party is in the wrong, espccially if he takes advantage of his superiority. 'Vhen Gennany began to fonnulate her tenllS of peace, when it becalne clear that she meant, as Oarlyle foretold, to take back Elsass and Lorrainc, thcre was a cry of spoliation, sanctioned unfortu- nately in high Liberal quarters where the truth ought to have bccn better known. A sore fceling began to show itself, aggravated perhaps by the Hussian busi- nc s, which, if it did not threaten to take active form, encouraged France to prolong it" resil"tance. The past history of the relations bctwecn France and Germany wa::; little understood in England. Carlyle perhaps alone among us knew completely how France had come lJy those eS:-jcntially German provinces, or how the bill was nuw IJcing prcsented jar paYlnent which had bcen running for centuries. To allay the outcry which was rising hc rcluctantly bucklcd on his armuur again. 'Vith IllS niece's hclp hc dictatcd a IOllg lettcr to thc 'Times,' telling his story simply and clcarly, without a trace of mannerism or cxag- geration. It appeared in the middle of .xovcmber, and at once cooled the watcr which might other-wise have boiled ovcr. 'Ve think little of dangcrs escaped but wise mcn evcrywhere felt that in writing it he Jlad rcudercd a service of thc higllcst kiud to Ell ro pl1an order aJHl justice. Iris OWll allusiollS to w11:11 he had (lonc are :::-lig"ht and Lrief. ....\s u:--lIal he tlJOugJlt lmt little of his own pel-fOrlllance. IJ /) 40-J. CARLYLE'S LIFE I.lV LONDO.iV. To John Carlyle. November 12, 1870. Poor l\Iary and I have had a terrible ten days, properly a ' '-Iuch Ado ahout Nothing.' It concerned only that p1'o- jpcted letter to the new papers about (termany. 'Yith a right hand valid and nprves in order I might have done the letter in a day, but with nerves all the contrary, and no right hand, it was all different. Poor l\lary had endless patience, endless assiduity; wrote like a little fairy; sharp as a needle, and all that could he expected of her when it came to writing: and before that there was such a haul- ing down of old forgotten books, &c., in all which my little helpmate was nimble and unwearied. Tn fine, we have got the letter done ann. fairly sent away last night. I do not reckon it a good letter, but it expreFseR in a prohahly t.oo emphatic way what my convictions are, and is a clearance to my conscience in that matter whether it do good or not, whether it he good or not. Journal. IS'Ó've'mbe'i' 21.- 'Yrote, with much puddle and confused bother, owing to mutinous right hand mainly, a letter to the , Times' on the French-German question, dated ten days ago, published in ' Times' of November 18. Infinite jargon in newspapers seemingly, and many scrubby notes knocking at this door in conspquence. .l\1ust last still for a few days --in a few days will pasf5 away like a dust-cloud. ot scrubby notes only, but' a rain of letters, wise, foolish, sane, Inad,' streamed in upon Cheyne TIo" dllrin tJ'e next few week . Smne were really interestinO' , cOIning fr0111 German soldiers servin()' in t:' L- <' the trenches before Paris, grateful to the single Englishman Vd10 could feel for them and stand up for them. On the 25th a telegraul was forwarded to him hy the Prus:-:iall \n1hassador, with a note from EFFECT o.N EiVGLISH FEEL LVG. 405 hilll:-:clf. The terlUS of the message I do not know, nor by whom it was sent. The nature of it, how- ever, 111ay be inferred fr0111 the words of Count Bernstorff. Prussia House, Carlton Honse Terrace, November 25, 1870. Sir,-I received yesterday evening the enclosed telegram for you from Hamburg, and I am much gratified to be able to avail myself of the opportunity of forwarding it to you, anti of expre:-:sillg to the celebrated historian my entire con- eurrence in the thankfulness of my countrymen. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant, BERNSTORFF. In fact Carlyle's letter had II10st effectually answered its purpose. There was no more talk of English interposition. I. Thiel's came over to beg for help; if not luaterial, at least lllorai. We had to decline to interfere, and Franee was left to its fate- a fate terrible beyond Carlyle's expectation, for Paris, after being taken by the Gernlans, had to be rc- eovercd again out of the hands of the French 001n- IllUlle anlÍdst the ashes of the Tuileries, and a second 'SeptcIuber ' lUa saere, to be avenged by a massacre in turn. On these horrors there is a pregnant pa - :-;age in a letter of his to his hrother. lIe saw, whcll no one else saw it, the cOIning greatne s of Prussia. Perhaps he saw other things equally correctly which no one else can sec. To John Carlyle. May 2ft, It;71. 1 am much in the dark about the real meaning of all these quasi-infernal Hedlamisms, npon \\hich no newspaper that I look into has auytlJing to ay t'xeppt 'horrible,' 406 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. 'shameful,' and '0 Lord, I thank thee that we EnglishmE'n are not as other men.' One thing I can seE' in these murderous ragings by the poorest classes in Paris, that they are a tremendous proclamation to the upper classes in all countries: 'Our condition, after eighty-two years of strug- gling, 0 ye quack upper classes, is still unimproved; more intolerablE' from year to year, and from revolution to revolu- tion; and by the Eternal Powers, if you cannot mend it, we will blow up the world, along with ourselves and you.' It was Carlyle's deliberate conviction that a fate like that of Paris, and far worse than had yet befallen Paris, lay directly ahead of all great IHoelerll cities, if their affairs were allowed to drift on under lai."Jsez- fairc aud so-called Liberty. But the ,vorld and its concerns, even Franco- German wars and Paris revolutions, could not abstract his llliJ.d, except fitfully, from the central thoughts which o u}>ied his heart. IIis interest had es entially gone fr0111 the Present to the Past and Future, the Past so painfully beautiful, the Future with the veil over it which no hand had lifted or could lift. Could he but hope to see ltei' once more, if only for five minutes? By the ::iide of this the re::it was nothing. In the nÜtl::it uf the cdwes [ruIn the battlefields he writes :- Juurnal. Ùctuùfr 11, 1870.- V cry sad, sunless, is the hue of this HoW almost emp y world to me. \V.orId about to vanish for me in Eternities that cannot he known. Infinite longing for my loved ones-towards Her almost a kind of mournful \\'ordhip -this is the one celestial element of my new exist- ence; otherwi e in general 'wae and \\eary '-' wae and THE RIGHT HdlVD. weary.' Sot even the amazing German-French war, grandest and most beneficent of Heavenly providences in the history of my time, can kindle me, except for a short while.' Again, soon after Count Bcrnstorff's note :- Journal. December 15, 1870.-How pungent is remors p, when it turns upon the loved dead, who cannot pardon us, cannot hear us now! Two plain precepts there are. Dost thou intend a kindness to thy beloved one? Do it straightway, while the fateful Future is not yet here. Has thy heart's friend care- lesslyor cruelly stabbed into thy heart. Oh, forgive him! Think how, when thou art dead, he will punish himself. True precppts-clear dictates of prudence both, yet how often neglected! In the following sprIng there are the saùJe t notices of the failure of his hand, as if he was still eager to .write something, but could not :- Loss of my right hand for writing with-a terrible loss. Ke,'er shall I learn to write by dictation, I perceive. Ala::;! alas! for I might still work a little if I had my hand, and the night cometh wherein no man can work. .L\lld a fortnight later :- Jl ne 15, 1871.-Curious to consider the institution (\f the igh d among universal mankind; probably the very olde:::.t human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation ,\ hatsoever. He that has seen three mowers, one of whom is left-handed trying to work to- gether, anrl how impossible it is, has witnes ed the simplest form of an impossibility, which but for the distinction of 'right hand' would have pervaded all human things. Have often thought of all that-never saw it !'o clearly as this morning while out walking, unslept and dreary enough in the windy sunshine. How old? Old I wondl'r if tlwre is any people harharous enough not to have thi..; distinction 4 0 7 - 408 CrlRL YLE'S LIFE I1V LOJl. D01V. of hands; no human Cosmos possible to be even begun without it. Oldest Hebrews, &c. writing from right to left, are as familiar with the world-old institution as we. "Thy that particular hand was chosen is a question not to be settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle: pro- bablyarose in fighting; most important to protect your heart and its adjacencies, and to carry the shield in that hand. This is very characteristic of Carlyle, who went always to the heart of every subject which occupied hÜn. But his particular occupation with it at that IllOlnellt, and his impatience with his inability to write, perhaps arose from an eagerness to leave COlll- plete, with a fitting introlluction, the letters and lllClllOrials of his wife, before making a final dis- position of the luanuscript. He could not do it. He was conscious that he would never be able to do it, and that he 111Ust decide on some other course. I was still his constant cOlnpanion, but up to this time he had never Inentioned these lnemoirs to Ine. Of her he spoke continually, always in the SaIne renlOrse- ful tone, always with bitter 8elf-reproa h; but of the IllonUIllent which he had raised to her lnemory he had never spoken at all. One clay-the n1Ïddle or end of June, L871-he brought, hÌ1nself, to my house a large parcel of papers. He put it in nlY hands. lIe told lue to take it siIllply and absolutely a IllY own, without reference to any other person or persons, :tnd to do with it as I pleased after he was gone. lIe explained, when he saw Ille surprised, that it was an ac ount of his wife's history, that it was incolll- plete, that he could himself forBI no opini0n whether it ought to be published or nut, that he oukl do no lnore to it, and must pa::,:, it over to llle. lIe wished 'LETTERS AND .JIEj}IORIALS.' 409 never to hcar of it again. I lliust judge. I nlust publi h it, the whole, or part-or else destroy it all, if I thought that this would be the wiser thing to do. He said nothing of any lin1Ït of time. I was to wait only till he was dead, and he was then in COll- stant expectation of his enù. Of hirn:,elf he desired that no biography should be written, and that this IeIlloir, if any, should be the authorised record of him. t;o extraordinary a nlark of confidence touched llie deeply, but the responsibility was not to be hastily acccpted. I was then going into the country f()r thc umIller. I said that I would takc thc IS. 'with I11e, and would either writc to hilll or would g-ive hirn an answer whcn wc ll1et in the autullln. Un examining the prescnt which had Lecn thus singularly nlade to IHe I found that it con::;isted of a transcript of the 'ReIniniscence' of :llrs. Carlyle, which he had written inlIllcdiately after her death, with a copy of the old direction of 18û6, that it was Bot to be publi hed ; two other fraglnentary accounts of her fanlÏly and herself; and an attenlpt at a prefacc, whi(.h had been abandoncd. The rest was the collcction of hcr own letters, &c.-almost twice as volullliuou as that which has beeu since priuted-with notes, com- mcntaries, and introductory explanation::; of his own. The perusal was infinitely affecting. I saw at once the lllcanillg of his pa siollate expressions of rel1101'Se, of his allu:;iolls to Johnson's penance, and of his re- pcated declaration that something like it was due froBl hiulself. lIe had never properly under t()où till her death how luuch she had suffcrcd, and how lI11lCh he had him clf to answer for. She, it appeared, in her young day had a:-;pired after literary di tindion. 4 10 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LONDON. lIe had here built together, at once a Inemorial of the genius which had been sacrificed to himself, and of those faults in hill1self which, though ther were faults nlCrely of all irritable teInperaIuent, and though he extravagantly exaggerated theIn, had saddened her married life. SOll1ething of this I had observed, but I had not known the extent of it; and this action of Carlyle's struck me as sOInething so beautiful, so unexaIllpled in the whole history of literature, that I could but adIllire it with aU nlY heart. Faults there had been; yes, faults no doubt, but such faults as 11108t Iuarrieò Inen cOInmit daily and hourly, and never think them faults at all: yet to hinl his conduct ::;eenled so heinous that he could intend deliberately that this record should be the only history that was to survive of hiIllself. In his Inost heroic life there was nothing Blore heroic, Inore characteristic of hÍIn, <- IHore indicative at once of his hUIllility and his in- tense truthfulness. lIe regarded it evidently as an expiation of hi::; own conduct, all that he had now to offer, and something which removed the shadow between himself and her nleITIOry. The question before me was whether I was to sa y that the atone- ment ought not to be cOlnpleted, and that the bravest action which I had ever heard of should be left unexecuted, or whether I was to bear the reproach, if the letters were given to the world, of having un- covered the errors of the best friend that I had ever had. Carlyle himself could not direct the publication, from a feeling, I suppose, of delicacy, and dread of ostentation. I could not tell hiln that there was nothing in his conduct to be repented of, for there was nluch, amI nlorc than I ha(l gue f:Ca; and I had 'LETTERS AJVD lIIElIfORIALS.' .pI a ain to reflect that, if I burnt the 1\18., 1\Ir . Carlyle had heen a volun1Ïnous letter-writer, and had never been reti('ent about her gnevances. Other letters of hers would infallibly in tinle come to light, telling the same story. I shoulù then have done Carlyle's lllemory irreparable wrong. He haù hiInself been ready with a frank and noble confes ion, and the world, aftcr its first astonislllllent, would have felt in- creased adn1Ìration for the man who had the courage to make it. I should have stepped Letween hinl and the cOlnpletion of a purpose ,vhich would have washed his reputation clear of the only reproach which could be brought against it. Had Carlyle Leen an ordinary man, hi private life would have COll- cerned no one but him:ìelf, and no one wonld have eared to inquire into it. But he belon 'cd to the cxceptional few of .WhOIll it was certain that every- thing that could be known would evcntually Le sifted out. Sooncr or latcr the whole truth would be re- vealed. Shoulù it be told voluntarily by himself, or Inaliciously hy other:::; hereafter? That was the q ucstioll. 'Vhen I saw him again after the sumiller we talked the subject over with the fullest confidence. lIe was nervously anxious to know lilY resolution. I told hinl that, so far as I ('ould then fo1'1n an opinion, I thought that the letters nd!/Id be published, provided the l )rohilJition was withdrawn a(raillst r )ULlishin <:) his own lemoir of :Thlrs. Carlyle. That would show what his feelin had really been, and what she ha{l really been, which also Illig-ht perhaps he llliS<,OIl- trued. It would have Leen hard Oll both of them if the harp {'VI1;:-;ures of )1 rs. Carlyle's pen hall been 412 CARLYLE'S LIFE III/ LONDON. left unrelieved. To this Carlyle instantly assented. The copy of the 1\IeInoir had indeed been given to Ine aInong the other papers, that I n1Ïght Blake use of it if I liked, and he had perhaps forgotten that any prohibition had been attached, but I required, anù I received, a direct pennission to print it. The next (luestion was ahout the tÏ111e of publication. On the last page of the 1\IS. was attached a pencil note naming, first, twenty years after his death. The' after Iny death' had Leen erased, hut the twenty years re- Inained. Though I was considerably younger than he was, I could not calculate on living twenty years, aud the letters, if published at all, were to be pub- lished by Inc. vVhen he had given them to nle ill June he had told nle only that I \vas to wait till he ,vas gone. He said now that ten years would be enough-ten years frOll1 that tiIne. There were In allY allusions in the letters to people and things, anec- dotcF:, criticisms, observations, written in the con- fidence of private correspondence, which ought not to be printed within so short a tÏIlle. I Ineutiolled Ollle of these, which he directed Ine to on1Ït. On these conditions I accepted the charge, Lut still only hypothetically. It had been entrusted to Ine alone, and I wished for further advice. He said that if I was in a difficulty I Inight consult John Forster, and he added afterwards his brother John. John Carlyle I had never an opportunity of con- sulting. I presllllled that John Carlyle wa ac- quainted with his brother's intentiuns, and would cOllullunicate with Ine on the subject if he wished to do so but I sent the lllanuscript to Forster, that I Blight learn p-enerally his opinion a1)out it. Forstcr 'LETTERS AiVD JIElll0RlALS.' 4 1 3 had bcen une of .:\11'8. Carlylc's dC'arcst friends, n1uch Illore intinlate with her than I had been. Hc, if any one, could ay whether so open a revelation of the life at Cheyne Row wa one which ought to be Inade. Forster read the letters. I suppose that he felt a uncertain as I had done, the reasons against the pub- lication being o obvious and so weighty. But he adlnired equallJT the integ-rity which had led Carlylc to lay 1:11'e his inner history. lIe felt as I did, that Carlyle was an exceptional person, whose character the world had a rig-ht to know, and he found it diffi- eult to come to a conclusion. To me at any rate he gave no opinion at all. He n1erely said that he "rould talk to Carlyle hÜnself, and \rould tell hill1 that he must I1lake 111Y position perfcf'tly clear in hi will, or trouble would certainly arise about it. N 0- thing Il10re passed between Forster and lnyself upon the suLject. Carlylc, however, in the will which he 111ade two years later bequeathed the .ThIS. to me :;pccifically in terms of the tenderest confidence. lIe desired that I should consult Forster and his brother when the occasion caIne for a final rcsolu- tion; but especially he gave the trust to Ine, charging Ine to do Iny best and wisest with it. lIe nlCntioncd :'5even years or tcn fr0111 that date (1873) as a tenn at which the .ThIS. nÜght be published; but, that no po<.;sible question Inight be raised hercafter on that part of the Iuatter, he left thc dctermination of the tÌ1ne to lHyself, and reque:::;tcd others to accept IllY judgnlCnt as his own. Under thef'c conditions thc ' Lctter:::; and ì\[cnlO1'iab' rcmained in Iny hands. ...\t thc datc of his will of 1873 he :1dherc<1 to hi old rcsolution, 1.h:1t of hi1llfo;clf there 4 1 4 CARL YLE'S LiFE Il\ LO!'{DON. should be no biography, and that these letters anù these letters alone should be the future record of hiI11. rithin a few weeks or Inonths, however, he discovered that various perS011S who had been arhnitted to partial intimacy with hÜn were busy upon his history. If he was to figure before the world at all after his death he preferred that there should be an authentic portrait of him; and therefore at the close of this same year (1873) again, without note or warning, he sent me his own and his wife's private papers, journals, corref;pondence, 'renliniscellce ,' and other fragnlents, a collection overwhehuing froIH its abun- r he had lost the power of .working, waf' become a mere burden to him. Often and often he spoke en- viously of the Roman method of taking leave of it. lIe had read of a senator in Trajan's time vlho, slip- ping upon the pavenlent from infirmity, kissed the p-round,exclaimillp- 'Proserpine, I cOIue!' put his house in order, and ended. Greatly Carlyle approved of such a tennination, and regretted that it was no longer permitted. He did not conceive, he said, that hi Iaker would resent the voluntary appearance before HÏ1n of a poor creature who had laboured faithfully at his task till he ('ould lahour no more. lIe made olle In ore effort to produce something. He had all along admired the old N orsenlen, hard of hand and true of speech, as the root of all that was noblest in the En lish nation. Even the Scandim sian gods were near<>l' to hi111 than the IIeurew. vYith omeone to write for him, he put together a sketch of the Norse LATEST TVR1TINCS. 4 1 7 kings. The stories, as he told them to me, set off by his voice and Inanner, were vigorous and beautiful; the end of Olaf Trygveson, for instance, who went down in battle into the fiord in his gilded arrnour. But the greater part of theIll were weakened by the process of dictation. The thing, when finished f'eemed diluted moonshine, and did not please him. ./011 J'tlf1l. Febr1Ul1'Y 15, 1872.- Finished yesterday that long rigmarole upon the Norse Kings. Uncertain now what to do with it; if not at once throw it into the fire. It is worth nothing at all, has taught me at least how impossible the problem is of writing anything in the least like myself by dictation; how the presence of a third party between my thoughts and me is fatal to any process of clear thought. He wrote also a criticis111 on the portraits of John Knox, in whirh he succeeded in demolishing the authority of the accepted likenesses, without, how ever, completely establishing that of another which he desired to substitute for them. lIe had great insight into the human face, and into the character which lay behind it. ' Aut Knox aut Diabolus,' he said, in showing me the new picture; 'if not Knox who can it be? A Illan with that face left his Inark behind him: But physiognOlny may be relied upon too far, and the outward evidence was so weak that in his stronger days he would not have felt so confident. 01 This, with an appendix to his 'Life of Schiller,' was the last of his literary labours. lIe never tried any thing again. The pencil entries in the Journal grew Hcantier, more illegible, and at last cea ed altogether. IV. E 418 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDOIv. The will was resolute as eyer, but the hand was power- less to obey. I gather up the fragnlents that remain. J1.Lly 12, 1872.-A long interval filled only with pitiful miseries and confusions bestfoTgotten. Empty otherwise, ex- cept for here and there an hour of serious, penitent reflection, and of a sorrow which could be called loving, calm, and in some sort sacred and devout! Pure clear black amidst the generàl muddy gloom. Item, generally if attainable, two houn;; (after 10.30 P.l\I.) of reading in some really good book- Shakespeare latterly-which amidst the silence òf all the Universe is a useful and purifying kind of thing. Reminis- cences too without limit. Of prospects nothing possible except what has been common to me with all wise old men since the world began. Close by lies the g'J eat secret, but impenetrable (is, was, and must be so) to terrestrial thoughts for evermore. Perhaps something! Perhaps not nothing, after all. God's will, there also, be supreme. If we are to meet! Oh, Almighty Father, if we are, but silence! silence! The end of the SUlnlner of 1872 was spent at Seaton with Lady Ashburton, whose affectionate care was unwearied. In a life now falling stagnant it is unnecessary to follow closely henceforth the occu- pation of tilnes and seasons. The chief points only need be now noted. The rocket was burnt out and the stick falling. In November of that year Emerson CaIne again to England, and remained here and on the Continent till the l\lay following. He had brought his daughter with him, and fronI both of them Car- lyle received a faint pleasure. But even a friend so valued could do little for him. IIis contelnporaries were dropping all round; John Mill died; Bishop Wilberforce died; everyone seenled to die except himself. DEA TH OF FRIEiVDS. 4 1 9 Juurnal. June 9, 1873.-' .More and more dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me all the aspects of this poor diminishing quack world-fallen opf:'nly anarchic-doomed to a death which one can only wish to be speedy. . . . Death of John l\Iill at A vignon about a month ago, awakening what a world of reflections, emotions, and remembrances, fit to be totally kepi silent in the present mad explosion (among the maddest I have seen about anyone) of universal threnodying 11Pnny- a-1inism; not at any time a melodious phenomenon.' I had lllyself written to him on the Bishop of vVinchester's death. He answered :- July 29,1873.-' I altogether sympathize in what you say of poor Sam of \\Tinchester. The event is pitiful, tragical, and altogether sadder to me than I could have expected. He was far from being a bad man, and was a most dexterous, stout, and clever one, and I have often exchanged pleasant dialogues with him for the last thirty years-finished now-- silent for all eternity! I find he was really of religious nature, and thought in secret, in spitE' of his bishophood, very much in regard to religion as we do. His remarks on Mill and :VEIl's autobiography are CUrIOus. TfJ .JrJ!Ul Ca rlylr. Chelsea: 31ay 10, 1873. Yesterday, on stepping out into the street, I was told that John 'fill was dead. I had heard no whisper of such a thing before; and a great black sheet of mournful, more or less tragic, memories-not about ]\[ill alone-rushed down upon me. Poor :Mill ! He too, has worked out his life drama in sight of me; and that scene has closf'd too before my oId eyes-though he was so much my junior. Goose K. came down to me to day-very dirty-very enthusiastic-very stupid and conflH ed. with a (laily nf'w!'papf:'f ' containing two F. E 2 420 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. articles, ineffably sublime and heart-interesting upon l\iill.' Two more blustrous bags of empty wind I have seldom read. , Immortal fame! ' 'First spirit of his age! ' , Thinker of thinkers!' "That a piece of work is man with a penny-a- liner pen in his hand. To tlte Same. Noyember 5. , You have lost nothing by missing thR autobiography of :Mill. I have never read a more uninteresting book, nor I should say a sillier, by a man of sense, integrity, and serious- ness of mind. The penny a-liners were very busy with it, I believe, for a week or two, but were evidently pausing in doubt and difficulty by the time the second edition came out. It is wholly the life of a logic-chopping engine, little more of human in it than if it had been done by a thing of mechanized iron. Autobiography of a steam-engine, perhaps, you may sometimes read it. As a mournful psychical curiosity, but in no other point of view, can it interest anybody. I suppose it will deliver us henceforth from the cock-a-Ieerie crow ahout 'the Great Thinker of his AW " V\T elcome, though inconsidf'rable! The thought of poor :;\iill altogether, and of his life and histDry in this pour muddy world, gives me real pain and sorrow. Such a sentence, so expressed, is a lnelancholy ending to the affectionate intÏInacy which had oncc existed between l\fill and Carlyle. At heart, perhaps, they remained agreed-at least as Inuch agreed as Carlyle and Bishop Wilberforce could have been; both believed that the existing social arrangements in this country were incurably bad, that in the con- ditions under which t.he great mass of human beings in aU civilised countries now lived, moved, and had their bemg, there was at present such deep injustice that the systell1 which pern1Ïtted such things could not .J.JIILL AND CARL YLE. 4 21 be of long endurance. Carlyle felt this to his latest hours. "\Vithout justice society is sick, and will con- tinue sick till it dies. The 1110dern world, incapable of looking duty in the face, attempts to silence complaint with issuing flash-notes on the Bank of Liberty, aud will leave all IHen free to scramble for as luuch as they can secure of the swine's trough. This is the notion which it forms to itself of justiee, and of thc natural aid which hU111an beings are bound to give to one another. Of the graces of mutual kind- line:;:;, of the dignity and beauty whid1 rise out of 01'- ganically-fornlCd hlllnan society, it politically knows nothing, and chooses to know nothing. The battle is no longer, even to the strong, who have, at least, the onc virtuc of couragc; the battle is to the cunning, in whOln is no virtue at all. In Carlyle's opinion no rClllCdy lay ill political libcrty. Anarchy only lay there, and wretehedne s, and ruin. lill had struck into that road for himself. Carlyle had gone into the other. They had driftcd far apart, and wcre now separatcd for ever. TilllC will decide betwecn theine Iill's thcory of things is still in the ascendant. England is nlOving more eagerly than ever in the direction of cnfi'all('hi clllent, believing that there lies the Land of Promi e. The orators echo Iill's Joctrines: the n1Ïllions listen and bclicve. The outward aspect of things secms to say that l\lill did, and that Carlyle did Bot, unller talld the COB- ditions of thc agc. nut the way is long, the expeetcd vH'tories are f'till to be won-are po tpolled till the day whcn 'England, the 1Ilother of free llation , h('r- elf i frec.' There arc rapids yet to be :-:tcinmed, or eataracts to <1<"H'cud, awl it remains ullcl'rtain 422 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. whether on arriving (if we do arrive) at a finished delnocracy, it will be a land flowing with n1Ïlk and honey, or be a waste heaving ocean strewed with the wrecks of dead virtues and ruined institutions. Carlyle was often taunted-once, I think, by lVIr. Lecky-with believing in nothing but the divine right of strength. To me, as I read hiln, he seems to say, on the contrary, that, as this universe is constructed, it is 'right' only that is strong. He says hÜnself:- "\Vith respect to that poor heresy of might being the symbol of right' to a certain great and venerable author,' I shall have to tell Lecky one day that quite the converse or 'j'cverse is the great and venerable author's real opinion- namely, that right is the eternal symbol of might: as I hope he, one day descending miles and leagues beyond his present philosophy, will, with amazement and real gratification, dis- cover j and that, in fact, he probably never met with a son of Adam more contemptuous of might except where it rests on the above origin. Old and weary as he was, the persistent belief of people in the blessings of democrar,y, and the con- fidenr-e which they gave to leaders who were either playing on their credulity or were thelllselves tlw dupe::; of their own phrases, distre::;::;ed and provoked Carlyle. He was aware that he could do nothing, that self-governlnellt by count of heads would be tried out to the end before it would be abandoned; hut in his conversation and letters he spoke his opinions freely-especially his indignation at the playing with fire in Ireland. which the great popular chicf had begun. IRISH POLICY OF .AIR. GLADSTO.lVE. 423 To John Carlyle. Chelsea: i\larch 7, 1873. The whole world is in a mighty fuss here about Gladstone and hi Bill: 1 the attack on the third branch of the Upas Tree, and the question what is to become of him in conse- quence of it. To myself from the beginning it seemed the consummation of contemptibilities and petty trickeries on his part, one of the most transparent bits of thimblerigging to secure the support of his sixty Irish votes, the Pope's brass band, and to smuggle the education violin into the bands of Cullen and the sacred sons of Belial and the scarlet woman, I had ever seen from him before. And again :- :March 2:1, 1873. Gladstone appears to me one of the contemptiblest men I ever looked on. A poor Ritualist; almost spectral kind of phantasm of a man-nothing in him but forms and cere- monies and outside wrappages; incapable of seeing veritably any fact whatever, but seeing, crediting, and laying to heart the mere clothes of the fact, and fancying that all the rest does not exist. Let him fight his own battle, in the n me of Beelzebub the god of Ekron, who seems to be his God. Puor phantasm! lie was bcttcr pleased with a lecture OIl English notiolls of govcrll1nent, delivcred by Sir J alllCS StCphCll, at thc l)hilosophical Institution, at Edinburgh :- I found it (he says, Kovember 15) a very curious piece ind('ed, delineating one of the most perfect dust-whirls of Administrati ve :Nihilism, and absolute absurdities and impo- tence , more like an electric government apparatus for Beòlam, elected all( submitted to by Bedlam, than any sane apparatu ever known before. And strangely enough it is interlanlpd with the loyallest assurances every now aud tlwn that it is the 1 Iri:.:h Edncation Hill. 424 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. one form of government for us for an indefinite period, and that no change for the better can be practically contemplated. He is a very honest man, Stephen, with a huge heavy stroke of \\"ork in him. Of Stephen, Ruskin, and one or two others, Carlyle could still think with a degree of comfort. He would gladly have struck one 1110re blow against' things not true;' for his intellect was strong as ever and his sight as piercing; but he sadly found that it was not to be. On December 6 he made the last pencil entry, or the last that is legible, in his Journal. FrOIll this time his hand failed him entirely, and the pri- vate window that opened into his heart was closed up-no dictation being there adlnissible. Decembe.r 6, 1873.-Day before yesterday was my poor birthday, attended with some ceremonial greetings and more or less sincere expressions of regard. 'Yelcome these latter, though unimportant. To myseJf the serious and solemn fact,' Thy seventy-eighth year is finished then.' Nor had that in it an impressiveness of too much depth; perhaps rather of too little. A life without work in it, as mine now is, has le and less worth to me; nay, sometimes a feeling of disgrace and blame is in me; the poor soul still vividly enough alive, but struggling in vain under the ,strong im- prisonment of the dying or half-dead body. For many month::; l)ast, Keept for idle 'reading, I am pitifully idle. Shame, shame! I ay to myself, but cannot help it. Grt:'at and strange glimpses of thought come to me at intervals, but to prosecute and fix them down is denied me. "T eak, too weak, the flesh, though the spirit is willing. He seelned to be drifting cahllly towards the end, aR if of outward incidents or outward activities there would be nothing more to record. But there was still sOlnethillg wanting, and he was not to leave the THE ORDER OF i1IERIT. 4 2 5 world without an open recognition of his services to lnankind. In January 1874, there came a rumour froln Berlin that Prussia proposed to reward the author of the' Life of Frederick the Great,' by confer- ring on hilll the Order of l\lerit, which Frederick him- self had founded. Possibly the good turn which he had done to Gernlany by his letter during the siege of Paris, nÜght have contributed to draw the Elnperor's attention to hiln. But his great history, translated and universally ::tl:cepted by Frederick's countrYlnen a.s the worthiest account of their national hero, was itself claÏlll sufficient without additional 1110tive. Carlyle had never been alllbitious of public honours. He had never even thought of such things, and the news, when it first reached Cheyne Row, was received with- out particular flutter of heart. "V ere it ever so well UlCant,' he said, 'it can be of no value to lIle wllat- ever. Do thee neither ill na gude.' The Order of }lerit was the BlUst flattering distinction which could have been offered hÜn, for it really means' 11lerit,' and must he earned, even by the Princes of the Blood. Of course he could not refuse it, and, at the bottom, I mIl sure that he was pleased. Yet it seelned as if he would not let hirm;clf enjoy anything which Jw was no longer alive to enjoy with him. The day before yesterday (he tells his brother on the 14th of February) his l'russian Excellency forwarded. to me by regif;tered parcel all the dOCUlllf'nts and insignia connected. with our sublime elevation to the Prussian Order of l\Ierit. Due reply sent; and so we have done, thank Heaven, with this sublime nonentity. I feel about it, after the fact is over, quite a::i emphatically as I dill at first,-that had they sent me a quarter of a pound of good tobacco, the addition ..p6 CdRLYLE'S LIFE ll\t- LOI\TDO V. to my happiness would probably have been suitabler and greater. To his friends this act of the Gennan Govern- lnent was a high gratification, if to hiln::5elf it was a slight one. The pleasure which lnen receive frmn such marks of respect is in 1110St cases 'satisfied vanity'; and Carlyle never thought of his own per- fonnances, except as 'duty' indifferently done. vVe, however, were all glad of it, the In ore so because I then believed that when I wrote his life I should have to say that although for so many years he had filleù so great a place an10ng::5t us, and his character was as noble as his intellect, the Govern- ment, or Governments, of his own country-Tory, Liberal, or whatever they might be-had passed hilll over without notice. The reproach, however-for reproach it would have been-was happily l'eInoved while there was yet tÏIne. It is rather for their own sakes, than for the recipients of their favour , that Governments ought to recognise illustrious services. The persons wholn they select for distinction are a test of their own worth. Everyone relnembers the catastrophe of 1874. 1\11'. Gladstone, but lately' the people's William,' the national idol, wa flung froin his pedestal. The country had wearied of him. Adulation had soured into contelnpt, and those who had chanted his praises the loudest professed, like the Rmnan populace on the fall of Sejanus, that they had never achnired hilll at all. At the time, the general opinion was that his t:tar had et for cyer, and Carlyle thought 1'0 too tin THE CO.iVSER VA TIVES IlV PO lVER. 427 he saw who it wa that the people had cho:sen to replace him. His Inind n1Ïsgave him then that the greater faults of his successor would lift 1\11'. Gladstone back again to a yet l110re giddy eminence and greater opportunities of evil. But this was not the world's impression, and Carlyle tried to hide it from hiInself as long as he could. Little sanguine as he was, he flattered himself at the time of the election that the better spirit of ancient England was awake again, that ðhe had sickeneù of her follies and was n1Ìnùed in earnest to put a curb between the teeth of anarchy. It was a bright flash of hope, and 111ight have been 1110re than a hope if the Conservatives could have wisely used the chance which was once nlore offered thenl. Unfortunately, the condition., of the time per- nlÌtted only the alternative of :Thir. Di raeli and :Thir. Gladstone-products, both of then1, of stlunp oratory. FrOln the author of the Reform Bill of lSG7 he could only look for tage tricks or illusions. No wise action could come of such a nlan, and the pendulum would too surely swing back to its old place. Of the two, however, since one or the other was inevitable, he liked Di:sraeli the best. Disraeli, though he lllight delude the world, did not delude hilll elf: aHd could see facts as they were if he cared to :see thel11. ..1.1. any rate there was a respite from the disintegrating proc'ess, and he might hope to live out his relnaining years unvexed by any more of it. :'[r. Disraeli eould not ha'":e bpen unaware of the unfavourable light in which he was re :tardec1 hy Carlyle. hut he by no IllCaTIS rccipnwatcd the feeling. Hc was essentially goodnatured, as indeed Carlyle ah\ay a('knowle<1ged, and took allY blow that llli ht 428 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOl'lDOl\'. be aimed at him with undi turbed composure. He had been a man of letters before he was a politician. He was proud of his profession and of the distinction .which he had hÏIl1self acquired as a novelist. He was personally unacquainted with Carlyle; they had nloved in different circles, and I believe had never Inet. But in early life he had been struck with the French Revolution;' he had ilnitated the style of it, and distinctly regarded the author of that book as the Inost inlportant of living writers. Perhaps he had heard of the bestowal of the Order of J\ferit, and had felt that a scandal would rest on England if a man whom Gennany could single out for honour was left unnoticed in his own land. Perhaps the con- sideration Inight have been forced upon him froBI sonle private source. At any rate, he forgot, if he had ever resented, Carlyle's assaults upon him, and determined to use his own elevation as Premier to confer sonle high 111ark of distinction on a person who wa so universally loved and admired. It was indeed tÏIne, for Carlyle hithert.o had been unnoticed entirely, and had been left without even the conllnon In arks of confidence anù recognition which far in- ferior Inen are sek10nl 'without an opportunity of receiving. He would not have accepted a pension even when in extremity of poverty. But a pension had never been offered. Eminent TIlen of letters were generally appointed trustees of the British l\Iuseuln ; Carlyle's name had not been found aIl10ng thcln. The post of Historiographer Royal for Scotland had been lately vacant. Thi:j, at least, his fricuds cxpected for him; but he had bcen intentionally passed over. The neglect wa=, now atoned for. OFFER OF THE GRAND CROSS. 429 The letters which were exchanged on this occa- sion are so creditable to all persons concerneù, that I print as lnany of them as I possess cOlnplete-in pel'petuam pei memoriam. Tn Tlwma."i Carlyle, Esq. (Confidential.) Bournemouth: December 27, 1874. Sir,-A Goyernment should recognise intellect. If elevates and sustains the tone of a nation. But it is an office which, adequately to fulfil, requires both courage and discrimination, as there is a chance of falling into favouritism and patronising mediocrity, which, instead of elevating the national feeling, would eventually degrade or debase it. In recommending Her :l\Iajesty to fit out an Arctic Expedition, and in suggesting other measures of that class, her Govern- ment have shown their sympathy with Science; and they wish that the position of High Letters should be equally acknowledged; but this is not so easy, because it is in the necessity of t.hings that the tef't of merit cannot be so precise in literature as in science. 'Yhen I consider the literary world, I see only two living namps which I would fain believe will be remembered, and they stand out in un- contested suppriority. One is that of a poet-if not a great poet, a real one; the other is your own. I have advised the Queen to offer to confer a baronetcy on l\1r. Tennyson, and the same distinction should be at your command if you liked it; but I have remembered that, like myself, you are childless, and may not care for hereditary honours. I have, therefore, made up my mind, if agreeable to yourself, to recommend to Her l\Iajesty to confer on you the highest. rlistinction for mprit at hpr command, and which, I believe, bas never yet been conferred by her except for direct services to the State, and that is the Grand Cross vf the Bath. I will Hpeak with frankness on anotlH'r point. It is not well that in t he snll et of your life yon should be di:-;turhed 430 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. by common cares. I see no reason why a great author should not receive from the nation a pension, as well as 3 lawyer or statesman. Unfortunately, the personal power of Her l\Iajesty in this respect is limited; but still it is in the Queen's capacity to settle on an individual an amount equal to a good fellowship; and which was cheerfullyac- cepted and enjoyed by the great spirit of Johnson and the pure integrity of Southey. Have the goodness to let. me know your feelings on these subjects. I have the honour to remain, Sir, Your faithful Servant, R. DISRAELI. To the Riqlzt lIon. B. DisJ'aeli. 5, Cheyne Row, Cbelsea: December 2Ð, 1874. ir,-Yesterday, to my great surprise, I had the honour to receive your letter containing a magnificent proposal for my nenefit, which will be memorable to me for the rest of my life. Allow me to say that the letter, both in purport and expression, is worthy to be called magnanimous and noble, that it is without example in my own poor history; and I think it is unexampled, too, in the history of governing persons towards men of letters at the present, as at any time; and that I will carefully preserve it as one of the things precious to memory and heart. A real treasure or henefit it, independent of all results from it. This aid to yourself and reposited with many feelings in my own grateful mind, I have only to add that your splendid and generous proposals for my practical behoof, must not any of them take effect; that titles of honour are, in all degrees of them, out of keeping with the tenour of my own poor existence hitherto in this epoch of the world, and would be an encumbrance, not a furtherance to me; that as to money, it has, after long years of rigorous and frugal, but also (thank God, and those that nre gone befoTe me) not OFFER OF THE GRAND CROSS. 431 degrading poverty, become in this latter time amplyabun- dant, even superabundant; more of it, too, now a hindrance, not a help to me; so that royal or other bounty would be more than thrown away in my case; and in brief, that except the feeling of your fine and noble conduct on this occasion, which is a real and permanent possession, there cannot an yt hing be done that would not now be a sorrow rather than a pleasure. "Tith thanks more than usually sincere, I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obliged anù obedient servant, T. CARLYLE. To the Counte. . nf Derby. 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea: December 30, 18ï4. Dear Lady,-As I believe you to have been the origi- nator, contriver, and architect of this beautiful air mansion intended for my honour and benefit, and as the Premier's letter appears to me very beautiful on his part, J venture directly to send you a corn ct copy of that and of my answer to it, which I really had a regret in feeling obliged to write; that is to say, in reducing so splendid an edifice of the generous mind to inexorable nothing; though I do say still, and will say it, the generous intention, brought ready for fulfilment from such a quarter, will ever remain a beautiful and precious possession for me. 1r. Disraeli's letter is really what I called it, magnani- mous and noble on his part. It reveals to me, after all the hard things I have said of him, a new and unexpected stratum of gellial dignity and manliness of character which I had by no means given him credit for. It is, as my penitent heart admonishes me, a kind of' heaping coals of fire on my he:ld ;' and r cio truly repent and promise to amend. For the 1"Pst, I naturally wi h there shonld be as Jittle as po ihle -'::1ispect of the nineteenth century, genuine though it he, takes the colours of the age, and shows it elf in tc:'\ti- mouials, addrcs::,cs, complimcnts. ' They fI:lY I am :t F F 2 b 43 6 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LOl\lDO.LY. v great lnan now, he observed to me, 'but not one of them believes nlY report; not one of theln will do 'what I have bidden them do.' His time was chiefly passed in reaòing and in dic- tating letters. He was still ready with his advice to all who asked for it, and with help when help was needed. He walked in the Inornings on the Chelsea Elnbanknlent. 'A real improvement that,' as he reluctantly admitted. In the afternoon he walked in the park with me or some other friend; ending gene- rally in an omnibus, for his strength was visibly fail- ing. At the beginning of 1876, Mr. Trevelyan brought out his Life of his uncle, and sent Carl'yle a copy.' {, , It prolnises,' he writes to his brother, to give a re- \ cognisable likeness of the great Thomas Babington, ,vhOln, to say truth, I never could in any way deeply adnlire, or at all believe in, except to a very shallow extent. You remenlber bringing nle his first-' Edin- burgh Review' essay/ one night fronl Annan to the Gill, and reaùing it with nle before going to bed. I think that was the only thing of his I ever read with lively satisfaction. Did you know that 1\Iacaulay is understood to signify' the son of Olaf' ; Aulay 1\Iacau- lay-Olaf, son of Olaf? Olaf Trygveson would surely be much surprised to see some of the descendants he has had. It is a 11l0st singular biography, and psy- chologically may be considered the most curious ever written. No man known to HIe in present or past ages ever had, with a peaceable composure too, so infinite a stock of good conceit of hinlself. Trevelyan has done his task cleverly and well. I finished it with a rather sensible increase of wonder at the ! On Milton. ADVICE TO CORRESPONDENTS. 437 natural character of him, but with a clearer view than ever of the limited nature of his world-admired talent.' 1any letters have been sent to me from unknown correspondents-young nlen probably who had been diverted frOlTI clericalisnl by reading his books-and had consulted Carlyle in their choice of a life. Here is one. I would give many nlore had I room for them, for they are all kind and wise. Chelsea: March 30, 1876. Dear Sir,-I respect your conscientious scruples in regard to choosing a profession, and wish much I had the power of giving you advice that would be of the least service. But that, I fear, in my total ignorance of yourself and the posture of your affairs, is pretty neady impossible. The profession of the law is in many respects a most honourable one, and has this to recommend it, that a man succeeds there, if he succeeds at all, in an independent and manful manner, by force of his own talent and behaviour, without needing to seek patronage from anybody. As to ambition, that is, no doubt, a thing to be carefully discouraged in oneself; but it does not necessarily inhere in the barrister's profession more than in many others, and I have known one or two who, by quiet fidelity in promoting justice, and by keeping down litigation, had acquired the epithet of the 'honest lawyer,' which appeared to me alwgether human and beautiful. Literature, as a profession, is what I would counsel no faithful man to be concerned with, except when absolutely forced into it, under penalty, as it were, of death. The pursuit of culture, too, is in the highest degree recommend- able to every human soul, and may be succe::;sfu]}yachieved in almost any hone t employment that has wages paid for it. No doubt, too, the Church seems to offer facilities in this respect; but I will by no means ad\ ise you to over- comp your reluctance against seeking refuge the'l'e. On the whole there is nothing strikes me as likelier for one of your 438 CdRLYLE'S LIFE IN LO.i.VDON. di position than the profession of teacher, which is rising into higher request every day, and has scope in it for the grandest endowments of human faculties (could such hitherto be got to enter it), and of all useful and fruitful employ- ments may be defined as the usefullest, fruitfullest, and also indispensablest in these days of ours. Regretting much that I can help you so infinitely little, bidding you take pious and patient counsel with your own soul, and wishing you with great truth a happy result, I remain, dear Sir, Faithfully yours, T . CARLYLE. Thus calnlly and usefully Carlyle's later years went by. There was nothing Inore to disturb him. His health (though he would seldOln allow it) was good. He complained of little, scarcely of want of sleep, and suffered less in all ways than when his temperaluent was more impetuously sensitive. One fonn of sorrow-inevitable when life is far prolonged, that of seeing those whom he had kno"\vn and loved pass away-this he could 110t escape. In February, 1876, John Forster died, the dearest friend that he had left. I was with hiBl at Forster's funeral in S ensal Green; and a Inonth later at the funeral of Lady A.ugusta Stanley at the Abbey. In April his brother Alick went, far off in Canada. Api"il 22, 187().-Poor Alick! he writes: He is cut away from us, and we shall behold his face no more, nor think of him as being of the earth any more. The much- struggling, ever true and valiant brother is for ever gone. To himself in the :-;tate he was in, it can be considered only a a ble f';ed relief, but it trikes me heavily that he is gone before myself; that I, who shoul!l in the course of nature THE RUSSIAN-TURKISH lYAR. 439 have gone before him, am left among the mourners instead of being the mourned. Young Alick's account. of his death is altogether in- teresting-a scene of sublime simplicity, great and solemn under the humblest forms. That question of his, when his eyes were already shut, and his mind wavering before the last finis of all :-' Is 1'om coming from Edinburgh the morn? ' 1 will never leave me should I live a hundred years. Poor Alick, my ever faithful brother! Come back across wide oceans and long decades of time to the scenes of brotherly companionship with me, and going out of the world as it were with his hand in mine. :l\Iany times he convoyed me to meet the Dumfries coach, or to \:1ring me home from it, and full of bright and perfect affection always were those meetings and partings. Though he felt his life to be fast ebbing, he still watched the cour e of things outside him. lIe had, as has been seen, heen touched by 1\11'. Disraeli's action towards him, but it had not altered in the least his distrust of Disraeli's character; and it was thus with indignation, but without surprise, that he found hÜn snatch the opportunity of the Hussian- Turkish War to prepare to play a f!reat part in European politics. It waR the curse ofn10clern English political life, as Carlyle sa\v it, that Prime :\Iinisters though t first of their party, anù only of the wellbeing of their country as wrapped up in their party's triumph. Ir. Glaùstone had a('rificed the loyal Protestants in Ireland for the Catholic vote. Disraeli was appealing to the traùitiuns uf the CrÏ1nean 'Val', the nlost foolish enterprise in which England had ever been engaged, tu stir the national vanit)T an(1 set the world Oil fire, I Alludin to the old times wL(>n Carlyle was at the C"ni\"er ity ami hi::! brothel' w,.u!d be ooking out for him at vacation timt'. 44 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. that he and his friends lnight win a momentary popu- larity. That any honour, any benefit to England or to mankind, could arise from this adventure, he could neither believe himself nor do Disraeli so much in- justice as to suppose that he believed it. Lord Pal- nlerston, a chartered libertine, had been allowed to speak of the Turks as 'the bulwark of civilisation against barbarism.' There was no proposition too absurd for the unfortunate English people to swallow. Disraeli was following on the same lines; while the few decently informed people, who knew the Turks, knew that they were the barbarians, decrepit, and in- curable; that their presence in Europe was a disgrace; that they had been like a streum of oil of vitriol, blasting every land that they had occupied. And now we were threatened with war again, a war which might kindle Europe into a blaze; in defence of this wretched nation. The levity with which ParliaInent, press, and platforIn were lending themselves to the Pl'eIllier's ambition, was but an illustration of what Carlyle had always said about the practical value of English institutions; but he ,vas disgusted that the leaders in the present insanity should be those froni whom alone resistance could be hoped for against the incoming of democracy. It was something worse than even their Reform Bill ten years before. He saw that it could lead to nothing but the discredit, perhap the final ruin of the Conservative party, and the return of 1\11'. Gladstone, to work fresh n1Íschief in Ireland. He foresaw all that has happened as accurately as if he had been a mechanically inspired prophet; and there was something of the old fire of the 'Latter-Day Pamphlets' in the tone in which he LETTER TO THE 'TIJfES.' 44 I talked of what was coming. John Carlyle had spent the spring of 1877 in Cheyne Row. He had left at the end of ..April, when the excitement was growing hot. His brother writes April 28 :- Dismal rumours are afloat, that Dizzy secretly intends to break in upon the Russian-Turkish "Tar, and supporting himself by his Irish Home Rulers, great troop of common- place Tories, Jews, &c., suddenly get Parliament to support him in a new Philo-Turk war against Russia-the maddest thing human imagination could well conceive. I am strongly urged to write something further upon it, but cannot fee} that I have anything new to ay. Events move fast in these dars, and one nail drives out another; but we all reInen1ber the winter cam- paign which brought the Russians to Constantinople and the Englifo:h fleet to the Dardanelles. Opinion in England was all but prepared to allow the Govern- ment to throw itself into the fray-all but-but not entirely. If initiative could be forced upon the Rus- sians, those who wished for a fresh struggle could have it. A schelne was said to have been formed either to seize Gallipoli or to take SOlne similar step, under pretence of protecting English interestb, which ,vould have driven Uussia, however reluctant she n1Îght be, into a declaration of war. The plan, whatever it lnay have been, was kept a secret; but there is rea on to believe that preparations were actually made, that com- Inanders w re chosen, and instructions were ahnost on their way, which ,vould have cOlnmitted the country beyond recall. Carl)Tle heard of this, not as he said from idle nnnour, but fronl sonle authentic source; and he heard too that there was not a moment to luse. On the 5th of 1\Iay he writes to his brother:- 442 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. After much urgency and with a dead-lift effort, I have this day got issued through the' Times' a small indispen- sable deliverance on the Turk and Dizzy question. Dizzy, it appears, to the horror of those who have any interest in him and his proceedings, has decided to have a new war for the Turk against all mankind; and this letter hopes to drive a nail through his mad and maddest speculations on that side. The letter to the 'TÌInes' was brief, not more than three or four lines; but it was elnphatic in its tone, and was po itive about the correctness of the infonnation. Whether he was right, or whether SOlne one had misled hÏIn, there is no evidence before the public to show. But the secret, if secret there was, had tInts been disclosed prematurely. The letter connnanded attention as coming frOln a man who was unlikely to have spoken without grounds, and any unexpected shock, slight though it Inay be, will disturb a critical operation. This was Carlyle's last public act in this world; and if he contributed ever so little to preventing England frOln cOlllInitting herself to a policy of which the mischief would have been hnmeasurable, counterbalanced by nothing, save a brief popularity to the Tory party, it wa perhap:s also the 1110st useful act in his whole life. CO.LVVERSATIONS IN LATE YEARS 443 CIIAPTER XXXIV. A.D. 1877-81. _ET. 82-85. Conversation and habits of life-Estimate of leading politicians-Visit from Lord "Tolseley - Lord BeaconsfieIa and Mr. Gladstone- Dislike of Jews-The English Liturgy-An afternoon in 'Vest- minster Abbey - Progress - Democracy - Religion -The Bible- Characteristics. ::\Iy tale draws to an end. In representing Carlyle's thoughts on men and thing , I have confined nlyself as nlllCh as possible to his own words in his journals and letters. To report correetly the language of conversations, especially when extended over a wide period, is alnlost an il11pos ibility. The listener, in spite of hiInself, adds sOlnething of his own in colour, fornl, or substance. I knew Carlyle, however, so long and so inti- Inatcly, that I heard Jllfmy things fI'm1l him which are not to be found under his hand; 1nany things 11l0re fully dilated on, which are there only hinted at, and slight incident::; about hiInself for which I could nlake no place in my narrative. I have already noticed the general character of his talk with me. r add here some few meI1lorabilia, taken either fronl notes hastily written down, or from Iny own recol- lection, which I helieve ill the main to be correct. "\Vhcn the hol'k of his grief had worll ofT, and 444 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. he had completed his expiatory memoir, he became more composed, and could discourse with his old fulness, and more calmly than in earlier times. A few hours alone with him furnished then the most delightful entertainlnent. vVe walked five or six miles a day in Hyde Park or Battersea, or in the environs of Kensington. As his strength declined, we used the help of an omnibus, and extended our excursions farther. In his last years he drove daily in a fly, out Harrow way, or to Richmond or SyùenhaIn, or wherever it lnight be. Occasionally, in the warm days of eady SUInlner, he would go with lne to Kew Gardens to see the flowers or hear the cuckoo and the nightingales. He was impervious to weather-never carried an umbrella, but, with a luackintosh and his broad-brimlned hat, let the rain do its 'worst upon hÍ1n. The driving days were the least interesting to me, for his voice grew weak, and, lilY own hearing being imperfect, I lost much of what he said; but we often got out to walk, and then he was as audible as ever. He was extreu1ely sensitive, and would become uneasy and even violent-often without explaining hiInself-for the most unexpected reasons. It will be ren1en1bered that he had once stayed at Malvern with Dr. Gully, and on the whole had liked Gully, or had at least been grateful to him. l\Iany years after Dr. Gully's name had come before the world again, in connection with the Balhaul n1y tery, and Carlyle had been shocked and distressed about it. vVe had been out at Sydenham. He wished to be at home at a particular hour. The time was short, and I told the coachman to go back quickly the nearest SE1VSITIVENESS. 445 way. lIe became suddenly agitated, insisted that the man was going wrong, and at last pereInptorily ordered him to take another road. I said that it would be a long round, and that we should be late, but to no purpose, and we. gave him his way. By- and-by, when he grew cool, he said, , We should have gone through Balhaln. I cannot bear to pass that house.' In an omnibus his arbitrary ways were very amusing. He always craved for fresh air, took his seat by the door when he could get it, and sat obliquely in the corner to avoid being squeezed. The conductors knew him, and his appearance was so nlarked that the passengers generally knew him also, and treated him with high respect. A stranger on the box one day, seeing Carlyle get in, observed that the 'old fellow 'ad a queer 'at.' , Queer 'at! ' answered the driver; 'ay, he Jnay wear a queer 'at, but what would you give for the 'ed-piece that's a inside of it?' lIe went often by onlnibus to the Regent Circus, walked frOlu thence up Regent Street and Portland Place into the Park, and returned the Harne way. Port- land Place, being airy and uncrowded, pleased hinl particularly. 'Ve were strolling along it during the Russo-Turkish crisis, one afternoon, when we met a Foreign Office official, who was in the Cabinet secrets. Knowing me, he turned to walk with us, and I intro- duced hirn to Carlyle, saying who he was. C. took the opportunity of delivering hinlself in the old erup- tive style; the Geyser throwing up whole vohunes of steam and stones. It was very fine, and was the last occasion on which I ever heard hinl break out 446 CARLYLE:S LIFE IN LONDON. in this way. JUr. - wrote to lue afterwards to tell lne how luuch interested he had been, adding, however, that he was still in the dark as to whether it was his eyes or the Turks' that had been dan1ned at such a rate. I suppose I 111ight have answered both. He spoke 111uch on politics and on the characters of public nlen. From the British Parlimnent he was profoundly convinced that no lllore f!ood was to be looked for. A den10cratic Parliaulent, from the nature of it, 'w'ould place persons at the head of affairs increasingly unfit to deal with them. Bad ,vould be followed by worse, and worse by worst, till the very fools would see that the systein lnust enel. Lord \V olseley, then Sir Garnet, wen1 with IHe once to call in Cheyne now, Carlyle having expressed a wish to see hinl. lIe was much struck with Sir Garnet, and talked freely 'with hÏ1n on many sub- jects. lIe described the House of Commons as 'six hundred talking asses, set to lllake the laws and ad- n1Ïnister the conccrns of the greatest einpire the world had ever seen;' with other uncOlllplimentary phrases. \Vhen we rof'C to go, he said, ' Well, Sir, I anI glad to have lnade YOllr acquaintance, and I wish you well. There is one duty which I hope Inay yet be laid upon you before you leave this ,vorld-to lock the door of yondcr placE;, and turn them all out about their business.' Of the two Parlianlentary chiefs then alternately ruling, I have already said that he preferred 1\11'. Disraeli, and continued to prefer him, even after his "áld effort to lnake hiulself arbiter of Europe. Dis- raeli, he thought, was under no illusions about hin1- TIlE POLITiCAL LEADERS. 447 self. To him the world was a Inere stage, and he a Inere actor playing a part upon it. He had no serious beliefs, and made no pretences. lIe under- stood, as well as Carlyle hirnself, whither England was going, with its fine talk of progress; but it ,vould last his time; he could Inake a figure in conducting its destinies, or at least all1use himself scientifi- cally, like JHephistopheles. lIe was not an English- Inan, and had no true care for England. The Con- servatiyes, in choosing him for their leader, had sealed their own fate. He had mad his fanle by assailing Peel, the last of the great order of English n1Ìnisters. lIe was dexterous in ParliaIuentary nlanæuvres, but looked only to winning in divisions, and securing his party their turn of power. If ,,,-ith his talents he had posse sed the in tincts of a statesman, there was anarchic Ireland to be brough t to order; there were the Colonies to be united with the Empire; there was the huge, hungry, half-Inunan population of our enonnous towns to be drafted out over the infinite territories of Canada, Au tralia, and New Zealand, where, with land to cultivate anù pure air to breathe, they Inight recover sanity of soul and lÌInb. lIe uscd to peak with real anger of the argu- lnent that such poor wrctches were wanted at home in their squalid alleys, that labour lllight continue cheap. It wa an al'f!ulllcnt worthy only of Carib cannibal . This was the work cut out for English Conscrvative , and they .were 8huttillg their cyes to it because it was difficult, and were rushing ofl led by Dizzy, into Uu sian wars. Mr. Disrac1i, however, had, he adn1Ìtted, S01ne good qualities. lIe could see facts, a suprcme Inerit 44 8 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. in Carlyle's eyes. lIe v{as good-natured. lIe bore no malice. If he was without any lofty virtues, he af- fected no virtuous airs. lr. Gladstone Carlyle con- sidered to be equally incapable of high or sincere pur- pose, but with this difference, t.hat he supposed himself to have what he had not. He did not look on 1r. Gladstone merely as an orator, who, knowing nothing as it ought to be known, had flung his force into ,vords and specious sentÍInents; but as the represen- tative of the multitudinous cants of the age-religious, moral, political, literary; differing in this point frOlll other leading men, that the cant seemed actually true to hÍ1n; that he believed it all and was pre- pared to act on it. He, in fact, believed lr. Glad- stone to be one of those fatal figures, created by England's evil genius, to work irreparable 111ischief, which no one but he could have executed. This, in sunl, was the opinion which he expressed to TIle a hundred till1es, with a hundred variations, and in this ÏInperfect fonn I have here set it down. In a few years, the seed which 1\1r. Gladstone has sown in Ireland and elsewhere will have ripened to the harvest. 'All political follies,' Carlyle says somewhere, , issue at last in a broken head to some- body. That. is tbe final outcoIlle of them.' The next generation will see whether we are to have broken heads in Ireland, or peace and prosperity. His dislike for Disraeli was perhaps aggravated by his dislike of Jews He had a true Teutonic aversion for that unfortunate race. They had no AumouJ', for one thing, and showed no trace of it at any period of their history-a fatal defect in Carlyle's eyes, who regarded no man or people as good for JJ]SLIA.E OF jE IVS. 449 anything who were without a ' genial sympathy with the under side.' They had contributed nothing, besides, to the 'wealth' of nlankind, being mere dealers in lnoney, gold, jewels, or el e old clothes, n1aterial and spiritual. He stood still one day, oppo- site Rothschild's great house at Hyde Park Corner, looked at it a little, and said, , I do not nlean that I want IÜng John back again, but if you ask me which 1110c1e of treating these people I hold to have been the nearest to the will of the Ahnighty about them-to build them palaces like that, or to take the pincers for thpm, 1 JeC'lare for the pincers.' Then he imagincd hirllself King John, with the Baron on the bench before hinl. 'Now, sir, the State requires SaIne of those lnillions you have heaped together with your financing work. " You won't?" very well,' and he gave a twist with his wrist-' Now will you?' and then another twist, till the lnillions were yielded. I would add, however, that the Jews were not the only victiIns whose grinders he believed delllocracy would make free with. London housebuildillg was a favourite text for a SCrInon frOln him. He would point to rows of housef' so slightly put together that they stood only by the support they gave to one another, intended only to last out a brief lease, with no purpose of continuance, either to themf:elvcs or their owners. 'Human life,' he said, was not possible in such houses. All real worth ill lnan came of stability. Character grew froin roots like a tree. In healthy times the faIllily hOlne was ('onstructcd to last for ages; sons to follow their fathers, working at the same business. with {>stablishC'd n10t hod of though t and aC'tion. 1\f odern IY. G G 450 CARLYLE'S LIFE LV LONDON houses were symbols of the uniyersal appetite for change. They were not houses at all. They were tents of nomads. The Inodern artisan had no lwnze, and did not know what hOlne Ineant. Everything \vas now a nlakeshift. :IVIen lived for the present. They had no future to look forward to, for none could say what the future was to be. The London streets and squares were an unconscious confession of it. For the sallIe reason he respected such old insti- tutions a::) 'were still standing alnong lIs-not except- ing even the Church of England. lIe called it thc nlost respectable teaching body at present in exist- ence; and he thought it Inight stand for a while yct if its friends would let it alone. ' Your rusty kettle,' he said,' will continue to boil your water for you if you don't try to mend it. Begin tinkering, and there is an end of your kettle.' It could not last for ever, for what it hall to say was Hot wholly true. Puri- tanism was a noble thing while it was sincere, but that was not true either. All doctrines had to go, after the truth of them caUle to be suspected. But as long as Inen could be found to work the Church of England who believed the Prayer-book sincerelJT, he had not the least wi:.;h to see the fall of it prccipi- tatcd. He disliked the liberal school of clergy. Lct it once be supposed that the clergy generally were teaching what they did not believe themselves, and the whole thing would becolne a hideous hypocrisy. He hinlself had for nlany years attended no place of worship. Nowhere ould he hear anything which he rep-arded aH true, and to be insincere in word or a t was not pO:'lsiblc to him. Dut liturgic:) alld 1'1/('h- THE ENGLISH LITURGY: -+5 1 like had a lllollrnful interest for hÏ1ll, as fossils of belief which once had been genuine. A lady-Lady Ash- burton, I think-induced hinl once, late in his life, to fro with her to St. Paul's. He had never before heard the English Cathedral Service, and far away in the nave, in the diln light, where the words were indis- tinct, or were disguised in lnusic, he had been more inlpressed than he expected to be. In the prayers he recognised 'a true piety,' which had once come straigh t uut of the heart. The distant 'Amen' of the choristers and the roll of the great organ brought tears into his eyes. He spoke so feelingly of this, that I tempted him to try again at vVestJllinster Abbey. I told him that Dean Stanley, for wholn he had a strong regard, would preach, and this was perhaps another inducelnellt. The experÌInent proved dan- gerous. "\Ve were in the Dean's seat. A luinor canon was intoning close to Carlyle's ear. The chorister boys were but three yards off, and the chanll of distance was exchanged for contact which was less enchant- ing. The lines of worshippers in front of hÏ1n, sitting while pretending to kneel, Inaking their responses, bowing in the creed by habit, and mechanically re- peating the phra es of it, when their faces showed that it was habit only, without genuine conviction; this and the rest brought back the feeling that it was but play-acting after all. I could see the cloud gathering in his features, and I was alanned for what I had done before the service was half over. 'V orst of all, through SaIne n1Ïstake, the Dean did not preach, and in the place of hiul was a popular orator, who gave us three q uartel'S of au hour of sugary eloquence. For a while Cadylc hore it like a hero. But by- H n 2 452 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. and-by I heard the point of his stick rattle audibly on the floor. He crushed his hat angrily at each specially eillphatic period, and groans followed, so loud that some of the congregation sitting near, who appeared to know hirn, began to look round. Mrs. D--, the Dean's cousin, who was in the seat with us, exchanged frightened glances with Ine. I was the n10st uneasy of all, for I could see into his mind; and at the too florid peroration I feared that he 'would rise and insist on going out, or even, like Oliver, exclaim, 'Leave your fooling, sir, and come down! ' IIappily the end arrived before a crisis, and we escaped a catastrophe which would have set London ringing. The loss of the use of his right hand was more than a common n1isfortune. It 'was the loss of every- thing. The power of writing, even with pencil, went finally seven years before his death. His mind was vigorous and restless as ever. Reading without an object was weariness. Idleness ".va Inisery; and I never knew him so depressed as when the fatal cer- tainty was brought home to hÏ1n. To this, as to other iInmediate things, tÏ1ne partly reconciled him; but at first he found life intolerable under such conditions. Every day he told l11e he was ,yeary of it, and spoke wistfully of the old Roman l11ethod. ' A nlan nlust stick to his post,' he said, 'and do his best there as long as he can ,york. When his tools are taken from hiIn, it is a sign that he may retire.' \Vhen a dear friend who, like himself, had lost his wife and was heart-broken, took leave in Roman fashion, he was emphatic in his approval. Increasing weakness only partially talnec1 hiu1 into patience, or reconciled TTEARINESS OF LIFE. hÜn to an e stence which, even at its best, he had n10re despised than valueù. To Carlyle, as to HaInlet, the modern world was but' a pestilent congregation of vapours.' Often and often I have heard him repeat :Thlacbeth's words:- To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps on this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time: And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusky death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sounù and fury, Signifying nothing. lIe was espccially irritated when he heard the ordi- nary cant about progre ss, unexan1pled p!,:osperi ty, &c. Progress whither? he would ask, and prosperity in what? People talked as if each step which they took was in the nature of things a step upward; as if each generation was necessarily wiscr and better than the one before; as if there was no uch thing as progres::,- ing down to hell; as if hunlan history was anything else but a history of birth and death, advimce and decline, of rise and fall, in all that men have ever made or done. The only progre s to which Carlylc would allow the nal11C was In oral progress; the only prosperity the growth of better and nobler men and ",vornen: and as humanity could only expand into high din1en ions in an orp:anic society w hcn the wise rulcd and the ignorant obeyed, the progress which consisted in destroying authority, and leaving cycryone to follow his own will and plcasure, was progress down to thc devil and his angels. That, in his opinion, was 453 - 454 CARLYLE'S LiFE IN LONDON. the evident goal of the course in which we were all hurrying on in such high spirits. Of the theory of equality of voting, the good and the bad on the SaIne level, Judas Iscariot and Paul of Tarsus counting equal at the polling booth, the annals of 11lunan infatuation, he useù to say, did not contain the equal. SometÌ1nes he thought that we were given over and lost without reI11edy; that we should rot away through inglorious centuries, sinking ever deeper into anarchy, protected by our strip of sea from a violent end till the earth was weary of us. At other til11es the inherent Il1anliness of the English race, inherited from nobler ages, and not yet rinsed out of them, gave hinl hopes that we might yet be delivered. I reminded hin1 of the comment of Dion Cassius on the change in Rmne frOl11 a conll11onweath to an erl1- pire. In a denlocracy, Cassius says, a country canllot bc 'well administered, even by 3('cident, for it is ruled by the majority, and the n1ajority are always fools. An enlperor is but a single nlan, and nlay, if the gods plcase, be a wise one. But this did not please Carlyle either. The cnlperors that ROlne got, and that we hould bc likely to get, were of the Copper Captain typc, and 'worse than denlocracy itself. The hope, if there was hope, lay in a change of heart in thc English people, and the re-awakening of the nobler element ill theIl1; and this Incant a recovered sense of 'religion.' They would rise out of their delusions whcll they recogniscd once 1110re the sacred nlcaning of duty. Yet v;/iat 'religiíJn? He did not think it posBiblc that educated hOlIest men could even profe.8 Illuch longer to bclicyc in hil"tol'i('al Christianity. Tl<.' had l)('cn rcading th<.' :Bihlc. Half of it ceBl('(l ,.........:Ir' THE BIBLE. 455 to be inspired truth, half of it lnllllan illusion. ' The prophet says, "Thus saith the Lord." Yes, sir, but how if it be not the Lord, but only you who take your own fancies for the word of the Lord?' I spoke to him of what he had done himself. Then as always he thought little of it, but he said, , They nlust cOlne to something like that if any l110re good is to grow out of them.' Scientific accountings for the moral sen e were all lTIoonshine. Right and wrong in all things, great and small, had been ruled eternally by the rower which nlade us. A friend was arguing OIl the people's right to decide this or that, and, when Carlyle ùissented, asked who was to be the judge. Carlyle fiercely answered, , Hell fire will be the Ju dge. God .A_hnighty will be the judge, now and always.' The history of lnankind is the history of creeds growing one out of the other. I said it was possible that if Protestant Christianity ceased to be credible, some fresh superstition might take its place, or even that Popery might COllIe back for a time, developed into new conditions. If the Olynlpian gods could f'urvive Aristophanes 800 years; if a Julian could still hope to maintain Paganislll a the religion of the elnpire, I did not see why the Pope might not suryive Luther for at least as long. Carlyle would n0t hear of this; but he did ::uhnit that the l\Iass -was the lllost genuine relic of religious belief now left to us. lIe was not always consistent in what he r-;aid of Chris- tianity. lIe would often speak of it with Goethe' as a height fr01ll whi('h, when on('e achieved, lnankind cutJd never ùescend.' lIe did not himself believe in the Hcsurrection as a historical fact, yet he was angry and scornful at Strauss's language about it. ' Dill 456 CdRL YLE'.s LIFE LV LOiVDON ') not our hearts burn within us?' he quoted, iw;isting on the honest conviction of the apostles. The associations of the old creed whieh he had learnt fr0111 his lnother and in the Ecclefechan kirk hung about him to the last. I was walking with hinl one Sunday afternoon in Battersea Park. In the open circle among the trees were a blind man and his daughter, she singing hynllls, he acc01npanying her on some instrument. We Htood listening. She saner L t? Faber's 'PilgrÏIns of the Kight.' The words were trivial, but the air, though simple, had s01nething weird and unearthly about it. ' Take l1le away!' he said after a few n1Ïnutes, 'I shall cry if I stay longer.' He was not what is COllll110nly called an :uniable nlan. Alniability runs readily into insincerity. He spoke his nlind fi eely, careles to whOln he g3xe offence: but as no man ever delighted nlore to hear of any brave or good action, so there was none lnore tender-hearted or c01npassionate of suffering. Stern and disdainful to wrongdoers, especially if they happened to be in high placet:, he was eyer pitiful to the children of n1Ïsfortune. Whether they were :,aints or sinliers Blade no difference. If they were miserable his heart was open to thenl. lIe was like Goethe's cl ves :- Ob er heilig, ob er böse, Jammert sie del' lTngliick:;;;ruann. His lllelnory was extrenlely tenacious, a is always the case with lllen of genius. He would relate anec- dotes for hours together (jf Scotch peasant life, of old Edinburgh students, old Ecdefechall villa en.::. wandering from one thing to another, IJut always dwelling on the simple and pious side of thingf:, never CHARA CTERISTICS. 457 OIl the scandalous or wicked. Burns's songs were eonstantly OIl his lips. lIe knew them so well that they seemcd part of his soul. K ever can I forget the tone in which he would repeat to lne, revealing un- consciously where his own thoughts were wandering, the beautifullilles :- Had we never loved ae kindly, Had we never ]oved sae blind].r, ::Kever met and never parted, 'Ve had ne'er been broken-hearted. Kot once but HHllIY times the worùs would bun t frOlll him, rathcr as the overflow from his own heart than as aùùressed to Ine. In his last years he grew weak, glad to rcst upon a scat when he could find one, glad of an arm to lean un when on his feet. lIe knew that his end Il1Ust be ncar, and it was seldolll long uut of his n1Ìnd. But he was not conscious of a failure of intellectual power, nor do I think that to the last there was any es ential failure. lie forgot names and places, as old n1cn always do, but he recollectcd everything that was worth relnenlbering. lIe caught the point of every Hew problem with the old rapidity. lIe was eager a evcr for new information. In his intellect nothing pointed to an end; and the experience that the mind did not neces arily dc ay with the body confinned his conviction that it was not a function of thc body, that it had anothcr origin and nlÌght have another destination. vVhen he spuke of the future and its uncertainties he fell back invariably on the last words uf his favourite hyn1n :- 'Vir h('i sen euch hoffen. ('Y (' hid you to hope.) 458 CARL YLE'S LIFE lLV LO-,-VDO.V. l\Ieanwhile his business with the world was over, his connection with it was closing in, and he had only to bid it Farewell. Fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages ; Thou thy worlllly task hast done, Home art gone and ta.'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Oftcn and often these words were on his lips. IJo1Jle, too, he felt that he was going; home to those , dear' ones who had gone before binl. His wages he has not taken with hinl. His wages will be the love and honour of the whole English race who read his books and know hi::; history. If bis writings are forgotten, he has left in his life a model of simplicity and uprightness which few will ever equal and none will excel. For he had not been sustained in his way through this world by an inherited creed whidl could give hiIn hope and confiden e. The inherited creed had cnllnbled down, and he had to fornl a belief for hÏInself by lonely lneditation. Nature had not bestowed on hiln the robust l1lCntal constitution which passes by the petty trials of life without heed- ing then1, or the stubborn stoicism which endures in ilcnce. Nature had made hiIll weak, passionate, cOlnplaining, dy peptic in body and sensitive in spirit, lonely, irritable, and lnorbid. lIe becmne what he was by his moral rectitude of principle, by a con- scicntious re olntion to do right, which never failed him in serious things fl'0111 his earlie t years. and, though it could Hot dlange his temperament, was the Ìldlexihlc guicle of hi conduct. Xeithcr elf,indul- lIfORAL STRUCTURE. 459 gence, nor aInbition, nor any nleaner 1110tive, ever led hilll astray frOln the straight road of duty, and he left the 1vorld at last, having never spoken, never ,vrittcll a sentence which he did not believe with his whole heart, never stained his conscience by a single deliLc. ratc act which he could regret to renlember. 460 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. CHAPTER XXXV. A.D. 1877-81. ÆT. 82-85. Statues-Portraits-Millais's picture-Study of the Bible-Illness and death of John Carlyle-Preparation of Memoirs-Last words about it-Longing for death-The end-Offer of a tomb in 'Vest- minster Abbey-Why declined-Ecclefechan churchyard-Con- clusion. A BRIEF chapter closes nlY long story. All things and all nlen COlne to their end. This biography ends. The biographer himself will soon end, and will go where he will have to answer for the Inanner in which he has discharged his trust, happy so far that he has been allowed to live to complete an arduous and anxious undertaking. In the sumnler of 1877 Carlyle, at Iny urgent entreaty, sat for his picture to Mr. Millais. }'Ir. Hoehnl had lllade a seated statue of hinl, as satis- factory a likeness in face and figure as could be rendered in sculpture; and the warm regard which had grown up between the artist and himself had enabled }'lr. Hoehnl to catch with more than COlnnlon success the shifting changes of his expression. But there was still something wanting. A. portrait of Carlyle cOInpletely satisfactory did not yet exist, and if executed at all could be executed only by the most acconlplished painter of his age. Millais, I believe, MILLAIS'S PORTRAIT. 4 61 had neyer attelnpted a n10re difficult subject. In the second sitting I observed what seemed a miracle. The passionate vehement face of middle life had long disappeared. Something of the .dnnandale peasant had stolen back over the proud air of conscious in- tellectual power. The scorn, the fierceness was gone, and tenderness and lnild sorrow had passed into its place. And yet under :Mìllais's hands the old Carlyle stood again upon the canvas as I had not seen hin1 for thirty years. The inner secret of the features had been evidently caught. There ,vas a likeness which no sculptor, no photographer, had yet equalled or approached. Afterwards, I knew not how, it seemed to fade away. l\;Iillais grew dissatisfied with his work and, I believe, never completed it. Car- lyle's own verdict ,vas modestly uncertain. The picture, he said, does not please many, nor in fact myself altogether; but it is surely strikingly like in every feature, and the fundamental condition was that )iillais should paint what he was able to see. His correspondence with his brother John, never intermitted ,vhile they both lived, was concerned chiefly with the books with which he was occupying himself. He read Shakespeare again. He read Goethe again, and then went cOlnpletely through the 'Decline and Fall.' I have finished Gibbon, he wrotp, with a great deduction from the high esteem I have had of him ever since the old Kirkcaldy days, when I first read the twelve volumes of poor Irving's copy in twelve consecutive days. A man of endless reading and research, but of a most disagreeable style, and a great want of the highest faculties (which indeed are vpry rare) of what wp could call a classical historian, compared 462 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON with Herodotus, for instance, and his perfect clearness and simplicity in every part. In speaking of Gibbon's work to Ine he made one remark which is worth recording. In earlier years he had spoken contenlptuously of the A.thanasian controversy, of the Christian ,vorld torn in pieces over a diphthong, and he would ring the changes in broad Annal1dale on the HOlllOousion and the Homoiousion. He told me now that he perceived Christianity itself ... to have been at stake. If the Arians had won, it would have dwindled away into a legend. He continued to read the Bible , , the significance of ,vhich ' he found 'dee p an d wonderful ahuost as luuch as it ever used to be.' Bold and honest to the last, he would not pretend to believe what his in- tellect rejected, and even in Job, his old favourite, he found luore wonder than satisfaction. But the Bible itself, the Bible and Shakespeare, relllained ' the best books' to hiul that were ever written. lIe ,vas growing weaker and weaker, however, and the exertion of thouf!ht exhausted hilll. I do not feel to ail anything, he said of himself, N ovem- bel' 2, 1878, except unspeakable and, I think, increasing weakness, as of a young child-the arrival, in fact, of second childhood, such as is to be expected when the date of de- parture is nigh. I am grateful to Heaven for one thing, that the state of my mind continues unaltered and perfectly clear: surply a blessing beyond expression compared with what the contrary would be. Let us pray to be grateful to the great Giver of Good, and for patience under whatever His will way be. And again, N ovelnber 7 :- The fact is, so far as I can read it, my strength is fadpd nearly quite away, and it. begin:;; to be more and more pvident ILLNESS OF JOHiV CARL YLE. 4 6 3 to me that I shall not long have to struggle under thi:; burden of life, but soon go to the refuge that is appointed for us all. For a long time back I have been accustomed to look at the E'J'nster F'J'eund as the most merciful and indis- pensable refuge appointed by the Great Creator for his wearied children whose work is done. Alas, alas! the final mercy oÍ God, it in late years always appears to me is, that He delivers us from life which has become a task too hard for us. As long as John Carlyle surviyed, he had still the associate of his early years, on whose affection he could rely, and John, as the younger of the two, lnight be expected to outliye hinl. But this last consolation he was to see pass fr0111 him. John Carlyle, too, was sinking under the weight of years. Illness bore heavily on hin1, and his periodic vi::5its to Chelsea had ceased to be 11lanageable. His honle was at Dlnnfries, and the arcounts of him which reached Cheyne Row all through that winter .were less and le s hopeful. It was a winter melnorable for its long, stern, implacable frost, which bore hard on the aged and the failing. Though they could not meet, they could still write to each other. To .John Carlyle. Chelsea: December 4, 1878. .:\Iy dear Brother,-On coming down stairs from a dim and painful night I find your punctual letter here, announc- ing that matters are no better with yourself, probably in some respects even worse. 'Ve must be patient, dear brother, anù take piously if we can what days and nights are sent ns. The night before last was unusually good with me. All t he rest, especially last night, wpre worse than usual, and little or no leep attainable by me. In fact I eem to per('piyf' that thprp i only fill(-> hopI', that of lwing calk(l away out of 464 CARLYLE'S LIFE flV LONDOl'v. this unmanageable scene. One must not presume to form express desires about it, but for a long time back the above has been my clear conviction. About you, dear brother, I think daily with a tender sorrow for your sake, and surely have to own with you that there is no good news to be ex- pected from either side. God's will be done. The frost, I perceive, will not abate yet, and the darkness gives no sign of lessening either. Your case, dear brother, I feel to be even worse than my own, aud I am often painfully thinking of you. Let us summon all the virtue that is in us, if there be any virtue at all, and quit us like men and not like fools. l\Iary sends her kindest love. To me she is unwearied in her attention; rose last night, for example, as she ever does at my summons; but was not able last night, for the first time, to do me any real good. I send my love to sister Jean, and am always eager for news of her. Blessings on you all. I am ever, dear brother, affectionately yours, T. CARLYLE. .l .. little lnore and John was gone. As his con- dition grew hopeless, Carlyle was afraid every day that the end had come, and that the news had been kept back froln him. 'Is my brother John dead?' he asked lne one day as I joined hinl in his carriage. He was not actually dead then, but he suffered only for a few luore days. John Carlyle would have been remelubered a a distinguished 111an if he had not been overshadowed by his greater brother. After his early struggles he worked in his profession for lliany careful years, and saved a considerable fortune. Then, in sOlnewhat desultory fashion, he took to literature. lIe .wanted brilliancy, and still Jl10re he wanted energy, but he had the virtue of his fan1Ìly-veracity. Whatever he undertook he did faithfully, with all his ability, and his translation of Dante is the best that cxiets. He needed the spur, howeyer, hefore he would BEQUESTS TO EDINBURGH UiVIVERSITY 465 exert hÏInself, and I believe he attenlpted nothing serious afterwards. In disposition he was frank, kind-hearted, generous; entirely free from all selfish- ness or anlbition; simple as his brother in his personal habits; and ready always with Hloney, tinIe, or pro- fessional assistance, wherever his help was needed. "\Vhen Carlyle bequeathed Craigenputtock to the University of Edinburgh, Juhn too ettled a, hands0111e SUIn for medical bur:-,aries there, to encourage pour students. These two brothers, born in a peasant's home in Annandale, owing little theillselves to an Alma Iater which had missed discovering their merits, ,vere doing for Scotland's chief University what Scotland's peers and lllCrchants, with their palaces and deer forests and social splendour, had, for some cause, too imperfectly supplied. J aIues Carlyle and three sisters still relllained, anù Carlyle was tenderly attached to them. nut John had been his early friend, the brother of his heart, and his death 'was a sore blow. lie bore his lo:,s Inallfully, suhlllÏtting to the inevitable as to the wiU of his Father and .ìVIaster. lie was very feeble, hut the munths went by without producing HutCh visible change, :save that latterly in his drives he had to take a supply of liquid food with hÏIn. lIe was still fairly cheerful, and tried, though with dinlÏnished eagerness, to take an interest in public atI:'lirs. lIe even thought for a nlOlnent of taking a per nllal part in the preparation of his l\Iellloirs. Among his papers I had fuund the Ueminiscences of his f tthcr, of Irving, uf Jen n y, of Southey and \Vordsworth. 1 had to ask myself whether these characteristic, and a I thought, and continue to think, extreillcly beautiful IV. 11 11 466 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. autobiographical fragments, should be broken up and absorbed in his biography, or whether they ought not to be published as they stood, in a separate volume. I consulted him about it. He had almost forgotten what he had written; but as soon as he had recalled it to his recollection he approved of the separate publication, and added that they had better be brought out inllnediately on his death. The world would then be talking about him, and would have' something authentic to go upon. It ,vas suggested that he might revise the sheets personally, and that the book 1night appear in his lifetime as edited by hÏ1nself. He turned the proposal over in his mind, and considered that perhaps he 11light try. On re- flection, however, he found the effort would be too much for hÌIn. He gave it up, and left everything as before to me, to do what I thought proper. At this time there had been no mention and no purpose of including in the intended volume the l\lemoir of 1\1rs. Carlyle. This was part of hi eparate bequest to 1He, and I was then engaged, a I have already said, in incorporating both 1nemoir and letters in the history of his early life. I think a year 1nu8t have elapsed after this before the subject wa mentioned between us again. At length, how- ever, one day about three 1nonths before his death, he asked n1e very solen1nly, and in a tone of the saddest auxiety, what I proposed to do about 'the Letters and l\Iemorials.' I was I:;orry-for a fresh evidence at so late a date of his wish that the Letters should be published as he had left the1n would take away n1Y discretion, and I could no longer treat them as I had begun to do. But he was so sorrowful and PUBLICA TIO_V OF .i1íEAíOIRS. 4 6 7 earnest-though still giving no positiye order-that I could 111ake no objection. I prol1lÌsed hÏ1n that the Letters should appear with such reservations as might be indispensable. The Letters implied the J\Iemoir, for it had been agreed upon froln the first between us that, if ]'1rs. Carlyle's Letters were published, his 1\Ielnoir of her must be published also. I decided, therefore, that the l\IeInoir should be added to the volunle of Relniniscences; the Letters to foHo,v at an early date. I briefly told hÜn this. He was en- tirely satisfied, and never spoke about it again. I have said enough already of Carlyle's reason for preparing these papers, of his bequest of them to nle, and of the eInbarraSslllent into .which I ,vas thrown by it. The argll111ents on either ide were weighty, and ten years of consideration had not made it more easy to choo e between thenl. l\ly final conclusion lllay have been right or wrong, but the illfluenre which turneù the balance wa:s Carlyle's pel'SeVerillg wish, and lny own ronviction that it was a wi:o;h supreluely honourable to hÜn. This was in the autumn of 1880, a little before his 85th birthday. lIe was growing so visibly infinu, that neither he himself nor any of us expected hiIn to survive the winter. II<' wa scarcely able even to wish it. lIe was attended by a Scotch physician who had lately settled in London. He disliked doctors gene- rally, and through life had allowed none of them near hinl except his brother; but he subn1Ïtted now to oc- casional visits, thouf!h he knew that he was past help and that old age was a disease for which t]wre was no earthly remedy. I wað sitting with him one day HU::? 468 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. when this gentleman entered and made the usual inquiries. Carlyle growled some sort of answer, and then said :- I think very well of you, sir. I expect that you will have good success here in London, and will well deserve it. For me you can do nothing. The only thing you could do, you must not do-that is, help me to make an end of this. 'Ye must ju t go on as we are. He was entirely occupied with his approaching change, and with the world and its concerns we could see that he had done for ever. In J alluary he was visibly sinking. His political anticipations had been exactly fulfilled. Mr. Gladstone had come back to power. Fresh jars of paraffin had been poured on the fire in Ireland, and anarchy and murder were the order of the clay. I mentioned sOl11ething of it to him one day. He listened indifferently. 'These things do not interest you?' I said. ' Not the least,' he answered, and turned languidly away. He beCal11e worse a clay or two after that. I went down to see hÏ1n. IIis bed had been moved into the drawing-roOl11, which still bore the stamp of his wife's hand upon it. lIeI' workbox and other ladies' trifles lay about in their old places. He had forbidden thel11 to be removed, and they stood within reach of his dying hand. He was wandering when I came to his side. He recognised me. 'I al11 very ill,' he said. 'Is it not strange that those people should have chosen the very oldest man in all Britain to lnake suffer in this way? ' I answered, 'We do not exactly know why those people act as they do. They may have reasons that THE END. 4 6 9 we cannot guess at.' 'Yes,' he said, with a flash of the old intellect, 'it would be rash to say that they have no reasons.' When I saw hÏ1n next his speech was gone. His eyes were as if they did not see, or were fixed on sonlething far away. I cannot say whether he heard nle when I spoke to hiln, but I said, 'Ours has been a long friendship; I will try to do what you wish.' This was on the 4th of February, 1881. The IllOrning following he died. He had been gone an hour when I reached the house. lIe lay calm anù still, an expression of exquisite tenderness subdu- ing his rugged features into feminine beauty. I have seen something like it in Catholic pictures of dead saints, but never, before or since, on any hUlnan countenance. So closed a long life of eighty-five years-a life in which extraordinary talents had been devoteù, with an equally extraordinary purity of purpose, to his l\faker's service, o far as he could see and under- stand that laker's will-a life of single-n1Ïnded effort to do right and unly that; of constant truthfulness in word and deed. Of Carlyle, if of anyone, it may be said that' he was a Blan indeed in wholn was no guile.' No insincerity ever passed his lips; no dis- honest or ÏInpure thought ever stole into his heart. In all those long year the nlost lualicious scrutiny will earch ill vain fur a single serious bleIllish. If he had frailties and iUlpatiences, if he made Inistakes and suffered for theIn, happy thuse who::,e conscience has nothing worse to charge thCln with. IIappy those who, if their infinnities have cau ed pain to others 47 0 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. who were dear to theIn, have, like Carlyle, Inade the t tult into a virtue by the sÏ1nplicity and conlpleteness of their repentance. lIe had told me when Mrs. Carlyle died, that he hoped to be buried beside her at Haddington. It was ordered otherwise, either by himself on reconsideration, or for some other cause. He had foreseen that an attempt n1Ïght be made to give him a nlore distin- guished resting-place in WestIninster Abbey. For Inany reasons he had decided that it was not to be. lIe objected to parts of the English burial service, and, veracious in everything, did not choose that words should be read over hiIn which he regarded as untrue. 'The grain of corn,' he said, 'does not die; or if it dies, does not rise again.' SOlnething, too, there was of the same proud feeling which had led him to decline a title. Funerals in the Abbey were not con- fined to the deserving. "\Vhen was buried there he observed to Ine, 'There will be a general gaol delivery in that place one of these days.' His own direction was that he was to lie with his father and mother at the spot where in his life he had made so often a pious pilgrÏIuage, the old kirkyard at Ecclefechan. Dean Stanley wrote to lne, after he was gone, to otIer the Abbey, in the warmest and most admiring tenus. lIe had applied to me as one of the executors, and I had to tell hÜn that it had been otherwise arranged. He asked that the body Inig-ht rest there for a night on the way to Scotland. This also we were obliged to decline. Deeply affected as he was, he preached on the Sunday following on Carlyle's work and character, introducing into l1Ïs Hennon a BURIAL AT ECCLEFECHA.J.V. 47 1 beautiful passage which I had given to him out of the last journal. The organ played afterwards the Dead March in , Saul '-grand, nlajestic-as England's voice of fare- well to one whose work for England had closed, and yet had not closed. It is still, perhaps, rather in its infancy; for he, being dead, yet speaks tu us as no other nlan in this century has spoken or is likely to speak. He ,vas taken down in the night by the railway. I, Lecky, and Tyndall, alone of his London friends, were able to follow. We travelled by the mail train. 'Ve arrived at Ecc1efechan on a cold dreary February morning; such a morning as he hÏInself describes when he laid his mother in the same grave where he wa now to rest. Snow had fallen, and road and field were wrapped in a white winding-sheet. The hearse, with the coffin, stood solitary in the station yard, as some waggon 111Ìgh t stand, waiting to be unloaded. They do not study form in Scotland, and the absence of respect had nothing unusual about it. But the look of that black, snow-sprinkled object, standing there so de ()late, was painful; and, to lose ight of it in the three hours which we had to wait, we walked up to 1\Iainhill, the small farmhouse, two Iniles distant, where he had spent his boyhood and his university vacations. I had seen Mainhill be- fore, Iny companions had not. The house had been enlarged since my previou visit, but the old part of it, the kitchen and the two bedroollls, of which it had comásted when the Carlyles lived there, relnained as they had been, with the old alcoves, in which the beds were still standing. To eompletc the resmn- 472 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDOl\ Llance, another family of the same station in life HOW occupied it-a shrewd industrious fanner's, who:se wife was n1aking cheeses in the dairy. Again there were eight children, the elder sons at school in the village, the little ones running about barefoot as Car- lyle had done, the girls with their brooms and dusters, and one little fellow not strong enough for fann work, Lut believed to have gifts, and designed, by-and-by, for college. It was the old scene over again, tIle Salne stage, the same play, with new players. We stayed looking about us till it 'was time to go, and then 'waded back through the half-melted snow to the station. A few strangers had arrived fron1 Edin- burgh and elsewhere, but not Inany; for the fmnily, silnplc ill their habits, avoided display, and the day, and even the place, of the funeral, had not been nlade public. Two or three carriages were waiting, - belonging to gentlelnen in the neighbourhood. Mr. J alnes Carlyle and his sisters were there, with their children, in carriages also, and there was a carriage for us. The hearse was set in D10ven1ent, and we followed slowly down the half-nlile of roaù which divides the station frmll the village. A crowd had gathered at the churchyard, not disorderly, but seem- ingly with no feeling but curiosity. There were hoys and girls brigh t with ribands and coloured ùresses, climLing upon the kirkyard wans. There was no n1Ïnister-or at least no ceremony which iUlplied the presencë of a Ininistcr. I could not but contrast, in 11lyown thoughts, that poor and ahuost raggeù scene, with the trampled sleet and dirt, and unordered if not di....ordpl'cd assemLJagc, with the sad ranks of 1110Urners W]1O would have' att('uded in thou:-;and lmd Dean BURIAL AT ECCLEFECHAN 473 Stanley's offer been accepted. I ha1f-regretted the resolution which had nlade the Abbey iInpo::5sible. :1\lelancholy, indeed, was the impression left upon me by that final leave-taking of nlY honoured master. The kirkyard was peopled with ghosts. All round me were headstones, with the names of the good old villagers of whom I had heard so nlany stories frOln hiln: the schoohnaster frOlu WhOlU he had learnt his first Latin, the blacksnlith with WhOlll his father had argued on the resurrection of the body, his father, mother, sister, woven into the life which was now oyer, and which it was to fall to myself to describe. But the graves were soiled with half-thawed sleet, the new paper corre- spondents were busy ,vith their pencils, the people were pressing and pushing as the coffin was lowcred down. Not in this way, I thought for a lUOlnent, ought Scot- land to have laid her best and greatest in his solemn sleeping-place. But it was for a nlOlnent only. It was as he had hÏIuself desired. They whom he had loved best had been buried so-all so-and with no other forms. The funeral prayers in Scotland are not offered at the grave, but in private houses, before or after. There was not]Iing really unsuitable in ,vhat habit had lllade natural and fit. It was over, and we left him to his rest. In future years, in future centuries, strangers will come froln distant lands-fronl Anwrica, from Australia, from New Z:caland, from every isle or continent where the English language is spoken- to see the house where Carlyle was born, to see the green turf under which hi:s dust is lying. Scot- land will have raised a nlonulllcllt over his grave; hut no 1110nUlnent is nceded for one who has maùe all 474 C.rlRLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. eternal ulen10rial for hiInself in the hearts of all to whom truth is the dearest of possessions. 'For, giving his soul to the common cause, he has won for himself a wreath which will not fade and a tomb the most honourable, net where his dust is decaying, but where his glory lives in everlasting remembrance. For of illustrious men all the earth is the sepulchre, and it is not the inscribed column in their own land which is the record of their virtues, but the unwritten memory of them in the hearts and minds of all mankind.' IN D E X. ABE A lmRGWII:I, visit to Bishop Thirl- wall at., 1. 307 Á'\fldiscombe, ,isits to, ii. 178,374 Alma, on t.he battle of the, ii. 173 America, receipt of remittances from, i. 14fi, 152,193; the Civil 'Var in, ii. 246 Anarchy, on the uses of, ii. 293 Anuandale, incidents at, i. 253; anec- dotes of, 322; vÏ::;its to, ii. 276, 287 Anne Boleyn, Carlyle's estimate of, ii. 397 Argyll, Duke of, ü. 248 Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, on the · French Revolution,' i. 178; visited by Carlyle, 253 Art, Carlyle's characteristic remarks on, i. 231 Ashburton, Lord (father of Mr. Bar- ing), makes the acquaintance of Carlyle, i. 347, 348; his death, 444 \shlcy, Lord (afterwards Lord Shaftes- bury), his efforts for the protection of factory children, i. 366 Athanasian controversy, on the, ii. 462 Atheism, modern, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 372, 386 Authors, remarks on, i. 153 Azeglio, rebuke of, ii. 128 D ABBAGE, i. 200 Baring, Lady Harriet (aft.erwarrls Larly Ashburton), her admiration for Carlyle, i. 342 ; visited by :Mrs. Carl) Ie, 367; her death, ii. 186 Baring-, Mr. (afterwards Lord Ashbur- ton), i. 1[;5, 342; visited by the Carlylcs, 370; joint t.our in Scot- land, 3 '2; Carlyle's vbits to, 41 fi, -114, ii. 24.7 j an incident at the CAR Grange, ii. 128; his second mar- riage, 229; his illness, 268; his death, 275; legacy to Carl:rle, 275 Barry, the architect, ii. 42 Bath, description of, i. 2 8 Benthamism, i. 290 Berlin, the revolution in, i. 434; de- scription of t.he city, ii. U8 Bemstorff, Count (Prussian Ambas- sador in London), his letter to Car- ly Ie, ii. 405 ßlanc, Louis, visit from, i. 452 Boehm's statue of Carlyle, ii. 460 Bonn, visit to, ii. 100 Hares, Carlyle's contempt. for, i. 345 Rreslau, visit. to, ii. 22:3 Bright, Jacob, acquaintance with, i. 412 Bright, John, acquaintance with, i. 412 Bromley, Miss Davenport, visit. to, ii. 326 Bruges, visit to, i. 262 nuilget of a z,'e1ll1lU' bwo1ll]J7'isl', ii. 162 Buller. Charles, i. 11:36, 257; his high Parliamentary reputation, 449; his death, i. 449 j Car1)le's elegy on, 44 ' Bullers, the, their kindness to Car- lyle, i. :!57; death of Mrs. Buller, 449 Bunsen, meeting with, i. 155 Buxton, vÏ:5Ìt to, i. 410 C AMBRIDGE friends, liberality of, i. ]51 Cant, Carlyle's detestation of, ii. 17 Carleton, the novelist, i. 398 Carlyle, James (brother of T. Carlyle), reprf'sents Carlyle at the funeral of the latter's mother-in- 47 6 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. CAR law, i. 236; visits his brother in London, 357; his character, ii. 145 Carlyle, Alick (brother of T. Carlyle), the death of, ii. 438 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, her opinion of the rewritten burnt manuscript, i. 5-1; Carlyle's letters to, 59, 76, 78, Ill, 145, 146, 209, 235, 237, 300, 301, 307, 319, 353, 364, 3S0, 3S2, 3U4, 435, ii. 10-14, 52, 88, 113, 176, 210, 277; her illness, i. 73; visits her mother in Hcotland, 74; her domestic trials, 79; returns to London in better spirits, 80; again seriously ill, 100; gives a soirée, 156; accompanies Carlyle to Hcotland, 166; her temper, 180; her close friendship with :l\1iss Geralùine Jewsbury, 207; letter to her mother on affairs in Cheyne How, 233; her illness at Liverpool on learning the deat.h of her mother, 23-1; returns to Cheyne How, 2!l; consents to follow tl1e Bullers to Suffolk, 2."')7 ; her birthday present from Carl) Ie, 30-1; super- intends the alterat ions in Cheyne Row, 329; her indomitable spirit under illness, 3!l ; visits Lady Har- riet Baring, 367 ; vi:"its the Barings in Hampshire, 370; her dislike of Addiscombe, 374 ; disagreement with"Carlyle, 379; goes to Seaforth, H79; seeks advice from l\Iazzini, 381 ; his letters in answer, 381, 3!H; returns to Cheyne Row, 393; resolu- tion regarding the Harings, 393; friendship with Mazzini, 402; ac- companies Carlyle to the Grange, -10:3; and to Matlock amI Buxton, 410; her illness at Addiscombe, 4H; vIsits Haddington, ii. 8; writes to John Carlyle, 8; her description of a Scotch wedding, 9; visit t.o the Grange, 88; decides not to accompany Carlyle to Germany, U7; visits John Carlyle and his wife at Moffat, 130; nurses Carlyle's mother, 133; her thrifti- ness, 160; Budget. of a Femme In- comprise, 162; begins her diary, 180; satirical letter from, IS'> ; goes t.o Haddington, 189; her opinion of the opening of 'Frederick,' 194; grows weaker in health, 196; her improved condition, 20(j; domestic trials, 233 ; improved domestic CAR arrangement.s, 242; her delicate condition, 250; goes to Nithsdale, 250; note to Mr. Froude on Bishop Colenso, 264; her continued weak- ness, 267 ; accident, 271 ; goes to St. Leonards, 274 ; flight to Annandale, 276 ; her partial recovery, 283; loses the power of her right arm, 287; goes to Nithsdale, 290; and returns to Cheyne Row, 291; her last part- ing from her husband, 301; her pleasure at the success of Carlyle's Edinburgh address, 307; her death, 312; and funeral, 316; dawn of the 'Letters and l\Iemorials of,' 359 Carlyle, John (brother of T. Carlyle), i. 21, 3-1; Carlyle's letters to, 55, 70, S3, 96, 99, 117, 13.3, 167, 177, 446, ii. 197, 240, 405, -132; visits his brother in Cheyne Row, i. 72 ; criticises his l\I1::;., 81; devotes himself to the poor in ltome during the cholera, 116; his thoughtfulness for his brother, 1(j(j; his influence over him, 296; leaves for Scotland, 2U7; his translation of Dante's , Inferno,' h. 8; death of his wife, 160 note; stays with his brot.her at Cheyne Row, 32.3; returns to Scot- land, 326; meets his brother on his return from l\Ient.one, 342; his death, 464; his character, 464 ; his bequest to Edinburgh University, 465 Carlyle, Margaret (mother of T. Car- lyle), her anxiety regarding Car- !vIe's faith, i. 62; characteristic l tters to her son, 63, 1 m ; Carlyle's letters to, i. 91, 102, 125, 284, 333, 337, 408, 439, 447, 453, ii. 108, 138; her increasillg weakness, i. 36'>; Carlyle visits her, 249, 413, ii. 142 ; her indignation at Lady Harriet Baring's treatment of Mrs. Carlyle, i. 414; divines domestic trouble in Cheyne Row, ii. 82 ; death, 142 Carlyle, Thomas, his opinion of bio- graphy, i. 1; beginning of Jife in Cheyne Row, 8; uncertain pro- spects, 9; absorbed in French Revo- lution, 12; his creed, 12; on litera- ture as a profession, 22, 2, 130; his reception of the news of the burnt manuscript, 27; compensation for, 29; resolves to rewrit.e the volume, 28; meets Wordsworth, 31; his INDEX. CAR poverty anrl confidence, 35; blank prospects, 37; his style, 40, 53; its justification, 42; refuses to recognise any body of believers, 44 ; thoughts of abandoning litera- t.ure, 47; finishes the rewriting of the burnt volume, 55; starts for Scotland, 57; returns to Chelsea, 61; refuses t.o be connected with parties, 65; Mr. Basil :\Iont.agu's offer of employment, 67; mode of life, 68; relaxation in garden work, 71; pleasure in his brother's com- pany, 72; t.he discipline of genius, n; visits John 'Mill, H; progress of his work, 75; reception of the · Diamond ecklace' by the critics, 8U: pessimistic views of literary life, 82; completes the 'French Revolution,' 8-1; his belief in the Divine guidance of the world's affairs, 89; his 'word-pictures,' 91 ; his intlexible love of truth, 91; reception of his work by contem- poraries, 93; consents to deliver lectures in London, 98; prospectus of the lectures, 99; their succe s, 103 ; visits Seotland, 108; returns to London, 114; his kindness to others, 116; thoughts on t.he cholera, 117; resolutions against vanity, 119; }.1roposals from t.he publishers regarding reprints of his works, 1:!1; distaste for public employment, 129 j prepares for seconrl course of lectures, 131; opinion of popularity anù its value, 133; depressing effect of lecturin upon him, 13R; visits Kirkcal(ly, U-1 j calls on Jeffrev, 144; oes to eotsbrig, ] 45; evidences in Lon- don of his growin importance, 148; agrees to write on Cromwell for the' Lon(lon and \\"estmin"ter,' H9; agitates for the institution of a public leniling library, 152 ; resulting in the formation of the Loudon Library, 15 ; on authors and publishers, 153; first impres- sions on the records of the Com- monwealth' 153; makes the ac- quaintance of :\Ionckton :Milnes, 1.')5; Bunsen, 155; and Mr. Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton), 155 ; remarks on Mrs.Carlyle's soirée,156; interview with Count d'Orsay, 158, :mccess of third course of Jectures, 477 CAR 1.59; his dissatisfaction with them, 159; his fear of being led away by public speaking, 160; reflections on condition of the working classes, 160; corresponds wit.h Mill and Lockhart on writing an article t.hereon, 163; meets \Yebster, 164; his portrait of him, 164; becomes acquainted with Connop ThirIwaIl (afterwards nishop of St. Da,id's), 165; receives present of a tn.'ue, 1(j5; visits Scotland, 166; first experience of railway travelling, lfi7; benefit derived from riding, 170; article on 'Chartism,' 171; which Lockhart refuses, 172; pub- lishes tbe article in book form successfully, 173; its reception by the crities, 174 ; on heroes,175 ; proposed discourses on ' Heroes and Hero-worship,' 176; receives con- gratulatory letters from strangers, 178; his unrest, 179; his letters on Heroes, 180; resolves to put them into book form, 185; his treatment of uncongenial company, 186; on special juries, H10; remarks on the supposed :\lacaulay article about bin' in the' Edinburgh Review,' l!) ; recdves further remittances from Am rica, 193; finishes 'Lectures on Heroes,' 194; wishes to live by t Ie sea, 198; continues studies on t he Commonwealth, 199; im- patience with Lonrlon, 201; his nervous irritability, 204; experi- ence of a special jury, 20.3; com('s to terms with Fraser about lectures on 'Hero-worship,' 207; first ac- quaintance wi' h :Miss Geraliline Jewsbury, 207; goes to Fryston with :\Ii1nes, 209; visits the James MarshaUs at Headingl)', 212; a new experience of life in English country houses, 213; proceeils to Liverpool anrl Dumfriesshire, 214; takes a cottage on the Solway for the sum- mer, 215; lives in seclusion, 222; returns to Lonrlon, 222; òifticulty in beginning' CrolUw('ll,' 224; rlis- belief in t.he present being better than the past, 22-1; sets out to attenrl bis mother-in-Iaw's funeral, :!;{6; is left sole executor, 236; his life at Templand, 217, 240; incirlent in Crawforil churchyard, 248; visits his mot her, 219 ; his pride in his famil} 47 8 CARL rLE'S LIFE Ii\! LOi\!D01\ CAR pedigree, 252; visits Dr. Arnold at Rugby, 253; the battle-field of Naseby, 255; returns to London, 256; goes to the House of Com- mons to hear Charles Buller speak, 257; his opinion of the House, 258 ; agrees to accompany Stephen Spring Rice to Ostend, 259; his descriptive power, 2õ9; visits Ghent, 266; returns to London, 272; his high appreciation of English sailors, 272; becomes acquainted with Owen, the geologist. 273; follows his wife to Suffolk, 275; a ride in Cromwell's country, 275; visits Ely Cathedml, 275; St. Ives, 276; Huntingdon, 276: his slow progTess with' Cromwell,' 279; his prophecies regarding the future laughed at, 2S1; t.he birth of ' Past and Present,,' 281; rapidity of its composition, 2RI; reception of the work, 286; its effect among his contemporaries, 288; his position anrl influencE', 291; passion for truth, W-l ; earnest- ness, 295; opinion of t.he reviews on 'Past. and Present,' 297; accepts invitations to visit South \Vales, 298 ; visits the Bishop of Ht. Daviil's, 307; description of an inn at CHou- cester, 313; surveys the battle- field of \\Toreester, 314; arrives at Liverpool, 315; sees Father Mathew, 315; brief tour in North Wales with his brother, 316; goes to Scotsbrig, 317; reflections on a biography of Ralph Erskine, 320: visits Templanrl and Crawforrl churchyard, 32 ; Haddington, 324 ; remarks on Irish anrl Highland shearers, 325; visits Jeffrey and Erskine, 327; and returns to Lon- don, 327; effects upon him of the alterations in Cheyne Row, 3 R; conscient.iousness in writing, 333; refuses a professorship at 81. Andrews, 336; delight at the success of the movement for the protection of factory children, 336; anxiety for his mother, 339; difficulties with 'Cromwell,' 339' low estimat.e of his own work, 340, an evening with the Barings at Addiscombe, 343; his contempt for bores, 345 ; life at. the Grange, 347 ; progress with 'Cromwell,' 3i} 1; it.s completion, 356; nature of the CAR work, 357; effect upon his mind of the long study of the Common- wealth, 35f1; political conclusions, 360; the rights of majorities, 360; joins his wife at Seaforth, 364 ; goes on to Scotsbrig, 364; the reception of 'Cromwell' by t.he public, 369; dawn of 'Frederick the Great,' 369; returns t.o London, 369; visits t.he Barings in Hamp- shire in company with his wife, 370 ; domestic clourls, 379 ; solicited to assist the' Young Ireland' party, 389; impatience at his wife's silenee, 391; accompanies the Barings to Scotland, 392; visits Irelanrl, 39í; witnesses the last appearance of O'Connell, 3g7 ; meets Carleton, the novelist, 398; dines with John Mit- chel, 3ftfl; returns to England, 399 ; meets with l\1argaret Fuller, 401; visits Lord and Lady Ashburton at the Grange, 403; visits the Barings, 40-1 ; his sympathy for Ireland, 405 ; visits from Jeffrey, 407; ani!. from Dr. Chalmers, 407; his advice to young men on literature as a pro- fession, 409; visits Matlock and Buxton, 410; and Mr. W. E. Forster at Rawdon, 410; makes the ac- quaintance of John ani!. Jacob Brigh t, 412 ; visits b is mother, 4 13 ; returns t.o London, 415; visit to the Barings, 416; corresponi!.s with Baron Rothschild on the Jew Bill, 419; his financial circumstancE's, 420; projects for new book!;', 423 ; the 'Exodus from Houndsditch,' 423; thinks of writing a work on i!.emocraey, 429; meets Sir Robert Peel, 433; thoughts on the state of Europe, 434; on Chartism, 437 writes newspaper articles, 437; r1ccompanips Emerson to Stone- henge, 440; visits the Barings, 4l-t-; his opinion of the proposeil Cromwell statue, 451; visited by Louis Blanc, 452; encounters Louis Napoleon, 453; provides temporary refuge for Charles Gavan Duffy, 456; t.our through Ireland, ii. 1; meet.s Gavan Duffy, 3; and Petrie, the antiquarian, 3; declines an invitation from the Viceroy, 3; his description of Kil- dare, 3; meet.s Mr. W. E. Forster, 5; his opinion of Lori!. George IiVDEX. 479 CAR Hill's experiment in Donegal, 6; address at Derry, 7; stays at. Hcotsbrig, 9; visits the -\shburtons at Glen Truim, 10; his description of a Highlanrl shooting paradise, 13 ; returns to Scotsbrig, 14; his de- testation of cant, 17 ; his bitterness on the Negro question, 21; severs his connection with Mill, 26 ; visits :Millbank Penitentiary, 29; a re- miniscence of old times, 37; his habits of declamation, 41; invited to dine with Sir Robert Peel, 42; meets Prescott., Cubitt., and Barry the architect, 42; meets Savage Landor, 50; visits 1Ir. Redwood, 50; his description of Merthyr Tydvil, 51; life at Scotsbrig, 5-t-; reaction after the Pamphlets, õ.J; his discontent. 57; visit.s the :Mar- shalls, 59; returns to London, 61 ; opinion of W ycherley's Comedies, 6;;; writes the 'Life of Sterling,' 68; his remarks on a portrait of himself, 76; on a peculiarity of the English language, 78 1Iott'; on the Crystal Palace, 7!1, I 5 ; goes to the waters at l\lalvern, 81; visits the Ashburtons in Paris, 83; meets 'fhiers, 11érimée, and Laborde, 83 ; resolves to write the history of FrederitJk the Great, 86; mag-nit uile of the task, 86 ; studies for' Frede- rick,' 90; projects going to Ger- many, g ; visits Linlathf'n, !}3; goes to Germany, !)7 ; at Bonn, 100; (lescription of the Rhine, 10-1; fit J;'rankfurt, 106; Homburg, 107; l\Jarburg, lOR; description of Goe- the's house, 112; and Schiller's, 113 ; llerrnhut, 117; dcscription of Ber- lin, 118; end of the jourm-y, 119; retrospect., 123; on the Duke lIf Wellington's funeral. 12ß; the beginning of 'Frerlerick,' 127; re- bukes Azeglio, 128; an inciilent at the Grange,12S ; revival of the cock nuisa,nce, 13.1; extract from journal on his miseries, 136; his last letter to his mother, 138; hurries to :-;cotsbrig in t.ime to see her once more, 142; on his mother's death, 142; his grief, 146; his ot,ininn of the Crimean war, 1.11 ; and of Louis :Kapoleon, 152; the sound-proof room, 153; the journal of a ilay, 159 the economics of Cheyne Row, CAR 161; sources of income, 161; his difficulties over' Frederick,' 172; on the battle of the Alma, 173; and Louis Xapoleon's visit to England, I H; visit to Suffolk, 175, 176; goes to Addiscombe, 178; spends the autumn in Scotland, 183 ; visits the Ashburtons, 184; grief at the r1eath of Lady Ashburton, 186; his horse Fritz, 187; progress with , Frederick' 189 . fresh worries 1 1 1l. the difficulties i costume, HJ3: ;J!) ; remarks on the Indian Iutiny, IH4; and on London Chri::.tmas, 196; on Scotch servants, 198; completion of first two volumes of tne' Frede- rick,' 200; his Frederick William compared with Walter Shandy, 20-1 ; a night in a railway train, 207; pays visit to Craigenputtock, 21 -1 ; seconil. tour in Germany, 217; nar- rative of his journey, 217; visits Rilgen, 218; Frederick's battle- fielils, 2 ; Bre lau, 222; Prag, 223 ; and Dresden, 2 5; returns to Lon- don, 225; his masterly grasp of the battle-tÜ"lds, 227; success of 'Fre- rlerick,' 228; effects of Ii terary life, 231; mode of life, 234:; takes a house in Fife, 23.3; visits Thurso Castle, 237; improved domestic arrangements, 2-12; his friendship ",ith John Ruskin, 244; on the American Civil .War, 2-16; visit to the Grange, 247; publication of third volume of 'Frederick,' 51; ppr- sonal intercourse with ;\1 r. Froudf', 25-1; his charity, 2.'>5; his compas- sion for suffering, 257; as a com- panion, '1;)7; his distrust of modern science, 259; his estimate of re- ligion, 260; and materialism, 261; his opinion of Dean Stanley, 26:1; anrl Colenso, 63; on literature ani!. its value, 264; is compared to Ht. Paul, 266; tone of his conver,.;ation, 267; breakdown of his hor!'e Fritz, 269 ; on Dickens's reading, 270; his \\ ife's accirlent, 271; his blindness to its nature, 2ï3; aecollJpanies lwr to I:'t. Leo[)arils, 7 4 ; takes a hou e there. 275; alone in Cheyne Row, '277; presents his wife with a brougham, 2H3; completes' Frerlerick,' 2H:I; goes to Annan(lale, 287; "i!'its the Speililings at Keswick, 290; ret urns to Cheyne !tow, 2!ll; his feelings 4 8 0 CARL YLE'S LIFE IN LONDOA CAR towards Eilinburgh, 2%; chosen Rector of the University, 298; his opinion of Ruskin's' Ethics of the Dust.,' 2!J8; departs for Edinburgh, 301; his last parting from his wife, 301 ; installation as Rector, 303; his speech, 303; its effect on the world, 306; temporary popularity of his works, 306; recognised as a 'great man,' 307; praise from the news- papers, 308; delayed by an acci- dent, 30!); his reception of the news of his wife's rleath, 314; re- turns to London, 315; aecom- panies the body of his wife to Haililington, 315; her funeral, 316; receives message from the Queen, 320; his reply, 321 ; alt.empt.s at oc- cupat.ion, 325; "isits Miss Davenport Bromley, 326; and Lady Ashburton at l\Ientone, 333; returns to Eng- lanrl, 341; his charities, 34:6; on public affairs, 347; publishes · Shooting Niagara,' 350; his last. public utterance on English poli- t.ics, 352; resumes ridin , 353; daily worries, 353; revi ion of his · Collecteil \V orks,' 3.).!; his weari- ness of life, 355; visit to W ools- thorpe, 357; receives a visit from his brother James, 3;')7; on the Clerkenwell explosion, 358; retro- spect, 359; dawn of 'The Letters and "Memorials of l\Irs. Carlyle,' 359; int.erests himself in the defence of Eyre, 364; his opinion of the rlisestablishment.of the Irish Church, 365; and of Tynrlall's lecture on Farailay, 366; visits Lord Xorth- brook, 367; meets S.ft.O. C't.he Rev. Lord Sidney'), 368; makes selec- tions from his wife's let.ters, 3ô9; meditations from his journal, 370; his opinion of morlem atheism, 372, 386; anrl of oratory, 374; another riding acciilent, 379; meets the Queen at Westminster, 380; loses the power of his right hanrl, 3!H ; on t.he death of his friend Erskine, 391; on t.he uses of anarchy, 393 ; on Anne Boleyn, 397; on Ginx's Baby, 398; on the Franco-German war, 399; and Napoleon III., mm; on the victory of Germany, 400; on the prospects for France, 401; on Russia's breach of t he Treaty of Paris, 401; his letter to the CHA , Times' on the Franco - German question, 403; its effect on the English people, 405 ; on the loss of the use of his right hand, 407; gives his wife's Reminiscences into the keeping of l\Ir. Frourle, 408; in- trusts l\1r. Froude with the writing of his biography, 414; his latest writings, H 7; on the death of Bishop WiIberforce and J. S. Mill, 419; on l\1ill's Autobiography, 420 ; on )Ir. Lecky, 422; on the Irish policy of l\lr. Gladstone, 423; on :)ir James Stf'phen, 423; his last entry in the journal, 424; receives the Order of Merit from Prussia, 425; on the general election of 1874, 426; on Gladstone and Disraeli, 427,447; hisanswerstol\Ir.Disraeli's let.ter on proposed honours, anil to t.he Countess of Derby, 431 ; tributes of respect on his eight.ieth birth- day, 434; morle of life, 436; his opinion of Trevelyan's 'Life of l\Iacaulay,' 436; a characterist.ic letter of advice to a young man, 437; on t.he death of his brother Alick, 438; on the policy of the Tory party rluring the Rnsso- Turkish war, 439 ; his letter to t.he 'Times' thereon, 442; his opinion of t.he Eritish Parliament, 44:(;; mf'ets Sir Garnet. W olseley, 447; his opinion of the Jews, 44!J; on Lonrlnn housebuililing, 450; and t.he Chureh of Englanrl, 450 ; his opinion of the scrvices at St. Paul's anil Westminster, 451; his irritation at his decaying powers, 453; on pro- greRs, 453; his t.enacious memory, 457 ; his knowlerlge of his approach- ing end, 457; his unswerving rec- titude, 459; Roehm's statue of him, 460; Millais's portrait., Mil; his opinion of Gibbon's 'Dccline and Fall,' 4:61; his anxiety regariling the'Lett.ers and Memorials,' 466 ; his dislike of rloctors, 467; increas- ing weakness, and death, .169; his funeral, 471 Cavaignac, General, i. 43!J Chalmers, Dr., visits Carlyle, i. 407 Charteris, La(ly Anne, i. 405 Chartism, i. 160; article on, 171, 173, 174; thoughts upon, 437 Chartism and Railicalism, Carlylc's estimate of, i. 160, 171 LNDEX. 4 81 CHE Chepstow, ile::.cription of, i. 2 1 Cheyne Row, beginning of life in, i. 8; effect on Carlyle of alterations in, 3:!8; visitors to, ii. 67 ; the econo- mies of, 161 ; alone in, 277,294,342; strange applications at, 389 Cholera, thoughts on the, i. 117 Christianity and political economy, difference between, ii. 32 Church of England, Carlyle's "iews on the, ii. 450 C'lerkenwell explosion, on the, ii. 358 Clough, Arthur, his reason for leav- ing Oxford, i. 457; Carlyle's high opinion of him, 458; his rleath, ii.2!3 Cockburn, Lord, Carlyle's estimate of, ii. 158 Colenso, Bishop, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 263; l\Irs. Carlyle's note to Mr. Froude on, ii. 64: Coleriilg-e, i. 45; ii. 71, 170 Cologne Cathedral, anecdote of, Ü. 131 note Commons. Honse of, Carlyle "isits the, i. :!.j7; hi opinion of it, 258 Commonwealth, Carlyle's first impres- sions on the records of the, i. 153; continues their study, 199; its effect on his minrl, 359 Commune, the French, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 405 Conservatism, remarks on, i. 24 Craigenputtock, ,isit to, ii. 214; be- queathed to Univcrsity of Edin- burgh. 345 Crawford churchyard, incident in, i. 2-18; visit t.o, 322 Crimean war, t.he, ii. Ul Cromwell, i. lt9. 151. 15-1:; rlifficulty with the Life of. 22-1, 33!); its be- ginnings, 331; its progress, 3.:)1; anù completion, 35ô; its reception by the puhlic, 369; new edition called for, 373; Carlyle's opinion of the proposed Cromwell statuc, 4:Jl Crystal Palace, the, ii. 79, 152 Cubitt, mceting with, ii. 4:2 D JDIOCTIACY, Carlyle's t.houghts on, i. 429 Perhy, TJaily, Carlyle's I, tter to, ii. U 1 ; her interview with Carlyle re- gar,ling his proposed honours, 43:1 VerI"), Carlyle's addre5s at, ii. 7 n T . EYR 'Diamond Necklace,' its reception by the critics, i. 80 Dickens, Charles, Carlyle's first 5ight of, i. 17ï; on his readings, ii. 270 Disraeli, Benjamin, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 428, 447: his letter to Car- lyle, 429; Carlyle's answer, 4:30 Doctors, Carlyle's dislike of, ii. 467 Donegal, Lord G. Hill's experiment in, ii. 6 D'Orsay, Count, interview with, i. 158 , Downing Street and Modern Govern- ment.,' ii. 30 Dresden, visit to, ii. 225 Duffy, Charles Gavan, anrl the' Young Ireland' party, i. 389; Carlyle"s opinion of Duffy, 3 m; his narrow escape, 400; guest in Cheyne Row, 456; meets Carlyle in Dublin, ii. 3 Dumfriesshire, visit to, i. 2H E DINBURGH, Carlyle's feelings to- warrls, ii. 296; is chosen Hector of the University of, 97; his in- stallation, 303 ; beque Jths Craigen- puttock to the University, 3-15 , Edinburgh Review,' Carlyle's remarks on supposed article by l\IacauIay in the, i. 192 Ely Cathedral, visit t.o, i. 275 Emerson, Ralph \\Taldo, his relations wit.h Carlyle, i. 45, 139; high ap- preciation of, 20; visits Carlyle in Lonrlon, 415; lectures in England, 422; visits Paris and Oxford, 440; at Stonehenge, 4-10 : his opinion of 'Frederick,' ii. 285; again visits England,418 England, conrlition of, in 1 4 , i. 280; improved condition now 283; this partly the effect. of Carl) lc's teaching, 283 English language, on a peculiarity of the, ii. 78 note Erskine, Ralph, reflections on a bio- graphy of, i. 320 Erskine, Thoma1', of Linlatllf'n, i. 127, ii. 93; Carlyle's letters to, i. 245, 277, 377,430, ii. 17,131, 2.j2, 317; visit to, i. 327; his ktter to Mr. Carlyle, ii. 292; his ùeath. 3 n Europe, thoughts on the state of, i. -134 'Exodus from Houmlsditch,' i. 42:1 Eyre', Governor, Carlyle's opinion of his conrluct, ii. : 9; alld interc:ot in his àefence) 3G-I 4 82 CARLYLE'S LIFE IN LONDON. FAR F ARADAY, Carlyle's opinion of Tyn- (k'tll's lecture on, ii. 366 Pe11l'lne IlICOl1IjJr1Sl', Budget of a, ii. 162 Fife, Carlyle takes a house in, ii. 235 Forster, John, his kindness on the death of l\Irs. Carlyle, ii. 313; on the 'Letters and Memorials,' 412; his deat.h, 438 Forster,l\Ir. 'V. E., visit to, at Rawdon, i. 410 ; meets him in Ireland, ii. 5 Foxton, Mr., ii. 216 France, Carlyle on the prospects of, ii. 401 Franco-German war, Carlyle on the, ii. 399; and the victory of the Germans, 400 Frankfurt, visit to, ii. 106 Fraser, James (proprietor of the maga- ziue), Carlyle's opinion of his criti- cal faculty, i. 121; come to terms aùout. the lectures on 'Hero 'V or- shi p,' 207 C Frederick the Great,' dawn of the hist.ory, i. 369; st.udies for, ii. 90; it.s beginning, 127 ; difficulties with, 172; it.s progress, 189; completion of the first two volumes, 200; its success, 228; publication of the third volume, 251; completion of the work, 283; its t.ranslation into German, 284; its effect in Ger- many, 281; reception in Englanrl, 285 French Revolution, Carlyle's History of the, i. 12; mishap with t.he 1\1S., 27, 34; resolves to rewrite it, 28, 51, 53, 55; progress with, 75; its completion, 84; nature of t.he work, 88; its reception by contemporaries, 93, !"I5 Fripps, !\fr., i. 300 Frourle, J. A., first introduction to Carlyle, i. 457; a disciple of Car- lyle's, ii. 179; Carlyle's criticisms on his work, 180; on Carlyle's his- torical method, 200; become close friends, 2.')4; Carlyle gives the cus- todv of his wife's Reminiscences to, 408"; and int.rusts him with t.he writing of his biography, 414 Fryston, visit t.o lr.l\1onckton l\Iilnes at, i. 209 Fuller, l\1argaret., her meeting with Carlyle, i. 401, 402, 403 IRE G A V .AZZI, FATHER, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 83 German Literature, Lectures on, i. 99, 102 Germany, projected visit to, ii. 92, 97 ; second tour in, ii. 217 Ghent., visit. to, i. 266-270 Gibbon's' Decline and Fall,' estimate of, Ü. 461 Ginx's Baby, ii. 398 Gladst.one, W. E., on slavery, ii. 20 'Jlote; his valedict.ory address as Rector of Edinburgh University, 295; Carlyle's opinion of him, 335, 423, 427, 448 Gloucester, picture of an inn at, i. 313 Goet.he, letters to St.erling on, i. 122, 226; description of his house, ii. 112 Gully, Dr., ii. 81, 445 H .ADDINGTON, visit to, i. 324; 1\lrs. Carlyle's visit to, ii. 8 Hampshire peasantry, let.ter on the, i. 447 Hare, Archdeacon, his Life of John Sterling, i. 418; Carlyle's opinion of it, 418 Headingly. visit. t.o, i. 212 · Heroes and Hero-worship,'i. 1.6, 180, 185, H)4, 207 Herrnhut, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 117 Highland and Irish shearers, i. 325 Hill, Lord George, his attempt to im- prove the state of Ireland, ii. 6 Holland, Lady, i. 178, 296 Hollanrl, Lord, i. 178 Homburg, visit to, ii. 107 House of Commons, visit to the, i. 257 Housebuilrling in London, Carlyle's remarks on, ii. 450 Hudson, the' Railway King,' i. 455 Hunt, Leigh, i. 136 Huntingdon, visit t.o, i. 276 Huxley, John, ii. 302. I NDIAN MUTINY, remarks on the, ii. 194 Ireland, Carlyle's anxiety about, i. 396; visits to, 397, ii. 1 ; sympat.hy for, i. 405; under English rule, ii. I; Lord Gcorge Hill's attempt to INDEX. 4 8 3 IRI improve its condition, 6; the Govern- ment's Irish policy, 385 Irish and Highland shearers, i. 325 Irish Church, Carlyle's opinion of the disestablishment of the, ii. 365 Irving, Edward, Carlyle's Reminis- cences of, ii. 331 J EFFREY, his opinion of tbe 'l1'rench Revolution,' i. 101; on Carlyle as an author, 131; meets Carlyle in Edinburgh,14! ; Carlyle's visit to, 327; visits Carlyle, 401 'Jesuitism,' ii. 31 · Jew Bill,' the, i. 419 Jews, Carlyle's opinion of the, ii. 449 Jewsbury, l\1iss Geraldine, Carlyle's acquaintance with, i. 201, 208 K EBLE,JOHN, Carlyle's description of, ii. 248 Kepler, ii. 259 Kililare, description of, ii. 3 Kingsley's 'Alton Locke,' ii. 51 Kirkcalrly, visit to, i. 144 Knox, John, Carlyle's criticisms on the portraits of, ii. 417 L ABORDE, 1\1., ii. 83 Landor, Savage, visit to, ii. 50 Larkin, Mr., assists Carlyle with , Frederick,' ii. U/9 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' the first of, ii. 23; reviews of them, 65 Lecky, Mr., ii. 422 Lect.ures in London, CarlJle's, i. 98, 131, 136, 138, 140, 159 Lending library, agit.ates for a, i. 152 , IJetters and Memorials of Urs. Car- lyle,' Mr. Froude's opinion of, ii. 408; John Forster on, 413; Carlyle's anxiety about, 466 Liberty, on, ii. 20 Linlathen, visit to l\1r. Erskine at, ü. 93 Literature as a profession, i.22, 47. 82, 130, 409; its effects on Carlyle, ii. 231; its value, 264 Liverpool, vi:-its to, i. 2H, 315 Llandough, South Wales, visit to, i. 300 Lockhart, bis correi:3pondencc with MIL Carlyle about the article on the working classes, i. 163, 171; his opinion of ' Past and Present,' 288 'London and 'West.minster Review,' article on Cromwell in, i. 149 London Library, establishment of the, i. 152, 188 London lions, letter to his brot.her on, i. 177 Lut.ber, on the localities of, ii. 108. lfACAULAY, Carlyle's remarks on lU. supposed article by, i. 192; opinion of him, 433; his 'Essay on :Milton,' 432; Trevelyan's Life of, ii.436 Mackenzie, l\1iss Stuart (Lady Ash- burton), her marriage t.o Lorrl Ash- burton, ii. 229; invites Carlyle to Mentone, 328 Mahomet, i. 181 l\1ajorities, the right.s of, i. 360 Malvern, visit to the wat.ers at, ii. 81 Manchester, adventure in, i. 147; in- surrection at, 282 Marburg, visit to, ii. 108 Marshall, Mr., of Leeds, i. 165, 212, ii. 59 Martineau, Harriet, visits Carlyle, i. 97 Materialism, Carlyle's estimate of, ii. 261 Mat.hew, Father, described, i. 315 :Matlock, visit to, i. 410 Maurice, Frederick (brother-in-law of John Sterling), his pamphlet on the Thirty-nine Articles, i. 39; Carlyle's opinion of him, 126; his , Religions of the World,' 409 Mazzini and London society, i. 3-14; his letters to 1\Irs. Carlyle, 381, 38!; conversation with Carlyle, 402; hi!il temporary triumph in Italy, 452; resists the French at Rome, 454 Melbourne, Lord, i. 186 l\fentone, yi5it to, ii. 336 Mérimée, M , ii. 83 l\Ierivale, Herman, his article on Car- lyle in the' Edinburgh Review,' 192 l\Ierthyr Tydvil, description of, ii. 51 Michael Angelo, Carlyle's criticism of his work, i. 263 Mill, John Htuart, Carlyle's estimate of, i. 2.;; entreats Carlyle to accept compensation for the burnt manu- r I 2 4 8 4 CdRL YLE'S LIFE IN LOlvDOl\Z MIL script, 29; is visited Ly Carlyle, 74; correspondenee with Carlyle on his article upon the working-classes, 163; willing to publish' Chartism' in the' 'Vestminster Review,' 173; replies to Carlyle on the Negro question, ii. 26; severs his connec- tion, 26; Carlyle on his death, 419 ; and his Autobiography, 420 Millais':, portrait. of Carlyle, ii. 461 l\1illbank .Penitentiary, visit to, ii. 29 )Iiln('s, :3Ionckton, Carlyle's intimacy with, i. 155, 20!) Mitchel, John, Carlyle's opinion of him, i. 399; the result of his work, 4UU , 110del Prisons,' ii. 29 1Iodern science, Carlyle's distrust of, ii. 2.j9 ::\Ioffat, Mrs. Carlyle's visit to, ii. 130 JIontagu, Basil, his offer of employ- ment, i. 67 :\Ionteagle, Lord (Mr. pring Rice), i. 124 Mont.rose, remarks on, i. 154 : \lurray, Dr. Thomas, i. lð6 N APOLEON, LOUIS, Carlyle's opi- 1 nion of him, i. 39!1, 453, ii. 152, 399; his visit to England, 17 t . Xaseby, visit t.o the battle-field of, l. 2.3.3 Xcgro question, the, ii. 23 .. euberg, Mr., Carlyle's compamon III Germany, ii. m; Carlyle's high appreciation of, 120 Kewby, life at, i. 21ð :Kithsdale, Mrs. Carlyle's visit to, ii. 2.30, 290 Korthbrook, Lord, visit to, ii. 367 North Wales, tour in, i. 316 O 'COXNELL, DA:KIEL, i. 397 Oratory, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 374 Ost end, visit to, i. 261 Owen, the geologiEt, acquaint.anre with, i. 273 I )AKIZZI, the librarian, ii. 137 Paris, revolution in, i. 428; and the reaction, 439; on Russia':, breach f)f the Treaty of, ii. 401 RUB Parliament, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 446 'Past anrl Present,' i. 281; its recep- tion, 286; re\iews of, 297 Peel, Dir Robert} reeeh'es a copy of 'Cromwell' from Carlyle, i. 375; his answer, 376; becomes personally acquainted with CE.rlyle, 433; article in ' Spectator' on, 452; invites Car- lyle to rlinner, ii. 42; his death, :1:7 ; Carlyle's estimate of his character, 48 Petrie, the anti1uarian, meet.ing with, ii. 3 Pig l'hilosophy, ii. 33 Political economy, remarks on, i. 282; diffcrence between Christianity and, ii. 32 Prag, visit to, ii. 223 Prescott, the historian, meeting with, ii. :1:2 Publishers. remarks on, i. 153 Puseyism, i. HI3 Q UEEN, the, her message of sym. pat.hy t.o Carlyle, ii. 320; mt:cts him at. Westminster, 380 R ADICALISM, remarks on, i. 24; Carlyle's declaration of war against modern, ii. 23 Redwood, 1\11'., i. 298, ii. 49 Reform Bill of 1867, ii. 343, 3;;1 Religion, Carlyle's opinion of, ii. 19, 260 Remington, l\Ir., ii. 121 Rhine, description of the, ii. 104 Rob<.'rtson and the article for the , London and \Vestminster,' i. 14!) Rogers, Carlyle's opinion of, i. 200, 403 Rothschild, Baron, asks Carlyle to write in favour of the Jew Hill, i. 419 Rügen, visit to, ii. 2] 8 Ruskin, John, his acquaintance with Carlyle, ii. 244; his 'Letters on Political Economy,' 24:1: ; his' Unt.o this Last,' 2.32; his 'Ethics of the Dust,' 2!J8 ; defends Governor Eyre, 330; Carlyle's opinion of him, :J83 Russell, Lord John, and Carlyle's 'Downing Strpet. and :\lodern Go- vernment,' ii. :W hVDEX. 4 8 5 SAN S AND, GEORGE, her works, i. 308 Hchiller's house, description of, ii. 1L3 Scotch History Chair, i. 227 Scotch servant.s, on, ii. 198 Hcotsbrig, life at, i. 59, 1 Il, 145, 166, 317, 364, ii. 9, 14, 54, 183 Hcott, Sir Walter, writes article on, i. 120 HpÐforth, visit to his wife at, i. 364 Hewell, William, his article on Carlyle, i. 193 S. G. O. (' the Rev. Lord Sidney'), ii. 3'(;8, 369 'J/ote 'Shooting Niagara,' publication of, ii. 3.>0 Sinclair, Sir George, ii. 237 Houth Wales, invit.at.ions to, i. 298; description of, 30! Special juries, remarks on, i. H)O; ex- perience of, 20;; Hpe,hlings, visit to the, at Keswick, ii. 290 ' piritual Opt.ics,' ii. 77 Spring Rice, l\Ir. (Lord :\Ionteagle), i. 12-1 Hpring Rice, Stephen, i. 259 ::-it. Andrews Professorship, the, i. 3: G Ht. Ives, visit to, i. 276 Ht. Leonanls, Carlyle accompanies his wife to, ii. '274 St. Paul's, on the services at., ii. 451 Stanley, Dean, ii. 263; his champion- hip of ßishop Colenso, 263; offers '" e tminster Abbev as t.he last rest.- ing-place of Ca;lyle, 470; his funeral sermon, 470 SÌl'phen, Sir James, ii. 423 sterling, John, his opinion of Carlyle, i. 10; is caught by the Harlical epillemic, 3R; offended by Carlyle's :.tyle, 40; Carlyle's letters to, 84, 107, 110, 122, 169, 226, 274, 285, 3: 2; dispute about Goet.he, I2 ; his article on Carlyle in the 'West- min ter Review,' 169; bad state of health, 229; his 'Strafford,' 230; returns to London from Italy, 2.>7 ; Carl) Ie, 350; 34!); bis last letter to his death, Carl)' Ie's Life of him, ii. 68 Stonehenge, Carl) Ie accompÐniC's ";merson to, i. HO , Htnmp Oratory; ii. 30 ;-;'l.Iolk, vbit:. to, i. 275, ii. 171) WIN Sussex, a week's riding tour in, i. 194 Symons, Dr., i. 300 T E: IPLA D, life at, i. 217, 2-10 322 Ten Hours' Bill, i. 336 Tennyson, Carlyle's ailmiration for, i. H)O; poetical parallel to Carlyle, 291; ii. 61 Thames, Carlyle's word-picture of a scene on the, i. 195 Thiers, l\I., ii. 83 Thirlwall, Connop (afterwards Bishop of Ht. David's), i. 165, 185; invites Carl)le to Wales, 2!J8; Carlyle's visit to him, 307 Thurso Castle, ii. 237; its neighbour- bood, 2,10 Tieck's 'Vittoria Accorombona,' i. 30 , Times,' Carlyle refuses employment on the, i. 11 TO\..n and country, on, i. 19-;- Trevelyan, his 'Life of Macaulay,' Carlyle.s opinion of, ii. 436 Tyndall, John, ii. 300; his lecture on Faraday at the Hoyal Institution, 36,:); Carlyle's opinion thereof, 3GG '1TITTORIA ACCOROMBONA,' \' Tieck's, i. 302 W ATTS'S portrait, Carlyle's re- marks on, ii. 380 Webster, meeting with, i. 164 'Wellington, Duke of, Carlyle's por- trait of him, ii. 46; his funeral, 1 5 Webh, Mrs. (mother of l\Irs. T. Car- lyle), visits her daughter in London, i. 58; her death, 34 'Westminster Abbey, on the services at, ii.451 '\V est minster Ueview,' Hterling'sarticle on Carlyle in the, i. Itm Wilberforce, Bishop, ii. 41, 419 Wilkie, the artist, Carlyle's opinion of, i. 330 Wilson, Miss, i. 97 Wilson, John, death of, ii. 155; Car- lyle's estimat.e of him, 156 Wind!:Jor ('ÐstIe, Carlyle's comment-; on, i. 1 I; 486 CARLYLE'S .LIFE IN LONDON. WOL Wolseley, Sir Garnet (now Lord), his int.erview with Carlyle, ii. 447 W oolsthorpe, visit to, ii. 357 Worcester, the bat.tle-field of, i. 314 Wordsworth, meeting with, i. 31 j remarks on, 45 \V orking classes, reflections on their condition, i. 160, 163, 171 YOU 'Vycherley's Comedies, Carlyle's dis- satisfaction with, ii. 65 Y OUNG, ARTHUR, his tour in Ire- land, ii. 6 · Young Ireland' movement, i. 389 j Carlyle's opinion of it, 398 pmN1'RD tit' 8POTTISWOODE AXD CO., NEW.STIn;t1' SQtfAftE LOXIJOY 'YORKS BY J-LUfES ANTHONY }lROUDE, I.A. 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